A Season for the Dead

Twenty

Publicity mattered. Alicia Vaccarini learned that two months after she’d won the parliamentary deputy’s seat for the Northern Alliance in Bologna. It took that long for one of the local rags to uncover the truth about Alicia’s private life: that the former university professor was a lesbian with a string of lovers, some of whom were only too willing to talk in return for a little money. The Northern Alliance had a firm position about “aberrant behavior.” It did not approve. In a few brief, heady weeks Alicia Vaccarini had gone from being fêted victor in a marginal seat to an outcast inside her own party.

When the central committee organizer had marched into her office to say she would not be chosen for reelection at the end of her term three years hence, she’d complained, bitterly, “Why didn’t you ask?”

The cold, hard man had stared and said, simply, “Why didn’t you tell?”

She now had only a year left, a year before unemployment, obscurity, poverty perhaps, at the age of forty-eight. Yet Alicia Vaccarini was a clever woman, a lecturer in economics, a worker of the system. She knew how to get grants out of Brussels. She knew how to sit on committees and wait until the right moment to intervene.

She had worked hard to ensure her future, accepting seats on a variety of bodies, judicial, municipal and even one which had overseen some preliminary discussions about the merging of the carabinieri with the state police. There had been opportunities, compromises, particularly when she found her decisions had some sway with people of influence, interested parties seeking a certain resolution.

From time to time, there had been arrangements which, under a strict reading of the law, were illegal. But these, she reasoned, were the price of political practicality. Whatever the Northern Alliance felt about her now, she had been elected with a duty, to serve those who voted for her in Bologna, and to further her own career. These were not necessarily contradictory.

Vaccarini had been careful. None of the current corruption investigations came close to her nor was it likely they would. When she had intervened she had been careful to ensure that the reward was never obvious: a favor here, a simple, valuable gift or service, or a payment abroad. She had cultivated new and unexpected friends, people who would never have come close to her had she stayed inside the cold, rigid embrace of the Alliance.

And there was the irony: Some of them were from quarters she would never have done business with before. On the right. On the left. In the higher echelons of the police and the security services. Even in the Vatican.

The world was full of people needing a little help, and willing to offer something in return. It was merely pragmatic to accept these visible flaws in the façade of society and, when appropriate, to use them to one’s own ends.

Still, unemployment beckoned. She had hoped for a position in Brussels: perhaps even the job of minor commissioner. Nothing had happened and the PR people she employed on a tiny retainer thought they knew why. It was her profile that was wrong. Alicia remained, in the public eye, that lesbian from Bologna who had lied to get herself elected. True, she was bright, she knew how to navigate the system. She was, in many ways, a hardworking, dedicated Italian politician.

Nevertheless the stain of her sexuality, and the way she had hidden her true self for personal gain, continued to taint perceptions. Without some more favorable press, her hopes of a continued political career were unrealistic.

This was the reason, the only reason, why Alicia Vaccarini now sat at a table in a deserted Martelli’s, the restaurant in the narrow alley around the corner from the parliament building which, during the week, was the workers’ dining hall for deputies, journalists and political hangers-on.

“I didn’t even know this place opened on Sundays,” she said, lighting a cigarette.

The journalist said he was from Time magazine.

Now that she was here, Vaccarini realized she should have checked. There were some jokers out there. People with hidden tape recorders who tried to embarrass you into making stupid comments, then selling them to the TV and radio stations. This had been an oversight on her part but an understandable one. The pranksters had low horizons; they always claimed to come from minor, regional papers, not the bigger ones in Rome and Milan where their false identities would be immediately transparent.

To say one was from Time was different; it was too bold a claim, surely, to be anything other than genuine. And now that she was here Alicia Vaccarini could believe it too. The journalist was about thirty, well dressed in a casual, Sunday fashion, with a pale rose shirt and blue trousers. He had an anonymous face, handsome in a vapid if somewhat exaggerated way, with dark, intelligent eyes and a quick, slightly nervous smile.

Only one thing stood out: He seemed too big for his clothes. His muscles bulged against his shirtsleeves; he held himself in an awkward, stiff fashion. He looked like someone who endured workouts in spite of himself, endowing a body that was meant to be more slight with a physicality that didn’t quite fit. And there was a smell too. Like some kind of liniment or a chemical that belonged in a hospital.

“It doesn’t open normally,” he replied in a measured, educated voice. “You’re witnessing the power of the American media, Deputy.”

She laughed and looked around. There was only one other couple dining on the far side of the room. “I could almost believe that.”

“I thought you’d prefer privacy,” he said.

“Why?” she asked, her heart sinking. “I told you on the phone. If you’re looking for some kind of dyke confession piece, if you think I’m going to pour my pink heart out in public, you’ve got the wrong person. That part of my story has been done to death and I’m happy to leave it in the grave.”

He raised a glass of red wine. “Me too.”

She joined him in the drink. It tasted good. Alicia Vaccarini realized she felt like some wine. There was nothing else to do that afternoon. It was too hot to think straight. The parliament was closed. The private work which had kept her in the city was finished.

She could afford to be lazy.

“What I want is to talk about you. The real you. What you believe. What you want to achieve. Where you see your life going after your term as deputy is over.”

“And this is going to make a story for Time?” she wondered.

