Medusa - 9 (10 page)

The trip was still a risk, of course, but a minimal and necessary one. He would be taking back roads to his destination. Given the massive depopulation of the whole area, these were almost unused, particularly after dark. With any luck, the shopkeeper would be the only person to see his face, and with his newly grown beard and dark glasses even his sister would have had difficulty in recognizing him. Besides, the batteries for the camping lantern that he had brought with him from Milan had almost run out, and without that substitute for the oil and acetylene lamps of his boyhood, he wouldn’t be able to function at all during the hours of darkness.

To be honest, he would have had to get out, however briefly, in any case. The rectangular block of the
cascina
, totally sealed off from the outside world except for its two gateways, and surrounded by a wide drainage ditch like the moat of a medieval castle, had an overwhelming sense of being cut off from the outside world. This had initially seemed comforting, but by now Gabriele was starting to suffer from what he and his friends in the army had used to call ‘barracks fever’.

And there was another factor. He was starting to feel a bit of a ninny. That’s how his father had sometimes referred to him in a tone of contemptuous affection –
il babbione
– and as so often in the past it was beginning to look as though he had been right. Ten days gone, and nothing whatever had happened. More to the point, it was getting difficult to see what could happen to justify his panicked flight to the family’s former rural property.

He remembered having read somewhere that the difference between a theory and a belief rested not on proof but on the possibility of disproof. No matter how many observations appeared to corroborate the theory of relativity, for example, it could never conclusively be proved to be true. Its scientific respectability rested on the fact that it could instantly be proven false should contradictory evidence come to light. The same did not apply to the idea that God had created the world in six days and then faked the fossil record to suggest otherwise, which is why this amounted to nothing more than a belief. As did his fears about his own safety, he now realized. They weren’t rational, and therefore could not be dispelled. What would have to happen to prove that he had been wrong, that in fact there was no threat, nothing whatever to fear?

Not that he wasn’t quite comfortable where he was. Indeed, that was part of the problem. The nights were still quite mild for the time of year, and the camping gear he had bought before leaving Milan – for cash, in case anyone was tracing his credit card records – was perfectly adequate to his needs. He lived as simply as he did at home, on pasta, parmesan, oil,
salumi
and dried soups, occasionally supplemented by a hare or pigeon he had trapped and prepared using his army training for living off the land. His only other purchase, before slipping on to a train bound for Cremona from the suburban station of Lambrate, had been this second-hand bicycle, on which he had invisibly arrived at his refuge, and which was always available for trips like this. The water from the well was better than what came out of the tap in Milan and he had brought plenty of books from the shop to keep him amused.

Best of all, absolutely no one knew where he was! Not just his enemies, but his friends, acquaintances and associates, not to mention his sister Paola and her thirty-something, live-at-home son. To think of all the time and affection he had lavished on the idle cipher that his nephew, so charming and intelligent when young, had turned out to be as an adult. But it had been his own fault. People always let you down. You were better off without them. Another of the things he had realized here – there had been plenty of time to think – was that he had always secretly dreamed of disappearing, of becoming invisible, wholly a subject to himself but in no way an object for others. That was what he had always wanted, and now, to all intents and purposes, he had it.

The bike rolled easily along, with an endearing little squeak from the rear axle. It was an old-fashioned ladies’ model, the black-painted frame elegantly bowed like a harp. There were three gears, two brakes and no gadgets. Gabriele had fallen in love with it at first sight, a cotton print frock amidst the massed acrylic sports gear of the ATBs, and the price had been absurdly low.

The light was fading fast now, but he would almost have known his way blindfold. All he needed was a glimmer to keep him from falling into one of the deep ditches that lined every road and track in this territory reclaimed centuries ago from the monstrous Po. He had covered them all as a boy, often walking and cycling for ten or twelve hours a day, and sometimes sleeping rough if he got lost or the bike broke down. No one had worried if he didn’t return by nightfall. In those days, the world had been hard but benign; now it was soft and malevolent.

