Authors: Michael Dibdin
Then, imperceptibly at first, things started to change. One of the first signs – and the most serious, from his point of view – was the barbed wire fence which Aldo Vincenzo had erected around his property. The local wines were beginning to acquire a reputation, and with it a price, exceeding anything previously heard of, and the grapes which produced them became correspondingly precious. There was even talk of Aldo Vincenzo emulating the example of some other local producers by sending his son, Manlio, to study something called ‘viticulture’, which struck most of the community as an absurdity akin to enrolling the boy at university to teach him the facts of life.
At about the same time as wines of the Langhe started acquiring their international reputation, coincidentally creating difficulties of access to his secret hoard of white truffles, the market for the latter took off in an even more dramatic and indeed literal sense. Since truffles lose their savour after a few days, most of the harvest had previously been consumed locally, with just a small quantity being exported by rail to hotels and restaurants in other regions of Italy, as well as a handful in Austria, France and Switzerland. Then came the era of air cargo. ‘White diamond!’ Angelin had said, but that proverbial metaphor was soon out of date. Ounce for ounce,
la trifola
made uncut diamond look cheap. International buyers vied with one another to obtain the precious tubers and ship them off to eager consumers in London, New York and Tokyo.
It was a world market, but the supply was strictly local. Some unexplored Russian hillside or Cambodian valley might perhaps hide similar riches, but white truffles could not be cultivated, and for now the only source of any importance was a small area of southern Piedmont centred on the town of Alba. Prices went through the roof, and the
trifolai
became even more reticent about the exact location of their favoured sites. Angelin’s discovery thus became of still greater value. No one ever suspected that this slice of forgotten copse at the margins of the Vincenzo territory might be a mine for the white diamonds so much in demand. Like the hillside which the Faigano brothers later leased to the media for a small fortune, it had fallen off the map.
But if anyone saw him digging there, or noticed that the barbed-wire fence designed to protect the vines had been cut, all this would rapidly change. That was why he had not come during the hours of darkness, the traditional season of the ‘phantoms of the night’, as truffle hunters were known. At night he would have had to bring a torch, which might easily have been seen. People around here were naturally curious. Everything happened according to a time-honoured order and sense. Any exception was a potentially interesting anomaly to be noted and passed on to others. Hence the indirect route which he had chosen to approach the spot, the care he took not to be seen, and above all his timing.
The evening before had seen the
Festa della Vendemmia
, celebrated annually at Palazzuole on the first Saturday in October. The date of the vintage itself varied from year to year and from vineyard to vineyard, depending on the weather and the degree of risk which any given grower was prepared to accept in return for the possibility of riper fruit. But the date of the village
festa
was invariable, as were the excesses and rituals associated with it. On the Saturday everyone ate and drank and danced and drank and flirted and drank and reminisced and drank, and then grew maudlin and nostalgic and lyrical. The entire community stayed up until well after midnight, slept in late the next morning and then reluctantly hauled themselves out of bed, clutching their hangovers like cerebral cysts, and staggered to church to attend the service invoking divine blessing on the event on which virtually all of their livelihoods depended in one way or another.
So as he picked his way up the muddy alley between the two rows of vines, he knew that the chances of anyone being up and about, never mind vigilant and suspicious, in the misty half-light before sunrise on that particular Sunday morning were as close to zero as made no difference. And while he had put in an appearance at the celebrations the day before – not to do so would inevitably attract comment – he had made a few glasses of wine go a lot further than it had appeared, and had woken fresh and alert at five o’clock that morning, ready for
his
annual, but very private, ceremony.
