His agitation had him awake well before the alarm clock did. He sat up in bed to the sound of the relentless rain on the roof. It was still dark and the weight of the clouds seemed to be pressing down on the air below. The volume of water now flowing along the gutters had washed all colour from the city, and left it as pale as a body recovering from a haemorrhage. He groped about for the coffee pot without switching on the light. The blue flame of the gas hypnotized him, setting his thoughts racing once again. The prospect of visiting the barge held greater appeal for him than did the post-mortem scheduled for that morning. Perhaps it was all that rain.
He took delight in the semi-darkness which preceded the first play of the ash-coloured, morning light on the roof tops. He left the house and started out towards the mortuary, even if he was much too early. The rain continued without relief. The clouds hanging low over the city seemed to fray at the edges in a way which somehow reminded him of the woolly interiors of mattresses pulled apart by the narcotics squad during a house search. The only dry spot was the glow of his cigar. Even his bones, as he walked in the early morning light, had grown soft, like the handles of shovels left out in the rain.
Nanetti was already there, sitting beside the radiator, but Alemanni and the police doctor had yet to arrive.
“The only way to get dry would be to stick your head in a bread oven,” Soneri said.
“If this rain doesn’t let up, I’ll have to go off sick. Even my toenails are hurting.”
The commissario changed the subject. “So what do you think now?”
Nanetti made a face. “Do you want a bet?”
“On what?”
“You know very well. Don’t act the simpleton. In my opinion, Tonna was dead when he went through that window. At the very least, he had lost consciousness.”
“Did you see anything on the body?”
“Yes, I saw one or two things that seemed out of place, but there’s another point,” Nanetti said, interrupting himself for a moment to reflect. “Is it really possible to throw a man out of a window from a narrow space if he puts up any resistance?”
“I wondered about that myself, but I’ve learned that real life makes possible things which in theory seem absurd. Suppose the killer was young and powerfully built. Tonna, on the other hand, was seventy-six and on the short side.”
“He would still have screamed his head off. There would have been signs of a fight, much more than a kick on a cabinet and a few bits of broken glass.”
At that moment the door opened and Alemanni made his entrance together with the police doctor. Soneri greeted the doctor and nodded coldly to the magistrate. Their exchange of the previous evening still rankled.
“If you wish to come along, you are welcome to be present,” the doctor invited them.
The commissario looked knowingly at Nanetti, who rose reluctantly to his feet. When he drew alongside him, Soneri whispered: “You’ve done the warm-up. Now it’s time to face them.”
“If I win the bet, you owe me lunch at the Milord,” Nanetti said.
The commissario had never had any doubt about the stakes. He got up, went over to the door and looked up at the rain still falling as though it was monsoon season and at the frozen doves sheltering under the eaves. He thought of the Po, where everything converged and where sooner or later he too would end up, he thought, like the water perpetually flowing downstream. He was on the point of picking up the telephone on the wall when he remembered he had a mobile of his own and that the local authority paid the bill. Juvara replied instantly, leading Soneri to imagine him seated in front of a screen surfing the net.
“Anything new, boss?”
“It’s too soon. They’ve only just gone in. Is there any news at your end?”
“Nothing new. I’m being told that the patrols are all out.”
“How high is the river now?”
“A state of emergency, category two, has been declared. That’s for everyone living in the proximity of the embankment.”
The situation was becoming more serious by the minute. The meteorologists were saying the only hope lay in a cold east wind bringing on a cold snap in the mountains and causing some of the water to freeze over. Soneri peered at the raindrops blown about in the air. A strong wind had indeed got up, but it seemed not to know where to turn. It snatched puffs of smoke from the chimneys, tossing them wildly hither and thither. Fierce gusts came hurtling along the avenues around the hospital, forming whirlwinds at the points where they clashed. A maelstrom of hypotheses was producing the same effect inside his head.
Just as the glow of his short cigar was snuffed out by contact with the damp air, the door of the operating theatre opened. The first out was the police doctor, who on seeing the commissario laid his leather bag on the coffee table in the waiting room and hitched his trousers up. “Regrettably, I do not think I have been of much use to you. He has numerous, serious wounds, all compatible with a fall from a third floor.” After a pause, he added: “But also with other things.”
