Blond Baboon

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Amsterdam dropped away as the plane banked, and the commissaris admired the pale greens and faded blues of fields and ponds set apart by geometrical patterns of expressways spreading out from the city. He had observed the tall suburban apartment buildings rising from parks as they swept away under the roaring jet engines. Their disappearance evoked some satisfaction. He was traveling, getting away, even if it was only for a moment. His forehead rested against the window as the plane flew above a large swamp. He knew the swamp well. It had been a mysterious world once, an endless maze of lagoons and reed-lined twisted ditches filled with murky water. He remembered the freshwater kelp that waved and intertwined in the depth, moved by hidden currents or the undulating sleek bodies of pikes and eels. The swamp had provided his first real discovery, a first indication that mere was more to life man school and trying to find ways to fit in with what grownups wanted him to do in the boring grayness of the small provincial town where he was raised.

He craned his neck but the swamp had gone while the plane gained more height and broke through the clouds and reached die great transparency of the sky. It occurred to him that the sky is an emptiness that sits on a layer of cotton wool and has no limit, an ungraspable manifestation of the mystery that he had also felt as a ten-year-old boy, exploring swamp backwaters in a canoe. The swamp had revealed some of its wonders then, die sky might do the same. And he was in it now, reclining in a first-class seat, reaching the top of a curve that would soon begin to dip down again and take him back to the twisted failings of humanity. Afloat in the universe and free while it lasted. Not a bad thought.

A stewardess bent down and smiled professionally. Did the gentleman want a drink? But surely, a nice cold old Dutch gin. He felt supremely happy as he sipped the icy, syrupy liquid and he grinned, for he had remembered what the blond baboon had said the day before. Happiness is a silly word because it has to do with security and security does not exist. True, of course. There is no absolute security and happiness is silly. How very clever of the baboon to have seen that. But there is temporary security and therefore temporary happiness does exist. Right now he was temporarily happy, and temporarily free of everything mat annoyed or threatened him. Afloat in the universe. He mumbled the words, swallowed the gin, smacked his lips, and closed his eyes. He was asleep when the stewardess touched his shoulder.

“Yes?”

“We have arrived, sir.”

“Ah.”

He followed her, carrying his small overnight bag and the bamboo cane with the silver handle.

Giovanni Pullini’s foot kicked an empty matchbox rather viciously. He had been waiting for a while near die airport’s security barrier, guarded by two carabinieri. The carabinieri clutched short-barreled machine guns, and their dark eyes, in which passion and ferocity were equally mixed, scanned the crowd of incoming passengers. One of the passengers would be the commissaris de la police municipale d’Amsterdam, whom Giovanni Pullini had been talking to two hours before. He had no idea what the man looked like but knew that the foreign policeman would be carrying a cane. Pullini didn’t know what the commissaris wanted although he could guess. Pullini didn’t like guessing. A vague but sensuous smile lifted his mouth as a bevy of stewardesses pranced past in high heels, bosoms raised, eyelashes flapping rhythmically.

The smirk faded as his predicament flashed through his mind again. His wide shoulders bulged under his custom-made sharkskin jacket and his short squat body moved a little closer to the barrier. His long eyebrows frowned above the deep-set eyes in a round red face. He felt his balding head. His head wasn’t of much use to him now. It was only telling him that he might be in trouble, real trouble, and he hadn’t been in real trouble for a long time. The opposite was true, he had been doing very well. And he shouldn’t be at the airport now, it was lunchtime, he should be in the country restaurant he owned. He should be listening to Renata, the charming lady who ran the restaurant and who lived in the beautifully furnished apartment on its second floor, an apartment he was getting to know better than his own house. A commissaris with a cane. He saw an old man, a thin little old man, limping toward the barrier. The devil himself, the devil in paradise.

Pullini’s smile was soft and charming when he shook hands and took the commissaris’s overnight bag.

“You had a good flight, commissaire?”

“Yes, thank you. I slept.”

