Cosi Fan Tutti Page 2

  ‘But I always tell Sabatino everything!’ wailed the younger sister, starting to weep again.

  ‘Look!’ said Zen. ‘If Sabatino and Gesualdo are the paragons you claim, what have you got to lose? You not only get the holiday of a lifetime in London, all expenses paid, but a chance to demonstrate once and for all that these young men, despite their other shortcomings, are indeed worthy of your devotion – and of your hand in marriage. In short, you get a chance to prove your mother wrong, and at her expense!’

  There was a silence.

  ‘How much?’ asked Orestina.

  Zen gave her an ingenuous smile.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘You have just admitted that your interest in this is purely mercenary. So how much are we talking about?’

  Zen twirled his left hand in the air.

  ‘A hundred thousand? I forget exactly. The money isn’t really important. I just suggested it to add a certain piquancy to the whole experience.’

  Orestina nodded.

  ‘I see. Well, let’s see if we can’t make this “experience” still more piquant for you, Dottor Zembla. I propose a side-bet for the same amount between the three of us. If you win, we will pay you fifty thousand each in addition to the hundred from mamma. If you lose, Filomena and I split the pot, a hundred thousand lire each. What do you say?’

  Aurelio Zen frowned and appeared to struggle for a moment. Then he thrust out his arm, grasped Orestina’s delicate but surprisingly muscular hand, and shook it vigorously.

  ‘What will you do with your winnings?’ he demanded.

  Filomena clapped her hands together, her face beaming with anticipated pleasure.

  ‘I’ll take Sabatino out for an evening on the town!’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘We’ll go to a movie and then have dinner somewhere and dance the night away. I’ll make it an evening we’ll never forget, not even when we’re your age, Don Alfonsetto!’

  Zen turned to the older sister.

  ‘And you, signorina?’

  ‘I shall add it to my savings,’ she replied coolly.

  ‘You’re good with money,’ Zen commented. ‘Like your father.’

  ‘Leave our father out of this!’ snapped Orestina.

  She scooped up the remaining pastry, which her sister had been eyeing, wrapped it in a paper napkin and slid it into her bag.

  ‘And now we must be going, or we’ll be late for our classes.’

  Aurelio Zen laid a hand on both their sleeves.

  ‘Mind, don’t tell your boyfriends! Otherwise the deal’s off.’

  ‘I don’t need to tell Gesualdo,’ Orestina replied scornfully.

  ‘Exactly!’ Filomena chimed in. ‘Sabatino already knows whatever I’m going to say to him. We’re so perfectly attuned. It’s almost mystical, the rapport we have.’

  Aurelio Zen stood looking at the two sisters, so different, so similar, so confident, so vulnerable. For a moment he felt a slight sense of regret, almost of guilt, at what he was doing. Then he shook his head, paid the bill, took them each by the arm and led them out into the bright wash of sunlight overlaying the town and the bay beyond.

  Bella vita militar

  By contrast with the balmy, expansive warmth of the street, the funicular station was dark and cavernous, the air cool, a faint draught edged with the smell of mould and oil. A pair of young rats chased one another playfully about between the rails. The cables were already in operation, slithering over the runners like silvery serpents. A few moments later the train appeared in the gloom below, inching up the hillside and slowing to a gentle, pneumatic halt alongside the steeply pitched platform.

  Zen boarded the middle carriage, its floor stepped like a stairway, and opened his copy of Il Mattino. The headlines had a distinctly second-hand air, following up on stories which had made their début earlier in the week: the controversy over future plans for the site of the steel plant at Bagnoli, the initiative by the mayor to retain various measures hastily instituted to clean up the city in time to host the G7 conference, the disappearance of a former minister in the regional government who was under investigation for alleged association with organized crime.

