Poisonville Read online

  The noise of a car startled him. He grabbed his duffel bag and hurried into hiding in the portico. The vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee, began driving in circles around the piazza. From the lowered windows issued excited youthful shouts. Then, with a revving roar and a screech of rubber, the car accelerated away into the fog. He emerged from his hiding place and went in search of a phone booth. He found one next to the old newsstand. It was pitch dark; some little kid must have spent a half-hour amusing himself by shattering the fluorescent tubes. He pulled a lighter and a scrap of paper out of his pocket and, by the light of the little flame, read a phone number. The impersonal voice of an answering machine responded. The subscriber was not at home.

  “Where the hell have you gone?” he shouted.

  Only the fear of discovery obliged him to regain a measure of calm and caution. He slithered away under the porticoes like a sly old rat with a well-honed instinct for survival.

  * * *

  I’d been lying awake for a while, but I felt too queasy to try to get out of bed. I’d had too much to drink the night before. Gin-and-tonics and champagne. I could still smell the hostess’s spicy perfume on my neck and chin. It wasn’t going to be an easy morning. Luckily, I didn’t have any court appearances scheduled; just a couple of office appointments. I looked over at the digital alarm clock for the tenth or eleventh time. I still had a few minutes left to try to get the alcohol out of my system. Then I’d bolt down an espresso, run a scalding hot shower, and be ready for another day on the job as a young lawyer. My friends had decided to throw me a stray party in the town’s one and only nightclub. Giovanna would ask me how it had gone. In reality, she wanted to know whether I’d wound up in bed with one of the young women at the Club Diana. No, I hadn’t. The party had been a flop. At least for me. Davide and the others had probably enjoyed themselves enormously. They were all pretty euphoric. They kept ducking in and out of the utility closet where one of the Romanians who worked at the club had lines of coke constantly at the ready. They had made perfect asses of themselves with the hostesses. The prettiest hostess, a Latin-American girl who—I think—was named Alicia, had been shoved into my arms, bedecked with ribbons and bows as though she’d been giftwrapped.

  “She’s not as pretty as Giovanna,” Davide had told me. “But apparently she fucks divinely.”

  She’d done her best, but I was careful to keep things within limits. I’m a Visentin after all, and as my father had once reminded me, there are certain things we don’t do.

  “Not here in town, anyway,” he’d added with a smile.

  Moreover, there were a number of people I recognized, most of them small-time industrialists, their pockets stuffed with money. Some of them were clients of my father. Constantin Deaconescu, the owner of the club, a Romanian with a criminal air, had come over to give his best wishes for my wedding.

  So all eyes were on me. I felt ill at ease, I didn’t like the club one bit. It was as vulgar and pretentious as the brand of champagne that the waiters kept serving, in a sort of bucket brigade. When Alicia let her hands wander a little too far below the belt for my social position, whispering that she was entirely at my service—all night long—I looked at her carefully. She was beautiful and seductive, but at that moment I wished I were with Giovanna instead. I made an excuse, said that I must have had a little too much to drink, and stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Behind me I heard a chorus of catcalls from my friends. It must have been two in the morning, and the icy chill in the air made me gasp. And there, stepping out of a sports car, was the last person on earth I wanted to see: Filippo Calchi Renier.

  “What do you want?”

  He pointed to the BMW. “Let’s take a drive. I have to talk to you.”

  “Do you need a lawyer?”

  He shook his head in annoyance. The scar on his cheek was bluish from the cold. “We need to talk about Giovanna.”

  “Of course,” I muttered, as I turned and walked toward the sports car.