A few minutes later they sat on the rear seat of a large car, a new car of a make the commissaris didn’t recognize. The limousine was chauffeured by a dreamy young man in a turtleneck sweater of exactly the same tender blue shade as the car.

Pullini pulled down the armrest and his strong, suntanned hand, adorned with two rings, each holding a large diamond, dug into its soft upholstery. The commissaris’s eyes flitted up and observed Pullini’s face. Pullini’s heavy thoughts were filling the car. The commissaris was thinking too. He had planned his attack early that morning, in the garden with the turtle rummaging around his feet and his wife fussing in the kitchen, coming out every ten minutes to refill his coffee cup. He had looked forward to meeting Papa Pullini, but now that his prey was next to him, breathing heavily through nostrils bristling with long dark hairs, he didn’t feel like upsetting the man. Perhaps some rapport had been established between the two, for Pullini’s face turned slowly and his lips formed a single word.

“Non?”

“Non.”

Pullini’s grip on the armrest loosened.

“We go to hotel now. In Sesto San Giovanni. Saint Giovanni. Same name as me, but me no saint.” He laughed and the commissaris laughed too. A joke.

“Small hotel. Comfortable. One night, yes?”

“One night.”

“You have bath, sleep a little, go for a walk maybe, and then I come and we drink some wine. Good wine. Later we eat, we talk.”

Pullini’s smile was innocent, childlike, and hurt the commissaris. He was sure that Pullini had tried to contact his son immediately after their conversation of that morning. But there hadn’t been much time. Chances were that Pullini still knew very little. He would know about Mrs. Camet’s death, for Francesco would have reported such an important event in the connection between the Pullini and Gurnet firms.

“Did you speak to your son this morning, Mr. Pullini?”

“I try. I phone hotel. I phone Camet and Company. Francesco, he not there. I want to ask Francesco what happened that is so important mat Amsterdam police commissaire comes to see me in Milano. Police, they do not like to spend money, yes?”

“Yes.”

Pullini was holding his smile. The smile displayed a glitter of gold and very white artificial teeth, well made and suitably irregular. He raised his hands. “Commissaire, I know nothing.”

“Do you know what happened to Mrs. Carnet?”

The red face froze. “Yes. She dead. Francesco, he tell me. An accident, yes? Or maybe no? You do not travel to Italy for accident.”

An enormous truck pulling an equally enormous trailer zoomed past blasting its horn. The limousine’s chauffeur flicked his wheel. His employee’s equanimity seemed to calm Pullini.

“O.K.”

The word was out of place between the gigantic bill-boards screaming their advertising in poetic, flowing Italian on bom sides of the autostrada.

The car turned off the main road and began to follow a narrow cobblestoned path winding through fields planted with ripening corn. The nondescript office and factory buildings that had lined the autostrada gave way to long cracked-tiled divisions screening the rustic peace of the countryside. There were rows of high trees, a dam with a waterwheel, and a high bridge that had to be negotiated in low gear. The commissaris saw farmhouses built like low, square fortresses defending themselves behind forbidding walls, centered on courtyards overshadowed by umbrella-shaped chestnuts and tall poplars.

Pullini pointed out a low pink and gray building. “There I was born, not fanner’s son, laborer’s son, in shed. Shed no longer there. Burned in war.”

The simple elements that formed Pullini’s face proved to be capable of forming fairly complicated expressions, even combinations of opposites such as sadness and triumph.

“You were happy on the farm, Mr. Pullini?”

“No. My father, he works. My mother, she works. Me, I also work. Always. Feed pigs, shovel shit, pigshit, cow-shit, horseshit. Also chickenshit. Chickenshit, he worse. Chickenshit, he burns. All in same wheelbarrow. Wheelbarrow bad. Push like this.”

Pullini leaned over and groaned, trying to hold the wheelbarrow.

