Back to Bologna (17 page)

34

‘One
penne all’arrabbiata
,’ the waiter shouted to the chef.

Shit, thought Romano Rinaldi, how the hell do I make that? But the vigilant crone perched on a tall stool in the corner was already on the job.

‘Don’t just stand there gawping! Get the pasta in! Two handfuls. Stir it well until it comes to the boil, the water’s getting gluey and it might stick. Drain that pot, refill it and switch to the backup. Warm up a ladleful of tomato sauce, add a pinch of chilli and…’

For the second time that day, Romano Rinaldi set a huge pan of pasta boiling. This time, though, he made sure that it didn’t boil over. This totally sucks, he thought. From being the celebrated and beloved
Chef Che Canta e Incanta
to being bullied and ordered around by some vicious granny who had once again got her hands on a man whose life she could make a misery, and was relishing every opportunity to do so.

And Romano gave her plenty. Not only did he not know how to cook, he deeply and indeed viscerally loathed the entire process. What he loved was celebrating the idea of tradition, of authentic shared experience and a stable and loving home life around the family hearth. Cooking was the medium he had chosen for this, but in itself it was a messy, painstaking, unrewarding and–as he had demonstrated so spectacularly that morning–potentially very dangerous form of drudgery that demanded total concentration and offered at best a sense of relative failure. Who has not always the impression of having eaten a better meal than the one set before them? It was a mug’s game, which was no doubt one reason why it had traditionally been left to women.

These large philosophical questions apart, Romano Rinaldi had ample specific reasons for feeling utterly miserable. A splitting headache for one, the result of his earlier indulgences and current lack of either drugs or alcohol to satisfy his urgent medical needs. Then there was
la nonna
, of whom the less said the better, and the unutterably vile surroundings in which he was forced to go about his distasteful and humiliating chores.

The pizzas that were the mainstay of the establishment were prepared and baked by the owner and his son in a spotlessly clean extension of the bar, in full view of the clientele. The kitchen area at the rear of the premises where he was penned up, well out of sight, was substantially smaller than any of the walk-in cupboards in Rinaldi’s Rome residence, and every surface was exuberantly filthy. The place looked like the scene of some Mafia settling of accounts after the bodies had been removed. Red splashes covered the pitted plaster walls, which were marked by long vertical gouges that might well have been made by the fingernails of some dying mobster. The floor was sprinkled with what at first looked like capers flung about with mad abandon, but turned out on closer inspection to be rat droppings. Rinaldi had been sorely tempted several times already to walk out and take his chances with the police. Even if he ended up getting convicted, could a prison term with hard labour be any worse than this?

When he had asked about the job a few hours earlier, the surly proprietor had at first shaken his head, then abruptly changed his mind and told the supposed illegal immigrant that he would give him a trial, starting immediately, but only because there was a large birthday party booked for that evening and he was desperate for someone, anyone, to help out in the kitchen. It had also been made clear to Rinaldi that he was to follow the orders of Normo’s grandmother to the letter, she being ninety years old and unable to do the work herself. ‘She’s the brain, you’re the robot,’ was how the charmless owner had succinctly summed up the situation. ‘And don’t even fucking dream of showing your horrible face in the dining area. Just bring the dishes out when they’re ready, set them down here on the counter and get straight back to work.’

The only upside of the whole situation was that his anonymity appeared to be complete. No one had given the slightest sign of realising who he was, or indeed of being aware of him at all except as an object for their use or in their way. He had become part of the immigrant stealth population, fully visible yet barely perceived, less real in his actual being than he had been as a two-dimensional image on television. Certainly no one would ever remark on the similarity between the two, or if they did would instantly dismiss the thought as a category error of the most basic kind. For the moment, anyway, he was safe.

But not from
la nonna
.

‘Don’t stand there scratching your arse! Drain the pasta, then empty and refill the pot, saving a splash of the cooking water to loosen the sauce.’

As usual, her orders were not in sequence, and he had to try and work out what to do first. Being a good cook was all about timing, he was beginning to realise, and his was terrible. Worse was to come. The pot of pasta water, as thick as soup after many uses, was hotter and heavier than Rinaldi realised, until a blossoming cloud of steam from the sinkward gush scalded his face and he dropped it on his foot.

‘
Macché?
’ the stooled crone howled, glaring at her cringing serf. ‘Did your mother have to teach you to shit? Leave it, leave it! Dish the pasta, add the sauce and a sprig of parsley and take it out. Quick, quick, before it gets cold!’

