A Quiet Provincial Town

VERONICA…

VERONICA…

It is well into autumn, even if the temperature is still pleasant. The days have become shorter and at 20.30 it is already night. The girl, slight although rather tall with short blond hair cut in a boyish style advances slowly, limping, helping herself with a crutch. In her free hand is a paper bag containing her frugal dinner. She reaches the canopy of the bus stop at the beginning of Viale Trieste and sits down on the bench with difficulty. She looks around to make sure there is no mugger around. The only passer-by is the veterinarian who still lives in that neighborhood, perhaps because he has a house and office there and, unlike most Italian families, has not succumbed to the temptation to move to the other side of the city. Fortunately a reassuring presence who takes his cute white dog for an evening walk at that hour. The girl eats her sandwich in a few bites, then looks for the pack of cigarettes, but realizes that the one she has in her pocket is now empty. Leonardo Albini materializes from the darkness as only he can do, as if he suddenly came out from a cloak of invisibility. His movements don’t escape another person, Dr. Zanardi, the Commissioner of the Police Precinct, who is invariably on the sidewalk on the other side of the road, leaning with her back to the wall as she pretends to fiddle with the keys of her car. Leonardo sits on the bench next to the girl and places papers and tobacco on her lap. She makes her own cigarette and lights it.

"Are you sure you want to know? Believe me, revenge doesn’t pay."

"But it leaves a good taste in your mouth, like this tobacco."

Leonardo writes a name and an address on a cigarette paper and leaves it in the girl’s hands.

"He’s a well-known person. Are you sure that was the licence plate?"

"I have it printed in my mind. He ran over me there, on that crosswalk, and took off. But before he disappeared into the dark, I read that plate well."

"And why didn't you report it to the police?"

"I did, of course, after I woke up from the coma. They checked and told me that maybe I had seen or remembered incorrectly, there was no sign related to the accident on the bodywork. And of course, in the meantime the guy would have had plenty of time to get the car cleaned up! And anyway I haven't trusted the police for a long time."

Only a slight accent betrays the Slavic origin of the girl, named Anna. She came from Serbia with her parents over sixteen years ago, when she was a little girl of just over four years old. To make ends meet, her father had immediately induced his wife into p**********n. The woman was young and attractive and the neighborhood lent itself well to that kind of "business". But one evening Anna's father, dead drunk, started accusing his wife of not putting down all her earnings for the family but was keeping something for her vanities, for clothes, shoes, for stockings. The quarrel ended with a knife wound. Anna saw her father run away, never to return, while her mother lay on the floor bleeding abundantly. The little girl knew how to type emergency numbers on the cell phone. She managed to compose 118 and get help in time. But the police never tracked down her father, who had probably returned to his home country somehow. Her mom did her best with makeshift jobs as a cleaning lady or caregiver for the elderly, no longer selling her body, but earning much less. Anna was 14 years old when her mother, tired of life, made the insane gesture. She went down into the street in front of the house, poured gasoline on herself and set herself on fire. A horrible end, of which fortunately Anna was not a direct witness. Returning from school, she saw a kind of blackened puppet on the sidewalk, as if someone had burned a large doll, and she struggled to understand that this was the body of her poor mother. There was a crowd of curious people around that still smoking ember, but no one who had found the courage to try to help her. And the whole thing had happened in broad daylight.

Anna was entrusted to a family home, but she ran away immediately, went to live on the street and starting doing the same job that as a child she had seen her mother do, with the result of earning enough to be able to eat. Often, when her "customers" saw that she was little more than a child, or they ran off for fear of being accused of p********a, or rewarded her with a maximum of 20 Euros, after all she was a little girl, she needed little to live on, just enough to buy food.

"Go to a lawyer, take him that name and he will see that you receive compensation," Leonardo advises her.

The girl shakes her head.

"I don’t have any money to give to a lawyer. That bastard has to pay and I'll do everything myself, you can be certain. This leg will never be like it was before. The femur was crushed under the wheels of that huge SUV. Even though the doctors did their best, the leg is a few centimeters shorter than the other, and what’s more it continues to hurt me really a lot. Right at the moment when I had been able to make a change in my life. I had got through the selections and was going to be taken on as a model. I had a job and a career ahead of me, and now no one will call me for a fashion show or a commercial, I will have to go back to walking the street to survive."

Without rebutting further, Leonardo leaves the girl another paper and a little tobacco enough to make another cigarette and goes away. He crosses the street and walks past Veronica, the policewoman who is keeping an eye on him.

"It's not that it’s not obvious that you’re stalking me. When are you going to understand that I’m a good-living guy? I need to take you to bed to make you understand. You’d enjoy being with me and you’d look for me for other reasons."

"Quit this messing around. Rather, I clearly saw you pass the "dose" to that girl. Are you dealing now?"

"I told you, I'm clean," Leonardo replies, raising his arms. "You can search me if you want, if I were a d**g dealer I’d have other doses on me, isn’t that right, Commissioner?"