“Sometimes it falls over. Then I shovel same shit twice.” He held up two fingers. “But I had birds. Pheasants. Partridges. Beautiful birds. They walk around like mis: titch-titch-titch. Baby birds.”

His hand moved around on the floor of the car, making short, swift movements. “When they grow I sell to farmer. Farmer, he eats my birds. But every year new nests and new birds. One year I buy peacock, but only money for one, so no baby peacocks. Farmer, he takes peacock.”

“Did he pay your

Pullini laughed, a soft, full bellylaugh mat gurgled in his throat. “No. Farmer says peacock eats too much feed so he takes him for courtyard. Farmer looks at peacock, me, I listen. Peacock shouts, ‘Giovanni! Giovanni!’ and I listen. Then I know one day Pullini must work for Pullini. That better.”

The car turned sharply. They had come to a village. A man greeted the car, men two women who came out of a store, then another man from the doorway of a shop. The greetings were elaborate. The subjects waved and inclined their heads respectfully. Pullini raised his hand but he didn’t wave. He only showed his hand. The driver also reacted by lifting a finger of the hand holding the wheel. The car’s nose pointed at a three-story brick building and stopped. A neon sign above the building’s double front door Said RISTORANTEPULLINI.

“Very nice.” The commissaris pointed at the sign. “You have another restaurant, I hear, in the mountains somewhere, I believe?”

“Who tell you?” Pullini’s chest bent over the armrest; a whiff of garlic touched the commissaris’s face. “My son?”

“Mr. Bergen told me.”

Pullini’s gold fillings flashed. “Yes. Bergen, he eats very much, but kitchen has plenty of spaghetti, plenty of sauce, plenty of sausage. Also veal, tender veal from Holland, many lires a gram. Bergen, he likes meat. That restaurant in mountains same as this one here, same kitchen. This cook, he teaches cook in mountains. Before, restaurants were bad, just one dish, spaghetti and tomato sauce and sometimes fish, old fish. Now better. We try later to-night, yes?”

The car moved again, following a narrow side street with only centimeters to spare on each side, and emerged into a small sunlit square. A policeman in an olive uniform and carrying a gigantic sidearm in a dazzlingly white gun-belt came to attention. Pullini got out and shook the constable’s hand. The driver slid from behind the wheel. The commissaris rested on his cane. The square was quiet, medievally quiet, paved with gleaming yellow stones, dappled by the light caught and softened in die foliage of protecting oaks. Shrubs grew in enclaves on the narrow pavement and songbirds chirped from cages hung under the arc of a gate.

Pullini’s hand nudged his elbow and the commissaris remembered his business.

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Pullini. What do you think about Mr. Bergen?”

“Bergen,” Pullini said, feeling the word with his thick lips. “Bergen, he all right. He buyer, I seller. He buys, he pays. Sometimes he pays later, and Francesco telephones and talks about this and that and then Francesco says ‘Money’ and Bergen, he pays. And sometimes he comes here.”

“You think he is a good businessman?”

“Half.”

“Half?”

“Half. Bergen is salesman. Big salesman, not big buyer. He, how do you say?” Pullini tried some Italian words and the commissaris held up his hands in apologetic despair. “You don’t understand, no? Here.” Pullini breathed in and his chest swelled up. He kept his breath. A foolish grin spread over his face and his eyes narrowed.

“I see,” the commissaris said gratefully. “A showoff. He tries to impress, is that it?”

Pullini breathed out. “Yes. Bergen all right as long as he pays. That other man, he better. I forget name of other man.” Pullini bent and swung his arms. His lips pouted. He frowned.

“Mr. Vleuten?”

“Yes. The monkeyman. He better. But he gone now. One time Francesco thinks maybe monkeyman he marries Mrs. Carnet and take business. Vleuten, he good businessman. Bergen, he sells, to anybody, any price. Like Francesco, but Francesco, he learns, he changes. Bergen, he never learns.”