He thought of this as ‘laying flowers on Angelin’s tomb’, even though the supposed victim of a barbaric enemy was not, of course, buried at the spot where he had been killed. The flowers were real, though: a touchingly artless bouquet of white chrysanthemums he had bought the day before in full view of several witnesses. He had told them that the flowers were for his mother, but with an awkward shrug which both ended the conversation and would be remembered in the event of his being caught and asked the reason for his presence on the Vincenzo land that morning. ‘I just wanted to honour my fallen comrade,’ he would say, his voice breaking with long-denied emotion. ‘People called him simple, but to me he was a friend …’
No one would dare question him further after that, he reckoned. His evident sincerity would speak for itself, for the oddest thing of all was that by now he had come to believe this version of events himself. And so as he made his way up the vineyard that autumn morning, he was simultaneously two quite different people on two very different quests: a wary and unscrupulous truffle poacher, and an elderly veteran of the Resistance honouring a dead brother-in-arms.
It was then that he saw something moving among the vines up ahead, heavy with ripe clusters of the fat blood-red grapes which would produce the Barbaresco wine for which the region was famous. All might have been well, even then. He had always been good at moving silently and at speed, and could easily have slipped through the rows of vines to his left and then worked back the way he had come. But Anna had scented the extraneous presence. Restrained by the leash, she couldn’t bound forward and investigate and so, as dogs will, she began to bark. The figure concealed in amongst the vines straightened up and turned towards him.
‘What the hell are
you
doing here?’
There was no reply.
‘Didn’t you see the signs on the fence? “No trespassing,” it says. Do you know what that means, or are you illiterate on top of everything else?’
The dog stood between them, looking from one to the other as though uncertain which side to take, which one to defend and which to attack. Then the man who had brought her took the initiative, walking forward at a slow, confident lope, his right hand gripping his
sapet
, the adze-shaped mattock used to unearth truffles.
That was how it began.
‘Barolo, Barbaresco, Brunello. I am a purist, Dottor Zen. I also happen to be able to afford that classical austerity which is the ultimate luxury of those who can have anything they want. In wine, as in music, the three Bs suffice me.’
‘I see,’ said Aurelio Zen, who didn’t see anything except the bins of bottles stretching away into the gloomy reaches of the vast, cold, damp cellar, its vaulted roof encrusted with a white mesh of saltpetre.
‘Barolo is the Bach of wine,’ his host continued. ‘Strong, supremely structured, a little forbidding, but absolutely fundamental. Barbaresco is the Beethoven, taking those qualities and lifting them to heights of subjective passion and pain that have never been surpassed. And Brunello is its Brahms, the softer, fuller, romantic afterglow of so much strenuous excess.’
Aurelio Zen was spared the necessity of answering by an attack of coughing which rendered him speechless for almost a minute.
‘How long have you had that cough?’ the other man asked with a solicitude which was all too evidently feigned. ‘Come, let us go back upstairs.’
‘No, no. It’s only a touch of chestiness. A cough won’t kill me.’
Zen’s host looked at him sharply. To someone who did not instantly recognize him – no such person was known to exist – he might have appeared an unremarkable figure: trim and fit for his sixty-odd years, but distinguished mostly by the layers of expensive tailoring which clad him like a second skin, and by a face whose wrinkles and folds seemed an expression not of calendar age but of inheritance, as though it had been worn by countless other eminent and powerful members of the family before being bequeathed to the present owner.
‘Kill you?’ he exclaimed. ‘Of course not!’
With an abrupt laugh, he led the way further into the labyrinth of subterranean caverns. The only light was provided by the small torch he carried, which swung from right to left, picking out stacks of dark brown bottles covered in mildew and dust.
‘I am also a purist in my selection,’ he announced in the same didactic tone. ‘Conterno and Giacosa for Barolo, Gaja and Vincenzo for Barbaresco. And, until the recent unfortunate events, Biondi Santi for Brunello.
Poco ma buono
has always been my motto. I possess an excellent stock of every vintage worth having since 1961, probably the best collection in the country of the legendary ’58 and ’71, to say nothing of a few flights of fancy such as a Brunello from the year of my birth. Under these exceptional circumstances, vertical tastings acquire a classical rigour and significance.’
He turned and shone his torch into Zen’s face.
‘You are Venetian. You drink fruity, fresh
vino sfuso
from the Friuli intended to be consumed within the year. You think I am crazy.’
