Cosi Fan Tutti Page 11

  ‘Oh!’

  Dario looked round. The speaker was the passenger who had just got out of the taxi.

  ‘Eh?’ retorted Dario.

  The man came closer, staring at Dario insistently.

  ‘Maybe I could use you,’ he said.

  He was tall and spare, with a pale face, grey eyes and a thin wedge-shaped nose. Dario laughed dismissively.

  ‘Sorry, you’re too old.’

  ‘I’d make it worth your while.’

  ‘I don’t do it for money.’

  They exchanged a look.

  ‘Oh!’ shouted the driver. ‘You want a ride or what?’

  Dario regarded her haughtily.

  ‘Not with you,’ he said.

  There followed a brief but colourful exchange of views on single-gender sexual practices and the personal charms of older women, after which the taxi roared away. Dario looked at the stranger.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said.

  ‘Someone I can trust.’

  Dario laughed shortly.

  ‘Is that all?’

  The man produced a number of large denomination banknotes, as well as an engraved card in the name of Alfonso Zembla. He handed both to Dario.

  ‘I live just down the hill. Your friends Gesualdo and Sabatino are on their way to my house now.’

  ‘Who said they were my friends?’

  ‘I watched you drive up together in that red saloon. Nice car. They didn’t seem to be too pleased with you, to be perfectly honest, and yet they left you there with about fifty million lire’s worth of automobile to steal or trash. Who but friends would do that?’

  Dario shrugged.

  ‘So?’ he demanded.

  Zen paused a moment.

  ‘Would the reason why they weren’t pleased have less to do with you than the fact that their girlfriends left town today?’

  Dario made a wry face.

  ‘God!’, he said.

  ‘They’re making a fuss about it?’

  ‘You’d think it was the end of the world. I mean we all know breeders get hung up on relationships, but I’ve never seen anything like these two. When I suggested that maybe a little flexibility was in order, they accused me of dragging their darling fishes into disrepute and left me to walk home!’

  Zen nodded. Taking Dario’s arm, he led him across the street towards the flight of steps.

  ‘It sounds as if it’s high time they were taught a lesson, and I think you’re the man to do it. After the way they’ve treated you, it would be satisfying as well as lucrative.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘I’m a friend of the Squillace family. They’re horrified at the idea of their girls getting mixed up with a couple of low-lifes like your friends, and they’re willing to pay good money to ensure it doesn’t happen. Now as luck would have it the flat below mine has been let to a couple of young ladies who have just arrived here and are desperate to – how shall I put it? – place themselves under the protection of someone who can help them get on in the world. And they’re not too particular how.’

  Dario nodded rapidly.

  ‘You aim to fix them up with Gesualdo and Sabatino?’

  ‘Exactly. The problem is that your friends know I’m in with the Squillaci, so they don’t trust me. Which is where you come in. I need you to act as go-between, monitoring the situation, smoothing out any difficulties that may arise and generally doing your best to get our star-struck young lovers to fall head over heels for someone new. If you bring it off, the Squillace family will make it well worth your while.’

  He paused as they came to a small square halfway down the steps, overlooking the sea. Navigation lights twinkled in the velvet immensity of the night.

  ‘These neighbours of yours,’ Dario began. ‘Are they young? Pretty? Do they know how to turn it on?’

  ‘They’ve got everything it takes to drive a man crazy. But why don’t you come and see for yourself? My house is just down there.’

  Dario shrugged.

  ‘Why not?’

  They heard the music first. It reached up to them, sinuous and insinuating, rhythmic but unsettling, a long melisma skidding around between keys without ever settling down. It got ever louder as they approached, booming and bending off the high stone walls of the alley. Then the house itself came into view. The first floor was a blaze of lights, the shutters and windows thrown open and the strange, oriental music blaring out.

  ‘Oh, ragazze!’ Zen called loudly.

  Two heads appeared simultaneously at the windows, a blonde to the right, a brunette to the left.

