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  Perhaps the consultant had allowed himself to be touched by the expression on his patient’s face, or perhaps he was more subtle than Zen had given him credit for. At all events, as they shook hands at the door, he asked an unexpected question.

  ‘Is your wife being supportive?’

  Zen did not answer for so long that the silence finally became embarrassing. First he had to work out that his ‘wife’ must be a reference to Gemma, who had made the appointment for him at a time when he had felt too weak to deal with hard-bitten Roman personal assistants with an attitude as long as their credit card statements. As for the query itself, that seemed unanswerable. The story was far too long and complex to sum up in a few words. It would take hours to explain even the bare outlines of the situation.

  ‘Supportive?’ he managed at last.

  The consultant clearly wished that he had never spoken.

  ‘Oh, just generally,’ he said dismissively. ‘You’ve got to remember that the whole business must have been disturbing for her too. In fact it’s often harder for family members than for the patient, oddly enough.’

  Zen thought, but no words came.

  ‘She’s been…’ he began, and broke off.

  The consultant nodded with transparently fake enthusiasm, murmured ‘Good, good!’ and walked quickly away.

  One feature of Zen’s condition that he had not bothered mentioning was that bits of his body he had never used to think about now demanded his constant attention, while others, on which he had unconsciously depended, were now conspicuous by their absence. It thus came as no particular surprise that the dull roar in his ears suddenly receded to a distant murmur, while the shrilling of his mobile phone a moment later sounded perfectly normal. He studied the strip of transparent plastic where the incoming call was identified for the length of five rings before answering.

  ‘I’m on the train. We were in a tunnel.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  It took Zen some time to answer.

  ‘It was a normal tunnel,’ he said at last. ‘Perhaps a bit longer than most.’

  ‘Tell me what the doctor said.’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’

  ‘The doctor says I’m fine. It’s just that I’m in a long tunnel.’

  ‘But there’s light at the end of it?’

  ‘No, it’s dark now. It must be there too, surely.’

  Asound like some cushions make when sat upon.

  ‘What time do you get in?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you want me to pick you up? I was thinking of going to a movie.’

  ‘Go, go! I’ll take a cab. Or walk.’

  ‘What about dinner?’

  ‘I had a huge lunch and I’m not hungry. Go to your movie. I’ll let myself in and…’

  He broke off, realising from the increased background noise and air pressure that the train was sheathed in yet another tunnel, cutting off the conversation between him and Signora Santini.

  Not that it took much to do that these days. The cut-offs, drop-outs, robotic acoustics, phantom voices and dead silences in their communications were becoming more frequent all the time, as if the entire network had gone bust and was being progressively run down. He could have sworn that her very voice-the voice he had fallen in love with on the beach in Versilia that memorable summer-had become harder and more strident, appending an unspoken ‘take it or leave it’ edge to the most commonplace remark. And he sensed that authentic anger, concealed like the raw hurt of his own mangled bowels, lay just below the surface of quotidian banality, securely rooted and feeding, for the moment, on itself. In short, the affectionate, calm and dependable woman he had fallen in love with had grown distant, capricious and tetchy. So it seemed, at least, but Zen accepted that he was the least reliable of witnesses. A stranger to himself, what could he know of others?

  The earlier mention of food pushed him out of his seat and along the carriage, grabbing at each seat-back to keep his balance, precarious everywhere these days. In the buffet car he bought a plastic-wrapped ham roll and a can of beer and carried them over to an elbow-high ledge by one of the windows, where his double was already installed. Maybe she had met someone else when he was in hospital. Or indeed before, during the period when he had been away on his last case. Or before that. It wasn’t unlikely. Both partners are always at least subliminally aware of the balance of power in their relationship, and the fact was that Gemma was younger than him and still very beautiful. Moreover, he knew that she had enjoyed a certain reputation for flightiness before they got together.