  Filippo and Giovanna had been a couple a few years back. Then she left him when she and I started dating. She broke the news to him one summer evening, at the festival in honor of the town’s patron saint. He got in his car and drove off; a couple of hours later he plowed straight into an old oak tree that stood by the highway. He’d been driving at a recklessly high speed; he had a blowout and lost control of the vehicle. Or at least that was his version, but everyone in town speculated that he might have been trying to kill himself. He was never the same after that, physically or mentally. I just felt sorry for him. But for Giovanna, there was a sense of guilt that she just couldn’t shake. She and I couldn’t talk about him without starting a furious argument. Filippo was the only child of the Contessa Selvaggia Calchi Renier. His was the most prominent family in town; mine was the second-most prominent. I, too, was an only child. My mother had died about fifteen years ago. A tumor killed her. She died in a private clinic in California. All my father’s money couldn’t save her.

  Filippo started the motor.

  “We don’t have to go anywhere,” I said. “We can talk right here.”

  Filippo ignored me and put the car in gear.

  “You can’t marry her.”

  “The wedding’s in nine days. You’d better get used to it.”

  “She doesn’t love you.”

  “Let me guess: she loves you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you going to drive me all around town just so you can spout this nonsense?”

  Filippo pressed down hard on the accelerator.

  “Slow down,” I yelled in fright. “Slow down, you idiot.”

  He had switched on his brights and was barreling at top speed toward a brick wall surrounding the park named for his father.

  “You’ll never marry her. Giovanna belongs to me.”

  I was terrified. I threw my arms up to protect my face, expecting the sound of the crash. Filippo slammed on the brakes at the very last instant, and the sports car screeched to a halt just inches short of the wall.

  I staggered out of the car and then grabbed Filippo with fury. I dragged him out of the car, punched him hard, and threw him down onto the asphalt. He didn’t even try to defend himself. The harsh yellow light of the streetlamps illuminated his idiotic simpering smile and the blood running out of his nose.

  “You’re crazy, you need professional help.”

  “I always take my pills; I’m a good patient.”

  I was about to haul back and punch him again, but something in his eyes stopped me.

  “She’ll betray you, just like she did me,” he said, wiping the blood off his nose.

  He was just a pathetic nut. I told him to go to hell and I started walking back home. When I got there I threw back a couple of really strong gin-and-tonics to quench my fury, and I climbed under the covers, alone, determined to say nothing to Giovanna. Filippo was hoping I would tell her what had happened, so that she’d rush to his side to comfort him. What I thought as I dropped off into slumber was that I should talk to my father about it. That knucklehead, Filippo, might very well cause a scene at the wedding. He was invited, of course. He and his mother would both be given a place of honor at my father’s table, along with Prunella, Giovanna’s mother. We should alert the Contessa: she would never allow her son to cause an unseemly row; if necessary, she’d make sure he was stuffed with sedatives. Selvaggia loathed Giovanna. She had always cast a jaundiced eye on Filippo’s relationship with a Barovier, a young woman branded by her father’s disgrace; she also blamed Giovanna for her son’s car crash. Of course, she had never said any of this explicitly; that would have been far too vulgar. She hadn’t needed to: a couple of venomous remarks had been quite sufficient, casual poisonous darts that Giovanna and her mother had been obliged to receive with smiles on their faces. And on the day of the wedding, they would all feign delight, exchange false hugs, and plant peck
s on one another’s cheeks. False and hypocritical best-wishes and sincere thank-yous. But that was life in our town. The leading families never caused scenes in public. And that went for Filippo as well.

  I summoned the strength to sit up in bed. My head was spinning, but not too badly. I gave up on the idea of an espresso; a cup of hot chamomile tea would do me more good. I dragged myself as far as the kitchen, and that’s when the phone rang.

  “What are you doing still at home?” my father’s voice rapped out over the phone, without so much as a hello.

  “I only have a couple of appointments later on this morning.”

  “You need to make sure the office is up and running anyway. A self-respecting professional—”

  “Papa!” I broke in with annoyance. “Last night was my bachelor party, and as if that’s not enough, I had an unpleasant run-in with Filippo.”

  Silence. “I see,” he said after a while. “Is Giovanna with you?”

  “No.”

