It was Cesarina, Ulderico’s wife, herself.
Addressing him quite naturally with the informal ‘tu’ not just as though they had known each other for years, for ever, but as if they had just been speaking a few hours ago, she immediately reproached him with affectionate familiarity for having waited so long to call them. Good heavens, she was saying, instead of going to Bellagamba’s to eat and to have a sleep there as well – lucky that after lunch they’d had the idea of ringing – but why, for heavens’ sake, hadn’t it crossed his mind to come straight round to theirs? Rico would have been more than happy. And the children as well …
She had a warm, low, drawling voice, slightly querulous, and an accent exactly like Nives’. And although the ‘tu’ she’d addressed him with had initially rather disconcerted him, he found it appropriate soon enough. When, shortly, they’d meet again, everything would go smoothly and it would save them both a great deal of embarrassment.
‘Just a moment,’ he said.
He turned to close the phone-booth door.
‘It was past three o’clock,’ he added. ‘And I didn’t want to disturb you.’
Disturb us! Cesarina had exclaimed. For goodness’ sake, he shouldn’t say that even as a joke. On Sundays and now – on a holiday it was always like Sunday – all of them got up very late, so they’d usually never sit down to lunch before two or a quarter past two. But apart from that, what difference would it make to set an extra place? If the table were set for nine – or ten actually, including the part-time maid – it could just as well be for eleven. And it would take nothing to prepare a bed for him for an after-lunch snooze!
‘Thank you,’ he had replied. ‘Next time I’ll feel free to drop in.’
‘Good. That’s quite right. And the hunting,’ she went on, ‘how did it go? Did you shoot anything? Soon as Rico heard you’d come here, he put his head out of the window and said that with this weather he reckoned you’d get nothing. But that was just envy,’ she’d added, laughing. ‘Anyway it seemed to me that the weather changed soon after that.’
Since closing the cabin door he could hear her much better. She joined her phrases together with a slight whine like a hungry cat, half-nasal, half-throaty. And she seemed so close now that at one point he thought he could even hear the faint rustling of a sheet. Could she be in bed? The speed with which she’d picked up the phone favoured this notion. It wouldn’t be so outlandish that, even in Codigoro, a telephone extension might be fixed up to the bedside. The phone at the Bosco Elìceo must also have had that sort of extension.
‘Yes, the weather changed,’ he’d confirmed. ‘We took down some forty birds in all.’
He had to receive her breathless exclamations, her congratulations, not, it seemed to him, without a certain air of having seen through him, as if Gavino, who might well have just called before him, had already given a very specific account of what had actually happened. On the other hand – he told himself, again registering the secret gnawing of anxiety, but not yet willing to submit to it, to fall back into it – he could hardly act any differently. Gavino or no Gavino, he wouldn’t want to seem the type to return from the valleys empty-handed. Even at the cost of going back to Bellagamba’s to pick up a brace of ducks to bring as a gift – and God knows what that would cost him, for countless reasons! – he wasn’t in the least inclined to cut that kind of figure.
But, in the meantime, she’d changed the subject. She was asking him about Nives, whom, she said, she hadn’t seen for at least twenty years, and the fault was mainly hers, of course it was, since, lazybones that she was, she’d never wanted to set foot in Ferrara. She asked him about his girl. She asked him how they’d got through the war years, the worst ones, and if it was true – Rico had told her of it – that towards the end of the war they’d had to escape abroad. And he, while replying to each of these questions, began to wonder why she was keeping him so long on the telephone. And Ulderico? Why wasn’t he speaking, except by proxy? Why not pass the phone to him? If they were going to meet anyway, why not just get on with it! Why not put a lid on all the chatter!
Together with these thoughts, he could sense other, very different ones insinuating themselves into his mind. He recalled that, not ten minutes earlier – on the basis of what? – when speaking on the phone that morning to the ancient maid and the young boy, he had imagined what he’d find at the Cavaglieri household – that is, all the family gathered around, the tea and the ciambella cake and the big dinner table flooded with light, and after it was cleared away, the game of tombola or rummy in which he’d participate just to hold out until it was bedtime, and so on. But might he not be mistaken? he wondered. Wasn’t he fooling himself? Although it would certainly be appealing to play the old misanthropic uncle whom his nephews and nieces would desperately try to cheer up and console with waves of affection and happiness, the sad fact was that this would never be anything other than a role, and a role, besides, that he would find impossible to play.
‘And how’s Ulderico?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Rico’s fine –’ exclaimed Cesarina, with a laugh. ‘As are the children, thank God …’ It’s only that Rico, bored of waiting and waiting, had got tired of staying there doing nothing and at a certain point had gone out – but he’d be back by eight o’clock at the latest. Now, not even the children were home. As she’d felt like she needed a brief lie-down and instead the kids had begun in their usual fashion to kick a football around in the living room – crash, bang – making a terrible racket, at around five she’d sent them off to the flicks with Giuseppina, the wizened old help, to be rid of them all. They wouldn’t be back before seven-thirty or eight.’
‘And … where was he going?’
‘Who? Rico?’ and she laughed again. ‘Beats me,’ she added in dialect, ‘perhaps he’s off to see his mistress.’
She was joking, he assumed. That, at least, was how it seemed.
‘Fine thing that would be,’ he said, forcing himself to play along, but in the meantime his throat felt constricted. ‘And where does he keep his mistress? Here in Codigoro?’
‘Good heavens, no way,’ replied the other, suddenly serious.
‘Perhaps he’d just gone for a stroll, poor Rico,’ she added. ‘Or even ended up somewhere playing billiards or cards … Only five minutes ago he’d rung from some bar to check if by any chance you’d called and to ask where the children were. And that almost certainly meant that he’d be going to wait for them at the cinema exit to take them off to church afterwards.’
She emitted one of her strange, sighing whines – a little longer and more marked than usual.
‘But where,’ she went on, ‘where are you calling from?’
‘I’m in the square at Fetman’s.’
‘Just below the house then!’ she exclaimed. ‘Have you checked carefully that Rico isn’t there?’
He hadn’t had time to look around. But if he had been there, the barman, given the sort he was, would certainly have let him know.
‘I don’t think he can be here,’ he replied.
‘If that’s so,’ Cesarina said energetically, ‘why not come round right away? Go on, please, and I’ll get up and make you a nice cup of tea.’
Before he could answer, she began to explain where the house was and how to find it. It was very close to the square, she said, and more or less a hundred metres away from Caffè Fetman, and more specifically in that big ten-storey building which was on the corner of Via della Resistenza. But he should take care. To reach the inner courtyard and the lift, he should enter from the square, since there wasn’t even a proper door for 7 Via della Resistenza from the street. The eighth floor, internal apartment number 17, and 18 too. Ring the bell from down below and she’d let him in.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That’s great. I’ll come right now.’
‘D’you mean it? Then I’ll put the water on for the tea. Be sure to come.’
‘See you soon.’
He hung up, and left the cabin.
He made his way through the crowd, looking around carefully. No, it wasn’t likely he’d miss Ulderico, tall as he was – more than six foot if his memory served him. Of course, he could have stowed himself away in some back room to play billiards or cards.
‘Have you seen Signor Cavaglieri, the engineer?’ he asked the barman as soon as he stopped in front of him.
‘No, not today.’
‘Thanks.’
He turned round and went towards the door.
‘Signor!’
Startled, he stopped and turned.
From behind the counter, through the smoke and the steam from the espresso machine, the barman was staring at him.
‘The telephone token,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget about the token and the Fernet.’