  The morning rush hour was long over and the train was almost empty, conveying mostly students and a few elderly women heading for the shopping streets around Via Toledo. In theory, Zen should have been at work over an hour and a half ago, but he did not appear at all concerned by this fact. Once again, his hand strayed to his pocket, as though he had mislaid something. It was now two weeks, three days and ten hours since he had smoked his last cigarette, but old habits die hard. The craving for nicotine had passed surprisingly quickly, but at certain ritualistic moments of the day – over a coffee, when reading the paper – he found himself reaching for the ghostly pack of Nazionali he could still hear calling out to him faintly.

  Halfway down the hill, the train shunted on to a loop to pass its opposite number on the way up. On the sprayed concrete walling of the tunnel, Zen made out the slogan STRADE PULITE – ‘Clean Streets’ – crudely daubed in black paint. It sounded like an allusion to the ‘Clean Hands’ investigation into institutionalized corruption which had brought down the political class that had governed Italy since the war. But it was hard to see what ‘Clean Streets’ could mean, particularly on emerging from the funicular’s lower terminus into the filthy, teeming, chaotic alleys of the Tavoliere district, where the morning market was in full swing.

  Zen walked down to the grim bulk of the Castel Nuovo, crossed the wide boulevard which ran along the seafront and waited at the tram stop opposite. It was theoretically possible to take a bus from his home to the port, changing in Piazza Municipio, but given the vagaries of the city’s public transport system Zen preferred to use the funicular and trams and walk the rest. Bus stops in Naples were purely notional markers which could be, and frequently were, moved without warning, and which in any case provided no guarantee that a given service would ever appear. But if a track existed, Zen reasoned, sooner or later something was bound to come along it.

  And he was in no hurry. Quite the contrary! For the first time in his career, Aurelio Zen was his own boss, to the extent anyone ever could be in the police force. If he came in late and left early, or even failed to show up at all, the only way he could be found out was if one of his own staff snitched on him. And he had been at great pains to ensure that they had a vested interest in making sure that this never occurred.

  One of the first effects of Zen’s posting to Naples, predating his actual arrival, had been the hasty closure of various profitable and long-established business enterprises operating from the police station inside the port area, much to the distress of all involved. This painful decision had been reluctantly taken after an emergency meeting of the management and staff. This was the first time that anyone could remember an outsider being appointed to command the harbour detail. And not just any outsider, but a former operative of the illustrious Criminalpol, who worked directly out of the ministry in Rome!

  For such a high-flyer to be transferred to a lowly, routine job in the South could mean only one thing, they all agreed. A clean-up had been ordered, and this Zen – his name didn’t even sound Italian – had been selected to enforce it with ruthless efficiency. The only mystery was why their modest little scam had been singled out in this way when, as everyone knew, there was so much serious, big-time abuse going on. But perhaps that was precisely the point, someone suggested. The men at the ministry didn’t dare touch the big names, to whom they were too closely linked and indebted, so they were making a show of doing something by sending one of their hatchet men to pick on low-level activities in which they took no direct interest.

  Zen’s first job had been to convince his new colleagues that this was not the case. It proved to be one of the toughest assignments he had ever faced. After holding out for over three weeks, during which time he had made no progress whatsoever, he finally decided to do something completely uncharacteristic, something so foreign to
his nature that he debated the wisdom of the move right up to the last minute, and only then went ahead because there was no alternative. He decided to tell them the truth.

  Since he could hardly convene the entire corps for this purpose, he deliberately selected the most hostile and truculent of the officers under his command, Giovan Battista Caputo. Caputo was a wiry, energetic man in his early thirties with a prow-shaped face, a hook nose, a flamboyant black moustache and a mouthful of sharp white teeth which were exposed up to the gums when he flashed one of his infrequent, vaguely menacing smiles. He looked like a composite of every gene pool which had ever flourished around the bay: Etruscan traders, Greek settlers, Roman playboys, Barbary pirates and Spanish imperialists. If he could win over Caputo, Zen reckoned, he would win the keys not only to his new command but to the city itself.

  ‘You’re all wondering what I’m doing here,’ he declared when Caputo presented himself in his office.

  ‘That’s none of our business,’ was the unyielding reply.

