The Day of the Owl (9 page)

'Oh, Excellency!' exclaimed His Excellency, leaping out of bed with an agility surprising in one of his age and decorum.

The ringing of the telephone had, with nagging persistency, infiltrated through sleep to his consciousness, and he had reached for the instrument with the sensation that his hand was detached from his body. As faint sounds and distant voices reached his ear, he switched on the light; this meant that his wife would have no more that night of the sleep which always came sparingly to her restless body.

Suddenly the faint sounds and distant voices fused into one single voice, still distant but irritated and inflexible; and His Excellency found himself out of bed, barefoot in his pyjamas, bowing and smiling as though bows and smiles were sliding down the mouthpiece.

His wife gave him a disgusted look and, before turning her splendid bare shoulders to him, muttered: 'He can't see you; there's no need to wag your tail.' Indeed, a tail was all His Excellency needed at that moment to express his devotion.

Again he said: 'Excellency!' then: 'but, Excellency ... no, Excellency ... yes, Excellency ... very well, Excellency,' and after saying 'Excellency' some hundred times, he stood there, telephone in hand, grunting comments about the mother of an Excellency who rang from Rome at two a.m. to upset his life. He looked at his wife's back. Wasn't she upsetting it enough already? He put the telephone down on its rest, then picked it up at once and dialled a number. His wife turned on him like a scalded cat: 'Tomorrow night I'm sleeping in the guest-room,' she snapped.

Now he was saying in the same irritated and inflexible tone he had listened to a few minutes before: 'I'm sorry, my friend, but I've just been woken up myself. I'm awake and you're awake and you'll kindly do me the favour of waking whoever you have to wake ... I've just had a call from Rome; I'm not saying from who, but you can guess ... That Bellodi - I told you, remember? – has stirred up scandal on a national scale ... National, I tell you ... One of those scandals that, when someone like you or I is involuntarily involved, means there's hell to pay, my friend, blackest hell... D'you know what a Rome newspaper came out with this evening? ... No? Well, you're lucky. I had to hear it from the party concerned and, believe me, he was in a fury ... There was a half-page, blown-up photograph of... you know who... standing next to Don Mariano Arena ... What d'you think of that! A photo montage? Not on your life. A genuine photograph. You say you don't care? ... That's not a very bright reaction ... Yes, I know as well as you do that it's not our fault if His Excellency is ingenuous enough, let's call it that, to be photographed with Don Mariano ... Yes, I'm listening ... '

His wife bounded out of bed, ravishing in her nudity. Like a famous actress, in bed she wore only Chanel Number 5; thus arousing His Excellency's sensuality and dulling that bureaucratic ardour of his which had rendered such service in the days of the Salo Republic. Wrapped in an eiderdown and an aura of scorn, she swept out, followed by His Excellency's anxious glance.

'Very well, then,' he said, after listening for a couple of minutes, 'this is what we'll do: in the course of the night you'll either nail down this Don Mariano for me with proof that even God Almighty couldn't touch; or else, also in the course of the night, you'll turn him loose and the press can be told that he was merely held for questioning ... What! The Public Prosecutor is following the investigations and agrees with Bellodi? ... Hell, what a mess! ... Well, do something ... Yes, of course I realize ... But d'you know what he told me only a moment ago?... You know who... He told me that Don Mariano Arena is an honest citizen and that one of us here, either me or you, is playing the communists' game ... How ever did this Bellodi get here? Why the devil did they send a man like that to an area like this? What's needed here, my friend, is discretion; a good nose, presence of mind, steady nerves, that's what's needed ... And they send down someone with St Vitus's dance ... But, for goodness' sake! that I don't question for a moment... I have the utmost respect for the Service, I honour it... Well, do whatever you want and he slammed down the receiver.

Now he had to calm his wife, a thornier problem than the thorniest ever set by his job.

*

Dawn was infusing the countryside; it seemed to rise from the tender green wheat, from the rocks and dripping trees, and mount imperceptibly towards a blank sky. The
chiarchiaro
of Gramoli, incongruous in green uplands, looked like a huge, black-holed sponge soaking up the light flooding the landscape. Captain Bellodi had reached that point of exhaustion and sleeplessness which produces a series of incandescent fantasies: hunger does the same; at a certain intensity it fades into a kind of lucid starvation which rejects any idea of food. The captain thought: 'This is where God throws in the sponge,' associating the sight of the
chiarchiaro
with the struggle and defeat of God in the human heart.