  ‘Let me introduce Dario De Spino,’ Zen continued. ‘If anyone can fix you up, he can.’

  A squeal of excitement from above.

  ‘How wonderful!’

  ‘What it is to have friends!’

  Zen unlocked the front door. The note he had left earlier was no longer there.

  ‘So what do you think?’ he asked De Spino as they climbed the stairs.

  ‘They’re the oddest looking creatures I’ve ever seen! And that accent! Where the hell are they from?’

  ‘Albania.’

  ‘Albania!’

  ‘They left earlier this year. Paid someone a fortune to smuggle them over to Bari. But there was no work there, so they’ve come up to Naples to try their luck.’

  ‘So how come they speak Italian?’

  ‘Watching television. It was never effectively jammed, apparently.’

  He pushed open the door of the lower apartment. Dario De Spino entered the room, staring wide-eyed at the two women who stood facing him. They were dressed in late-sixties outfits which no doubt represented the height of underground chic in Tirana: polyester tank-tops, extremely short miniskirts and calf-length white boots. Their hair was long and straight, their make-up primitive but copious.

  Zen rubbed his hands together and turned back to the doorway.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you three to get acquainted.’

  ‘I’m Libera,’ said the brunette, advancing on Dario De Spino. ‘And this is Iolanda. We’re so pleased to meet you. We’ve just arrived in the city, and we don’t know a soul here.’

  ‘If only we could get in touch with the right people,’ sighed Iolanda. ‘People with connections. It’s hard for two girls all alone, with no friends or family to help …’

  The voices faded as Zen walked upstairs to his own flat. The door was open and the lights on, but there was no sign of anyone home. Then he continued up the spiral staircase giving access to the roof extension and there they were, standing out on the terrace, smoking cigarettes and gazing up at the twinkling lights of a passing plane. Given the delays considered normal at Capodichino, it might even be the one entrusted with the safety of their darling girls.

  Che figure interessanti

  Twenty minutes later, as Aurelio Zen walked up the steps and down the street to the turn-of-the-century palazzo where Valeria Squillace lived, it was with a sense of a job, if not well done, at least well begun. Putting Dario De Spino on the payroll had definitely been an excellent inspiration, and the crucial negotiations with Gesualdo and Sabatino had gone much more smoothly than he had feared.

  Initially the two men had seemed distinctly suspicious of ‘Alfonso Zembla,’ and had asked a great many questions about his life, work, residence in Naples and relationship to the Squillace family. For all of ten minutes they had interrogated him like a couple of cops, while Zen fed them a mixed diet of innocuous facts, half-truths and outright lies. Yes, he was from the North, from Venice. He worked in the port of Naples as a customs inspector, and was distantly related to Valeria Squillace on her father’s side.

  As for this sudden interest in Orestina’s and Filomena’s private lives, he explained that he had become a sort of uncle to the two girls, who confessed things to him that they would not tell their mother. He understood the latter’s doubts and anxieties about this double liaison, so unsuitable on the face of it, but considered them unfounded. That wa
s why he was taking advantage of a combination of circumstances which had arisen to give Gesualdo and Sabatino a chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of the girls’ mother.

  As an act of charity, he explained, Signora Squillace had responded to an appeal on behalf of the Albanian refugees who were flocking to Italy, seeking work and a better future. The nuns who sponsored the appeal were housing and feeding many hundreds of these immigrants in their own facilities, but the demand exceeded their capacities and they had appealed for help to many of the city’s wealthier families, including the Squillaci, who had responded positively to similar appeals in the past.

  Zen hinted obliquely at some dark secret which Signora Squillace felt obliged to expiate by allowing some vacant rental property she owned to be occupied temporarily by deserving cases selected by the nuns. It was only after doing so that she had seen a newspaper report suggesting that some of these supposed ‘refugees’ were in fact criminals and prostitutes who had left Albania to escape justice, and who were continuing to carry on their trade in Italy.