Then, in a terrible screech: ‘ANTOOOOOOONIO!!!’

It was a blessed relief to escape from the kitchen, even limping and for only a few seconds. Having set the plate down, Rinaldi stole a look at the group assembled for the birthday festivities, exactly the kind of extended family occasion that he had so often hymned on his show. To think that just that morning he,
Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta
, would secretly have despised such people and their vulgar
piccolo-borghese
jollifications.

The waiter snatched the dish of pasta from the counter and handed Rinaldi a piece of paper.

‘Nine orders for the large party. All to be ready together, so move it!’

35

It was a tribute to the vigorous if crude skills of Vincenzo Amadori’s hair stylist that when he entered La Carrozza, neither Bruno nor Rodolfo recognised him at first. Vincenzo had spent much of the afternoon at a hair salon in an unfashionable suburb having his rug cut, dyed pink and spiked in retro-punk mode. Spotting Rodolfo and his Ruritanian tart at their usual table, Vincenzo slouched over and plonked himself down.

‘Got the bag?’

Rodolfo jerked a thumb at the corner behind his chair.

‘Right then, I’ll be off,’ said Vincenzo, getting to his feet again.

‘Oh, calm down!’ Rodolfo replied. ‘And sit down. No one’s going to pick you up here looking like that. In either sense of the phrase. So stay and have a drink with us, at least. Flavia and I have something to celebrate.’

He signalled to the waiter to bring another glass. Vincenzo leered at the bottle.

‘Veuve Clicquot? Sort of pricey shit my parents and their set drink to impress each other. What the fuck’s this all about? You win the lottery or something?’

‘In a way,’ Rodolfo replied with a long look at Flavia. ‘We just got engaged.’

Vincenzo slewed his head like a startled horse. The extra glass arrived, and Rodolfo did the honours.

‘Here’s to all of us!’ he proposed gaily.

He and Flavia clinked glasses. Vincenzo downed his dose in one, scowled and lit a cigarette.

‘You don’t seem very happy for us,’ Flavia remarked.

Vincenzo shrugged.

‘For you, maybe. Not for me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Other people’s happiness brings me bad luck.’

A soggy silence followed.

‘So what exactly is all this about?’ asked Rodolfo, jerking a finger at Vincenzo’s hairdo and a thumb at the bag of clothing he had brought.

Vincenzo drew a small bottle of some clear spirit from his pocket and had a long slug.

‘I told you, fuckwit!’

‘You said that the private detective your parents hired to check up on you claims to have evidence that you committed a crime. What crime?’

Vincenzo squirmed uneasily in his chair.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Meaning you don’t trust us.’

‘It doesn’t matter, that’s all. Okay, it was the thing that happened today. That prof at the uni got plugged.’

‘You didn’t do that!’ Rodolfo exclaimed.

‘Of course I didn’t! Even if the cops find me, they’ll never be able to prove a thing. I just don’t need the hassle, that’s all. That’s why I’m going to lie low for a while.’’

‘Can’t you prove that you were somewhere else at the time?’

‘I was asleep.’

‘Alone?’

‘Listen, I didn’t fucking do it, okay? This time I’m completely and utterly innocent.’

Rodolfo nodded seriously.

‘I know you are,’ he said. ‘You see…’

‘This time?’ Flavia put in.

Vincenzo gave her a hard look, as though recognising her as an equal. He’s never looked at me like that, Rodolfo thought.

‘Well, I did Curti! I’ve been telling everyone that until I’m blue in the face, but of course the bastards don’t believe me when it’s the truth. Instead they try and nail me over this lie.’

‘So you killed Lorenzo Curti,’ Rodolfo remarked, just to remind them both that he was still there.

‘Sure. I’d been carrying that Parmesan cutter around for weeks. My first idea was to carve up the paintwork on his car when he was at one of the games down here and leave the knife at the scene to make a statement.’

He laughed raucously.

‘Get under his skin a bit, know what I mean? But I never had a chance. He always had one of his minders with him, or some business buddy.’

He jerked back another drink.

‘But that night in Ancona everything came together. After the game I hung around the VIP entrance to the stadium, and for once Curti came out alone. He knew my father and he’d seen me around the house back when I used to live there. So when I told him that I’d missed the fan bus and asked for a lift back to Bologna he waved me into his Audi. He came off the autostrada at San Lázzaro to let me out, and when he pulled over I let him have it. Then I stuck the cheese cutter in his chest and walked home. Nice touch, don’t you think? The Parmesan knife, I mean.’

