Medusa

II

‘I suppose you’ve heard about that terrible thing.’

Riccardo was standing just inside the kitchen, the piled plates in his hand, looking about him sheepishly as he always did.

‘What thing?’ Claudia asked, relieving him of his burden.

He didn’t answer at once. Instead, he turned back and closed the door to the living room. That was something he had never done before. For a moment she wondered…

But that was silly. It was only Ricco, and besides those days were over. She set the plates down on the counter and looked at him with a touch of asperity. These sociable afternoons with the Zuccottis had a fixed, reassuring rhythm that nothing ever disturbed. The fall of the cards was the only invariable permitted, and even there she and Danilo virtually always won.

‘What are you talking about?’

The question seemed to confuse poor Riccardo still further. And when the answer came, it was in a disjointed stutter, like a terrified declaration of love.

‘That body. Corpse, I mean. In the mountains… What a terrible business.’

He rubbed his hands together helplessly.

‘It had been there thirty years, they say.’

Claudia wrinkled her nose in disgust.

‘There was something about it on the news. Yes, of course, terrible. So why bring it up?’

Riccardo looked at the floor, at the sink, then out of the window at the roofs of Verona, anywhere but at her. It looked almost as if he was going to cry, and the answer to her heartless question was suddenly obvious. He must of course have known the victim, or at least the family. Lightly burdened by remorse, she stepped over and took his hand, rubbing it gently.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

It was at this moment that the door opened and Raffaela walked in.

‘Oh!’

She set down the coffee pot she had carried in as a pretext. This too was new. When they met at the Zuccottis’ home, Raffaela served and Danilo helped her clear up. Here at Claudia’s, she and Riccardo did the work. As at cards, they never cut for partners.

‘I do hope I’m not interrupting anything!’ Raffaela went on archly.

‘Of course not!’ her husband snapped, his fit of nervous hesitancy quite dispelled. ‘I was simply…’

He broke off.

‘Ricco was just telling me about that terrible business of the climber they found dead in that cave near Cortina. I didn’t know you two were personally concerned. I’m so sorry.’

Raffaela Zuccotti gave her a look which was clearly intended to convey that if she, Claudia, thought for a moment that she, Raffaela, was going to fall for such a transparently flimsy excuse as that, then she had another think coming. She turned to her husband and very forcefully said nothing.

‘I thought it was someone Claudia might have known,’ Riccardo said feebly.

‘A dead climber?’ his wife queried acidly.

‘No one knows who he was. He was found by some Austrian climbers. Well, they were cavers, actually.’

Thirty years of teaching at a liceo classico had left Raffaela well prepared for such badinage as this.

‘Whether their explorations concerned peaks or grottoes,’ she said with a pointed glance at Claudia’s ample figure, ‘I fail to see why any of this is of such personal concern to either of you.’

Claudia laughed effortlessly.

‘For God’s sake, Raffaela! The whole thing was just a misunderstanding. Ricco mentioned the news item, and I thought for some reason that he knew the poor man. I was just being sympathetic, that’s all.’

Abandoning them abruptly, she returned to the living room, where Danilo was sitting at the coffee table idly shuffling the pack of cards. Claudia subsided on to the sofa beside him and started an intense monologue about the celebrity scandal of the moment. It was conducted in an almost inaudible undertone, and she paid not the slightest attention to the Zuccotti couple when they emerged from the kitchen.

‘Thank you so much, cara!’ cried Raffaela, taking charge of the situation as always. ‘Everything was perfect. We have so enjoyed ourselves, but we really must be going. It looks like rain, doesn’t it? Come on, Ricco.’

Her husband presented the most extraordinary spectacle, staring at Danilo with a mute fixity that Claudia found completely inexplicable.

‘Riccardo!’ his wife admonished.

‘ Certo, si. Arrivo. Anzi, andiamo. Cioe… ’

Claudia vaguely waved and smiled.

When the front door finally closed behind her guests, she rose from the sofa.

‘I’m going to slip into something more comfortable,’ she said, turning her back but not moving.