  “Her colleagues from the law office and the secretaries organized a surprise party for her, before the wedding. You know, the sort of thing they do in law firms in Milan. But she didn’t show up, and no one knows where she is. They were upset, they wanted to give her presents.”

  That was typical of Giovanna. She’d vanish from time to time, forgetting to tell other people about it, and with just a few days to go before the wedding, she must be busy taking care of the last few details. She was a real perfectionist, born under Virgo, as she liked to point out.

  I walked over to my law office, from my apartment in the center of town. As always, I stopped for a moment in front of my father’s law office, and studied the gleaming bronze plaque. Beneath his name—Avvocato Antonio Visentin—stretched the imposing list of his underlings. The fourth name was hers: Giovanna Barovier. Papa had taken her on as an intern, as a favor to me. Like Selvaggia, at first he was opposed to our relationship, but then he had understood that I was in love with her, and that Giovanna was better than her father’s soiled reputation. Once we were married, I’d join his law firm too, and there would be a new brass plate on the firm’s front door, with my name underneath my father’s. Until that day, he wanted me to run my own practice, he wanted me to make ends meet with no help from him. He didn’t want anyone to think that he’d made me a partner just because I was his son. It didn’t matter that that’s exactly what all the other lawyers in the area had done for their sons, without a second thought. Not him. He was the finest, the best-known, the most respected lawyer in town. He often said that the children of the leading families were softies, incapable of running the companies their parents had struggled to build. Even if he had never uttered his name, I knew that he was thinking of Filippo in particular. My father had put me through a tough and demanding apprenticeship. I took my degree in law at the University of Padua, and then I moved to Milan to work as an intern. After that, I opened a law office of my own in town. I struggled to build up my own list of clients, though hardly an impressive one. The most desirable clients, the ones with money, were all his. More than once, I had found myself battling his paralegals and junior lawyers, and Papa was always there, sitting in the audience, to see how I did. I would turn my back to him, but I knew he was there; I could feel his eyes on me. And I always attended his hearings. Papa really was the best. He almost never raised his voice, the way most of the old windbags did who practiced law in our town, but when he stood up and adjusted his lawyer’s robes before beginning his summation, a respectful silence would fall over the courtroom; he’d draw that silence out as long as possible, and then he’d break into it with his actorly voice, a voice that all his colleagues envied. My mother used to say that he looked like Jimmy Stewart. Not only physically, and in his gentle and slightly melancholy gaze, but also in his confident, unflappable movements.

  Just a week earlier, Papa had made the announcement: I was ready for the big time. At last, he would take me in as a partner. I was deeply moved.

  He wrapped his arms around me. “You’ve done good work, Francesco. You’ve earned this.”

  I certainly had earned it. From the day I took my law degree, I’d worked hard to get my name on that plaque; I had specialized in corporate law so that I could become legal counsel to my father’s most important client, the Torrefranchi Foundation. The foundation had been created as a cultural entity, but once the Northeast had become the locomotive of the Italian economy, it had been transformed into a formidable consortium of corporations, capable of undertaking ventures in every field of business, and doing deals with anyone. Its unquestioned chief executive was Selvaggia, the Contessa.

  Selvaggia had been born into a family of farmers, but she had succeeded in marrying the only aristocrat in the district: the Conte Giannino, who was a couple of decades older than her. Before she was married, her first name was Fausta—her maiden surname was Tonon—but she had promptly changed Fausta to the much more chic name of Selvaggia when the count asked her to marry him. She was canny, and she had a sharp business sense. After her husband died, she invested the money he had left her in successful business operations, bringing most of the area’s manufacturers into various partnerships with her. And the legal brains behind it all had always been Papa. He had made the Contessa’s dreams possible, and he had reached out to all those people who could help to shore up the Foundation’s image and power at a local level: politicians, artists, intellectuals, judges, and even a few high-ranking men of the cloth.

  And that was where I would practice law. After years of hard work, I could finally savor the fruits of success. I’d become a respected lawyer, a powerful man, in town and throughout the region. Just like my father. My life was already planned out, engraved in golden letters. I was a Visentin. And I was about to marry the most beautiful girl in town.