He swung left on to the slightly wider road that curved along the bank of the river into which all this land drained, and which in turn drained into a minor tributary of the Po. Two cars passed him, one in each direction, but each travelling at such a speed that Gabriele could have figured to the occupants as no more than a hazardous blur to be avoided if possible. The remaining locals all drove like maniacs, as though taking revenge for the years when their forebears had had to trudge endless distances each day of their lives, under a blazing sun or pouring rain, to or from their work in the fields.

The road eventually curved around to join the main
strada
statale
at the triple-arched medieval bridge leading up into the small town perched on its ledge safely above the flood level of the plains all around. Gabriele dismounted, hid the bicycle away in a grove of poplars near the junction and then continued on foot.

Within the walls, all was as quiet as a tomb. He turned left, off the main road, and then right into a street of low, two- storey brick terraces. The town had a name, but on a deeper level it was generic; one of a thousand or more almost indistinguishable communities dotted across the Po valley and delta, low and modest in appearance, built of plastered brick, and originally serving as a market and shopping centre for the surrounding area. Since the flight to the cities of the sixties and seventies, such places had a sad air of living in enforced retirement. This suited Gabriele’s plans perfectly. Three-quarters of the population had left, and those who remained stayed within doors of an evening and went to bed early. There was no one about on the street, and his rubber-soled sports shoes made no sound as he walked towards the central piazza. Apart from the lack of people about, everything was as he remembered it from forty years earlier. More parked cars, of course, and the odd bit of repainting or remodelling here and there, but basically the same old stale loaf of a town.

The shop was still there too, although with a new sign and plate-glass window, and presided over not by Ubaldo and Eugenia, but by a menopausal woman whom Gabriele finally recognized with a shock as their daughter Pinuccia, about whom he used to have wet dreams. He had put on his dark glasses before entering the shop and he now put on his thickest Milanese accent and asked if they sold batteries, in a tone suggesting that hicks like them probably wouldn’t know what batteries were, never mind have any.

While Pinuccia was searching through a mass of cardboard boxes stacked on a shelf in a dim recess of the shop, Gabriele’s eye was caught by a large black skeleton printed on transparent plastic which was hanging from a hook behind the counter. A witch with a pointed hat and broomstick dangled on the other side of the cash register. Of course, Halloween was approaching. When he had last been interested in such things, the importation of exotic items such as this had not yet been thought of. The church would have banned it, for that matter, or at least fulminated against it. All Saints’ Day was a religious festival, and the superstitious legends and old wives’ tales surrounding the preceding evening something to be ridiculed or ignored.

Pinuccia returned with a selection of batteries, of which Gabriele purchased six. He paid and left, removing his dark glasses so that he could see his way. The almost full moon peeked over the roofs of the houses on the main road. He had timed his journey perfectly.

The light of the town’s one public telephone box gleamed dully from the far side of the pompous
rinascimentale
piazza. It would probably be broken, or of the almost obsolete variety that only took tokens. Maintaining public phones cost the company a lot of money, and even the beggars had mobiles these days. So did janitors, on the other hand.

The interior of the box was a bit of a mess – cigarette butts on the floor, a heavily used copy of
Il Giornale
replacing the missing phone book, a tang of urine in the air – but the machine accepted his phone card and connected him to Fulvio’s mobile. Gabriele was well aware that making this call also involved an element of risk, but he had assessed it at length over several days and had decided that it was acceptable.

‘
Pronto!
’

As always, Fulvio answered the phone as if making a declaration of war.

‘It’s Passarini.’

‘
Dottore
! How have you been? Where have you been?’

‘I’m fine. I’m just calling to find out whether anyone has been trying get in touch with me. Do you understand?’

Although unprepossessing in manner, the janitor was remarkably quick on the uptake.

‘
Certo, certo!
’

‘Well?’

