Edgardo Ugo was cycling home, when something happened.
He was feeling serene and light-hearted, totally at ease with himself, with the city he knew so well and loved so much, and with life in general. To his utter amazement, he had scored an incontrovertible triumph in the much-publicised contest with Rinaldi. Admittedly this had been due to the other man’s unbelievable incompetence, but the result had been no less conclusive. Let the bastard try and sue him now! After that, refusing to comment on the proceedings to the throng of journalists clustered outside the evacuated exhibition centre, he had taken a cab straight to the university and delivered his famous weekly lecture with his usual calm professionalism, as though he’d just returned from a visit to the library.
Now he was heading back to the little urban pied-a-terre that he maintained a short distance from the university, to freshen up and change out of his smoke-poisoned clothes before going to lunch with a visiting academic from the University of Uppsala. By bicycle, of course. In Bologna, bicycles were associated with the populace: impoverished students, pensioners scraping by, penny-pinching housewives and the like. For a world-famous author and academic, with untold millions in the bank, to be seen on one instantly transformed his battered though structurally handsome 1923 Bianchi S24 from a humble means of transport into what semioticians called a ‘sign vehicle’, thus making one of those arcane jokes for which Ugo was famous. God, he was cool.
And then something happened.
Afterwards, of course, it was perfectly obvious what this was, but the instant offered nothing but fleeting and confused impressions, followed by a sickening loss of balance, the jarring impact, and multiple aches and pains. The next thing he was distinctly aware of was a man standing over him. Ugo himself appeared to be lying on the cobbled street with the handlebar of the bicycle lodged somewhere in his kidneys.
‘Aurelio Zen, Polizia di Stato,’ the man snapped, displaying some sort of identification card. ‘You’re under arrest for dangerous driving.’
Ugo tried to say something, but the man had turned away and was loudly phoning for an ambulance. It was then that Ugo saw a woman leaning groggily against the nearest parked car. There was blood on her face and she was breathing rapidly.
‘Immediately!’ the policeman named Zen yelled. ‘It’s a matter of the highest urgency. My wife has been run over.’
‘I’m not your damned wife!’ the woman retorted.
The man folded up his mobile and strode over to Ugo, who had by now regained his feet. He looked absolutely beside himself with fury, or worry, or both.
‘I can’t effect an arrest now,’ the policeman told him, ‘as I need to accompany the victim to hospital. But if she turns out to be seriously injured, God forbid, then I shall take further steps. Give me your details.’
Ugo got out his wallet and handed Zen his identity card, along with another giving his home address and title, position and contact numbers at the university. That might get him a little respect, he thought, picking up his bike as a siren made itself heard in the distance.
‘Excuse me!’
He turned. The woman he had struck was looking at him.
‘Aren’t you Edgardo Ugo?’
He nodded. She smiled and her bloodied face lit up.
‘I’ve always wanted to meet you,’ she went on. ‘I was at your cook-off with Lo Chef this morning. I thought you were wonderful!’
For possibly the first time in his life, Edgardo Ugo found himself at a complete loss for words.
‘I’m so sorry that this happened,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t apologise enough.’
The woman laughed lightly.
‘Not at all, it was all my fault.’ She jerked a thumb at Zen, who was anxiously scanning the far end of the street for the ambulance. ‘We just had a row and I couldn’t get away from the restaurant quickly enough. I dashed out without even looking to see what was coming. There was no way you could have done anything about it.’
‘Here it comes!’ called Zen.
‘And don’t pay any attention to him,’ Gemma confided to Ugo. ‘All that stuff about arresting you? That’s just bluff and bluster.’
Then the ambulance was there, the paramedics stepping out. Ugo mounted the Bianchi and tried to cycle discreetly away, but the collision had dislodged the drive chain. He didn’t want to get his fingers filthy, or to linger, so he set off on foot, pushing the bike.
At the corner of the street, beneath the arch marking the entrance to the former ghetto, he turned to look back. Apparently the ambulance crew didn’t consider the woman’s condition serious enough to put her on a stretcher and were getting her seated in the back of the ambulance. The incident had drawn quite a crowd, including one young man wearing a black leather jacket decorated with the crest of the local football club. He also noticed that the policeman who had threatened him did not in fact get into the ambulance, as he had said he would, but watched it depart, then turned and started walking in Ugo’s direction.
Ugo turned the corner with a shrug. If the cop wanted to find him, he had the address anyway. Meanwhile he marvelled at the day’s extraordinary events. To knock someone down in the street and then have her tell you how wonderful you were! Incredible. He just hoped that she wasn’t concussed. Anyway, that was enough excitement. A hot shower and a change of clothes, then off to a leisurely late lunch with Professor Erik Lonnrot. He leant the bicycle against the house wall, between the front door and the marble copy of Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 ready-made Fountain. He found his key and turned sideways to force it into the sticky lock.
And then something else happened.