The inspector scratched the back of his neck.
‘No, on the contrary. It’s very well done. I bet when you were a little kid you wanted to become a policeman,’ said Bordelli, smiling. Piras remained serious.
‘I’ve always liked discovering the hidden side of things, especially when everything looks completely normal on the surface.’
‘I’m the same way, Piras. We’re both cursed.’ Piras gave a hint of a smile, with only his eyes. The rest of his face remained stony. It was probably a rare thing to see him laugh in earnest.
They remained silent for a few seconds, listening to a distant siren until its wail became confused with the buzzing of a restless fly. The heat was intense, the kind that slows the thought processes. Bordelli felt a bead of sweat drip down his side and bestirred himself.
‘What do you want to do in the police force?’ he asked the boy.
‘Murder,’ Piras said firmly.
‘I guessed as much.’
‘I should leave now, sir. I have to go somewhere in the car.’
‘Have a good day.’
Piras thanked him and left the room with a firm step, not a drop of sweat on him. Bordelli’s shirt, on the other hand, was wet and sticking to his back, and he envied the Sardinian with all his heart. He remembered the coffee and brought the cup to his lips. It was disgustingly lukewarm, but he drank it anyway.
Rodrigo lived in Viale Gramsci, in the nineteenth-century quarter that had sprouted up along the line of the Renaissance-era walls, after these were demolished. Broad avenues, no commerce. Inspector Bordelli rang the buzzer outside the main entrance and waited. His cousin worked at home in the afternoon and was usually loath to leave his desk. He taught chemistry at the liceo and saw the world through formulas. He was constantly assigning written exercises, then spent his afternoons correcting them. That was why he taught: so he could correct. In August, when everybody else was on holiday, Rodrigo was still correcting avalanches of homework that he would thrust into the faces of his pupils on the first day of class in October.
In childhood, he and Rodrigo had silently detested each other. Bordelli was two years older and used to frighten Rodrigo with the faces he made. In adolescence they ended up spending a few summers on the same beach. Their parents would send them out to sea together to fish, but all Bordelli could think about when they were on the water together was drowning his cousin. By age twenty, as fate would have it, they lost sight of each other, but on the first Christmas after the war, they met up again. And they shook hands and decided once and for all that they were different from one another. Neither had married, but for different reasons: the inspector because he was waiting for the right girl, and Rodrigo because he was afraid to spend too much, in every sense. Ever since that Christmas, they would seek each other out some three or four times a year, never for any particular reason, but as if, every so often, they both needed to see, with their own eyes, the abyss of difference between them, either as confirmation or for love of the challenge. And they would part, each pleased not to be like the other. For Bordelli it was always a relief to realise that the whole world wasn’t like Rodrigo, and Rodrigo always openly declared that Bordelli was not at all right in the head. But they didn’t hate each other; they couldn’t because they were too far apart. Actually, there was a sort of bond between them, though neither of them would ever have admitted it.
Bordelli rang the bell again, and at last Rodrigo came to a window on the fourth floor. Seeing his policeman cousin below, he stopped and looked at him, remaining provocatively immobile. The inspector gestured to him to open the door, but the other just stood there, staring at him. Then he saw Rodrigo disappear, and a moment later he heard the click of the electric lock on the door. Climbing the stone stairs, he detected the smells of old furniture and carpets, typical of that building. On the fourth floor he found the door open, but no one there to welcome him. He entered and noticed with pleasure that it was cool in the apartment. Rodrigo was sitting in the living room with pen in hand, obviously a red pen. He did not greet him or even look up from his papers. Bordelli sat down on the edge of the desk.
‘Well? So how’s Rodrigo?’
‘You’re sitting on the homework assignments I need to correct.’
‘Oh, sorry. Where should I put them?’
‘If I put them there, it means that’s where they’re supposed to be.’ He spoke fast, correcting all the while, eyes fixed on the page. Bordelli stood up and put everything back in place.
‘I’m going to make tea. Will you have some?’ he asked politely.
‘The housekeeper cleaned the kitchen a couple of hours ago,’ said Rodrigo, still without looking up.
‘So what? Does that mean you’ll never cook again?’
‘All right, all right, go and make your tea.’ It seemed like a major concession.
‘Lemon or milk?’ asked Bordelli.
‘Milk.’
‘Sugar?’
‘No sugar. There’s honey in the cupboard on the right.’
‘How many spoonfuls?’
‘Two. Teaspoons, that is.’
‘I got that.’
‘I’d like a little silence.’
‘I’ll be silent as the grave.’
It was strange to talk to someone who was correcting papers without ever looking you in the eye. Bordelli thought about annoying him further by asking him what kind of cup he wanted, whether he wanted a napkin and what kind, paper or cloth, and other things of that sort, but thought better of it. He went into the kitchen to make the tea, trying to create as little mess as possible. He returned with cups in hand and found his cousin in the same position. Rodrigo seemed to have turned to stone. He was staring at a sheet of paper. He was only happy when he could make sweeping strokes of red ink. Bordelli set Rodrigo’s tea down in a random spot on the desk, at the very moment his cousin was finishing a broad red flourish of the pen.
‘Another mistake? Are they big mistakes or little mistakes?’ he asked. Rodrigo finally raised his head and looked at him.
‘Remove that wet cup immediately,’ he said icily.
‘It’s your tea.’
‘Get that mess out of here, it’s making a ring on my agenda.’
‘What’s the problem? You’re only going to throw it away at the end of the year.’
Rodrigo heaved a sigh of forbearance and decided to intervene personally. Setting down the red pen, he lifted the cup and wiped the cover of his agenda with a paper napkin, which he then rolled up into a ball and tossed into a wastepaper basket under the desk. Bordelli followed his every move with great curiosity. In a way his cousin’s precision fascinated him; it looked very much as if it stemmed from some sort of madness. Rodrigo then straightened his back and gave a smile that was supposed to convey calm and serenity.
‘Why are you here? Do you have something specific to tell me?’ he asked.
‘No, why? Does it seem as if I have?’
‘I don’t care. Why did you come?’
‘For a chat.’
‘All right, then. Let’s chat.’ Rodrigo folded his arms to show that he was interrupting his corrections. Bordelli sat down comfortably in a chair, and with his teacup balanced on his thigh, he lit a cigarette.
‘So, then, how are things, Rodrigo?’ he asked with a hint of a smile. Rodrigo stood up and opened his eyes wide.
‘Put out that disgusting cigarette immediately,’ he said, trying to contain his rage.
‘I don’t see an ashtray.’
‘Do you know that it takes a week for the smell of smoke to go away?’
‘I swear I didn’t know,’ Bordelli said, inhaling deeply, as if it were his last puff, asking again for an ashtray with his eyes. Rodrigo opened a secretaire and pulled out a small souvenir dish from Pompeii, set this in front of him, and immediately stepped back. Bordelli snuffed out his still-whole cigarette.
‘So … aside from the cigarette, how are you? Getting along all right?’ Bordelli asked. Rodrigo had sat back down at the desk, but seemed a little more inclined to chat, even if he had no choice.