  Her anxieties had been alleviated to some extent by the knowledge that he, Alfonso Zembla, was on the premises to keep an eye on what was going on. Unfortunately an exceptional situation which had arisen at work meant that for some time he was going to have to spend a considerable amount of time away from home, starting tonight …

  ‘What sort of situation?’

  The question came from Gesualdo. The tone was dry, almost ironic, as though he already knew the answer. He really would have made an excellent interrogator, thought Zen.

  ‘An undercover operation,’ he replied. ‘I can’t say any more. It’s all strictly hush-hush.’

  Zen was gratified to see that the two men exchanged a significant glance. He had chosen his professional cover partly to explain his presence in the port area, if they should find out about it, but partly with a view to giving them a further incentive to comply with his request. Given their presumed line of work, the prospect of having an ally in the Customs might be expected to exercise a powerful appeal.

  Now it was time to emphasize the other benefits which they stood to gain.

  ‘What I want to be able to do is tell Valeria – Signora Squillace – that I’ve left the place in safe hands, and she has no reason to worry that it’s being used as a whorehouse, or worse. So we kill two birds with one stone. I can concentrate on my job, while you two get the credit for defending the Squillace family property against the depredations of the Muslim hordes.’

  ‘We can’t just sit around here all the time,’ Sabatino protested. ‘We’ve got work to do, too.’

  ‘That’s no problem. The main thing is that you spend the night here, and check up on the situation whenever your other responsibilities permit. I take it that your families can spare you for a few days? That’s all it’ll take, just until this emergency situation at work blows over …’

  A lot more negotiation, manoeuvring and mutual mendacity had followed on both sides, but in the end the two men agreed, albeit somewhat grudgingly, to what Zen proposed. He had given them a brief tour of the flat, pointing out such details as the tricky gas tap and the trip switches which went if you attempted to use more than one electrical appliance simultaneously, reminded them to double-lock the door and turn off the lights when they went out, then picked up the overnight bag he had packed earlier and left before they had time to change their minds.

  Some weeks earlier, when they had first discussed this idea, Valeria had mentioned that since he was putting himself out in this way on behalf of the family, the least she could do in return was to provide him with a roof over his head. He had assumed that she was thinking in terms of a hotel room, but when the issue came up again she had pointed out that with her daughters away there were two vacant bedrooms in her apartment, and that he was welcome to stay there.

  It had never for one moment occurred to Zen that this invitation was the result of anything other than expediency, and perhaps the thrift which notoriously characterized wealthy families. What with the costs of the girls’ trip to London, to say nothing of Zen’s incidental expenses, which Valeria had agreed to underwrite, this was going to end up costing her several million lire. What more natural than that she should wish to save the additional extravagance of hotel accommodation for her collaborator?

  It was only when Valeria came to the door to greet him that another possible scenario occurred to Zen. It was indeed thrust upon him, in the form of the formidable and breathtakingly visible bosom which nuzzled him in the ribs as Valeria leaned forward to give and receive their usual – and, as he had always thought, entirely conventional – peck on the cheek. Her black gauze gown, cut very low both front and back, left just enough to the imagination to arouse interest. A pervasive scent, subtle but heady, completed these discreet provocations.

  ‘So how did it go?’ she asked, bolting the door behind Zen and taking his bag.

  ‘Fine, excellent, perfect, great, no problem,’ he burbled incoherently.

  Valeria produced a smile he had never seen before, like someone unwrapping a fragile family heirloom from its cocoon of tissue paper.

  ‘You’re a wonder!’ she said.

  The Squillace apartment could not have offered a greater contrast to the building in which it was situated, a ponderous and brooding edifice seemingly cobbled together from discarded designs for a museum, railway station or opera house. Its pointlessly grandiose dimensions suggested the pretensions and insecurity of recent riches rather than real power and permanence, an impression strengthened by the large quantity and low quality of the decorative details, which betrayed a vulgar terror of the unadorned and the asymmetrical.