Alemanni and Nanetti, deep in discussion, joined them. When they found themselves face to face with Soneri, they stopped talking, each waiting for the other to begin. It was the magistrate who broke the ice: “We have not managed to come up with definitive answers,” he said. “If it were not for the indications found by the forensic squad on the window from which he threw himself, I would have no hesitation in filing the case as suicide. However, your colleague was telling me
…” he went on, implying Nanetti with a vague, sceptical gesture.
The commissario had difficulty in suppressing his rage towards that man who, with advancing years, had developed a sourness which had hardened into pig-headed resentfulness. For a moment, a tense look was exchanged, interrupted only by the doctor saying good-bye. As the door thudded shut, Soneri said: “So what do you intend to do?”
Alemanni stared at him in bewilderment and only then did the commissario grasp what was concealed behind that attitude of cold conceit: he had before him a man made fearful by a career in decline. For that reason, he paused a little before adding with the maximum of studied arrogance: “Sir, I think it would be an idea if you were to turn your mind to the other Tonna as well. I think there may be a link.”
Alemanni bent even lower, bowing his head: “If there is some scruple still niggling at you… I will sign the authorization today.”
When he had gone, Nanetti breathed a sigh of relief: “You’ve succeeded with the most difficult part of the post-mortem.”
Soneri said nothing. With an authorization so grudgingly conceded, he would feel under intense scrutiny for the duration of the investigation.
“Don’t worry,” Nanetti consoled him. “He kicks up the same fuss every time. He suffers from chronic insecurity, so he wants to minimize his part and thereby be always in the clear, come what may.”
“I was hoping that…” Soneri stuttered, before his words trailed off.
As he was leaving, Nanetti held him by the sleeve. “You haven’t forgotten our bet?”
“You haven’t won.”
“But Alemanni did agree to sign.”
“I’ll concede only because of that stain of blood on the windowpane…”
“We’ll discuss it over lunch.”
They were seated in a side room which Alceste kept exclusively for his best customers.
“When are you setting off?”
“I’ll go this afternoon. It only takes twenty minutes.”
A wager was celebrated like a rite and a fixed menu was prescribed. Culatello as a starter, followed by anolini in brodo and then wild boar with polenta. Gutturnio was the non-negotiable wine.
“So nothing at all came from the post-mortem?”
Nanetti said, “An elderly man who falls from that height is going to smash into thousands of pieces, like a ceramic dish. And then to complicate matters, there was that bounce off the canopy over the entrance…that apart, I would be almost certain that the blow to the head was not caused by the fall.”
“There is a blow to the head that does not seem to you compatible?”
“We’re talking about a fracture of the skull with a deep depression. This rarely happens to people who throw themselves from a height. Normally the injuries are wide and flat, similar to someone who’s been crushed. In his case, however…but it could just be due to an impact with a protruding piece of concrete on the canopy.”
Soneri remembered the stretcher bearer pointing out to him the place where the body had bounced before it fell on to the courtyard.
When they left the restaurant, the air was cooler and the commissario remembered the forecast. Gusts of wind and rain continued the work of cleansing the city, but the sky had taken on the shade of pewter. By the time he accompanied Nanetti back to the police station, there were only two hours of light remaining. While his colleague got out of his Alfa Romeo, cursing sports cars for being built so low, he hesitated for a few minutes before deciding what to do. He then sped off under the watchful eye of the guard who had come out to see what was afoot.
The road ended alongside the embankment which was as high as a city wall. A couple of kilometres back he had been stopped in the rain and checked with maximum distrust by two very youthful carabinieri. After examining his identity card at length, they moved wordlessly aside to let him continue his journey. The commissario, relieved not to have the officers’ machine guns any longer trained on him, drove on among the low houses fronted by porches, weaving his way between puddles on a tarmac surface softened by the deluge. He parked in front of the Italia bar, some twenty metres short of the embankment, the only relief in an otherwise flat plain and the real border in that wholly level landscape.
As he got out of the car, three elderly men kept him under observation from behind a misted-up window. Soneri disappointed them by turning away towards the embankment and clambering up the incline to the elevated road where several people were milling about and tractors were continually passing to and fro. The water was not far off. Facing him, battered by the current, a pennant was still waving in defiance of the elements, albeit with the desperation of a survivor of a shipwreck. Further on, the flag and the jetty of the riverside port were submerged under the yellowing water. The shack housing the boat club appeared almost to be toppling. Centimetre by centimetre, shallow, dark waves were taking over the yard which ran down to the main embankment, while some men, wellington boots up to their knees, moved around furtively, like ants, carting all manner of objects to safety. Soneri saw two uniformed carabinieri with gun belts over their dark coats step out of the club. A maresciallo was in animated conversation with an old man who was evidently refusing to give way while around him a group of boatmen were listening intently.