Danilo obediently stood up and unzipped her dress. Claudia walked off into the hallway leading to her bedroom, the garment already tumbling off her shoulders and down to her waist. Leaving the door open, she unhooked her brassiere and breathed a soft sigh as it fell to the floor. She kicked off her shoes and wriggled out of the dress, then stripped off her stockings and unlatched the hateful corset. With a lilt she stepped across the ruins and slipped silk on like a younger skin.

‘So what was all that about?’ she remarked, returning to the living room.

Danilo was now standing by the sideboard stacked with photographs of Claudia’s son Naldo at every age from birth to twenty years. He was still nervously shuffling the cards.

‘Raffaela seems to be taking life terribly hard, poverina. Not that maturing is easy for any of us, but imagine a steady diet of four decades with the ghastly Riccardo, and then realizing that the clock has run out. It must be like being confined to one’s bed with some terminal illness when one’s never done anything or travelled anywhere.’

‘Whereas you’ve travelled from bed to bed, done everything and never been confined anywhere.’

Claudia wound the ankle-length robe loosely about her and uttered a practised laugh.

‘Honestly, the things you say! I always behaved perfectly while Gaetano was alive.’

Danilo raised an ironic eyebrow.

‘I mean I never screwed anyone in our social set,’ Claudia retorted. ‘What more can you ask?’

Danilo didn’t seem inclined to ask, or to say, anything. But he didn’t leave either. Another little anomaly. They were piling up this afternoon.

‘Would you like a pastry?’ Claudia asked him pointedly. ‘Some more coffee?’

Danilo put the cards down and turned to face her. He seemed about to say something, then gave one of his trademark boyish guffaws which always charmed Claudia, even though she knew he could produce them on demand as and when it suited him.

‘Why do you laugh?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I just remembered what Gaetano used to say about cards. You know that our pack is different from the one used in every other country? Not just the suits of swords and cups, but the fact that there are only forty cards, because the ten, nine and eight are missing. Gaetano claimed that this symbolized everything that was wrong with the Italian military. Almost a third of the total force consisted of senior officers while the rest were cannon fodder. The former weren’t always stupid and the latter were often brave, but what was missing was a solid, dependable corps of sottufficiali to pull the whole unit together and get things done on the ground. That’s what kept the Germans in the war, even after Stalingrad and Normandy. Their NCOs were the best in the world.’

‘Yes, Gaetano could be quite boring on military matters,’ Claudia replied languidly. ‘But I had to put up with it from him. He was my husband. I don’t have to put up with it from you.’

Danilo’s glance seemed to be trying to spare her something. An uneasy silence fell.

‘Well, I think I’ll have a bath,’ Claudia announced briskly, heading for the inner hallway of the apartment. ‘Feel free to let yourself out when you’re ready.’

Danilo strode across, gripping her wrist and pulling her back into the room. Astounded, almost excited, Claudia let herself be drawn. Danilo was her casual companion and card partner, an endless source of scurrilous gossip, a creature of varied charms and indeterminate sexuality. The one thing he never had been was physical.

‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ he told her. ‘Sit down. Let me get you a drink.’

‘I don’t drink.’

‘Yes, you do, cara. I can smell it from here. Vermouth, I’d say. The sweet variety.’

Her shoulders sagged. She was aware that her robe was hanging open in an unseemly manner, showing half her bosom, but that was the last thing on her mind. Danilo was busily opening and closing the doors of the sideboard.

‘In the kitchen,’ she told him. ‘Above the sink.’

Opening a silver box which looked entirely decorative, Claudia helped herself to one of her rare cigarettes as Danilo returned bearing a tumbler filled almost to the brim with Cinzano Rosso. He handed it to her and, in what he managed to make appear the same smooth gesture, proffered a flame from his lighter.

‘Well?’ she asked with marked sarcasm. Whatever was going on had already gone on much too long.

There was no reply. Danilo just stood there, gazing into space. Claudia took a gulp of the red liquid, which tasted even more sickly than usual. But Cinzano was a ladylike drink. She could name some women who had moved on to gin and vodka and never found their way back.

‘Danilo, over the years you’ve made me laugh, you’ve made me cry and you’ve made me angry. Once or twice you’ve even made me think. Now you’re beginning to bore me. I never thought you’d do that. If you’ve got something to say, for God’s sake say it!’

Danilo smiled nervously.