They had arrived at the hotel. Pullini had puffed himself up again and was strutting around the car’s bumper, leading the way to the hotel. The commissaris followed slowly. Pullini waited.

“And Gabrielle Carnet, what do you think of her, Mr. Pullini?”

Pullini’s face fell. “Me, I don’t know Gabrielle. Francesco, he likes her. Gabrielle, she beautiful, yes?”

The commissaris nodded firmly. “Yes. She is.”

Pullini whistled. The butt of the small cigar the commissaris had given him rolled on his underlip. He scratched his nose.

“Now maybe Camet and Company finished.”

“Possibly.”

“Never mind. We find other company, Holland has many companies. Pullini furniture is good, good quality, good price. Maybe I go to Holland now. Set up own office. Find good Dutchman, good Dutchman he becomes manager. Holland has many good Dutchmen. Maybe you help me, yes? You and I, do a little business?”

The owner of the hotel had come into the street to meet Pullini and the two men embraced. The commissaris was introduced with a flourish and the owner took the overnight bag from Pullini’s hand. His bow to the commissaris showed servility, deep friendship, respect, and a great love. His smile flashed as he straightened up again. They were ushered into the building with another display of exuberant intimacy. The commissaris’s room on the second floor was large. It had a floor of marble slabs and deep windows, each window with its own vase holding matched bouquets of wildflowers. The owner pointed at the bed as if he wanted to excuse its poor appearance but the bed was big and sumptuous, with clean crisp sheets and a stack of downy pillows. The posts of the brass frame were crowned with white and blue ceramic balls.

“Lovely,” the commissaris said, and Pullini translated and patted the owner on the back. The owner pulled his drooping mustache and hunched in a tremendous effort to comment on the compliment. He found a word: “Happy!”

“Yes. Happy.”

The commissaris and die owner beamed at each other. The owner opened a door and showed the bathroom. More marble, once white but aged to a delicate shade of ivory. A tub with brass faucets. A brass tank resting on solid oak.

“Hot,” the owner said proudly.

Pullini and the owner linked arms and marched to die door. They bowed together. “I come back seven o’clock. O.K.?”

“O.K., Mr. Pullini.”

“Have bath, sleep, then walk. Sesto San Giovanni very small, can’t get lost.”

“Sure. Thank you.”

The commissaris sighed as he lowered himself into the bath. His legs felt like two thin dry sticks that had been thrown into a roaring fire. The steaming water would calm the pain once more. A maid had brought a pot of strong tea and he poured himself a cup that rested on the tiled rim of the bath. He forced himself not to think of further developments and made pleasurable little noises instead as the water swept along his legs and hips and reached his chest and shoulders. He even sang, a wordless song consisting of grunts that lengthened and flowed into each other. He sipped his tea and stopped singing. The case had grabbed his mind again and the image of Papa Pullini dominated the stage of his brain.

If only Papa Pullini had married Elaine Carnet. But perhaps it had been too much to expect. A young Italian businessman romancing with a nightclub singer in Paris. All very well. But she gets pregnant. The young Italian businessman fades away. The months pass. The beautiful nightclub singer doesn’t sing anymore. She watches her body grow in an upstairs bedroom in Amsterdam. She writes letters on blue perfumed paper. There is an answer, on the Pullini furniture company’s letterhead. It is not a romantic letter. It avoids the subject of pregnancy and it doesn’t mention the matter of marriage. It offers an agency in furniture. The commissaris’s hand came down and hit the bath water. For God’s sake! What a way to handle the problem. But a way that suited Papa Pullini’s temperament and it had worked. He didn’t know how it had worked and he would probably never find out. Had Elaine left her baby in the care of a relative or paid help and traveled through Holland by train and visited the big stores? Had she shown her prospective customers a catalogue and a price list or had she organized a showroom somewhere and enticed clients to look at her wares? The preposterous fact was mat Camet and Company was born together with Gabrielle. He hit the water again with such force that some of it splashed into his teacup. He put the cup into the tub and pushed it around. Papa Pullini had been very clever and very businesslike but it would have been better if he had married Elaine, for if he had Francesco wouldn’t have pushed his tamer’s former mistress down the garden stairs of her house in the Mierisstraat. A long chain of events crinkling through a space of thirty years, but set off by Papa Pullini’s brilliant egotism.