“Close down this shack and get out,” the officer was saying.
“We will go as and when. We know what we’re doing,” the man replied.
“You are under my jurisdiction.”
“Maresciallo, we know more about the river than you do, so let us get on with it and you go and help the people who need your help.”
The two men stared at each other, furiously. The maresciallo turned to the others beside the old man, but seeing they were equally unimpressed, he turned away with an angry movement that shook the water off his overcoat and climbed back into his vehicle. From halfway up the incline, Soneri signalled to the driver to stop.
“I am Commissario Soneri from the police,” he said, extending his hand.
The maresciallo, still highly irritated, held out his wet hand with ill grace. “The prefetto will need to come himself and give orders to this lot,” he muttered threateningly from under his helmet. “Get in. We’ll talk back at the station.”
It was not far from the Italia, and through the window the solid mass of the great embankment stood out clearly.
“Let’s hope it holds,” Soneri said to break the silence.
The maresciallo paid no heed to the commissario ’s words and limited himself to glancing over to satisfy himself that there was no sign of any leaks. “So you’re here because of Tonna?” he said. From the nameplate in imitation silver on his desk, Soneri deduced he was called Arico.
“Yes,” he said. Having detected a note of disdain in the officer’s voice, he added: “He had a brother who died yesterday and we may well be dealing with a case of murder.”
For the first time, Arico showed a spark of interest. “How did he die?”
“He fell from the third floor of the hospital. It looked like suicide.”
The maresciallo seemed deep in thought for a moment or two, then he looked down again at the papers in front of him. When the telephone rang, he gave some peremptory orders in a raised voice. Even before the officer turned back to face him, Soneri was persuaded that he was dealing with a difficult individual. “My dear commissario, what can I tell you? The Tonna from here has disappeared. The barge set off without warning, and was found unmanned by my colleagues at Luzzara. I put out a call for information on Tonna’s whereabouts, but so far no-one has come forward. You can see for yourself how badly understaffed we are here.” He launched into a fresh tirade against time off and holidays, but it was pretty clear that, given the opportunity, he would have been off himself. “And then this river!” He cursed in the vague direction of the embankment. “Meantime, the prefetto’s going off his head,” he said, picking up a bundle of transcripts as though he were lifting a burglar by the collar.
“Does Tonna have any relations here?”
“A niece. She has a bar on the piazza.”
“Does she know anything?”
“Nothing at all. She only ever saw him, maybe once a week, when he got off his boat to bring her his things to wash.”
The telephone rang once more. Arico was attentive, this time with an attitude of resignation. It was no doubt a superior. All the while, he was looking outside at the grey sky covered with what looked like bruise marks, and Soneri had the impression he was dreaming of the orange groves of Sicily on hills sloping down to the sea. He, on the other hand, was as happy in the rain as an earthworm. Shortly afterwards, he was back on the embankment, en route to the boat club. He had learned that the old man who had been debating with the maresciallo was called Barigazzi.
He went in search of him and found him bent over his stakes. “Is it rising fast?”
“It’s rising constantly, which is worse.”
“You don’t see eye to eye with the maresciallo?”
“No, he’s sticking his nose into matters he doesn’t understand. Are you from round here?”
“I’m a commissario from the police headquarters. My name is Soneri. I’m here about Tonna.”
Barigazzi stared at him. “A funny business, that.”
“Oh, I agree. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
They went into the boat club. The radio was frenetically churning out bulletins as though it were wartime. It had been freed from its fittings and was the only object left in the bar.
“You’ve got six hours before the water gets here, so be prepared,” Barigazzi said.
“All we’ve got to do is pull out the cable and unscrew the control panel,” replied the man standing next to the radio.
“I see you haven’t altogether ignored the maresciallo’s advice,” Soneri said.
There was annoyance in Barigazzi’s look. “If it had been up to him, we’d have been on the other side of the embankment two days ago. There are some people as would give orders without having even seen the river. They go on like someone who’s just invented the wheel.”
“When it comes to navigation, perhaps Tonna thought of himself in those terms.”