Another prolonged outburst of coughing was the only reply, ending in a loud sneeze. The other man took Zen by the arm.
‘Come, you’re unwell! We’ll go back.’
‘No, no, it’s nothing.’
Aurelio Zen made a visible effort to get a grip on himself.
‘You were saying that I don’t understand wine. That’s true, of course. But what I really don’t understand is the reason why I have been summoned here in the first place.’
His host smiled and raised one eyebrow.
‘But the two are the same!’
He turned and strode off down the paved alley between the bins. The darkness closing in about him, Zen had no choice but to follow.
The instruction to attend this meeting at the Rome residence of the world-famous film and opera director, whose artistic eminence was equalled only by the notoriety of the rumours surrounding his private life, had come in the form of an internal memorandum which appeared on his desk at the Ministry of the Interior a few days earlier. ‘With respect to a potential parallel enquiry which the Minister is considering regarding the Vincenzo case (see attached file), you are requested to present yourself at 10.30 hrs on Friday next at Palazzo Torrozzo, Via del Corso, for an informal background briefing by …’
The name which followed was of such resonance that Giorgio De Angelis, the one friend Zen still had in the Criminalpol department, whistled loudly, having read it over Zen’s shoulder.
‘Mamma mia!
Can I come too? Do we get autographs? I could dine out on this for a year!’
‘Yes, but who’ll pay the bill?’ Zen had murmured, as though to himself.
And that was the question which posed itself now, but with renewed force. The celebrity in question clearly hadn’t invited Zen to his
palazzo
, scene of so many widely reported parties ‘demonstrating that the ancient tradition of the orgy is still not dead’, merely to show off his wine collection. There was a bottom line, and the chances were that behind it there would be a threat.
‘I can appreciate your point of view,’ his host’s voice boomed from the darkness ahead. ‘I myself grew up in the estuary of the Po, and we drank the local rotgut – heavily watered to make it palatable – as a sort of medicine to aid digestion and kill off undesirable germs. But perhaps there is some other way I can make you understand. Surely you must at some time have collected something. Postage stamps, butterflies, first editions, firearms, badges, matchboxes …’
‘What’s that got to do with wine?’
The famous director, known to his equally famous friends as Giulio, stopped and turned, admitting Zen back into the feeble nimbus of light.
‘The object of the collection is as unimportant as the quantities inserted in an algebraic formula. To the collector, all that matters is selection and completeness. It is an almost exclusively male obsession, an expression of our need to control the world. Women rarely collect anything except shoes and jewellery. And lovers, of course.’
Zen did not reply. His host pointed the torch up at the curved ceiling of stone slabs.
‘The nitre! It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are now below Via del Corso. Young men, my sons perhaps included, are racing up and down in their cars as they once did on their horses, yet not a murmur of that senseless frenzy reaches us here. The wine sleeps like the dead.’
‘I used to have a collection of railway tickets,’ Zen remarked.
Giulio flashed a smile.
‘I knew it!’
A dry rustling amongst the bottles to his left made Zen start.
‘Rats,’ said the famous director. ‘You were saying?’
‘My father …’
Zen hesitated, as though at a loss, then started again.
‘He worked for the railways, and he used to bring them back for me, little cardboard tickets with the name of the destination printed on them, the class and the fare paid. By the end I had one to all the stations as far as Verona, Rovigo, Udine and Trieste …’
He paused again, then clicked his fingers.
‘All except Bassano del Grappa! I remember someone making a joke about having to wait until I was older before trying grappa. I didn’t understand at the time. I was just annoyed at having that gap in my collection. It ached like a pulled tooth.’
‘Excellent! Perfect! Then no doubt you will understand how I felt when I heard about this dreadful business involving Aldo Vincenzo.’
Zen frowned, returning reluctantly to the present.
‘Vincenzo?’ he echoed.
The famous director shone his torch around the neighbouring bins, lifted a bottle and held it out to Zen. The faded label read: BARBARESCO 1964. VINIFICATO ED IMBOTTIGLIATO DAL PRODUTTORE A. VINCENZO.