Some Bitter Taste Read online

  ‘Not at all, Signora, if you don’t want me to.’

  He put the paper back.

  ‘I don’t. I thought that if I told you, in confidence, you could advise me. My neighbour, Signora Rossi, a young woman whose husband is an architect—they have a little girl who occasionally spends a little time with me in the afternoons if both parents are out at work—of course, this has nothing to do with the problem. I’m just trying to explain why I came here, even though …’

  ‘That’s all right, Signora. You don’t have to explain anything.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but I don’t want you to think that I would waste your time. I mean, not reporting anything stolen, just wanting to talk to you.’

  ‘That’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘You’re very kind, but I remember … my handbag was snatched recendy—you know the sort of thing, a youngster on a scooter. They say one should be thankful not to be injured as so many women are when they try to hang on to their bags and are dragged into the road. Anyway, I reported it at your headquarters in Borgo Ognissanti and, though they were perfecdy polite, quite kind, in fact, I didn’t feel I could go there with—I mean go there and talk about—’

  ‘Being frightened? Well, you’re right. They’re very busy over there. You did well to come here. This neighbour of yours, do I know her?’

  ‘From years ago, yes. She said you wouldn’t remember her but you were very kind to her and her husband just after the little girl was born and they thought they were going to be thrown out of their house. Perhaps you do remember.’

  ‘I can’t say I do. I don’t imagine it was anything much, whatever I did. So you told your neighbours about what’s worrying you?’

  Again her eyes left his, her fingers trembled, nose, mouth, throat.

  ‘I mentioned it. In case they’d seen anyone on the stairs, near my door.’

  ‘Very sensible. Now, are you absolutely sure that there’s nothing missing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were there any signs of a forced entry?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘What sort of lock have you?’

  ‘A spring bolt. Six horizontal bolts and a floor-to-ceiling vertical one.’

  ‘Not the sort of thing they open with a credit card. Well then, Signora, if no one has broken in and there’s nothing missing, what makes you think someone has been in your flat?’

  ‘I don’t think. I know.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There were things out of place. I’m not an excessively tidy person but one senses when things are not the way one left them. We all have habitual ways of placing things … I see you do think I’m wasting your time.’

  ‘No I don’t. I think that you’re an intelligent and sensible woman and that you wouldn’t waste your own time, let alone mine. I don’t think you’d be here—I don’t think you’d be frightened—because of a vague sensation. Was there something—a smell, a trace of some other person, cigarette smoke, for example, if you don’t smoke yourself?’

  She seemed to stop breathing for a moment. The wave of fear passing through her body was visible. His big eyes were still fixed on her and she seemed unable to drag her gaze away now.

  ‘The first time.’ He could hardly hear her.

  ‘No one can overhear what we say in here, Signora. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Was there cigarette smoke? Ashes? Just a smell?’

  ‘Just a smell. Not cigarettes. More like cigars.’

  ‘And the other times? Was there a smell?’

  ‘A knife.’

  ‘A knife?’ Was she going to turn out to be crazy, like so many others with similar complaints? ‘What sort of knife? A dagger? A hunter’s knife? A bread knife?’

  ‘Not a bread knife but it was a kitchen knife.’

  ‘I see. And was this kitchen knife yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it wasn’t in its usual position.’

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you? I wasn’t going to tell you about the knife. I knew you’d think I was mad. It was lying in the entrance hall, right where I’d see it as I walked in the door! I’m not mad, Marshal, I’m in danger!’

  ‘Now, now, Signora, nobody said anything about being mad.’

  She had tried so hard to be composed but her face became red and blotchy now, her eyes bloodshot. The marshal stood up.

  ‘Please! You’re not listening!’

  He’d spoken too soon about that, it seemed. T am listening. I’m just going to ask one of my carabinieri to bring a glass of water for you and then you’ll calm down and tell me the rest of your story quietly.’