“Perhaps. Nobody knew the river like him.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Leaving aside the night he moored here and disappeared, it was four days ago,’ Barigazzi said. “He tied up to go to his niece’s. He stopped off here at the club, but only for an hour or so, time to down a couple of glasses of grappa, the kind that’s distilled locally and he was so keen on.”
“Was there anything unusual about how he was that night?”
“Tonna was always the same. Quiet. He only spoke about the Po, or about fishing and boats. But he wasn’t much of a talker even on those topics.”
“Did he have friends at the club?”
Barigazzi looked at him, rolled his eyes and then shrugged his shoulders so that they seemed to touch his ears. “I doubt if he had many friends anywhere. Only other boatmen who worked the river like him. He communicated by gestures both on land and on the water.”
The radio was broadcasting alarming news. A leak had opened up in the San Daniele embankment, on the Lombard side facing Zibello.
“This is something new,” said the man who was working the radio. “It’s caught them all on the hop.”
“Are there still many who make their living sailing up and down the river?” the commissario said.
“Agh!” Barigazzi exclaimed, with a gesture that indicated deep anger. “Two men and a dog. Nobody invests in boats nowadays and you’ve seen the state of the moorings.”
“But Tonna apparently wouldn’t give up, in spite of his age.”
“It was his life,” the old man said, a bit irritated by the question. “Do you expect a man to change his vices at eighty?”
“Many men opt for a quiet life at that age.”
“Not Tonna. He never entertained the notion of leaving his barge and digging a garden. And anyway, he always wanted to stay away from people and their empty chatter.”
“Any unfinished business?”
Barigazzi made a vague gesture. “He liked his own company…” he said in a tone which seemed to the commissario intended to convey some deeper meaning.
“Even when he was sailing?”
“Sometimes he took his nephew along, but he didn’t manage to make a riverman of him. The young nowadays like their comforts, and the river makes its demands.”
Soneri thought of Tonna and his solitary life, dedicated to commuting endlessly between Pavia and the mouth of the river, his two termini. A riverman who had no liking for company or for dry land. So caught up was he in these thoughts, he failed to notice that it had stopped raining.
Barigazzi lifted his head as a sign of gratitude. “Don Firmino got it right for once. San Donino has bestowed his grace on us,” he sniggered.
At that very moment, the lamp over the boat club, three metres above the roof, was switched on. The water, in gently rippling waves, continued to rise over the yard and was now scarcely two metres from the entrance.
“You arrive when everyone else is getting out,” Barigazzi said.
“It’s my job.”
The man gave a slight nod to show he understood. “Anyway, there is no danger. Every so often the river comes along to take back what is his, and we let him get on with it. He doesn’t keep it long. The Po always restores everything.”
“Including the dead?”
Barigazzi looked him over attentively. “Even the dead,” he agreed. “If you are referring to what I think you are, you can be sure he’ll turn up. But are you really sure the Po has taken him?”
The commissario thought it over for a while before replying. “No,” he said with resignation, telling himself that the investigation was still to get under way. “Can I offer you a drink?” he proposed to the old man.
“I’d be very grateful, in a little while,” Barigazzi said. “First we have to shift the radio. We’ll take it to the Town Hall. That way the mayor will be able to listen for himself.”
“Where’s the best place for a drink?”
“Depends on your tastes,” the old man said. “I prefer Il Sordo, run by the deaf barman, under the colonnades, but they’ve got good wine in the Italia, where you’ll have been already.”
Soneri was astonished that the man knew where he had left his car, but then he remembered that from the embankment it was easy to see down to the road in front of the bar.
It was growing dark as he went down towards the town. He was aware of a level of feverish agitation among the houses and he understood why when he noticed a group of people gathered around a carabiniere patrol car parked nearby. The maresciallo was issuing evacuation orders, but the people were unwilling to move. As he passed by, the commissario caught sight of the officer’s face, with beads of sweat caused by the excitement mingling with drops of rain. Only a few families loading goods on to the van were paying him any heed. The others seemed on the point of mutiny. On the piazza, on the other hand, everything was quiet, as though the river were receding. A yellow sign concealed behind a large chestnut tree whose last leaves were hanging listlessly on the branches pointed to the Portici bar. Inside there were a few tables and several video games occupied by some young people.
“You must be Tonna’s niece,” Soneri said to the woman behind the bar.
A woman of around forty, not especially well preserved, looked at him with obvious distrust. “Yes,” she said, in a forced, vaguely threatening tone.
“I am Commissario Soneri, from the police.”