He imagined the final scene, knowing that he had to be very close to the truth, that he might as well have been in the room, together with Gabrielle, who saw her lover and half-brother kill her mother. Manslaughter, of course, provoked manslaughter, mere had been no premeditation in the act. He saw Elaine Camet, dowdy and painted to hide die lines and folds caused by loneliness and bitter thoughts and continuous frustration. Drunk, most likely. And angry, vengeful. Convinced of her right, snarling with victory. She had been waiting for Francesco, she had probably telephoned him at his hotel. She had created the situation and was, finally, in charge of her circumstances. Francesco had come for one simple reason, his eighty thousand guilders mat Bergen hadn’t paid and that he couldn’t tell Papa Pullini about, for Papa Pullini didn’t know that his son had organized a private commission on all sales to the Dutch firm. Francesco didn’t know why Elaine Camet wanted to give him the money instead of Bergen and he didn’t care, all Francesco wanted was his cash.

He had gone as a helpless beggar and he must have been in a foul mood. Bergen had been threatening not to give him any more orders. The business might be ending then and there. His trip to Amsterdam had turned into a nightmare. He wasn’t feeling well either, he was sniffling and sneezing. And instead of handing him a discreet brown envelope to be stuffed into his inside pocket Mrs. Carnet had been waving the money at him, a thick wad of thousand-guilder notes, a small fortune that he desperately needed to pay for his expensive private pleasures. She had screamed. It had taken him awhile to understand what she was screaming about, but it became clear soon enough. She was explaining, in French, and at the top of her voice, that Papa Pullini was Gabrielle’s father and that he hadn’t married her but had made her work for him instead, to enlarge the Pullini business. That there had been no choice. That she had had to give Papa Pullini business to pay for the upbringing and education of his own child, Gabrielle, Francesco’s half-sister. That she had known, all along, that Francesco and Gabrielle were having an affair, that history was repeating itself. That she knew that Francesco had married in Italy, a rich girl with the right connections, just as his father had done twenty-odd years ago.

Francesco hadn’t answered her. He had sat in his chair, his handsome bearded head resting on his slender hands. He had wanted her to stop screaming. But she went on and on, repeating herself, waving the money, dropping some of it and picking it up again. She wasn’t going to give it to him. She was only showing it. She would keep it as a small repayment for a lot of suffering. It was hers. Money squeezed out of the pockets of Italian lovers who took their girls for long walks in the moonlight, who sent flowers and beautifully wrapped presents, who slithered into the girls’ beds and who performed so admirably only to slide away in the night if the relationships proved to yield more problems than pleasures.

The gale shrieked around the house as Francesco sat listening and the woman screamed on, her lips bubbling with venom. And when she paused it was only to remember swear words in both French and Italian, flinging them at him as they came to her. She had taken off her wedding ring, wrenching it off her finger. She threw it on die floor and it rolled toward his feet and he stared at it. Francesco was having difficulty understanding Mrs. Carnet. His French was bad, but he did know some words, and he gradually began to fit together what the crazy woman was telling him. His nerves stretched even more tautly as a fresh torrent of abuse burst free. Mrs. Camet’s voice had dropped now; she was whispering and her insults had the sharpness of a dagger. The dagger slid into his feverish, aching brain.

“But times have changed,” Mrs. Carnet was whispering. Oh yes, times had changed. Girls were no longer helpless and had woken up to the hardness and cruelty of the male world that would use and manipulate and discard mem if it was given half a chance. Papa Pullini hadn’t liked to use anything when he made love and neither would Francesco. Men didn’t like a film of rubber to come between mem and their pleasure. They wanted all their pleasure, and if their pleasure led to their girlfriends’ sorrow, well, what of it? They were up and away, hunting for fresh game. But now girls had the pill and they didn’t get pregnant unless they wanted to. And girls had many lovers now, as many as they pleased.

