Back to Bologna

9

Barefoot and wearing her raincoat as a dressing gown, Flavia was savouring a cigarette and stirring a pan of sauce when there came a pattern of heavy raps at the door. She went to squint at the caller through the fish-eye lens, getting only a general impression of a hat, dark glasses and a heavy overcoat.

‘Who is it?’

‘Police.’

She took another peek, then unbolted and opened the door. The man flashed a plastic card from his wallet. Flavia made out the word ‘Speranza’ but nothing more.

‘May I come in?’ he asked.

He looked more like a secret policeman than the regular sort, thought Flavia, although such men did not present identification or ask permission to come in. But there was only one reason why the police should be interested in her and the other girls living in those rooms, and that was to effect their immediate deportation under the new immigration laws that had been rushed through to satisfy the xenophobic electorate of various politicians whose support was essential to the survival of the governing coalition.

The intruder stood at the centre of the room, looking about him at the mattresses on the floor, the fruit crates used as cupboards, the pot of pasta sauce simmering on the hotplate, the length of blue nylon cord suspended between two bent nails and serving as a communal wardrobe. In an inversion of its normal function, Flavia wrapped the raincoat tightly about her body, still wet and cold from the primitive shower in the opposite corner.

‘Nice place,’ the man remarked.

This was too obvious a provocation to merit a reply.

‘You sharing?’

Flavia shook her head. There was just a chance of saving the other girls, if she could somehow get word to them before they came home. Didn’t they have to allow you a phone call here in Europe? The man was staring at their meagre possessions, in full view all around. There was still a chance, though, since these added up to less than a quarter of what the average Italian woman would have regarded as the basic minimum.

The policeman took a studio photograph from the inside pocket of his double-breasted coat and showed it to Flavia.

‘You know this person,’ he said.

She recognised Rodolfo’s flatmate immediately, although she had never seen him wearing a jacket and tie, but shook her head again. The intruder replaced the photograph and produced a shiny metal hip flask from which he took a long gurgling drink.

‘Sure you do,’ he said, wiping his lips. ‘Name’s Vincenzo. Vincenzo Amadori.’

He swapped the flask for a packet of cigarettes from yet another pocket of his capacious coat.

‘Mind if I smoke?’

She shook her head again.

‘Want one?’

Her instinct was to refuse-tell nothing, take nothing-but a much older superstition reminded her that three denials brought bad luck. The packet was labelled Camels and the cigarette the man lit for her had a pleasant toasty flavour. American imports, she thought inconsequentially. Definitely the secret police. She decided to call him Dragos.

‘Sure you know him,’ the intruder insisted. ‘Number seventy-four Via Marsala, second floor at the back.’

Flavia realised that further evasion was in vain. Clearly she had been followed.

‘I am see him there I think,’ she declared in a laborious chant.

‘Hey, it talks as well!’ Dragos remarked with a jocular leer. ‘Tell me you mix a mean martini, darling, and you’ve got yourself a date. Actually, all you need to do is sit down and cross your legs.’

He looked around hopefully, but chairs were among the many items of furniture the room lacked.

‘You go there to see him?’ Dragos continued. ‘Or is it the other kid?’

‘The other.’

Asharp nod.

‘Smart girl. Strictly between you, me and anyone who may be listening in behind these cardboard walls, our little Prince Vince is bad news.’

‘I already know these. But he is not a prince I think.’

The secret policeman’s attention had seemingly wandered again, this time to the electric hotplate that was the household’s only cooking facility. He walked over and sniffed the simmering sauce appreciatively.

‘Have you ever met any of his friends?’ he remarked in a tone of studied indifference.

‘Of this Vincenzo?’

‘The very same.’

Drago sucked at his cigarette.

‘He’s fallen into bad company, you see. His parents are very worried.’

‘My friend he is not bad company.’

‘Mattioli? No, he’s okay, for a student. But there’s this crew that Amadori hangs out with at football matches. They’re a different story.’

‘These I never see.’

‘Never, eh?’

Dragos picked up a spoon, dipped it into the pasta sauce and slurped down the contents, turning to Flavia with a patronising smirk that was abruptly wiped from his face. He dropped the spoon and clutched his throat, then doubled over and began bawling incoherently.

Flavia ran to the washbasin and filled the toothglass with water, but the sufferer had already grabbed a beaker of colourless fluid from a nearby shelf and downed it in one. The result was a series of piercing shrieks which blasted openings into that wing of the palace which the Princess had ordered to be abandoned and sealed up years before.

‘Merda di merda di merda di merda di merda di merda di…’

It was only after administering a lengthy course of plain yoghurt diluted with lemon juice that Flavia was able to get her visitor into a fit state to leave, which by then was all he showed any desire to do. Unfortunately the interruption left her no time to complete and then eat the late lunch she had been eagerly anticipating before going to work. She was particularly resentful about this since the sauce-despite the unprintable things the secret policeman had said about it-was a personal favourite which she could only prepare on very rare occasions when the necessary ingredient was to hand.

There were few enough things that Flavia missed about her native country, but the relish which formed the basis of this sauce was one. It consisted of sliced red and yellow goatshorn peppers, robustly hot and subtly sweet, steeped in oil with garlic and lemon zest and mysterious spices. The wonderfully intense flavour suffused your entire system for hours afterwards, warming and reinvigorating both flesh and spirit. It was a perfect pick-me-up for this vicious cold spell that had lasted for weeks, and Flavia had been overjoyed when six large and priceless jars emerged from the parcel she had received the day before from the woman who had been her closest friend during their long childhood years in the House of Joy.

But enough water to cook the pasta would take at least twenty minutes to come to the boil on the feeble electric ring, and in half an hour she was due at work. The managerial underling she had to deal with was an obnoxious little tyrant who had already made it abundantly clear that he regarded women like Flavia as expendable casual labour, and that the least infringement of her verbal terms of engagement would result in instant dismissal. So she mopped up as much of the delicious sauce as she could by dunking chunks of day-old bread into it, happily chomping it down. Why on earth the policeman had made such a fuss about the mouthful he’d tasted was utterly beyond her, although the remains of a glass of the homemade plum brandy that Viorica had also sent was probably not the ideal antidote.

Nevertheless, she felt that she had scored a point in some way. By the time he finally left, Dragos had been very tractable, indeed almost tearfully grateful for Flavia’s ministrations, and had insisted on leaving her his phone number with a line about her ‘being well rewarded’ for any information she passed on about Vincenzo Amadori. Flavia would of course never have dreamt of voluntarily telling the police anything about anyone, let alone a person associated, however insignificantly, with Rodolfo, but she definitely felt that she had won that particular encounter, and arrived at the bus stop in the freezing gloom with a light, lively smile on her lips.