The man with the goatee was waiting.
The parking lot of the scrapyard was deserted, and he was alone, his only company two crows circling gloomily over heaps of demolished cars.
He was smoking one MS after the other. He would light them, take a couple of drags then toss them far away. Heedless of the snow and the wind, he stood there in full sight, shivering, smoking and smiling.
He was happy. He found the circling of the crows appropriate.
He was waiting.
The man with the goatee was plagued by a recurring nightmare. He did not have it every night or he would have gone mad, but often enough for him to be certain it would follow him until the day he died.
In the nightmare he was a child again and had done something very naughty. It did not matter what exactly. That was a detail that changed each time. He had done something naughty, and to escape his parents’ wrath he was hiding in their bedroom wardrobe. Once he had closed the doors, he discovered to his horror that he was naked, stark naked and trapped, since in the meantime he could hear the room filling with voices, footsteps, words.
As the voices gradually increased in volume, he started groping in the dark, searching for something to cover himself with, panic pressing on his bladder, until his hands found a soft, warm piece of cloth: a blanket. He immediately crawled under it, aware of the air diminishing, the heat increasing and the discomfort in his bladder turning to pain. His certainty grew that somebody would fling open the wardrobe doors and tear the blanket off him just when he was no longer able to hold it in. The crowd would see him, stark naked and soiled with piss. He clenched his teeth, bit his lips and held on.
When the urge to urinate became unbearable, the man with the goatee, knowing that he was asleep next to his wife in his bed at home, did everything he could to wake up. Hard as he tried, though, he could not. All he could do was tremble, hold on and hope that, just this once, the nightmare would change.
It never did.
His bladder relaxed, the wardrobe was flung open, the blanket was snatched away and the crowd pointed at him, shouting and laughing in disgust.
The final image – before, bathed in sweat, his heart pounding, he started biting his pillow to stop himself from waking his wife with his cries – was the face of the man who had exposed him in front of everybody. The face of Herr Wegener.
You did not need a psychiatrist to interpret this nightmare. It summed up the whole life of the man with the goatee: Captain Giacomo Carbone.
As a boy he had been skinny, with deep-set, elusive eyes. At seventeen, he smoked German cigarettes and was terrified of being drafted. He was very bright and had found a way to be useful to the Germans without having to face lead and shrapnel on the front line. Just like Kobold.
By spying, informing, collaborating.
Unlike Kobold, though, Carbone had insisted on wearing a balaclava. That was why the Standartenführer showed contempt towards him and called him a coward. Still, his cowardice had saved his life during the post-war reprisals.
Carbone remembered that time well. He had spent months living off the charity of a distant relative, shut up in a loft, smoking and waiting for someone to discover him and put a bullet in his chest. But that hadn’t happened.
When he heard that the Standartenführer’s body had been discovered in the woods in the Ulten Valley, he felt reborn. The secret of Carbone, the coward in the balaclava, had died with the S.S. man, while he himself had survived. Life was smiling on him.
He began to show himself in public again.
He finished school, and on a damp, rainy day enlisted in the carabinieri. He passed the officer’s exam at his first attempt. And since he spoke German, his superiors posted him to Bolzano, in South Tyrol. There, he met a girl called Isabella who knew nothing of his past as a collaborator. He grew a goatee to impress her. He worked hard at his new job and got ahead. He was transferred from Bolzano to Brixen, then to Brenner and finally to Merano. On the banks of the Passer, he proposed to Isabella, and they started making preparations for their wedding. Two days before the big occasion, Kobold knocked at his door.
Kobold knew.
It was bad luck, pure and simple. Kobold had seen him just once without a balaclava, at the Alpini barracks in Bolzano, but that was enough. Kobold had a prodigious memory, and as the skilled hunter he was he had waited until Carbone had a lot to lose before making his move. He had not said much.
“You’re my dog now.”
And he had put him on a leash.
That was the night Carbone first had the nightmare about the blanket and the wardrobe.
Being the dog of someone like Herr Wegener also had its advantages. Wegener not only knew when to tug on your collar, he also knew when to reward you.
Backhanders, complimentary tickets to events Isabella wouldn’t have missed for the world, incredible discounts from car and household appliance dealers.
In return, Wegener asked him for tip-offs, the odd confidential file concealed between the pages of a newspaper, maybe also to turn a blind eye to certain lorries travelling to Switzerland through the Passeier Valley. What he wanted most was information.
Carbone kept having the same nightmare. He had had it for decades now, at least once a week. Always the same: the wardrobe, the blanket, the people pointing at him.
The shame.
Wegener had sentenced him to a state of never forgetting. That was why Carbone hated him.
Today, though, Giacomo Carbone, now a captain, felt light. He finally knew how to rid himself of that nightmare once and for all. He was not chain-smoking because he was nervous, but because he could not wait to tug at his leash one last time.
The crows flew away. The snow continued to fall.
Carbone had almost finished the packet of MS when Herr Wegener arrived.
His eyes were bloodshot. He looked like someone who has had a sleepless night. There were no hellos. Carbone motioned Wegener to follow him. He led him into a shed. There, removing a canvas cover, he showed him a grey Fiat 130.
“Is this it?”
No answer. Wegener’s expression said it all.
Carbone smiled. “Didn’t you know women are bitches? You have to keep them on a leash.”
He had prepared that line while waiting.
Herr Wegener did not react. So much the better. Carbone had no desire to get into a fight. He would be all too tempted to take out his gun and shoot the son of a bitch. Why risk losing everything so close to the finishing line?
Freedom.
He loved the sound of that word.
“It wasn’t hard to find. The model, the colour, the licence number. The description of your wife was useful but not really necessary.”
“Who?”
“The guy who owns this place.”
“He . . .”
Carbone shook his head. “The poor devil shat his pants as soon as he heard who the car belonged to.”
“And . . . ?”
“He came of his own accord. I didn’t even have to call him in.”
Clutching his hat in his hands, the owner of the scrapyard had also handed over a wad of banknotes. It was the money Signora Wegener had paid for the changeover, he had said. The Fiat 130 for a Mercedes. The money was safe in one of Carbone’s drawers, and he had no intention of returning it to its rightful owner. Let’s call it a tip.
“How?”
“How what?”
“How did Marlene know where to find him?”
“You can’t be married to a pastry cook and not know who in the neighbourhood has a sweet tooth.”
Herr Wegener took a step towards him. “I don’t like your tone.”
Carbone ignored the threat. “A Mercedes W114. An excellent car. Solid. Cream finish. The number plate is on this piece of paper. I’ve already issued a description to my people. It has a very good engine, you can drive it quite a distance.”
“Did she say where she was headed?”
Carbone looked into his eyes, enjoying every ounce of embarrassment, terror and anger he saw in them, and allowed himself one final dig. “You think you married a stupid woman?”
Wegener turned and left.
Carbone lit an MS and smoked it all, down to the filter, really savouring it.
He came out of the scrapyard and got into the car waiting for him at the corner of the street with its engine running. He ordered the driver to return to the carabinieri station.
He smiled. He had one last thing to do before he was a free man again. Make a telephone call.