  When he came back and sat down she was already quieter but her face had a collapsed look about it which the marshal had seen a hundred times at the moment of a confession. He was pretty sure that this woman wasn’t going to confess anything that could be any business of his and he was right.

  ‘I may as well tell you before I go any further that I have spent time in a psychiatric clinic. You would get to know, anyway I suppose. But it was only for severe reactive depression after my mother died. I’m very much alone in the world—but I’m not paranoid or anything like that. If you check they’ll tell you.’

  A carabiniere brought in the glass of water and murmured, ‘There’s nobody out there now. Can I go to lunch?’

  The marshal looked at his watch and stood up. ‘All right, but first see that this lady sits down with her glass of water in the waiting room until she feels well enough to leave. Signora, leave your address with my carabiniere and don’t worry. I’ll come and see you at home myself.’

  ‘Wait. There’s something else.’

  There was always something else. When people wanted his help without the embarrassment of telling him the full facts, they went on tossing him titbits until they got his attention. She was feeling about in her handbag with a shaky hand. ‘I’ve had a threatening letter. Here. Look at this.’

  The marshal took it. It was a picture postcard, one of those joke ones that show an enlargement of the genitals of Michelangelo’s David. Every bar in the city sold them. Rather than an anonymous letter, it looked more like something neighbouring kids might send to a tedious spinster who nagged about radio volume or the street door being left open.

  The woman said nothing. He felt her eyes fixed on him as he turned the card over.

  It was addressed to Sara Hirsch, Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti 4, 50125 Firenze. It had been posted in the city in July. The postmark was too blurred to see the exact date.

  It said, ‘NOW WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE WE’LL BE COMING TO VISIT YOU. WHEN WE DO YOU’LL BE SORRY.’

  The marshal looked at her hard. ‘Signora, this is from someone you know.’

  ‘How can you say that? How could I know—’

  ‘No, Signora, you misunderstand me. Whoever sent you this is known to you. The writing is known to you so the writer has tried to disguise it in a very amateur way. Look here at the N, and then here, look at the L here and here. A different style each time.’

  ‘But why? After all, I’ve done nobody any harm. Why should they threaten me? What do they want?’

  ‘The message is clear enough, Signora. It means just what it says. “We know where you live.” They intend to make you frightened of living there. I take it you’re not the owner of the flat.’

  ‘No … no.’

  ‘Well, Signora, whoever it is wants you out. Unfortunately, given the length of time, sometimes twenty years, needed to obtain an eviction through legal channels, there are lawyers around unscrupulous enough to resort to terrorist tactics, especially in the case of a woman living alone. It’s a bad business, Signora, and very unpleasant for you but at least you know the motive behind it now and it’s something that you have every reason to be angry about but not afraid. I’ve known a few of these nasty lawyers but there’s never been an instance of actual harm.’

  She stood up. T must go. I must think what to do.’ She held out her hand for the postcard.

  ‘Just a minute.�
�� He photocopied it before giving it back to her. You’ll find that you have something in this person’s writing at home, I think, something to do with your tenancy. If you have any further trouble we can have a graphologist take a look.’ He didn’t specify what sort of trouble, given that she herself hadn’t gone back to the story of somebody’s having been inside her flat. It was more than possible that the message had frightened her into imagining all that, but it was also possible that it was pure invention, something to get his attention. She showed no relief at his explanation of the message. People were strange about what they would admit to and what they wouldn’t. Perhaps she felt that being evicted was something shameful that only happened to poor people who didn’t pay their rent. In Florence it could happen to anybody and did. He kept quiet. Any attempt to comfort her would probably just embarrass her. He showed her to the door. She paused in going to look him in the eyes, her chin held high.

  ‘Don’t imagine that I shall allow myself to be bullied. I shan’t.’

  ‘That’s the spirit, Signora. Why don’t you have a talk with your lawyer and tell him what I’ve told you.’