Partly joking, and partly because he knew the captain to be interested in popular sayings, the sergeant said:

'
E lu cuccu ci dissi a li cuccuottt:

A lu chiarchiaru nni vidiemmu tutti.'

The captain asked what it meant, his curiosity instantly aroused.

The sergeant translated: 'An owl said to its owlets: we'll all meet in the end at the
chiarchiaro,'
adding that perhaps this meant we shall all meet again in death, the
chiarchiaro
having in some way, who knew why, become associated with the idea of death. The captain knew why very well; and in his feverish imagination he saw a host of night birds in the
chiarchiaro,
an aimless flapping of wings in the pallid light of dawn. No image, he thought, could ever convey more fearsomely the impression of death.

They had left their car on the road and were now approaching the
chiarchiaro
down a narrow, muddy path. Carabinieri could be seen moving about the
chiarchiaro
and a peasant or two helping them.

Suddenly the path ended at a farmhouse; and they had to cross some fields of wheat to reach the sergeantmajor of S., who could now be made out quite clearly, gesticulating as he directed operations.

When they were within earshot, the sergeantmajor called with an exultation out of keeping with the discovery of a corpse: 'He's here all right, sir! It'll be a job to get 'im up, but he's here!' But this was his work, and the finding of a murdered man was grounds in this case for satisfaction and rejoicing.

It was there, the body; at the bottom of a thirty-foot cleft which had been sounded with a rope and stone as plumbline. The light of electric torches, filtering through bushes growing on the sides of the cleft, barely showed the bottom. But upwards wafted, unmistakably, the stench of putrefaction. To the great relief of the carabinieri, who were afraid the job would fall to one of them, a peasant had volunteered to go down tied to a rope and attach the body to other ropes so that it could be hauled up with comparative ease. A lot of rope was needed and they were waiting for the return of a carabiniere who had gone to fetch it from the village.

The captain went back across the fields to the farmhouse where the path began. It seemed deserted. But, going round to the side facing away from the
chiarchiaro,
a dog suddenly sprang towards him to the limit of its rope; it hung there, nearly choked, by its collar, barking furiously. It was a handsome brown mongrel with little violet half-moons over its yellow eyes. An old man came out of the cowshed to quieten it. 'Down,
Barruggieddu,
down!' he said, and then to the captain: 'I kiss your hands.'

The captain went over to the dog to stroke it.

'No,' said the old man in alarm, 'don't touch 'im, he's wicked! He'll let a stranger touch 'im and be reassured, and then bite 'im ... He's a little devil.'

'What d'you call him?' asked the captain, wondering about the strange name the old man had used.

'Barruggieddu,'
said the old man.

'What does that mean?'

'Someone who's bad,' said the old man.

'I've never heard that one before,' the sergeant said; then in dialect asked the old man for an explanation. The old man said that perhaps the right name was
Barriccieddu
or maybe
Bargieddu
but, in any case, it meant 'evil', the evil of a man in a position of command. At one time the
Barruggieddi
or
Bargieddi
had lorded it over the townships and sent people to the gallows for their own cruel pleasure.

'I've got it,' said the captain. 'It means the Bargello -the chief of police.'

Embarrassed, the old man was mute.

The captain had wanted to ask him whether, a few days previously, he had noticed anyone going towards the
chiarchiaro
or had seen anything suspicious in those parts; but he realized that there was nothing to be got out of a man who considered a chief of police as evil as his own dog. Perhaps he wasn't so far wrong, thought the captain; for centuries the
bargelli
had bitten men like him, bitten after reassuring, as the old man had said. What had the
bargelli
been but tools of invading tyrants?

He took leave of the old man and set off down the path for the road. Straining at its rope, the dog barked its final menace.
'
Bargello,'
thought the captain,
'bargello
like me, with my short length of rope, my collar, my mania,' and he felt more akin to the dog called
Barruggieddu
than to the historic
bargelli
of not so very long ago. 'Hound of the law,' he thought of himself; and then he went on to think of the 'hounds of the Lord', who were the Dominicans, and of the Inquisition, a word which conjured up a dark empty crypt and stirred gloomy echoes of history. He found himself wondering with anguish whether he, too, the fanatical hound of the law, had not already crossed the threshold of that crypt. Thoughts, thoughts born and melting in feverish self-destroying yearning for sleep.