The woman grew even more rigid. She put down the glass she was drying to give him her full attention. “If it’s about my uncle, I have already told all I know to the carabinieri,” she said. “But they don’t exactly seem to be going out of their way to find him.”
“Do you think there’s been an accident?”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
“At the moment, no,” Soneri said. “But the idea that he would have fallen into the water does seem strange.”
The woman stared at him, with open hostility. She was wearing no make-up, and gave the impression of systematic self-neglect.
“You haven’t told me your name.”
“Claretta,” she said. That name, more suitable for a doll, was at odds with the brazen set of her face.
By a kind of conditioned reflex, Soneri thought of Claretta Petacci, Mussolini’s mistress. Perhaps because the woman was dressed in black.
“I imagine you’ve dismissed the possibility that your uncle might have decided to end it all.”
She dismissed the idea with a sweep of her hand. “He was too fond of the life he was leading, of the river and of his barge. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had found his body in the cabin, but this way-”
“When did you see him last?”
“Four days ago. He came with his clothes to wash, as he did every week. Each time I asked him when he planned to give it all up, but he wouldn’t discuss it.”
“Did he have enemies?”
“Ancient history, from before the war,” Claretta stated, her voice hardening. “Politics.”
With Claretta Petacci still in his mind, Soneri asked instinctively: “Because of his Fascist past?”
The woman nodded. Anteo sought solitude on the river, spending his days as a wandering hermit on the water, avoiding contact with hostile towns and people. Perhaps his brother had had the same problem, and that was why he spoke only of illnesses, fleeing from his own past and hiding away whenever anyone wanted to pry into his youth.
“But here, in this town, did he ever receive threats?”
“Perhaps he did right after the war, but not nowadays. It’s really a question for the older generation, and many of them are dead now. Young people simply ignored him. They’re nearly all Reds here.”
Claretta made as if to move off towards the cappuccino machine, but the commissario raised his hand to hold her back.
“I came to tell you about something else.”
She stopped in her tracks, as though she were under threat.
“Your other uncle, Decimo, has gone as well,” Soneri told her in a voice that had dropped two tones below its normal register. “He jumped out of a third-floor window in the hospital in Parma,” he said, not referring to the possibility of murder.
The woman remained briefly silent. “Two at one time,” she murmured. Then, folding her arms to support her flaccid, heavy breasts, she whispered: “Poor Decimo.”
The commissario observed her closely, but before he could speak, she got in first. “Where is he now?”
“In the mortuary.”
She seemed dumbstruck. She kept her eyes on the floor while the theme tunes from the video games made a mockery of all the tumult inside her.
Soneri attempted to take advantage of the fact that she had dropped her guard. “Could you tell me if you have any suspicions, if anyone had got in touch with your uncle, or perhaps he dropped some hints…it was your son who sometimes sailed with him, is that not so?”
“Anteo didn’t talk, not even to me. For my son, the problem was not sailing on the river. It was his silences that got to him.”
Soneri was about to let the matter drop. He let his arms fall to his side and gave a deep sigh. It was then that the woman raised her eyes from the floor and stared straight at him. The commissario was on the point of striking a match but stopped and waited expectantly.
“There was something strange, but I don’t know if it has anything to do with it.” Soneri did not move a muscle. “A week ago, someone phoned here looking for him.”
“Had that ever happened before?”
“Never.”
“Did they say who they were?”
“No. A man. From the voice it seemed he was an older person.”
“Did he seem to you to belong to these parts?”
Claretta stood thinking, as though she were unsure of the precise answer to give. “He spoke dialect perfectly, but he didn’t speak good Italian.”
“That can happen with people who hadn’t been to school all that much.”
“No, I mean he spoke Italian with a foreign accent.”
“What do you mean, foreign?”
“I’m not sure. Spanish, perhaps.”
“And what did he say?”
“That he was looking for my uncle.” After a pause, Claretta was more precise. “But he didn’t say straightaway that he was looking for Anteo Tonna. He said he was looking for ‘Barbisin’.”
“And who is ‘Barbisin’?”
“It was a nickname they used to give my uncle in the past.”
Someone opened a window, allowing in a gust of wet wind. The woman shivered as though she had been struck a blow, and went behind the bar to serve a customer who had just come in. The commissario’s mobile rang. He left the bar, saying good-bye with a wave, and waited until he was in the middle of the street before pressing the answer button. Juvara shouted out “Hello!” a couple of times without hearing anything in reply. Soneri cursed the machine and had to move to another corner of the piazza to get a signal.