  But once inside the apartment, everything was light, bright, sparse and stylishly luxurious. The overall tone was Milan: ranks of cupboards in white polyester resin with bare wood fittings, lots of glass and steel shelving and tables, long low sofa units, bare parquet floors with one or two oriental rugs, pale grey walls enlivened with a few large modern oils.

  ‘We used to entertain a lot when Manlio was alive, so we needed the space,’ Valeria said as they entered the salon, which stretched some thirty feet across the entire width of the apartment, divided into a sitting and dining area. Through the open windows, a scattering of lights and a vast blankness hinted at the fabulous view which the place must command by day.

  Valeria guided Zen to a corner of the sofa set and seated herself beside him.

  ‘But it’s not worth moving now,’ she continued. ‘As soon as the girls get married, I’ll go home.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Ferrara.’

  He looked surprised.

  ‘I didn’t realize you were from the North.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and of it, too. I only moved down here because of Manlio. For the girls it’s different, of course. They were born and brought up here. To them it’s their home.’

  ‘So how did you meet your late husband?’ Zen asked politely.

  ‘At a wedding. He was the best man and I was one of the bridesmaids. The groom was a cousin of Manlio who looked after certain business interests he had in Emilia-Romagna. Manlio proposed to me two weeks later.’

  She looked at Zen intently.

  ‘That’s who it is!’ she exclaimed, laying her hand on Zen’s arm.

  ‘Who what is?’

  ‘I knew you reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t think who. Of course, it’s Orlando! You could be twins. I’ve got a photograph somewhere, I’ll show you.’

  She got up to fetch it, but at that moment the telephone sounded, a confident rich burble. The call wasn’t for Zen, although plenty of people were desperately trying to contact him at that very moment. But his own phone was out of action, and he had been careful to avoid telling anyone where he was staying.

  Valeria was on the phone for some time, evidently talking to her daughters in London. She had, Zen realized, a good body, but he still wasn’t interested. No more romantic complications for him. He was ver
y comfortable with the role he had been playing since coming to Naples: the philosophical observer who looks on with wry amusement at the follies of others but is too wily and cynical to risk becoming entangled himself.

  She turned towards him, catching him eyeing her, and smiled unexpectedly.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll all seem better in the morning, darling. Anyway, I’ve got to run, there’s someone at the door. Try and get some sleep, and give me a call in the morning. Bye!’

  She hung up and drifted back towards Zen.

  ‘So how are they finding London?’ he asked.

  ‘They say it’s just as dirty as Naples, the traffic’s even worse, there are more beggars and it’s cold and raining.’

  ‘But they’re going to stick it out?’

  ‘Filomena sounded a bit homesick. She’s always been the weaker one. She gets moody quite easily. But Orestina’s made of sterner stuff, and proud too. And in the end Filomena will go along with whatever her sister decides.’

  She stood over him, smiling.

  ‘Now, then, would you like something to drink? Some tea? A nightcap?’

  ‘Tea would be wonderful. And then I must get some sleep. I have rather an important case on at the moment, and I’ll need to be up early.’

  ‘Is it something to do with this Strade Pulite business?’ Valeria asked, heading off towards the far end of the room.

  ‘No, no. That has nothing to do with me.’

  He got up and followed her across the dining area into a luxuriously equipped kitchen.

  ‘Well, I don’t know who’s behind it,’ Valeria remarked, filling a kettle, ‘but I wish them the best of luck. The people they claim to have abducted are the very ones poor Manlio worked with for years and trusted like his own family, and who then left him to fend for himself against the judges without lifting a finger to save him!’

  She set the kettle on the stove.

  ‘Which reminds me, come in here and I’ll show you that picture.’

  She led the way into a small room furnished with a desk, filing cabinet and a small set of bookshelves. The air smelt faintly of cigar smoke.