Big Italy Read Free Page B

reason I’m happy every morning as I prepare my coffee.”
    “Happy?” Magagna shook his head doubtfully. “Wait another ten months.”
    Trotti raised his hand and stroked the photograph with the tips of his fingers. Then he set it back on top of the refrigerator.
    “Still see your wife?” Magagna asked.
    “Sandro says he’ll stay on in the clinic in Brescia for two more years. Then he’ll come to Santa Maria.”
    “With his family?”
    “Sandro never married.”
    “Why not?”
    Trotti shook his head. “We were like brothers, Sandro and I. Slept in the same bed. He always accused me of farting but he never stopped. With the diet of those war years, it’s no real wonder.”
    “I can see why he never married.”
    “Sandro’s a couple of years older than me. In 1944 he went off to fight with the partisans. Nearly got hanged by the Fascists.”
    “Didn’t you once tell me Sandro gave you his bicycle?”
    Trotti dipped his head in admiration. “You’ve got a good memory, Magagna.”
    “Or perhaps you like to repeat the same things over and again.” Magagna added, “And your cousin Anna Maria went and married a Dutchman, just to get away from pedaling in the hills.”
    “When on earth did I tell you that?”
    “Many, many years ago.” Magagna sighed.
    “Sandro’s done well for himself. Went back to study after the war and got his high school diploma. Goodness knows where he got the money from, but he went on to study medicine. Probably from Piet, the Dutch brother-in-law.” He added, “Must be fifteen years since I last saw Piet.”
    “You could always go to Holland when you retire.”
    “In ’56, my cousin Sandro set up his little clinic in Brescia.”
    “But he never got married?”
    “Have some more wine, Magagna.”
    “I’m driving home in this fog.”
    “Some grappa, then?”
    “Why did your cousin never marry, commissario?”
    “Who knows?” Trotti sipped some more wine, running his tongue along his teeth. “It was Sandro who told me my brother Italo had been killed.”
    Magagna looked at his hands in silence. It was warm in the kitchen in via Milano and Magagna had undone his collar and tie. He lolled back on the upright chair, an arm looped over the back rest.
    The television droned on, ignored.
    “It’s all so long ago.”
    “Sangue di Giuda makes you maudlin, commissario.”
    Trotti clicked his tongue in irritation. “Sandro’s always had money. A nice car and a villa near Rimini. There was a time, twenty—twenty-five years ago, when he would take a different girlfriend there every week. He had a red Alfa-Romeo Spider coupé and for some reason, he was always with a blonde. He liked the Nordic type.” Trotti made a gesture of impatience. “Sandro’s so stubborn.”
    “At least you’ll have someone to quarrel with in the hills.”
    “If you think I’m irascible, you haven’t met Sandro. Stubborn—we’re all stubborn in the hills. It was a hard life and without that stubbornness we’d never have survived. Sandro was always a lot more ambitious than me. I sometimes wonder if it’s because of his pride he never found the right girl. Was looking for perfection—but I suppose it’s not too late.”
    “They say if a man’s not married by the time he’s forty he’s not going to marry at all.”
    “Sandro has a lot of qualities—qualities that are common to us mountain folk.” Trotti glanced at the television. “He’d have made a good father.”
    After a short silence, Magagna asked, “You really think you can leave this city?”
    “Why not?”
    “You only pretend to dislike people.”
    “I dislike people?”
    Magagna coughed politely.
    The kitchen windows were misted. Occasionally there was the distant rumble of a bus along via Milano. The clock on therefrigerator ticked noisily. The parish news sheet had been tucked behind the alarm clock, forgotten there since Pioppi had visited her father in August and had persuaded him to take her to church.
    “You