‘What did you talk about on the drive back?’ Flavia enquired.

Vincenzo stared at her in utter bewilderment.

‘What the fuck’s that got to do with it?’

‘Where did you get the gun?’ Rodolfo demanded, in an intentionally ironic parody of the typical
commissario di polizia
, given to fixed ideas and the third degree. Vincenzo laughed uneasily and flashed one of his rare radiant smiles, switching effortlessly into his alternative persona as someone gifted with beauty to burn, who could not only get away with anything but make you long for him to try.

‘I came by it,’ he said, waving his hand as though to suggest that firearms regularly fell into it by some process that he did not understand but was powerless to prevent.

‘Oh come on!’

‘No, really. There was this old guy in the bar, right?’

‘Where?’

‘At Ancona, after the game. He was taking photographs of me and the boys with that camera I showed you and I sussed that he must be the snooper my parents had hired. They hadn’t told me, natch, but the housemaid gave me a heads-up. So when the guy goes to pee I go in after him and smash his head against the wall, then go through his pockets. And I find the camera, very nice job too, full of digital shots of us, and also a pistol.’

Vincenzo frowned.

‘And then someone took it! From our apartment. I’d hidden it behind the books in your bedroom.’

He shot Rodolfo a glance.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Then who?’

‘The private detective, of course,’ said Flavia. ‘He must have been keeping a watch on the house, because he followed me back to mine and then came round later and tried to pump me for information.’

‘You never told me that!’ Rodolfo protested.

‘I thought it might disturb you after your bad news at the university. Anyway, Dragos must have recognised your friend here when he attacked him, then raided the apartment when you were both out and taken his gun back.’

‘Who’s Dragos?’ both men asked in unison.

‘Oh, that’s just my name for him. I thought he was a secret policeman.’

Vincenzo drained the last drops from his bottle.

‘Anyway, the only thing for sure is that this Ugo business had nothing to do with me. I didn’t even know the old fart. Was he really famous?’

‘In some circles,’ Rodolfo replied airily.

He was tempted to end Vincenzo’s anxieties by confessing the truth, but that would start a crack in his relationship with Flavia that could never be made good. He decided to let Vincenzo sweat it out overnight and contact him in the morning. Besides, there was just the remotest possibility that he was telling the truth about the Curti killing. The pistol definitely existed, after all, and he had presumably concealed it in Rodolfo’s room to throw suspicion on him if it were discovered in the course of a police search. No, he didn’t owe Vincenzo any favours.

A gale of laughter swept over from the large table in the centre of the room.

‘Who are these wankers?’ yelled Vincenzo, whirling around. ‘More happy fucks! Jesus, my luck’s certainly run out tonight.’

‘It’s that young girl’s birthday,’ said Flavia. ‘They’re just having fun.’

‘Fun? Fun? You think that’s what life’s about, having fun?’

‘Then what?’

Vincenzo’s lips crinkled in a contemptuous sneer.

‘Stopping other people having fun,’ he said. ‘That’s what it’s all about, sweetheart.’

Flavia sniffed dismissively.

‘Well, you’re not going to stop us having fun. Is he, Rodolfo?

But Rodolfo did not seem inclined to answer. His eyes held Flavia’s, and his gaze was deeply disturbed.

36

‘…and add the garlic. Now the oil. No, not like that! In a slow drizzle, like the rain from heaven! Did your mother have to teach you to pee? How can anyone be so cack-handed? Listen to nature, only to nature! She always tells you what to do.’

Rather her than you, thought Rinaldi.

‘Now a fine grating of nutmeg, like the winter snow dusting down from the mountains…’

‘How much?’

Her lullaby-like reverie disturbed, the crone glared at him.

‘How much what?’

‘How much nutmeg!’ screamed the chef.

She stared at him in apparently genuine amazement.

‘Ma quello che basta, stupido!
’

Just enough. Thanks, grandma.

‘Enough, but not too much,’ Rinaldi’s mentor continued dreamily. ‘For us it’s traditional. How could a foreigner like you understand? Are you a Catholic or a Turk? Never mind, you’re a man, that’s the problem. Men should stay out of the kitchen. They don’t have a clue about cooking. How can they, when they’re not in tune with the rhythms of nature? We women have them in our bodies like the tides. Listen to nature, only to nature! Follow your innermost impulses and you can never go wrong!’