He frowned and poured some more wine from the carafe. The waiter came and placed two plates of pasta on the table. “You’ve got me there, Alicia. I’m a fraud. But only up to a point. Every story needs a tag. They want to do some piece about how being gay is no longer a bar to public office in Europe. I need some examples that show the real story. I need to ask the question: What would have happened to you if you’d been heterosexual? If you’d been married, with children, and put in the same kind of work you’re doing now?”

“I see.”

He pulled out a small tape recorder and set it on the table. Then he leaned over and placed his hand on hers. It was, she thought, a very powerful hand.

“Alicia. People like us have to stick together.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re telling me you’re gay?”

“You’re telling me you didn’t know the moment you set eyes on me?”

“No. I mean yes.” She didn’t know what she meant at that moment.

He seemed a disconcerting person. When she thought about it she was able to think of him as gay. But it required effort and she couldn’t help wondering whether this was not some trick on his part; whether he was, in truth, some kind of chameleon who could change his shape, alter his appearance at will.

He pressed the button on the tape recorder. She watched the little wheels whirl.

“Tell me about yourself. Only the things you want to talk about. Tell me how you became who you are. What you believe in. About your religion.”

“My religion?”

“Everybody believes in something, Alicia. We just have different names for it. You came from a Catholic family. I read that in the files. You must have believed once.”

She nodded. The wine helped her remember. There had been a time when she was convinced by all those old stories, when they gave her some comfort in the lonely, dark nights of childhood.

“Of course. And then you get older.”

“Wiser?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“And then you get older still, and sometimes it comes back.” He paused. “Do you think that might happen to you?”

“Who knows?” she said lazily, feeling the wine go to her head, liking this strange young man, who was not really gay, she decided, simply very good at lulling an interviewee into believing whatever was appropriate for an easy conversation.

“Doubt is a virtue,” he said firmly as the meat course arrived: grilled lamb with artichokes. “It’s better to believe than to know.”

Alicia Vaccarini laughed. “Quite. Are you really a journalist?”

“What else could I be?”

“A priest, I think. I could imagine you in black. Taking confession. Listening.”

He stopped eating and considered this. “Perhaps I could be a priest. But not today. And I don’t want to hear confessions, Alicia. Confessions are tiresome, whining things, surely.” He looked at her frankly. “Confessions won’t rebuild your career. Only the truth may do that.”

“Only the truth will set you free!” she said gaily, deciding she would get a little drunk, because it was that kind of day.

“Precisely,” he said, suddenly quite serious. “Now talk, please. Of yourself. Of what you wish to become.”

The carafe was refilled. After the meat there was zabaglione and grappa, although she felt she drank more than he did. Alicia Vaccarini began to talk, more freely than she had recently with anyone, in the media or outside it, not caring what the little tape recorder heard. This odd young man, with his considerate, priestly manner, was excellent company, a sounding board who listened closely to everything she said, criticizing when he thought it appropriate, praising when he felt praise was due.

The afternoon disappeared in a whirl of one-sided conversation. When he paid the bill it was approaching four o’clock. She felt wonderful, elated, released of some unconscious burden that had been haunting her for years.

They walked outside. The heat of the day was beginning to fade. This part of the city was empty. The day was so hot it shimmered in front of her eyes. She was reluctant to return to the cramped, stuffy apartment in the Via Cavour that was her solitary home.

Her companion pointed down the narrow alley adjoining the restaurant.

“Alicia,” he said. “It’s such a lovely afternoon. I have my car here. Let’s walk by the river for a while. Drink some coffee. Eat some ice cream. You’re such excellent company. Would you like that? Please?”

She nodded, liking him all the more, and followed as he entered the shade of the alley, disappearing into the shadows. The alley grew dark and unexpectedly cold. There was the smell of damp in the air. Finally she saw him, standing by his vehicle. It was not a car but a small van, with windows in the back, the kind used by tradesmen. He was no longer smiling.

She walked up to him, wondering what accounted for the change in his face, which was now very serious, now looking at her in a way—was this distaste?—she did not recognize.

This stranger put his hand into his pocket and pulled something out: a plastic bag containing a piece of white material. There was that smell again, the one which seemed to belong in a hospital.

She wanted to run but she was too drunk. She wanted to shout but there was nothing to say, no one to hear it.

The white cloth came up to her face and the hospital smell filled her head. Alicia Vaccarini wondered stupidly why all the oxygen had just disappeared from the world, then felt the blackness creep into her head, steadily, with a rushing, roaring sound, in from the corners of her vision, devouring her consciousness.

When she awoke, after an unfathomable period of time, she was in a small, brightly lit circular room, tied to a chair, surrounded by images: photographs and paintings, some so strange she refused to look at them, not daring to let their content enter her head. Music was playing from behind her: hard bop, fast and edgy. Someone was humming to the long complex solo, note for note.

A cloth gag was tied tightly around her mouth. Her hands were bound behind her back. Her ankles were secured firmly to the legs of her chair.

She tried to speak. The words came out as a pathetic grunt. The figure emerged from behind her. In his right hand was a long butcher’s knife. In his left a sharpening rod, which he stroked quickly and professionally with the blade.

“You’re awake,” he said, nodding to drive home his point. “Good. We have much to discuss, and much to achieve.”