‘Is that a lie? I told you about those.’
‘It never left me, Julia,’ he murmured. ‘I invited it back. Do you understand what I’m saying? This thing inside’s been growing all these years. In a way I never understood, I’ve been nurturing it. Calling to it. Ever since Rome. Ever since the flood.’
‘The flood…’
‘And now I’ve introduced it to you.’
Fratelli reached round and grabbed the bottle anyway, then took down two small glasses off the shelf, filled them with the clear liquid. She could smell its strength even as he placed the drinks on the table.
‘Sit down and listen,’ he ordered. Then he nodded at the grappa. ‘You’ll need this. So will I.’
Friday, 4 November 1966
‘Two in the morning. What time of day is this to leave me?’
‘The time the roster says. A woman who’s fool enough to wed a slave shouldn’t complain about the hours he works.’
He kissed his wife, smiled at her, touched her soft auburn hair. They’d been married two years. Still no sign of children — not that they hadn’t tried. Kids would come. His instincts, that small voice inside he’d had since childhood, told him so, and it was rarely wrong.
‘Slaves have no choice. Fratelli does,’ she told him. ‘Here. I made you something to eat.’
He’d slept till one. Then Chiara roused him, put on her dressing gown and got up to make some coffee and a panino for him to take to the station. Tomorrow was her day off from the department store. She could sleep late. He felt guilty that she should work at all, but they needed her wages. His salary as a junior Carabinieri officer was so slight it almost seemed insulting. Even though he’d inherited his mother’s house near the Carmine church, money was still in short supply. It wouldn’t always be like this. Soon he’d climb on to the promotion ladder like Walter Marrone before him. Walter was smart when it came to internal politics, acting captain when no one else was around, which would doubtless be the case that very night. Fratelli wasn’t in the same league and he knew it. But Walter could teach him the tricks. They could talk about it later: Walter the temporary boss, an officer on the up; Fratelli his lineman.
November on the dead man’s watch. Perhaps someone would break the tedium and smash the window of a tourist’s car. That was the most he could hope for. There’d be plenty of time to chat.
Fratelli looked at the food she’d prepared for him. Cheese and bread. He knew Walter would have brought along some lampredotto they could reheat in the station kitchen. Maybe even drink a beer or a glass of wine to get through the long and empty hours.
Chiara came close and kissed him.
‘What was that for?’ he asked.
‘A wife can kiss her husband, can’t she?’
She had dark, alluring eyes; a beautiful face that belonged on the walls of the Uffizi. Fratelli had no idea what he’d done to deserve this woman, and refused to give the matter a moment’s consideration, believing that to do so might break whatever magic spell held her to him for no good reason whatsoever. Charming, funny, of a resolutely intelligent and independent inclination, Chiara Brunelli could steal the heart of any man she wanted. She chose his. It was the only dubious and irrational decision he’d ever known her make.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But go to bed.’
She wasn’t normally this affectionate late at night, when he was about to disappear for ten hours or more.
‘Let me call Walter and tell him you’re sick.’
‘No!’
‘You have your feelings. Your intuitions. Why can’t I have mine?’
This mood of hers was so strange.
‘Because you’re the rational one. With your feet on the ground. I’m the moody creature. Leave that role to me.’
She shook her head and clung to the lapels of his coat. The rain beat heavily on the windows of their little terraced house.
‘This weather!’ Chiara whispered. ‘Will it ever stop?’
‘Yes,’ he said patiently.
‘I listened to the radio while you were snoring. It said the army and the police were going into the hills. There was flooding. People leaving their homes.’
Fratelli didn’t follow the news much. He liked to look at whatever was in front of him at that moment, to peer hard and try to unravel its mysteries. Distant happenings in the hills didn’t bother him. They were someone else’s problem.
‘Will you go?’ she asked.
‘If they wanted me, someone would have phoned by now. It’s winter. It rains.’
She pulled at his tie, making the knot fit more snugly against his freshly pressed shirt. Fratelli wasn’t a fastidious man. His clothes were cheap and well-worn, but Chiara liked him to look smart; worked hard with an iron and the antiquated washing machine in the ground-floor storeroom to keep him that way.
‘Let me call Walter…’
‘No,’ he said and placed a single finger briefly on her nose.
‘Don’t play your condescending tricks with me, Fratelli,’ she said in a comical voice. ‘I don’t appreciate them.’
He took her shoulders, felt her warmth and strength, and said, ‘I have to work. And when that’s done I’ll come home. As I always do. I’ll bring…’
‘No flowers! We can’t afford them.’
‘Some food then. A pizza and some cheap red wine. Let’s live the life.’ His hand went to her soft, brown hair. ‘One day, I promise…’
With a petulant sulk, Chiara pulled away and got his coat, put it on him. He could see in his mind’s eye how she’d do the same so fondly with the child to come — a boy, he guessed, and then a girl.
‘I can’t sleep when you go out like this,’ she grumbled. ‘Maybe a little. Then in the middle of the night I’ll do some washing. You need the shirts. This rain had better stop or it’ll never dry.’
Fratelli didn’t know what to say, so he kissed her once more and then, without another word, went out into the dreadful night.
The car was in the garage, broken down again. So he had to pull his collar around his face and walk through the constant rain across the bridge of Santa Trinita to the Carabinieri station in the Borgo Ognissanti. He stopped mid-span and looked in both directions. He’d never seen the river so high. It was approaching the foot of the bridge where he stood and wasn’t far from the top of the arches on the Ponte Vecchio along the way. There were lights in the shops there. Night watchmen, he thought. And cars on both sides, with figures carrying boxes to them.
Clearing the shops of their jewellery. A wise precaution. The rains had been incessant for days. There were stories, old tales, of how Florence had flooded in the past, the river seeping into the city, filling cellars and the ground floors of homes, causing expensive havoc.
Fratelli suddenly felt he understood Chiara’s qualms. This was strange. It felt outside the normal round of dismal winter weather Florence knew and expected any time from November onwards.
He strode across the bridge and turned left towards the station.
Ognissanti… all the saints. He didn’t expect to bump into any that night. The street lights shone on empty streets where water ran across the black cobbles in snaking, writhing torrents. There was a siren from somewhere near Santa Maria Novella. No activity outside the station, though. If something did turn bad, they’d have to bring in more men.
He ought to get into the habit of listening to the radio. Walter Marrone surely did. People on the up ladder cultivated habits like that. For Fratelli it was always the same before night duty. He needed time to be alone with his wife, to talk to her, to feel free of the burden of work for a brief while before picking up his Carabinieri badge once more.