Romano Rinaldi just succeeded in resisting the temptation to follow this advice by swinging the frying pan round and beating the old bat to death with it, but it was touch and go. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. Somehow he finished the order and carried the dishes out to the serving counter two at a time. As he took the last one, the now familiar howl erupted from his tormentor. The waiter duly appeared and arranged four of the plates on each arm, but the ninth defeated him.

‘Bring that,’ he ordered Rinaldi.

Lo Cheffollowed him out into the dining area, where the birthday celebrations were now in full swing. The waiter curtly directed Rinaldi to present the dish he was carrying to a girl of about sixteen who was sitting at the head of the table, a string of pearls which might or might not have been genuine about her neck, and a glow that certainly was on her face. The padded case in which the necklace had been presented lay open on the table.

Romano Rinaldi laid her pasta down with a flourish.

‘It’s your birthday,
signorina
?’ he enquired.

The girl nodded. Rinaldi bowed deeply.

‘
Tanti auguri.
May I ask your name?’

She shrugged awkwardly and blushed.

‘Mi chiamano Mimì, ma il mio nome è Lucia.’

Romano Rinaldi touched her hand for the briefest of moments, then turned to the table in general and launched into the big tenor aria from the end of the first act of
La Bohème
, wittily changing Rodolfo’s description of himself to ‘Who am I? I’m a chef. What do I do? I cook.’ This provoked much laughter and applause, but the real pleasure for Rinaldi was the realisation that his voice was perfectly adapted to the intimate acoustics of this space, and absolutely on key. In the studio he had to be miked up and his vocal interventions electronically tweaked in post-production to raise flat notes, lower sharp ones, and generally boost the volume, but now he didn’t need any of those tricks. All that mattered here was pitch, range and style, and he had all three in spades.

As he forged forward, he realised with a certain pleased astonishment that he wasn’t just imagining this in his usual drunken or stoned stupor. It was real, and everyone else in the room felt it. The entire company fell silent, transfixed by the narrative thrust of Puccini’s melodic line and the naked glory of the human voice. Every eye was fixed on Rinaldi in respectful silence as he completed the entire aria with inexhaustible confidence, climaxing effortlessly on the difficult high
‘La speranza!’
which he held for fully ten seconds, bringing cries of
‘Bravo!’
, before lowering his voice to a tender
pianissimo
for the concluding bars.

The result was a spontaneous and prolonged ovation from everyone in the restaurant. Standing there in his sauce-spattered apron, Rinaldi acknowledged his audience with appreciative bows, then turned to the overwhelmed birthday girl, kissed her hand lightly, and floated back towards the kitchen. As he passed the pizza oven, Normo stared at him in stunned silence. Rinaldi smiled casually and rounded the corner into the corridor, where he promptly slammed into some punk dropout with pink hair on his way back from the lavatory.

The youth, who was evidently drunk, ended up on the floor. When Rinaldi offered him a hand he received a torrent of obscene abuse in return, but just ignored it and walked on down the passageway. In that moment of exaltation, nothing could touch him. This was even better than
la coca
! Not only was he the star of the evening, but he’d just had a fabulous insight that would save his career from the disgrace of that disastrous cookery contest and propel it to still greater heights of glory and riches.
Real Work
: a new concept, a new show, a new book, a new…

Something hot, wet and sticky exploded on the wall beside him. The street kid he’d accidentally knocked over grabbed another of the plates of pizza that Normo had set out on the counter and hurled it at Rinaldi.

‘Stronzo di merda, vaffanculo!’

‘You’re barred, you bastard!’ screamed Normo ritualistically, but he couldn’t take any action, shut away as he was behind the counter. As for the two waiters, they seemed disinclined to enter the fray. The aggressor reached for another pizza. Rinaldi stepped smartly into the kitchen and dug the replica pistol out of the pocket of his jacket. Waiting until the third pizza and its plate exploded against the door to the lavatory, he stepped back into the corridor.

‘Out,’ he said decisively, waving the barrel of the pistol at the intruder.

The youth stared at the weapon with fascination rather than fear.

‘Hey, that’s my gun!’

‘Out!’ Rinaldi repeated, whirling the troublemaker around by his left arm and marching him towards the door.