“Boss, I haven’t really got much to report. Decimo Tonna really and truly did live on his own. His neighbours saw him come and go, but he only ever exchanged the time of day with them. He did his shopping at the supermarket and never went to the local bar. I’ve also heard that some social workers went to see him a couple of times, but he chased them away.”
“Does the parish priest know anything about him?” the commissario said. More and more frequently the priests were the only ones you could turn to. And more and more frequently, they knew nothing either. “Check the files on the two Tonnas. They were once Fascists…”
“That’s nearly fifty years ago,” Juvara said.
Soneri thought this over for a few moments until he heard the ispettore repeat again: “Hello, hello?”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, closing his mobile without saying good-bye.
He walked a little way with myriad thoughts churning in his head, and only after a minute did he realize that what he was experiencing was the overture to a thoroughly bad mood. He felt he was caught up in twin cases but was incapable of disentangling from either any workable lead or even the outline of a hypothesis to work on. Meantime, he found himself confronting the silent faces of the Tonna brothers whom he had never seen alive. The only one he had seen was Decimo under the special white sheet used for corpses, with only the white of his eyes visible and blood trickling from his mouth in the graceless grin of death.
In one of the narrow streets, the mobile rang again.
“So you’re not drowned.” It was Angela.
“Not yet, but don’t lose hope. The river’s still rising.”
“Why not throw yourself in, seeing you’re so keen to be there.”
“I’m afraid of drowning in the dark. Anyway, I’ve just eaten.”
“That’s the one thing you’ll never forget to do.”
“Christ, Angela, I’ve only just got here. And I can’t make head nor tail of the business.”
“O.K., Commissario, you do your investigating. And when you come back, bring me a little something.”
“It’s so much easier for you lawyers: you play about with words, you pull down and build on the facts other people have dug up for you.”
“Don’t play the victim,” Angela said. “I’d like to see you plunge every day into that tank of alligators called a courtroom. I have colleagues who would sell their mothers for a handful of coins.”
“Could anyone be worse than a murderer?”
“Have you any idea what happened to the barge?” she said, her mood becoming more cheerful.
“No, but I have persuaded Alemanni to unite the inquiries into the two brothers.”
“You can pat yourself on the back, then. In all my dealings with that one, I’ve never once got anything out of him. He rejects every application I make, even the most straightforward ones.”
“He’s nothing but a gloomy old bugger who can’t get it into his head that it’s time for him to move on.”
“I hope to see you before you go drifting off somewhere. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity in a couple of days. If you have any memory left, you’ll understand…”
He heard the mobile being closed with a snap which seemed to him like the sound of something being broken, but at that moment, walking under the colonnade, he chanced on the osteria called Il Sordo. Inside, under hanging chandeliers with a few candles in each, there were eight beechwood tables. The light was faint but sufficient for games of briscola. He recognized Barigazzi and three other men he had seen at the boat club standing at the bar.
“Did you get out in time?”
“Nando, the boy operating the radio, is still there dismantling it. He’ll be here shortly.”
“Did it come up sooner than you expected?”
“No. It will reach the shack about three o’clock. We know the river, so we know it’s pointless hanging about waiting for it.” It was Barigazzi who did the talking.
“Can I get you something?”
“We never say no. It’s an offer that might cost you dear around here,” they all replied, making for an empty table.
The deaf barman, whose misfortune gave its name to the Il Sordo bar, kept his eye on them until they sat down. When he came over, no words were spoken, but Barigazzi held up four fingers and his thumb and the man nodded. Soneri was about to ask him about something else, but he stopped when he felt a hand on his elbow. “No point. He’s taken out his hearing aid this evening, so he wouldn’t hear a thing.”
It was only then that the commissario became aware that small amplifiers the size of cotton wool balls were protruding from both of the landlord’s ears.
Barigazzi introduced Vernizzi, Ghezzi and Torelli. “In fact,” he said, “you’ve met the whole committee of the boat club all at once.”
Then he pointed to the owner of the bar. “He does that when he’s in a bad temper. He pulls the apparatus out of his ears and listens only to his own silence.”
“What a bit of luck,” Soneri said, thinking of certain calls from Angela. He looked around at the walls covered with photographs of great opera singers, all in parts from Verdi. His eyes fell on a Rigoletto while, in the background, the notes from one of the more romantic numbers swelled up.
