Simonini felt such relief that his mission had been accomplished that he dressed once again in his ecclesiastical garb and returned to the tavern at Bagheria to indulge in a substantial dinner of pasta con le sarde and piscistocco alla ghiotta (dried cod soaked in cold water for two days and cut into fillets, an onion, a stalk of celery, a carrot, a glass of olive oil, chopped tomatoes, pitted black olives, pine nuts, sultanas, a pear, desalted capers, salt and pepper).
Then he thought about Master Ninuzzo…It wasn’t a good idea to let such a dangerous witness wander free. He climbed back on his mule and returned to the powder magazine. Ninuzzo was by the entrance, smoking an old pipe, and welcomed him with a broad smile. «You think it’s done, Father?»
«I think so. You should feel very proud, Master Ninuzzo,» said Simonini, and embraced him, saying «Long live the king,» as was the custom in those parts. And as he did so, he thrust twenty inches of dagger into his belly.
Who was to know when the body would be found, seeing that no one passed that way. In the highly unlikely event of the police or anyone else tracing Ninuzzo’s movements back to the tavern at Bagheria, they would find he had spent many evenings over the previous months with a priest who enjoyed his food. But the priest would be nowhere to be found, since Simonini was about to leave for the mainland. As for Bronte, no one would be much concerned about his disappearance.
He reckoned it would all be over by nine in the evening.
Simonini returned to Turin around mid-March, eager to see his paymasters—it was time for them to settle the account. Bianco appeared one afternoon in his office, sat down and said: «You never do anything right, Simonini.»
«What do you mean?» Simonini protested. «You wanted the accounts to go up in smoke, and I challenge you to find them!»
«That’s right, but Colonel Nievo also went up in smoke, and that’s more than we intended. There’s far too much talk about the disappearance of this ship, and I don’t know whether we’ll be able to keep things quiet. It will be hard to keep the secret service out of this whole business. We’ll no doubt work it out in the end, but the only weak link in the chain is you. Sooner or later someone’s going to remember you were Nievo’s friend at Palermo and—surprise, surprise—that you were working down there for Boggio. Boggio, Cavour, government…Good Lord, I’d hate to think what unsavory gossip would follow. So you must disappear.»
«To the fortress?» Simonini asked.
«Even keeping someone in a fortress could encourage rumors. We don’t want to repeat the farce of the man in the iron mask. We’re proposing a less theatrical solution. You close up shop here in Turin and disappear abroad. Go to Paris. Regarding initial expenses, half of our agreed remuneration should be sufficient. After all, you went too far, and that’s as bad as only doing half the job. And since we cannot suppose you’ll survive for long in Paris before getting into trouble, we’ll refer you directly to our colleagues there. They may have something for you to do. You’ll pass, shall we say, onto the payroll of another administration.»
9. Paris
2nd April 1897, late evening
Since I began this diary, I have not been out to a restaurant. This evening, to keep my spirits up, I decided to go to a place where anyone who met me would have been so drunk that, even if I didn’t recognize them, they wouldn’t recognize me. It is a nearby cabaret in rue des Anglais, Père Lunette, which takes its name from an enormous pair of pince-nez over the entrance—no one knows when or why they were put there.
Rather than providing food, the owners give you bits of cheese to gnaw, almost for free, to make you feel thirsty. Otherwise you drink and sing—or rather, the «artistes» sing: Fifi l’Absinthe, Armand le Gueulard and Gaston Trois-Pattes. The first room is a corridor, half taken up by a long zinc counter, with the landlord, the landlady and a child who sleeps amid the swearing and laughter of the customers. In front of the counter, along the wall, there is a rough bench where patrons can sit once they have taken a glass. On a shelf behind the counter is the finest collection of gut-rotting concoctions to be found in all Paris. But the real customers go to the room at the end, with two tables around which drunkards sleep on each other’s shoulders. The walls have been decorated by customers, for the most part with obscene drawings.
This evening I sat next to a woman intently drinking her umpteenth absinthe. I thought I recognized her. She had worked as an artist for illustrated magazines but was gradually letting herself go, perhaps because she was consumptive and knew she hadn’t long to live. She now offered to do customers’ portraits in return for a glass, but her hand trembled. If she’s lucky, she’ll end up falling into the Bièvre one night, before the consumption takes her.
We exchanged a few words (I’ve been so holed up the past ten days that I found comfort even in conversation with a woman), and each time I offered her a glass of absinthe I could hardly avoid having one myself.
And that is why, as I write, my vision is blurred and my head befuddled—ideal conditions for remembering little, and badly.
All I know is that I was naturally apprehensive when I arrived in Paris (after all, I was going into exile), but the city won me over, and I decided I would spend the rest of my life here.
I didn’t know how long my money would have to last, so I rented a room in a hotel in the Bièvre district. Fortunately I could afford one to myself—a room in those places often had as many as fifteen straw mattresses and sometimes no window. It was furnished with secondhand odds and ends, and the bedding was verminous. There was a zinc bath for washing, a bucket for urine, not even a chair…and soap and towels were out of the question. A notice on the wall required the key to be left in the keyhole on the outside, apparently so the police would not have to waste time on their frequent raids, when they would grab sleepers by the hair, peering closely at them by the light of a lantern, flinging back those they didn’t recognize and dragging downstairs those they’d come looking for, after giving a good thrashing to anyone who tried to put up any kind of resistance.
As for eating, I found a tavern in rue du Petit Pont where you could have a meal for a song. All the meat was bad, having been thrown away by the butchers at Les Halles—the fat had turned green and the lean meat black…it was salvaged from the bins at dawn, cleaned up, covered with salt and pepper and steeped in vinegar, then hung for forty-eight hours in the open air at the far end of the courtyard, by which time it was ready for the customer. Dysentery guaranteed, price affordable.
After the life I’d been leading in Turin and the plentiful meals in Palermo, I would have been dead in a few weeks if it weren’t for the fact that I soon collected my first wages (as I shall shortly recount) from the people to whom Cavalier Bianco had sent me. I could now afford to eat at Noblot, in rue de la Huchette. You entered a large room overlooking an old courtyard, bringing your own bread with you. Close to the entrance was a cash desk managed by the landlady and her three daughters, where they kept a tab for the more expensive dishes—roast beef, cheese, jams, or stewed pear with two walnuts. Customers, such as artisans, penniless artists and copy clerks, who ordered at least half a liter of wine were allowed behind the cash desk.
Beyond was a kitchen, where on an enormous stove simmered mutton ragout, rabbit or beef, puréed peas or lentils. There was no table service: you had to find a plate and cutlery and line up in front of the cook. Diners then pushed and shoved, full plate in hand, to find a place at the enormous table d’hôte. Two sous for broth, four sous for beef, ten centimes for the bread you’d brought with you—the whole meal would cost forty centimes. It all seemed excellent, and indeed I noticed that plenty of respectable people went there for the pleasure of slumming.
But long before I could afford to go to Noblot, I didn’t mind those first few weeks of hell: I made useful acquaintances and was able to get to know a world in which I would later have to learn to swim like a fish in water. And listening to the talk in the alleyways, I found out about other streets in other parts of Paris, such as rue de Lappe, entirely dedicated to ironmongery for artisans and their families, or of a less reputable kind, such as instruments for picklocks or skeleton keys, or retractable daggers to be concealed up the sleeve of a jacket.
I stayed in my room as little as possible and only allowed myself the pleasures available to penniless Parisians. So I walked