  ‘I’m going to tell you anyway,’ said Zen. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘I prefer to stand.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn what you prefer. I’m ordering you to sit down.’

  Caputo obeyed stiffly.

  ‘The answer to the question I just raised is very simple,’ Zen went on. ‘I requested a transfer.’

  For all the effect of these words on Caputo, Zen might just as well not have spoken.

  ‘You don’t believe me,’ Zen remarked.

  ‘It’s none of our business,’ repeated Caputo stolidly.

  ‘And it’s easy to see why you don’t,’ continued Zen. ‘Why should anyone request a transfer from the capital to a posting in a provincial city where he has no family, no friends and doesn’t speak the dialect? And not even to the main Questura but to a dead-end job with the port detail?’

  Caputo looked Zen in the eye for the first time, but still offered no comment. Zen took out his pack of Nazionali and offered one to his subordinate, who shook his head.

  ‘The answer to this question is not so simple,’ Zen said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. ‘To use a classical allusion, I had to choose between Scylla and Charybdis. I had made enemies at the ministry, powerful enemies. I knew that they would not let me continue in my previous job, and I suspected that they might attempt to send me to a punishment posting. My only hope was to anticipate them by applying for such a move myself. I took a look at the positions vacant and chose this one. I’m the correct rank to command this detachment, and since it effectively constitutes a massive demotion from my former position with Criminalpol, my enemies could not intervene without revealing their hand. I had accepted defeat, but on my terms, not theirs.’

  ‘Who are your enemies?’ whispered Caputo, all attention now.

  ‘Political.’

  ‘On the right or the left?’

  Zen smiled condescendingly.

  ‘No one uses those words any more, Caputo. We’re all in the centre nowadays. And my enemies are about as close to the centre as it’s possible to be. In fact at the time of which I am speaking one of their number was the Minister of the Interior.’

  Caputo’s eyes widened.

  ‘You mean …?’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  Caputo licked his lips nervously.

  ‘Maybe I will have a cigarette after all,’ he said.

  Zen pushed the packet across the desk.

  ‘That explains what I am doing here,’ he said. ‘It also explains my total lack of interest in any and all aspects of my job. This posting has been forced on me as the least of various evils on offer, but I do not feel the slightest degree of professional involvement or responsibility. I am sure that you and your colleagues are perfectly capable of carrying out your duties in a satisfactory manner, and my only wish is to leave you free to do so without interference or supervision. In short, just pretend I’m not here and carry on as you always have done. Do I make myself clear?’

  Caputo flashed his shark’s smile.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The only thing that concerns me is that nothing occurs which might draw unwelcome attention to this detachment, and hence give my enemies an excuse to move me to the killing fields of Sicily or some God-forsaken hole up in the mountains. I’m sure I can count on your experience and discretion, Caputo, to ensure this does not happen. As far as everything else is concerned, I leave matters entirely in your hands. In fact the less I know about it, the better pleased I shall be.’

  Caputo nodded briskly and stood up.

  ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’

  Zen was about to shake his head when a thought struck him.

  ‘Actually, I’d like a cappuccino scuro. Not too hot, lots of foam, no chocolate.’

  He lay back, glancing at the clock on the wall. Less than five minutes later there was a knock at the door and a uniformed patrolman entered bearing a tray laden with a glass of mineral water, a selection of freshly baked pastries and the cappuccino.

  Every morning after that, an identical tray appeared a few minutes after Zen’s arrival at the office. For a while, that was all. Then, about three weeks after his conversation with Caputo, he came in one day to find a large cardboard box in the corner of the room. It proved to contain fifty cartons of Nazionali, 10,000 cigarettes in all. Zen removed three cartons and took them home, and stacked the rest in the empty drawers of his filing cabinet.