Did Francesco know that he was only one of Gabrielle’s lovers? That Gabrielle only accepted his embraces because he happened to please her for the time being? Other men were asked to come to Gabrielle’s apartment upstairs, and they were told to go when she no longer needed them. Gabrielle didn’t care so much about Francesco. Gabrielle didn’t even care that Francesco was her half-brother. For she knew. She had been told, just now, just a few days ago. Francesco could go back to Italy and never come back and Gabrielle would replace him, just like that. And Mrs. Carnet stepped forward, leering, and snapped her fingers in his face.

And it was the last thing she ever did, for Francesco jumped her and tore the money out of her hand and pushed her to die open garden door. They fell together and Francesco came back alone, to face Gabrielle, who hadn’t moved from her corner throughout her mother’s final performance. They had probably gone down into the garden together and ascertained Mrs. Carnet’s death. Perhaps Francesco had cried and Gabrielle had comforted him, she might have stroked his hair. Perhaps Gabrielle had hated her mother and pitied her half-brother. Perhaps she had always wanted a brother and her love could have changed but not ended.

The commissaris pushed the teacup; it filled with soapy water and sank onto his legs. Gabrielle still had a portrait in her room, close to her pillow, that resembled Francesco’s features. What did he know about a woman’s love? Gabrielle also loved the baboon, for she carried his omen, his symbol, between her breasts. She might have protected Francesco out of love, but it could also be that she was levelheaded enough not to want the police to meddle with someone who was her lover, her brother, and an important business contact, the man who controlled the supplies of furniture that her firm depended on. Whatever her motives, she had covered up the mess, removed Francesco’s glass, wiped everything his hands might have touched, and sent him back to his hotel. She hadn’t telephoned the police but the ambulance service, hoping that her mother’s death would be filed away as accidental.

And she had allowed him to leave with the money but had probably contacted him again later, very likely early in the next morning, and had arranged for him to return the cash so that she could pretend to find it. And Francesco had been honest enough to return the full hundred thousand. That Mrs. Carnet had waved a hundred notes at him instead of the eighty she owed would have been due to her state of nerves. She had simply added the twenty notes she had just received from the baboon, perhaps to make the wad thicker amd more impressive.

Perhaps Gabrielle was a courageous girl who should be allowed to take care of her own life and not be charged as an accomplice to a serious crime. But as the killer’s half-sister she might be excused, although she would be charged. The commissaris looked at the submerged cup and thought of refloating it but began to climb out of the tub instead. He wouldn’t let Francesco off, for Francesco had pushed a lady down her own garden stairs and the lady had broken her neck. The young man should have had die sense to confess, but he might still be manipulated into a confession. It would help his case and soften the lesson. And mis trip was part of that manipulation, but so far it had only resulted in a pleasant hour in a marble bathtub. He found his watch and began to dress. There was still plenty of time. He would go for a walk.

The commissaris had walked for no more than a quarter of an hour when he found himself on a long narrow road with a low wall on each side. He had come to the end of the village and the road was leading to a confusion of small fields, all carefully planted with vegetables. He had just decided to turn back when he saw a small green truck roaring around the next curve. A disreputable pickup with a snarling, lopsided grille set between rusted headlights that wobbled on dented mudguards. As the truck hurtled toward him he recognized its driver, a young man in a light blue turtleneck sweater, the same imperturbable young man who had driven Pullini’s limousine. He thought of raising his hand in greeting when he realized that the pickup was coming straight at him, that its left wheels were on die sidewalk, and that its mudguard was razing the crumbling wall. The pickup was sounding its hoarse little horn, but mere was nowhere for the commissaris to go, and he pointed his cane at it in a futile gesture of defiance.