He returned to C. and, before going to his quarters for a short rest, called in at the Public Prosecutor's office to report on the progress of his investigations and to extend the detention of Arena whom he wanted to interrogate in the afternoon after marshalling and assessing all his facts.

In the Palace of Justice, journalists were camping out on stairs and corridors. They were on him like a swarm of bees and the photographers' flashes exploded painfully into his arid-feeling eyeballs.

'How's the investigation going?... Is Don Mariano Arena responsible for the murders or is there someone more important behind him? ... Have Marchica and Pizzuco confessed? ... Will their temporary arrest be extended or are there warrants out? ... D'you know anything about a tie-up between Don Mariano and Minister Mancuso? ... Is it true that the Honourable Member Livigni came to your office yesterday?'

'No, it isn't,' he replied to the last question.

'But politicians have intervened on behalf of Don Mariano, haven't they? Is it true that Minister Mancuso telephoned from Rome?'

'As far as I know,' he said in a loud voice, 'there has not been - nor can there be - any political intervention. As far as any connections between one of the detainees and certain politicians are concerned, all I know is what you've written yourselves. If such connections exist - and I don't wish to cast aspersions on your professional honesty - I have not, so far, had to take them into consideration or investigate them. Should these connections, in the course of my inquiries, become such as to draw the attention of the law, you can be sure that neither the Public Prosecutor nor myself will fail to do our duty ...'

This declaration was presented by an evening paper in a six-column headline as: 'Minister Mancuso also involved in Bellodi investigation.'

Evening papers come out, of course, by midday; and, by what in the South is lunch-time, the telephone wires were burning with the yells of those involved; yells which burst on the eardrums, sensitive enough at the best of times, of certain persons trying to drown their sorrows in the wines of Salaparuta or Vittoria.

*

The problem is this: the carabinieri have three links of a chain in their hands. The first is Marchica, that they've grasped so firmly that it's like a ring for tying up mules set in a farmhouse wall.'

'Diego's not the sort to talk. He's got the guts of the devil.'

'Leave his guts out of this. The trouble with you is that you don't realize that a man who may be capable of killing ten, a thousand, a hundred thousand people, can also be a coward ... Diego, allow me to say so, has talked. So Pizzuco's link is now attached to his ... There are now two alternatives: if Pizzuco talks, there's the third link, Mariano's, joined to his; if he doesn't, he's still linked to Diego, but not very strongly, and a good lawyer could loosen that link without much trouble ... and in that case ... the chain comes to an end and Mariano is free.'

'Pizzuco won't talk.'

'I'm not so sure of that, my dear fellow. I always look on the blacker side of things, so let's suppose that Pizzuco does talk. If so, Mariano's for it. At a guess I'd say that at this moment the carabinieri are trying to weld Pizzuco's link to Mariano's. If it holds, two things can happen: either the chain ends with Mariano, or Mariano, old and ill as he is, decides to tell his beads ... In that case, my friend, the chain gets longer and longer, so long, in fact, that I and the minister and God Almighty get caught up in it... A calamity, my good fellow, a calamity ...'

'You're talking like a skeleton at a feast... Heavens alive, don't you know what kind of man Don Mariano is? Silent as the grave.'

'Yes, when he was young; now he's old with one foot in that grave of his. The flesh is weak, as Garibaldi said in his will, afraid that, in a moment of weakness, he might confess his sins to a priest, sins that must have been spiny as prickly pears. What I'm getting at is this: in a moment of weakness Mariano may break down and confess his sins, which, between ourselves, are not exactly few ... I had his dossier in my hands in 1927, it was thicker than that' - he pointed to one of Bentini's tomes - 'a kind of criminal encyclopedia ... a for arson, b for battery, c for corruption ... the lot. Fortunately the dossier vanished ... No, don't look at me like that; I'd no hand in it. Other friends, bigger fry than me, did the three-card trick with that dossier. From this office to that, from that to the other, until it vanished under the very nose of the Public Prosecutor, a terror, I recall. He flew right off the handle, I remember, threats right and left, and those who were under the deepest suspicion were those who had nothing to do with it, poor things. Then the Public Prosecutor was transferred elsewhere and the storm passed. The truth of the matter is this: Attorney-Generals, Public Prosecutors, judges, officers, chiefs of police, corporals of carabinieri, they all pass ... '