Traitors to All Read Free Page B

finally taken the nameplate saying
Dr Duca Lamberti
off the door, all that was left was the two little holes where the screws had been, but it had been no use. And after the pregnant girls, there were the drug addicts, they’d also offered him a lot of work: as far as the addicts were concerned a doctor struck off the register would be more willing to issue the right prescriptions, he still had the prescription books, and as his career was in ruins they could do business together, without any risk, said the drug addicts with their pale nails, the backs of their hands mottled with what looked like pink bruises, making him truly sick of life. And after the drug addicts came the prostitutes who’d got diseases, ‘I daren’t go to my usual doctor, he’d only inform on me to the police, and they’d just lock me up,’ because of course he wasn’t the usual doctor, he was an exceptional doctor, a doctor who had done three years in prison for euthanasia, so obviously he knew how to cure syphilis, he must have been a specialist in that when he was in San Vittore, musn’t he?
    At last the visitor took out his bottle and uncorked it. ‘It’s a rather delicate favour, doctor. Attorney Sompani told me you’re very strict and will probably say no, but it’s a special case, a very human case, a girl who is supposed to be getting married and …’ – and at last the revolting filth cameout, flowing from the bottle, in the perfect voice of this perfect bearer of filth. What it amounted to was a hymenoplasty: the special case, the very human case, was a girl who was supposed to be getting married, and her bridegroom wanted her to be a virgin, and in fact was convinced that she was. In reality the girl, and this was very human, had not had the courage to confess to her fiancé that she had lost her virginity in a blind fit of passion, long past, because she knew that if he discovered the truth he might even be capable of killing her. A hymenoplasty would resolve the matter in an elegant, undramatic fashion, the fiancé would be happy that his bride was a virgin, the bride would be happy that she had married well, while he, the doctor, Duca Lamberti, would get, for performing the hymenoplasty, one million three hundred thousand lire now and seven hundred thousand once the operation had been performed. In cash, of course.
    ‘I’m giving you ten seconds to get out of here before I smash your head in,’ Duca said, getting lazily but resolutely to his feet and theatrically picking up the stool on which he had been sitting: he had learned to act, too, and had no intention of forgetting it.
    ‘Let me say one more thing,’ the other man went on, unfazed, because the more cunning they are, the more obtuse. ‘You might like to get back on the register, I have a contact who …’

3
    He walked from his apartment to Police Headquarters. Superintendent Carrua was eating, on the desk there was a plate with a roll, just a roll with nothing in it, plus a few black olives and a glass of white wine. Duca talked to him as he was eating the olives, peeling them carefully with his teeth, then put down on the desk the thirty ten-thousand-lire notes that had been given him by the merchant of filth, and in the darkest corner of the office – because here in Headquarters, as his father had once explained, the sunnier it is outside, the darker inside – in that dark corner sat Mascaranti, who had written everything down: he couldn’t help himself.
    ‘He told you he could get you put back on the register?’ Carrua said, working conscientiously on an olive.
    ‘Yes, he even told me how he’d go about it, it was obvious he’s familiar with that world.’
    ‘Do you think he could do it?’
    ‘I think he could, if he wanted. He even knows an influential politician, someone we both know well, who could be of great help.’ He told him the name.
    ‘And do you think he really wants to get you back on the register?’
    ‘I don’t think so at