Cosi Fan Tutti - 5 (2 page)

which she wore short. Her features were sharply delineated, especially the firm, decisive mouth and the long straight nose.

“I don’t care whether this was your idea, Dottor Zembla, or mamma’s,’ she declared. ‘In either case, it is a transparent attempt, as vain as it is despicable, to undermine the feelings which Gesualdo and I cherish for one another, feelings such as persons of your generation are no longer capable of and whose strength and purity you

cannot therefore be expected to understand. If I wished to be vulgar, I might suggest that it is precisely your inability to feel such emotions yourself which has generated

the envy and rancour which lie behind this sordid attempt to discredit our poor lovers.’

Aurelio Zen shook his head.

‘You are too ingenious, Signorina Orestina. My interest in this matter is entirely mercenary’

‘Pronti, dottore!’ cried the barman, setting the coffee and the two scallop-shaped pastries on the marble counter.

‘How does money come into it?’ asked the younger woman, glancing down at the plate before her. Her appearance was softer and less formidable than her sister’s, her

hair longer and lighter, her flesh paler and plumper.

‘Whose money?’ Orestina enquired pointedly.

Zen sipped the scalding coffee, served in a cup preheated by boiling run-off from the espresso machine.

‘Your mother’s/ he said.

‘Aha!’

‘Let me explain to you her way of thinking…’

‘We know that only too well,’ returned the younger woman. ‘She thinks that Sabatino and Gesualdo are thugs, criminals, gangsters, drug dealers, and Heaven

knows what else!’

‘Oh certainly, Signorina Filomena! That goes without saying. But where your mother and I differ is that she doesn’t believe that they are really in love with you. Not only have you chosen to bestow your beauty, brains and breeding on these worthless individuals - I paraphrase your mother’s rhetoric here - but, even worse, they are only diverting themselves with you, and will move on to new conquests as soon as they have got what they want.’

‘That’s a horrible thing to say!’ cried Filomena, her green eyes watering. ‘Sabatino is always very sweet and respectful to me and he really cares about my feelings.

Mamma has no right to say that he doesn’t love me. She’s just jealous, that’s all.’

‘Gesualdo’s only crime is that his parents were poor and lived in the wrong part of town,’ her sister protested.

‘It’s simply shameful of mamma to condemn him for that.

He’s the finest, truest, kindest, straightest man I’ve ever met, and worth any number of the snobby, snotty, spoilt brats she would like to marry us off to!’

Aurelio Zen drained his coffee and reached towards his pocket, then paused, frowning. He shook his fingers as though to relieve a cramp.

‘My analysis of the situation exactly,’ he replied.

‘Which is why it’s doubly unfortunate that you are unwilling to put their fidelity to the test. As it is, your mother and I may have to wait a long time to see which of us has won.’

‘Won?’ snapped Orestina. ‘Won what?’

‘Are you saying that you and mamma have made a bet on our future happiness?’ demanded her sister. ‘How dare you do such a thing? As though our lives were a

horse race or a football match!’

Aurelio Zen shrugged.

‘All I wanted to do was to prove your mother wrong.

But since you won’t cooperate …’

Filomena lunged forward impulsively and grabbed one of the sfogliatelle.

‘And why should we cooperate?’ she demanded.

‘What’s in it for us?’

‘A trip to London, for a start.’

‘London?’

‘We’d need to make your sudden departure look natural, of course. What more normal than that two literature students in their final year at the university should go off to England to brush up the language?’

‘I’ve always wanted to go to London,’ murmured Orestina wistfully.

‘Well, here’s your chance,’ Zen remarked with a broad smile. ‘And if you turn it down, ladies, I shall be forced to conclude that, despite your fervent protestations, you’re not really as sure of your boyfriends as you claim to be.’

‘Sabatino would never be unfaithful to me!’ said Filomena.

‘I trust Gesualdo like my own self!’ declared Orestina.

I’ve found a very good package deal,’ Zen went on.

‘Air tickets, nice hotel in the centre, generous discounts at selected shops, clubs and discos. True, it means flying Alitalia, but a colleague of mine knows someone who works for the ground staff at the airport and he can get you upgraded.’

The younger woman brushed the pastry crumbs from her ample bosom.

‘When would we be going?’

‘Right away. That gives you a couple of weeks over there before you have to be back to sit your exams.’

‘Out of the question/ said Orestina.

‘I’ll need to discuss it with Sabatino/ said Filomena.

Zen clapped his hand to his forehead.

‘For God’s sake! The whole point is that they’re not to know that it’s a test.’

‘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 II Mattino. The headlines had a distinctly second-hand air, following up on stories which had made their debut 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 G8 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.