‘Sorry, I’m just not sure how to start. Riccardo was supposed to do this, you see. He’s had time to think the whole thing through, work out the best way to put it. But Raffaela interrupted and then hauled him off, so I’ve had to step into the breach. Anyway, basically it’s about that body they found in the mountains last week.’

‘So I gather. What about it, for the love of heaven?’

He made three futile attempts to begin, then spread out his hands in appeal.

‘How much did Ricco tell you?’

‘Nothing. He was just getting to the point when Raffaela marched in on marital patrol duty.’

With evident relief, Danilo seized the opportunity to laugh.

‘Ah yes, I see! Well, the point is that while the body hasn’t been officially identified as yet, sources in Rome close to the regiment have informally advised various people here as to certain relevant facts. Some of them in turn informed Riccardo, who told me, and we both agreed that it would be better if you heard it from us first.’

‘Heard what, for God’s sake?’

Danilo faltered again for a moment, then plunged on like a horse taking a fence.

‘Leonardo Ferrero.’

Claudia didn’t move or speak, didn’t react at all for at least a minute. Shock has its uses, and comes in various forms. Hearing that name on Danilo’s lips was like hearing a poodle pronounce the secret name of God.

She reached forward to flick the ash off her cigarette, then slowly stood up, looking around her with the startled expression of someone who has fallen asleep on the bus home from work and awakened to find herself in a foreign country.

Danilo coughed.

‘You knew him, I believe.’

Claudia smiled brightly, as though putting two and two together at last.

‘Lieutenant Ferrero? Certainly we knew him. He was one of Gaetano’s favourites. But that was all a long time ago.’

She finally seemed to become aware of Danilo’s silence.

‘So why bring it up now?’

‘Because on the basis of the information that we have received, and I must stress that this is strictly confidential, the preliminary identification of the corpse that has been found in those tunnels up in the mountains appears to indicate that it is his.’

Claudia went over to the window giving on to the courtyard of the building. The woman in the apartment opposite had opened her shutters, a thing she only did when she was entertaining one of her many younger lovers that evening. Later, just before the crucial moment, she would teasingly close them again. At least I’ve never sunk that low, thought Claudia abstractly. Flaunting one’s romantic triumphs was vulgar. She finished her cigarette, opened the window and tossed it out.

‘That’s absurd,’ she said, turning back to face Danilo. ‘Lieutenant Ferrero died thirty years ago in a plane crash. An explosion in the fuel tank. Gaetano and I attended the funeral.’

‘So did I. And that’s what we all believed, of course. But it seems that we were wrong.’

‘So what did happen?’

Danilo made a wide, open-handed gesture.

‘That’s what the authorities are trying to find out now. The point is that sooner or later they may come here, wanting to question you. It would therefore be best for you to prepare yourself.’

Claudia walked back to her drink, downing half of it at a gulp.

‘But what on earth has it got to do with me?’

Danilo looked her in the eyes in a way he had never done before.

‘I don’t think you really want me to address that question, Claudia. We both know the answer, and to discuss it would be unnecessarily painful for both of us. At our age one wants to avoid pain as much as possible, don’t you agree?’

The telephone rang, and for once she was eager to answer it. It turned out to be Naldo, making his usual weekly duty call.

‘ Ciao, Naldino! How are you, darling? And how’s the restaurant going? Really? Oh dear! Well, I’m sure things will pick up once spring comes.’

She carried on in this vein for several minutes, deliberately overdoing the maternal gushiness in hopes that Danilo might take the point and leave. But he showed no signs of doing so. Eventually the conversational flow began to dry up and Naldo even started to sound slightly alarmed, as though he suspected that his mother was drunk. And perhaps she was ever so slightly tipsy, for she had a sudden urge to tell Naldo that his father’s body had been recovered. Only Danilo’s presence saved her.

The drawback was that when she hung up, Danilo was still there. Claudia regarded him with the air of someone who has just noticed a very bad smell in the room and is speculating as to its origin.

‘Do forgive me if I’m being dim,’ she said, ‘but I still haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about.’