  He munched his way ravenously through the roll, having lied to Gemma about his ‘huge’ lunch. In his present state, Zen could only achieve anything by breaking the task down into small, achievable subsets and then concentrating wholly on performing them, to the exclusion of all else. Today his chosen assignment had been to get to the consultant in Rome in time for his appointment. He had accomplished this, but at the price of forgetting totally about other matters, such as making an appearance at the Ministry and possibly seeing his friend Gilberto. He had even forgotten to eat. There were times when he remembered his period in the clinic almost with nostalgia. Everything had been so simple then. No one expected you to be competent or to take any initiatives. On the contrary, such behaviour was frowned upon. The staff told you what to do and when to do it, and you obeyed them. There was no need to plan or act. In retrospect, it had all been very relaxing.

  He finished the rather dry roll, washing it down with the rest of the beer. To be honest, he realised, the visit to the consultant had been just a pretext. His real reason for going had simply been to go, to escape the encircling walls of Lucca. This massive brick barrier had once seemed reassuring, but after one month bedridden and another confined to the apartment in Via del Fosso, it had become as spiritually suffocating as it literally became in high summer, shutting out every open perspective and refreshing breeze. No doubt that was why he had arrived in Rome hours before his appointment, killing the time by sitting around in cafes and gazing mindlessly at everyone who came and went, like a tourist. And afterwards, instead of taking the first train north, he wasted further hours at a cinema in a seat so close to the screen that the movie was an incomprehensible blur. Now, though, he was on his way home, this brief spell of parole at an end. It could be prolonged slightly by deliberately missing the connection at Florence, so that by the time he arrived back at the apartment, Gemma would with any luck be asleep.

  But there was still tomorrow, and the day after, and all the days after that. Once upon a time he could have turned to his work for distraction, but it seemed doubtful, feeling the way he did, that he would even be able to hold down the sort of routine administrative job he had been allocated years before during a period when he was in disfavour, doing the rounds of provincial headquarters to check that the petty pilfering and misappropriation of funds were being kept within broadly acceptable limits. In a word, his career was over. He had been granted indefinite sick leave once the extent of his medical problems became clear, and the temptation now was to string that out for as long as possible, then parlay it into early retirement. He had a powerful backer at the Ministry, and was clearly of no use to anyone. A gilt handshake seemed to offer the most painless solution to this embarrassing situation for everyone concerned, and he could see no reason why it should be refused.

  Which left the question of his personal life. Zen had had relationships go wrong before, of course, and had felt amazed, dismayed and at a loss, but this time the effect was much more intense, perhaps because the possibility of its happening had never occurred to him. Neither Zen nor Gemma had bothered to get a divorce from their previous partners, and so the question of their remarrying had never arisen. But to all intents and purposes they had acted, and had seemed to feel, as if they were indeed husband and wife. More often now, though, they resembled two boxers circling each other warily, occasionally jabbing out, then gett
ing into a clinch and pounding each other at close quarters with no referee to pull them apart. There was never any winner, only two losers, and the contest invariably ended with Gemma stalking out and slamming the door behind her.

  Turning to the window, Zen eyed his spectral other, so smugly solid and substantial. He felt as if he were the reflection and that image the original. ‘A shadow of his former self,’ as the stock phrase went. A hopeless invalid. A sad case. The long, sleek train poured out of the final tunnel and clattered over the bridge across the Arno. In the past, on his weekly visits to the Ministry, Zen had always felt a lifting of the heart at this moment, because it was when he felt that he was almost home. Now, for exactly the same reason, it filled him with foreboding.

  3

  When Vincenzo burst in, Rodolfo was lying naked on the bed and savouring one of those rare moments when, to quote a German poet recently cited by Professor Ugo, ‘a happiness falls’. What had he done to deserve this? The answer appeared to be nothing. At the advanced age of twenty-three, Rodolfo was reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that he was not one of life’s natural achievers, a doer of deeds, attainer of goals and winner of women. If he had won Flavia, for the moment at least, it was only because she had fallen into his hands. There was nothing wrong with his intellect, but when it came to everything else, he seemed to be an under-motivated if well-meaning lightweight who had always taken, and no doubt always would take, the path of least resistance.