“Aureliano Pertile,” Ghezzi said, without a moment’s hesitation.
The deaf landlord himself wanted to live in silence, but he provided music for his guests. He reappeared with a dark, thick glass bottle and four majolica bowls foaming at the brim. Soneri recognized it as a Fortanina, a wine low in alcohol but high in tannin, sparkling like lemonade.
“I thought it had vanished from circulation,” he said.
“It was declared illegal because it didn’t reach the required grade of alcohol, but the landlord makes it in his cellar,” Vernizzi informed him. “You’re not here as a spy, are you?”
“No, not if he’ll bring me some spalla cotta,” the commissario said. “I’m concerned with a different kind of crime.”
“Of course,” Barigazzi said, intercepting Soneri’s thought.
He looked at them one after the other, as though issuing a challenge. “Have you any idea what could have happened?”
Vernizzi and Torelli leaned back in their chairs, raising their eyes upwards to imply they had no idea. Ghezzi kept his counsel and the commissario had the impression that he had no intention of speaking, leaving this to Barigazzi, a ritual that reminded him of meetings in the prefettura where people spoke in order of seniority.
“It’s no good asking us. You know as much as we do about how it all might have gone,” said the recognized senior.
“I haven’t formed a precise idea. I’m not a riverman.”
“Tonna would never have abandoned his barge. It was the only place he could live in peace.”
“In that case, either he had a stroke and fell into the river, or else someone bumped him off and cut the mooring. Some irresponsible idiot, even if it all turned out alright for him in the end.”
In reply, all four busied themselves with the food in front of them.
The spalla cotta was quite exceptional, pinkish with just the right level of streaky fat. Soneri made a sandwich with the bread and as the music grew louder and louder, some people at the tables behind joined in with an improvised version of “Rigoletto or The Duke of Mantua”.
The commissario knew when to bide his time. The main thing was to allow thoughts to mature, give them time to take form and organize themselves into speech. The wine played its part. When he had finished chewing, Barigazzi took up the subject.
“Look, Commissario, there’s one thing I don’t get about the last voyage of the barge. Do you believe it’s possible for a forty-metre vessel to pass under four bridges without smashing into the columns, with no-one at the helm and, to crown it all, with the engine switched off?”
Soneri’s expression told them that he had no idea.
“Four, uh!” the old man repeated, raising his hand and holding up the same number of bent fingers with the thick, broken nails typical of a man who had laboured on the docks. “Three road bridges and one railway bridge: Viadana, Boretto and Guastalla.”
“So, then, there was someone on the barge. But if it was Tonna, what happened to him?”
“You’re the investigator,” Ghezzi said.
“We’ve just agreed that Tonna would not have abandoned his barge. He might have fallen into the river if something or someone struck him, and then the current might have carried the boat downstream. So perhaps it sneaked under the bridges by itself by pure chance.”
“There is one way of finding out if that’s what happened…” Barigazzi was sitting sideways on the seat, his arm against the back of the chair in a theatrical pose which seemed in keeping with the music.
Soneri, respecting the pause, raised his bowl to his lips and drank a deep draft of the Fortanina. It was like a young wine, halfway between a fresh must and the heavy, black Lambrusco from the lands around the Po.
“You’d have to find out if he’s still on the dinghy.”
“The dinghy?”
“Something like that,” Barigazzi said. “It’s something you need when you have to get ashore and the mooring is out of reach. Maybe because of a sandbank or shallows.”
The dinghy. Soneri looked at his watch with the idea of contacting the carabinieri in Luzzara, but then he thought it might be more fruitful to go there in person and perhaps even get on board. Meantime, the music had changed. “Aida” echoed off the walls of the osteria, tripping along the beams of the ceiling and bouncing back into the ears of the listeners. The wall facing the commissario was bare brick, the plain, red brick prevalent in the lower Po valley, while the other walls were partially covered with plaster. In a low corner, near the bar, there was a gauge with a series of notches indicating the dates of various floods. The highest was ’51.
“An insult, so much water in a drinking den like this,” Soneri said to Barigazzi.
“We put up with it occasionally, but give it half a chance and it’d be all over us.”
“We’ve taken more water in through our ears swimming in the Po than through our mouths drinking the stuff,” Vernizzi said. “Like the owner of this place, who can’t hear a thing now.”
“There’s some people I could mention that have taken in water through the holes in their arses,” Ghezzi sniggered.