‘Actually there has been someone. Was, I should say. I haven’t seen him for a few days.’

‘What happened?’

‘He came to my cubicle in the front hall and asked if I was responsible for the building. I said that I was, and he asked if that included the …’

He was however, Gabriele remembered, long-winded.

‘Yes, yes. And the upshot?’

‘He asked about the bookshop, your shop. I said I didn’t know, I understood that there had been a death in the family and that you’d decided to take some time off. He asked how long, I said I had no idea. He said he had a very important business matter to discuss with you – huge amount of money at stake, something that couldn’t wait, all the rest of it. But he wouldn’t leave a name or number. I simply told him I had no idea where you were, which is true apart from anything else, and I was sorry but I couldn’t help. Basically just stone-walled him out of there, but he didn’t want to go, I can tell you that.’

Gabriele was silent for so long that the janitor thought they’d been cut off and started going ‘
Pronto? Pronto?
’

‘I’m still here, Fulvio. Anything else?’

‘Just the usual post and casual callers. That professor from the university dropped by while I was taking out the garbage. He wanted to know if the plates he’d ordered had arrived. From some atlas.’

Jansson’s
Atlas Novus
, thought Gabriele. A few loose sheets from one of the Latin editions, possibly 1647. He had acquired them very reasonably in Leipzig, but now he had a buyer in the United States interested, so the professor would have to wait and see what the market price turned out to be.

‘That man who came asking after me. What did he look like?’

‘Thick-set, average height, brown eyes set close together, bald, prominent ears. Oh, and a broken nose. Really splayed out, like a boxer or rugby player. What more can I say? He had a sense of power about him, as if he was someone, or thought he was. That’s about it.’

‘Very good, Fulvio. Thanks for your help.’

‘But when will you be back,
dottore
?’

‘I can’t really say. It may be some time. Anyway, just keep on as you have been doing and I’ll make it up to you as soon as I return.’

He hung up, retrieved his phone card and then, as a final thought, rolled up the copy of
Il Giornale
and stuck it in his coat pocket. It might be mildly interesting to find out what had been going on in the world since he had left it.

He was about to start back to his bicycle when an idea struck him. He returned to the shop and asked Pinuccia if she had any fireworks. It was only when she looked at him in a way suggesting a certain confused recognition that he realized that he had forgotten to put his stage shades back on.

‘Fireworks?’ she said.

‘
Certo
,’ he replied in his pushy Milanese accent. ‘For Halloween. Firecrackers. Bangers. Light blue touch-paper and retire immediately. Boom. Big thrill for the kiddies. You understand?’

For a moment he was worried that she’d understood only too well, but in the end the dullness in her eyes subdued that momentary spark of intelligent interest and they concluded the transaction without further incident. Still, the spark had been there, if only for a second, he thought as he walked back down the street leading to the bridge.

Had Pinuccia ever had fantasies about him? He had been one of the local landowner’s sons, after all. This was an aspect of the situation which had never occurred to him at the time. He had been far too busy becoming himself to give a moment’s thought to who he actually was, but others might not have been so dim. And his once-beloved’s failure to recognize him, although a blessing given the circumstances, nevertheless felt like a loss. She was no longer she and he was no longer he. Alone in the familiar environs of the
cascina
, he had grown accustomed to thinking of himself as a boy again, but that boy was as dead as poor Leonardo.

The ride back was calm and uneventful, a magic adventure in the moonlight-soaked landscape. The only problem was the mist, which had curdled in patches now in that unpredictable way it had, so that one moved from almost total transparency to opacity in a second, and for no apparent reason at all. And then out again, from a clump so thick he had to dismount and walk, watching his way carefully, only to stumble suddenly into a clarity so perfect it made mock of his caution. Passing one of the places where an irrigation canal ran over the drainage ditches on a slender stone aqueduct, he recalled his childish fascination with this physical oxymoron: water flowing over water.