  Ahappiness had fallen, and he had been fortunate enough to be there to catch it, but you couldn’t count on such luck indefinitely. Normally what fell broke, or broke you if you were standing unawares beneath. Rodolfo’s father had continually striven to remind his son of such basic facts, in a weary but dutiful tone of voice which suggested-indeed, almost proudly advertised-that while he had accepted the utter futility of any such attempt, he would not have it said of him that he had shirked his paternal responsibilities.

  The thought of his father had brought to mind, by natural degrees of progression, the family home, the little market town, and the whole intimately immanent landscape of his youth. Puglia! So when Vincenzo burst in, resembling an Errol Flynn lookalike after a particularly hard night’s carousing, his flatmate felt naked in more ways than one.

  ‘Siamo in due,’ he hissed angrily, yanking the covers up over Flavia’s torso and his own genitals.

  The intruder leant on the door frame like a drunk against a lamppost.

  ‘Where the fuck’s my fucking jacket, you cunt?’

  As always, Rodolfo marvelled at how repulsively attractive Vincenzo was, with his sleek black hair, aquiline features, intense eyes, slim body and devastating devil-may-care manner.

  ‘Jacket?’ he replied, getting out of bed and pulling on his jeans.

  ‘My football jacket! It’s disappeared!’

  Vincenzo grasped the shapeless, acid-green polyester garment that he was wearing over an incongruously fashionable dress shirt.

  ‘I had to borrow this piece of shit from Michele. I want my own jacket to go to games in, God damn it! My signature jacket!’

  Rodolfo steered his flatmate out into the living room and softly closed the bedroom door behind them.

  ‘You mean the black leather one with the Bologna FC crest on the back?’

  ‘Of course I do! I’ve worn it to every single match since…For years and years. For ever! It’s the team’s lucky charm! When I don’t wear it we lose, just like we did tonight.’

  Rodolfo gestured apologetically.

  ‘I’m sorry, Vincenzo. My coat was stolen at the university. I haven’t been well, as you know, and it’s freezing cold out there so I borrowed one of your jackets. You weren’t around, so I couldn’t ask, I just took the shabbiest one I could find. I didn’t realise it was so precious to you. You’ve got tons of clothes, after all.’

  Vincenzo Amadori’s extensive and eclectic wardrobe was indeed one of the principal reasons why he and Rodolfo were sharing this relatively luxurious apartment in the first place.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Rodolfo repeated. ‘Your jacket’s safe next door, but I don’t want to turn the light on and wake Flavia.’

  But Vincenzo, typically, had already lost interest in the subject.

  ‘Who cares?’ he said, dismissively waving a limp hand. ‘It’s all hopeless anyway.’

  ‘We lost?’

  ‘We lost. But it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘How come there was a game tonight? It’s midweek.’

  ‘Postponed from the original fixture. Cancelled due to a spot of nastiness engineered by yours truly. So we all had to go back to Ancona. The fans, the player, the manager, the owner…’

  ‘And we lost.’

  Vincenzo roused himself briefly, felt in various pockets and finally produced a bottle of limoncello.

  ‘Leading at half-time and then pissed it away, with a little help from the ref as usual. Three-one final.’

  ‘You just got back?’ Rodolfo remarked, to get off the subject of the match before Vincenzo started insulting him as a shitbrained southerner, a Bari supporter whose sister did it with Albanians. It was just a matter of time before Vincenzo twigged that Flavia was from the unfashionable side of the Adriatic and made some remark which Rodolfo would not be able to overlook.

  ‘Shit happened,’ his flatmate replied with that raffish smile he could switch on and off at will. ‘I was out of it, Rodolfo. Way, way out!’