Danilo walked over and took her hands in his. More physicality. Not wanting to meet his eyes, Claudia looked down at the white, perfectly manicured fingers grasping hers. Not the hands of a soldier, one would have said, although Danilo had served for almost thirty years. He had handled guns, knives, shells, bombs, and perhaps a select number of the young recruits who had passed through the Verona barracks at one time or another, but none of this had left a trace. Then she looked at her own hands, and remembered what they had done.

‘ Cara, you cannot be unaware of the rumours that circulated at the time of Gaetano’s death…’

She snatched her hands away.

‘What rumours? I don’t understand. I refuse to understand!’

Danilo sighed deeply.

‘You understand perfectly well.’

He gestured towards the window.

‘And there are plenty of people out there who understand too, or think they do. You know what this town is like. They’ll be all too ready to gossip to some snooping cop. And this will be an investigation by the polizia di stato, not the carabinieri. They’ve been squared away, but apparently the Ministry of the Interior is now launching its own enquiry. Some political battle I don’t understand. Anyway, the crucial thing is that you’re prepared. Spend a little time thinking over what you want to tell them. Go through your papers to make quite sure that there aren’t any things you’d prefer not to fall into the hands of the judicial authorities. They may have a search warrant, you see.’

‘To search this house? Why on earth would they want to do that?’

‘Well, that rather depends on what they may have learned in the course of their earlier investigations. At all events, Riccardo and I feel very strongly that it would be better to take no chances. Both for your sake, and for the honour of the regiment.’

This last phrase was spoken with a peculiar emphasis. Danilo nodded once, jerkily, turned on his heel and walked out, almost slamming the door behind him.

Claudia stood there for a full minute after he left. Then she went through to the kitchen and refilled her glass from the open bottle of Cinzano Rosso on the counter. Danilo had never spoken to her in such a tone of voice before, like a parade- ground sergeant bawling out some raw recruit. What in the name of God was going on? If the body that had been found really was Leonardo’s, it was she who should be going mad. Instead, everyone else was.

‘For the honour of the regiment’! She’d never thought to hear that cliche again since Gaetano’s death. But once again, apparently, the ranks were closing, and this time against her. No wonder Danilo had wanted his friend to bring the matter up with her. Riccardo was a gentleman through and through, thoroughly decent even if stupendously boring, and given a little more time would have found a way to make her understand what had happened and what needed to be done while respecting her feelings and freedom of action.

She had thought that Danilo was much the same, but she realized now how mistaken she had been. He wasn’t kind; he was a sentimentalist, a very different thing. And like all sentimentalists, he could turn vicious in a moment if thwarted. But how had she thwarted him? What did he want? How much did he know? He’d hinted at this and that, but was it out of tactful discretion, as he’d claimed, or just out of ignorance? He had been playing some sort of game with her, of that she felt sure, but she didn’t know the nature, still less the purpose, of the game. In fact she really didn’t know anything much about Danilo at all, she realized.

On the other hand, she thought, returning to the living room for an unheard-of second cigarette, he didn’t know anything much about her. So there was really nothing to worry about, except of course for those concerned with ‘the honour of the regiment’. They must have been shitting their neatly starched knickers, she thought, using an Austrian expression occasionally voiced by her bilingual mother. If this investigator for the Ministry of the Interior ever found out even a fraction of what had really occurred all those years ago, the honour of the regiment would resemble a pair of those soiled knickers for the foreseeable future. It would be the scandal to end all scandals.

But those in power would of course take steps to prevent this happening, hence the discreetly menacing tone of Danilo’s parting shot. She was to be careful how she handled herself with the police, not just because of her own involvement in the matter, but because if she said the wrong thing and became a liability to those who had even more to lose they would not hesitate to sacrifice her in order to save themselves. Yes, that had been the message: a crude threat wrapped in a thin layer of superficial concern.

She swallowed another gulp of Cinzano, reeling from this revelation but pleased and proud that she still had the wit to work it out. Very well, the situation was clear. Now she had to decide what to do, a much harder matter, and one she certainly didn’t feel up to tackling now. She needed a bit of time to come to terms with what had happened and to work out a course of action. The best way would be to go to the garden and consult The Book. That would help her get things in perspective, as it had so often in the past. And then she might take one of her periodic trips to Lugano and just wait for the whole affair to blow over. She knew from experience that these things always did in the end.