The commissario smiled while his eyes continued to run over the walls where various Falstaffs and Othellos stood out against a background of heavy clay streaked with white lime, the colours of a good Felino salame. His eyes fell on a life-size, medium-quality fresco of a Christ executed by some mad artist. The face seemed to express not so much pain as the anger of a man cursing and swearing, while his sturdy, oarsman’s arms seemed capable of tearing the nails from the cross. When the commissario looked lower, he saw that the artist had painted the legs folded over, crossed slightly beneath the pelvis.
“You’ve noticed it too,” Barigazzi said sarcastically. “Jesus Christ did not die of cold feet.”
Guffaws rang out around the table and created ripples in the Fortanina in the bowls.
“It wasn’t always like that,” he said, turning more serious. “It happened in ’51, with the flood.”
The commissario looked around all the tables. The chances were that not one of them was a church-goer.
“You don’t hold back with your jokes,” he said.
“It’s not a joke,” Torelli protested. “Even the priest agrees, and he made the old women believe it was a miracle.”
“The thing is he might be right.”
Soneri shook his head to say it was time to stop. He felt himself trapped in the middle. He had come to pose questions, and now he found himself in a bizarre situation. The wine was inducing a mood of euphoria in him, while the talk spun round him like a gauze bandage immobilizing him layer by layer.
“I don’t believe in miracles,” Barigazzi said, turning serious. “But nobody can say who redid Christ’s legs, not even the bar owner himself. He found them like that when he got back to his osteria after the flood water receded. They say it was some street artist who did the painting standing up to his knees in water.”
Soneri looked back at the Christ. He looked like an Indian holy man, but there was nothing blasphemous or mocking about him. “It’s strange to see an image like that here, where no-one goes to church,” he almost said.
“We don’t go to church and we can’t stand priests, but he,” Barigazzi said, pointing at the painting with deep respect, “he was a man who underwent suffering, like us.”
“He taught us not to kill,” Soneri said.
The three, suddenly suspicious, looked up for a moment and stared at him: “You don’t really think that we…”
“No, I don’t. But they did kill Tonna’s brother.”
“Decimo?”
“Yes.”
The conversation halted and even the music paused. The din of the osteria took over. None of the four asked any questions. Their mood was now serious and only Vernizzi murmured, “That’s certainly strange,” and he seemed to be speaking for the others.
There was a silence for a few minutes, which Soneri passed listening to the somewhat acerbic Verdi of “I Lombardi alla prima Crociata” before Barigazzi found the courage to venture: “So in your view, Anteo too was…”
The commissario first stretched out his arms then moved his face closer to Barigazzi’s square, high-cheekboned face. He was not wearing a beret, and this showed off his still thick but whitening hair. “I’m not sure, but as we set aside other hypotheses, I’m almost beginning to grow convinced.”
The other drew back and seemed lost in thought. From the expression on his face, the commissario deduced that he had been very convincing.
“Until this moment, I had been under the impression that the current could have carried the barge downstream and through the arches of a bridge, but you’ve undermined this conviction and with it any real possibility that we’re dealing with an accident. You have simplified the hypotheses, but complicated the story.”
Vernizzi and Torelli nodded in the style of a priest hearing confession.
“So then,” Soneri started up again, “There must have been someone on the barge. Someone who knew what he was doing, who knew the river well enough to be able to navigate at night-time, in the dark, using only the tiller. Someone who started off from the boat club, casting off the moorings, giving the impression that the rising water of the Po had made the barge break free, or else that Tonna himself had decided to sail without engine or lights. After all, that was strange, was it not? But to make this last hypothesis credible, there needs to be some indication that there was a boatman on board.”
“The light,” Barigazzi said. “The light on the barge was switched on a couple of times while it was on the river.”
Soneri smiled at this confirmation, while the music rose in a crescendo at a crucial point in the opera, even if he couldn’t recall exactly which. It was the first supposition which stood up, but it was followed immediately by the realization that it was worthless, no more than a straightforward deduction from facts which he had not yet sifted.
Barigazzi looked at him. “Commissario, do you see the Po? The river is always smooth and placid, but deep down it’s turbulent. No-one ever thinks about life down there, fish struggling for survival in an unending duel in the murky depths. And everything is endlessly changing, according to the whim of the water. None of us can imagine those depths unless and until we end up scraping against them. Dredging is always provisional work. Like everything in this world, wouldn’t you say?”