Veronica pats him down and, apart from his wallet, pulls tobacco, papers, lighter and a package of Marlboro out of his pockets.

"How the hell can you make cigarettes with this junk? I don’t know!" The woman pulls a Marlboro out of the pack and lights it, then returns everything to the man. “Sooner or later I’ll catch you red-handed, and I’ll make you take a nice holiday in a pleasant hamlet of Ancona called Montacuto. In the cooler, in a residence with bars on the windows and surrounded by a very high fence."

"I think I'll get you to a bedroom first and make love to you. You're ripe for it," Leonardo replies, skillfully making a cigarette with the tobacco and lighting it as Veronica looked at him terrified. They each go their own way, while Anna remains sitting under the canopy of the bus stop for a long time. At a certain point she gets up and, one step at a time, with the calm required by her uncertain gait, she arrives at the address Leonardo gave her. She studies the house, studies its occupants and the actions and times of her revenge are already outlined in her mind.

The next day, Anna is already ready for action. She had made the Molotov cocktail following the instructions to the letter: it will work. The adrenaline circulating in her blood is at such high levels that she forgets any pain. It's three o'clock in the morning and there is not a living soul around. She leaves the crutch near the fence of the house, and very laboriously climbs over it. The ladder she had spotted in the garden must have been used to prune the trees, but what matters is that it has the right height to get to the windows of the first floor. Anna leans it under what she has understood to be the bedroom window. The guy sleeps with his wife and they have a baby of a few months who is sleeping in the adjoining room. The night before, at exactly a quarter past three, the bedside light had come on and the woman had gone to the child’s room after he had woken up and wanted the bottle. Anna calculated that the same thing could be repeated every night at about the same time. She climbs the rungs of the ladder, one by one, with a little effort, but not too much. The roller shutter is lowered only halfway. At the right moment, a jab with an elbow to break the glass and launch of the Molotov. It will be hell.

That bastard will die in the same way as my poor mom. He deserves it! If the wife is quick, she will get her a*s to safety with the little one. As for me, I will wait here quietly for them to come and arrest me, as it is now...

At the top of that ladder, Anna puts a cigarette in her mouth, the lighter in one hand, the incendiary bomb in the other. Punctually, the light turns on and the woman gets up. The flame of the lighter flickers, reaches the cigarette, but can’t reach the fuse of the rudimentary device.

No, I cannot be the cause of the fact that that child will grow up like me, without a father, and with a mother destroyed by pain.

Her leg is starting to hurt again and it is difficult to go down the ladder, put it back in its place, climb over the fence and recover the crutch, but she succeeds.

Life for Anna continues to go by as usual, her economic resources are increasingly less, and every night she finds herself eating her sandwich sitting on the usual bench. She calls to the white dog, who deviates from his trajectory to come and get his dose of cuddles, dragging his master behind him. The dog lays o his back with his paws in the air, to get little tickles on his belly, which he likes so much. The vet smiles at Anna, she looks into his eyes, two green eyes that instill confidence.

"In this note is the name and address of the person who made me like this. Do what you like with it, I have neither money nor credibility to go and ask for compensation."

In silence, the man takes the note, puts it in his pocket and walks away. A few days later, the girl receives in the mail a check for 300,000 euro signed by the guy who ran over her at the time and ran away like a coward. In the envelope a note: I hope this is enough. Please do not report me. A scandal would ruin me forever.

Leonardo, as usual, suddenly appears and sits on the bench next to the girl.

"Cigarette?" he asks.

"No, thank you. I quit smoking. I don't like the taste of tobacco in my mouth anymore."

"How did it go? Have you made good use of my information?"

"Thanks to you and another angel, I now have the money to go to America and undergo an operation that will bring my leg back to its right length. I have calculated that what with the trip, the stay and expenses for the clinic I’ll need exactly 300,000 Euros. Everything I have, but when I return to Italy I will be ready to face a new life."

"Good luck, then!"

Leonardo crosses the street and arrives beside the policewoman lurking there. Unexpectedly, he brings his face closer to her face and brushes her lips. Caught off guard, Veronica accepts the kiss and runs her tongue around his tongue for a few moments. Then, she suddenly stiffens and pulls away just far enough let rip a resounding slap directed at Leonardo's cheek.

"You're crazy!" she exclaims. Then, following the thread of her reasoning as a policewoman: "Did the w***e refuse the dose you offered her today? But anyway, remember, get it well into your head: sooner or later I’ll catch you red-handed."

"You’d be better off taking a look around and seeing who the real criminals are, that are certainly not lacking in this area. But why should I tell you what to do? As it is, it’s by following me that you catch criminals. Sooner or later I’ll send you the bill, my dear!"

He brings his mouth closer to Veronica's again and, this time, and not by mistake, she indulges in a long kiss. When she opens his eyes again, Leonardo has vanished into the dark, as only he is able to do.