  After that, things improved by leaps and bounds. He was greeted in respectful yet friendly fashion by everyone he met, and his orders and requests were obeyed with alacrity, sometimes before he even realized that he had made them. He normally showed up at work each morning about eleven, unless he had something better to do, leaving again shortly before lunch. Today he was entertaining Valeria at home, so he planned to make no more than a token appearance before stopping by the market to shop for whatever took his fancy.

  Cars and vans and lorries surged sluggishly along the partitioned channel supposedly reserved for the trams, but in practice used by all and sundry as a relief route from the traffic-clogged Via Cristoforo Colombo. Once in a while, the city’s vigili would swoop down and start handing out fines, but such actions were sporadic and tokenistic, repressive blitzes by a colonial power which knew that the struggle against the local population was unwinnable but could not afford to concede this openly.

  In the dock area behind Zen, the white Tirrenia line steamer which had arrived from Sardinia that morning was tied up on one side of the passenger terminal. On the other lay a sleek grey warship flying a flag he found familiar but which he couldn’t identify. Farther back, in one of the outer docks, a huge aircraft carrier displayed the unmistakable emblem of the Stars and Stripes.

  A dull ringing from the embedded rails announced the arrival of an elderly tram, swaying and nodding its way out of the tunnel burrowed under the Monte di Dio. Zen folded up his newspaper and waited patiently while it trundled through the massed traffic towards him, its bell jingling plaintively. Ten minutes later, the tram deposited him in Piazza del Carmino, outside one of the main entrances to the port area. Zen walked in through the open gates, nodding perfunctorily to the armed guard, who sketched a salute.

  He crossed the concrete yard inside the gates and turned right towards the four-storey building which housed the detachment of the Polizia dello Stato responsible for law enforcement within the port area. Most of this enclave, as well as the neighbouring parts of the city centre, had been flattened by both Allied and German bombing during the war, but the police station had miraculously been spared. Thanks to its restrained proportions, sturdy design and traditional materials, it stood out as a model of old-world grace and charm amid the brutalities of the surrounding architecture.

  The size of the building belied the modest number of personnel deployed there, having been constructed at a time when the port was much more active than it was now, after interminable labour disputes had diverted much trade south to Salerno. The ground and firs
t floors were the only ones in official use, and the second used only as a dumping ground for forgotten files and broken furniture. As for the top storey, it appeared equally abandoned at this time of day, although once night had fallen it turned into one of the liveliest venues in the whole area, much frequented by sailors who for one reason or another did not have a pass permitting them to leave the port enclave. But Zen was careful to know nothing of this, nor about how the prostitutes who worked there got past the guards at the gate, and still less about the contraband goods and illegal substances which reputedly changed hands on the same premises.

  He walked in through the open doorway, acknowledging the greetings of the three uniformed men lounging about in the hall, and climbed the stairs to his office on the first floor. The trio discreetly broke off their conversation until he had reached the landing, then resumed in a low tone. The murmur of their voices reached up through the cool, shadowy spaces of the stairwell like the distant drone of bees.

  Tutti due fan ben la loro parte

  He had been in the office barely a minute when there was a knock at his door.

  ‘Come in!’ called Zen, surprised and pleased that his cappuccino had arrived so quickly.

  But it was Giovan Battista Caputo who appeared. His manner was unusually subdued.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, chief. Can I have a word?’

  Zen waved his hand wearily.

  ‘We had a spot of trouble last night,’ Caputo announced, coming in and closing the door.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘We’ve got a couple of warships in at the moment. An American aircraft carrier and a Greek frigate. A group of sailors from the carrier spent the evening in that bar by the passenger terminal.’

  Zen nodded. He had visited the place on a brief guided tour of the dock area with Caputo a couple of weeks earlier, the idea being to provide Zen with a bluffer’s guide to his new job. The bar in question, he had been given to understand, was operated by the same consortium responsible for the various phantom enterprises which operated from the top floor of the police station, and served among other things as a perfectly legal front allowing prospective clients to be screened before being granted admission to this inner sanctum. It was a poky place which nevertheless managed to provide a splash of life and colour amid the grandiose austerities of the stazione marittima.