  ‘I will. I intend to make a number of calls immediately on my return home. I intend to defend my rights. I have more cards up my sleeve than these people know about. I am not weak, even when I feel weak.’

  It could be, of course, that every word of her story was true and that she was cra2yjust the same. Things happen to crazy people as they do to everyone else. That last speech sounded like she rehearsed it to herself every day.

  She seemed to him to be torn between her anxiety to get away and her anxiety to convince him. She jumped back to her earlier story as though reading his mind.

  ‘Whatever you may think, everything I’ve told you is true. That knife was lying right inside the front door.’

  ‘I see. And where’s your kitchen?’

  ‘Immediately off the hall, on the right as you go in—you’re not trying to suggest I dropped it there myself?’

  ‘I’m not trying to suggest anything. No, no. You don’t have a cat? Or a dog.’

  ‘No. I’ve always wanted a cat but until I’m more settled in life—what are you trying to say?’

  ‘Nothing, except that—’

  ‘Listen, there’s something else …’

  ‘If there’s anything else you can leave a note about it with the carabiniere. I’ll come and see you one afternoon this week when you’ve had time to talk to your lawyer.’ He took the carabiniere aside to say quietly, ‘Find out if she had her locks changed after her bag was stolen, will you? You know how it is with people living alone. They frighten themselves into hysterics and then you find out they haven’t taken the most obvious precautions.’

  She was watching, trying to hear. As the carabiniere approached her she fixed the marshal with frightened eyes and said, ‘You’ll really come and see me as you promised?’

  ‘I’ll come.’

  The marshal was late for lunch.

  ‘You’re late,’ Teresa said. ‘I’ll put some fresh pasta in. The boys have eaten your share.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In their room playing that new computer game.’

  The fresh, buoyant postholiday feeling returned with the smells in the kitchen where Teresa was pinching big leaves of basil from a plant for his pasta. One of the rows and rows of bottled tomatoes was open on the marble worktop, and a crate of oranges and lemons, picked yesterday morning in Sicily, stood in one corner, their peel rough, their leaves smooth and shiny. The perfume filled the whole flat. The smell of his childhood. What was Teresa going on about?

  “You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘What? Of course I am. No, I won’t try and learn their wretched computer games.’

  He had tried once but Toto got more and more infuriated with him.

  ‘Oh, Dad!’

  Giovanni had been more patient. He was a bit on the slow side himself and never won though he always wanted to play.

  ‘I’ve got better things to do with my time, and so should they have.’

  ‘It was your sister bought it for them.’

  ‘They couldn’t have talked Nunziata into buying a computer game if you hadn’t talked me into buying the wretched computer last Christmas “because they need it for their studies".’

  He let the blips and yells coming from the bedroom say the rest. He knew very well that Teresa was trying to cover the noise by an unnecessary clattering of pans. The spaghetti slapped into the colander. While he stirred a lump of butter into the glistening sauce she started the washing up.

  ‘Aren’t you sitting down for a minute?’

  ‘I ate with the boys. You didn’t phone to say you’d be late.’

  ‘Couldn’t interrupt.’ He hated it when she washed up instead of talking to him.

  ‘Well, neither can I. I’ve another two wash loads to do, not to mention all the ironing. I don’t know which is more work, leaving or coming home. Besides, there’s no point in talking to you when you’re in this mood.’

  ‘What mood?’

  ‘This mood. If you ask me, you won’t play with them because you’re too slow and Toto loses his patience with you, like anybody would.’

  And wasn’t that what he’d just said? He was offended and not all that sorry to have to drink off an espresso standing at the sink and go back early to the queue of people he’d sent home in the morning. He nodded to them all as he passed through the waiting room to his office, muttering, as he closed the door behind him on his equivalent of the holiday washing and ironing, ‘I don’t know which is worse, setting off or coming back.’

  In the end, Teresa got her workload back to normal within three days. On the fourth day he was just beginning to see over the top of his.