  He took a long, gargling swig of the lemon liqueur. Rodolfo noted that it was the genuine pricey product made exclusively with fruit from the officially guaranteed zones in Capri and Sorrento. Nothing but the best for Vincenzo, even when his goal was oblivion.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you got back all right,’ he said, making a show of concern before returning to the bedroom and Flavia.

  Vincenzo again smiled the raffish smile that he could switch on and off at will.

  ‘Somebody gave me a lift. And then…’

  He broke off, clutching his stomach, then tried unsuccessfully to stand up. Familiar with these symptoms, and mindful of the fact that he would have to clean up any resulting mess, Rodolfo went to help him.

  ‘And then?’ he prompted, trying to keep Vincenzo’s brain engaged and his reflexes dormant.

  Vincenzo shook his head urgently and plunged down the hall to the bathroom. A moment later came loud groans followed by the sounds of repeated vomiting. Rodolfo sighed and returned to bed, locking the door behind him.

  ‘I don’t like your friend,’ said a quiet voice.

  ‘He’s not my friend. We share this apartment, that’s all.’

  Flavia edged herself upright in the bed on each elbow alternately, the fleece of dark-red hair tumbling over her shoulders and breasts. She cleared it off her face, lay back on the pillow and reached for the pack of cigarettes on the bedside table.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  As so often, out of sheer ignorance of the basic logic of the language, she had wrong-footed him. That was what happened if you had affairs with foreigners, Rodolfo reflected sourly. Next thing you’d be falling in love and deciding that their banal gaffes were actually profound insights into the human condition.

  ‘Why what?’ he asked irritably, his idyll now completely disrupted. He was equally angry with Vincenzo for waking Flavia, and with Flavia for allowing herself to be woken.

  ‘Why do you share with him?’

  Rodolfo lay down on the bed beside her.

  ‘I don’t know. It just happened. Like you and me.’

  Flavia smoked quietly and made no reply, her startling blue eyes regarding him with no little concern.

  ‘I got back after Christmas to find that there’d been a fire in the building where I had been living,’ Rodolfo went on. ‘It was a question of finding alternative accommodation, and fast. On the allowance my father gives me I didn’t have a lot of choice, and of course most places were already let for the whole academic year. So I photocopied some ads with those tear-off str
ips and pinned them up all over the university district, but nothing came of that. Then someone who was moving out of this apartment tipped me off about it. It was out of my price range, but I came round to take a look anyway and ran into Vincenzo as I was leaving. He’d heard about the place independently, and of course money’s no problem for him. He paid the landlord a deposit right away and then suggested that we go and have a drink together as he had a proposition to put to me. I didn’t know him, but he seemed pleasant enough. Anyway, classes had already started and I couldn’t afford to be choosy. Over coffee-well, he had something stronger-he suggested that since there were two bedrooms we should share the apartment and split the rent. When I told him that even half would be a stretch for me, he said, “All right, you pay a third, on condition that I get the big bedroom. I don’t care about the money, but I need my space and I don’t like living alone.” So there you are. Pure chance.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as chance.’

  Rodolfo laughed.

  ‘If you kept up with the news, you’d know that there’s nothing else.’

  The girl frowned.

  ‘So you’re not-what is it?- credente?’

  ‘A believer? Of course. I’m a fervent Protestant.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely. I protest against everything.’

  Flavia’s frown deepened.

  ‘I try to watch the news, but I can’t always understand.’

  He leaned over and kissed her pale face.

  ‘I don’t mean the small screen, I mean the big picture. And there’s nothing to understand. Or better, nothing that can be understood. Deterministic materialism is the only game left in town. The intellectual high rollers have figured out the odds down to the last decimal point, and basically they agree with Vincenzo. Details aside, the deal is that shit happens.’

  From the hallway, as if on cue, came the sound of the toilet flushing. There followed various unidentifiable thumps and bumps, and finally the slam of the other bedroom door.