A Long Finish - 6 Read Online Free Page B

the estate will have had time to reorganize, to get another wine-maker or sell out to Gaja or Cerretto, either of whom would be only too glad to get their hands on the Vincenzo vineyards. But for now, Manlio’s my only resource. Just as I’m yours.’
    Zen sat trying to catch his breath through the layers of phlegm which had percolated down into his lungs.
    ‘Why me?’ he demanded point-blank.
    The famous director waved the hand holding his cigar, which left a convoluted wake of smoke hanging in the still air.
    ‘I made various enquiries, as a result of which someone mentioned your name and sketched in the details of your record. Most promising, I thought. You appear to be intelligent, devious and effective, compromised only by a regrettable tendency to insist on a conventional conception of morality at certain crucial moments – a weakness which, I regret to say, has hampered your career. In short, dottore , you need someone to save you from yourself.’
    Zen said nothing.
    ‘In return for the services which I have outlined,’ his host continued seamlessly, ‘I offer myself in that capacity. I understand that at one time you enjoyed the favour of a certain notable associated with the political party based at Palazzo Sisti. His name, alas, no longer commands the respect it once did. Such are the perils of placing oneself under the protection of politicians, particularly in the present climate. They come and go, but business remains business. If you do the business for me, Dottor Zen, I’ll do the same for you. For your son, too, for that matter. What was his name again?’
    ‘Carlo.’
    The famous director leant forward and fixed Zen with an intense gaze, as though framing one of his trademark camera angles.
    ‘Do we have a deal?’
    Zen was briefly disabled by another internal convulsion.
    ‘On one condition,’ he said.
    The man known to his friends as Giulio frowned. Conditions were not something he was used to negotiating with the class of hireling which Zen represented.
    ‘And what might that be?’ he asked with a silky hint of menace.
    Aurelio Zen sniffed loudly and blew his nose again.
    ‘That when you next give a party here, I get an invitation.’
    There was a moment’s silence, then the famous director roared with what sounded like genuine laughter.
    ‘Agreed!’
     

     
     
    The meal over, the three men pushed back their chairs and returned to work. At first glance they appeared as interchangeable as pieces on a board. Gianni was slightly stockier than the others, Maurizio was significantly balder, while Minot, who was shorter and slighter than either of the two brothers, wore a foxy moustache above his cynical, down-turned lips. But their similarities were far more striking. They were all of an age, which might have been anywhere from fifty to eighty, worn down by constant labour and near-poverty, with proud, guarded expressions that revealed a common characteristic: the fierce determination never to be fooled again. Their clothes, too, were virtually identical: dark, durable knits and weaves, much patched and mended, each garment a manuscript in palimpsest of tales that would never be told.
    They had eaten in silence, waited on by the only woman in the house, Maurizio’s teenage daughter Lisa. Back in the cellar, the long-maintained silence continued. It was not an empty silence, the void remaining once everything sayable has been said, nor yet the relaxed stillness which implies an intimacy or familiarity such that speech has become an irrelevance. This silence was tense with unspoken thoughts, facts and opinions not alluded to, a mutual reticence about things better left unsaid. It could be defused only by activity – filling mouths, or bottles.
    The only light, from a single forty-watt bulb attached to a huge beam in the centre of the ceiling, died a lingering death in the lower reaches of the cellar, as though stifled by the darkness all around. The only sounds were repetitive and