  A girl from Brescia, worried to tears: ‘It’s the keys I’m worried about. I feel such a fool.’

  ‘No, no … Signorina, you mustn’t worry so much. If you say your friends’ son can be contacted and a new set of keys made—’

  ‘But the locks will all have to be changed! They’ll never let me stay in their house again after this, I know they won’t.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Signorina. These bag snatchers are very fast. Now, try and remember: You said you were in Piazza del Carmine. Was it a moped or a scooter?’

  ‘A scooter, dark blue.’

  ‘Was he wearing a helmet?’

  ‘Yes, he was. That was dark blue as well, with white zigzags on it, like lightning.’

  Blast that boy. As if his mother, fighting a losing batde against cancer, hadn’t troubles enough.

  Domestic violence. A regular customer, immense, with lap-dog: ’Yap! Yap yap yap!’

  ‘Baby! Poor Baby. Hush now, it’s all right.’

  ‘Yap yap!’

  ‘Did you call your lawyer?’

  ‘Of course I did. She said the case won’t come before the judge until September. She says I shouldn’t let him into the house in the meantime. You’ve no idea how violent he is.’

  ‘I do know how violent he is, Signora. You called me out a number of times if you remember—’

  ‘That was before I asked for the separation. You’ve no idea—’

  ‘Yap yap yap yap yap! Grrr.’

  ‘You know, I don’t think she likes your uniform.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Shh … nice man, he’s a nice man. Look, he’s going to stroke you.’

  ‘Not on the desk, Signora, if you don’t mind. Keep the dog on your knee. And if your lawyer told you not to let him in, why did you?’

  ‘Because Baby won’t eat her dinner if he’s not there.’

  ‘Yap!’

  A man of seventy-odd, stiff with rage: ‘You and I understand each other! I did my military service in the cavalry, I don’t know if I mentioned that.’

  ‘Yes, I think you did.’

  ‘A missing streedight is an invitation to a mugger. I’ve written to the mayor but he hasn’t deigned to answer so I’ll
leave the matter in your hands. You’re a man of good sense.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  A stolen bicycle: ‘Worth nothing so why steal it? That’s what I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re sure it wasn’t street-cleaning night? You should check that the municipal police haven’t picked it up.’

  A woman whose top-floor neighbour spent his evenings leaning out of the window, smoking: ‘With my patio as his ashtray. I’ve put a nice bit of matting down and what’s going to happen if it catches fire?’

  ‘Ah, ignorance, Signora, ignorance is an ugly beast. You tell him I know all about it, that should do the trick. If it doesn’t I’ll come round.’

  The cat-shooter girl: “There must be something you can do.’

  ‘Yes, but we’ve already done it.’

  ‘I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘But there it is.’

  She lived in one of the little terraced houses down near the Ponte alia Vittoria, and one of her neighbours, she couldn’t distinguish which, was regularly taking potshots at the local cats from his bedroom window with a shotgun.’And there’s an elementary school playground immediately beyond our little gardens! What if he hits a child? All you have to do is check which person in the street has a shotgun.’ So they had and it turned out that the young lady was the only person in the row who didn’t have a shotgun.

  ‘They all have regular licences, Signorina. If you could lean out a bit farther when the shooting starts perhaps you could manage to work out which house it is. Otherwise …’

  ‘He shot two yesterday. One dead and the other with its spine full of shot. I found it and brought it in but it’s paralysed and I know I’ll have to have it put down.’

  Another cat. This one lost: ‘Didn’t settle, you see. They don’t, do they, in a new house? She must have got over the wall into the Boboli Gardens so, with you being right on the spot here, I thought I’d leave you a photograph—you can’t mistake that black patch on her knee. I suppose your men patrol the gardens?’

  ‘No, no, they don’t. If you give the photo to one of the gardeners—they feed all the cats in there twice a day—I’m sure they’ll find her for you.’

  A stolen camera, mimed: 'Sprechen Sie Deutsch?