  Standing outside the door of my law office was my first client of the day. I had no secretary, so he had waited for me in the street. He was a turkey farmer, heavyset, about sixty years old. He spoke only in dialect. As I was showing him into the office, he explained that near his farm some young people had held a “rave”—he read the word haltingly from a note that his grandson had written out for him—and his turkeys, terrified by the pounding music, had stampeded against their pen, crushing one another in panic. Nearly all the turkeys had been killed. He wanted thirty thousand euros in damages. It was a relatively minor case, and one I was by no means likely to win. Still, you never refuse a paying client without a good reason. After talking it over, we shook hands and the turkey farmer, clearly satisfied, left the office. On his way out, he confided that he had heard good things about me at the tavern.

  My second client that morning was a woman I knew from high school. She wanted me to represent her in a divorce case. I knew her husband, too. When we were in boarding school, we had played on the same volleyball team for a few seasons.

  “Why don’t you ask Giovanna to take your case?” I asked her. “She has more experience in this area.”

  “My husband has already hired a lawyer from your father’s law office.”

  “Then I’m sorry, I can’t help you. When I get back from my honeymoon I’m going to start working there, too.”

  I recommended that she go to another lawyer, and she congratulated me on my upcoming wedding, unable to conceal a hint of envy.

  A short while later, I received a phone call from Carla, Giovanna’s best friend and her maid of honor at our wedding.

  “I can’t find her anywhere,” she told me.

  “She hasn’t even gone into the law office. She must be busy driving the seamstress crazy, or maybe the florist. You know how Giovanna can be.”

  “We were at the seamstress’s shop yesterday,” she told me. Then she fell silent for a few moments. Finally, embarrassed and hesitant, she asked if Giovanna had spoken to me.

  “About what?”

  “I’m not really sure. I only know that it was impor
tant. Very important.”

  “Important how? I don’t follow you.”

  Carla wouldn’t say anything more; she hung up with a muttered goodbye. She had recently moved back to town after a long period living and working in southern Italy, in Campania. She had taken her college degree in biology, and had moved to Caserta with a classmate from the university. Then he broke up with her, and Giovanna had helped Carla find a job back in town, at the local health board. At least, that’s what my fiancée had told me. I didn’t know Carla very well. I knew that Giovanna and Carla had been close friends since they were little girls, and had stayed in touch ever since. I had never had such a close friend. I knew everyone in town, I spent lots of time at the country club and the café in the town piazza when it was time for aperitifs. I chatted about this and that with lots of different people, I went to parties, but I was a Visentin, in some sense on a higher, unattainable plane from ordinary people. Even as a child, I had lived with a sense of privilege, which had always obliged other people—young and old—to think of me as different from them. Back then, there was none of the widespread prosperity of the present day; social distinctions were more sharply drawn. Still, though, even now that lots of people own villas with extensive grounds and beautiful swimming pools and drive Mercedes, BMWs, and Ferraris, I continue to sense that time-honored respect for my family. My mother had done her best to persuade me to become best friends with Filippo, but we’d never liked each other much, even when we were still in short pants. I’d met lots and lots of other boys like him at the boarding school where I lived for the five years of high school. I’d had a good time, but I’d never really established any solid friendships. Things were different at university, but by then it was too late. I realized that I was no longer open to or interested in anything deeper than a passing acquaintance. I divided the world into the likable and the obnoxious. It was the same with girls. I had had plenty of girls, and I had no special memories of my time with them. Sex, affection, a certain period of fun and enjoyment, and then a tactful conclusion, no hard feelings, as my social position required. Then I met Giovanna and everything changed. With her I had plunged into an ocean of feelings and sensations that I was unable to understand in rational terms. Giovanna was my woman, my lover, and my best friend. She was my whole life. And I was happy in a way that I had not experienced since my mother died. Everything seemed perfect. My world, my future.