The inspector advanced, looking all around the room. It was as if he had entered another world. The floor was made of large wooden boards that creaked with every step. Dante didn’t look up at the inspector until the last moment. After wiping it on his smock, he held out a gigantic hand to him, almost too big to shake. He had a broad, joyful face, like an enthusiastic baby’s, with eyes ever so slightly veiled by sadness.
‘Candlelight is so much more restful,’ he said in his powerful voice.
‘I agree.’
Dante looked at him as though sizing him up, from his height of six foot three inches.
‘So you’re a police inspector,’ said Dante.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you. What were you doing?’ asked Bordelli, to buy time.
Upon hearing the question, Dante became as excited as a child.
‘I am creating a substance that will revolutionise the world,’ he said, smiling, as if he were talking about chocolate. Curious, Bordelli asked him what this substance was. Dante pulled a half-smoked cigar out of the pocket of his smock and lit it on a candle. He sat down slantwise on the workbench.
‘It’s a substance that will make mice happy,’ he said with satisfaction.
‘Mice?’
The inventor bared his huge teeth in a gargantuan smile.
‘I love mice. I don’t like that people kill them simply because they prowl in kitchens and frighten women. The powder I am creating will make them immune to all poison.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t. I can tell that you, too, think mice are trouble and full of diseases.’
‘That’s what we were always taught.’
Dante pointed a gnarled index finger at Bordelli.
‘Would you like me to call them?’ he said.
‘Call whom?’
‘The mice.’
‘The mice?’
‘But keep very still. They don’t know you and might get anxious.’
Though Bordelli was already thinking that this man was simply mad, he felt perfectly at ease in that great, candlelit room. Maybe I’m mad, too, he thought.
‘How many of them are there?’ he asked.
‘Don’t worry. They’re friends.’
Dante made some strange noises with his mouth, and a few seconds later the floor started to fill up with dark little creatures advancing with caution, sniffing the air in fits and starts. They approached the inventor. There were at least twenty of them. Dante knelt down and started whispering to them. The mice walked over his shoes without a care. He touched them with one finger, calling them each by name: Jeremiah, Attila, Erminia, Achilles, Desdemona.
Bordelli couldn’t restrain himself.
‘How can you tell them apart?’
Dante bit his cigar and spat out a wad of tobacco.
‘To us the Chinese, too, look all alike,’ he said. He took a piece of chocolate out of his pocket and started crumbling it on the floor. The mice ate the bits and went quietly home. Dante bid them goodbye in his basso voice, then turned to Bordelli.
‘Coffee, Inspector?’
‘I’d love some.’
‘It’ll be ready in an instant.’ He went over to the workbench and began fidgeting with an alembic with a coiled pipe. He lit a flame under it and poured a handful of coffee grounds into it.
‘A patented system,’ he said. ‘The fats evaporate and only the best part remains.’
Bordelli looked at the workbench, fascinated. It was crowded with incomprehensible gadgets, cogs and scattered test tubes. He had never seen anything like it in his life.
Dante put his big hands in his pockets.
‘We inventors devote our lives to improving the lives of everyone. But I must admit we also have a lot of fun.’
There was a buzzing sound: the coffee was ready. Dante poured it into two strangely oval espresso cups.
‘Another invention of mine,’ he said proudly.
‘I figured as much.’
‘These cups are adaptable to every kind of mouth. Try drinking from it.’ The inspector took a sip, and a large drop of coffee fell on to his shoes. The inventor frowned at him.
‘You must turn the cup until you find the right place for your mouth,’ he said.
The inspector spread his feet and tried again. He gave it his best, but it seemed impossible to drink from the cup without making it rain. And the coffee was bad into the bargain. The only thing special about it was that it had a strong taste of liquorice.
‘I’ll have to try again another time,’ said Bordelli.
‘Perhaps I need to modify the design,’ said Dante, face darkening, and he started examining the cup from every angle, trying to find the defect.
‘Signor Pedretti, as I was saying on the phone, I have some bad news for you,’ said Bordelli.
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s your sister.’
‘Dead?’ said Dante, staring at him.
‘Yes.’