Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna Read online

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  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

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  Sample Chapter of AUNTIE POLDI AND THE HANDSOME ANTONIO

  Read More from the Auntie Poldi Series

  About the Author

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  First US edition

  Copyright © 2016 by Mario Giordano

  English translation copyright © 2018 by John Brownjohn

  First published in Germany in 2016 as Tante Poldi und die Früchte des Herrn by Bastei Lübbe AG, Köln

  First English-language edition published in Great Britain in 2018 as Auntie Poldi and the Fruits of the Lord by John Murray (Publishers), a Hachette UK company

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Giordano, Mario, 1963–author. | Brownjohn, John, translator.

  Title: Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna / Mario Giordano ;

  translated by John Brownjohn.

  Other titles: Tante Poldi und die Früchte das Herrn. English

  Description: First US edition. | Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. |

  Series: An Auntie Poldi adventure ; 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018033130 (print) | LCCN 2018050389 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328918949 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328919021 (hardback)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Humorous.

  Classification: LCC PT2667.I5617 (ebook) | LCC PT2667.I5617 T3513 2018 (print) |

  DDC 833/.92—DC23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033130

  Cover design by Martha Kennedy

  Cover illustration © Chris Andrews

  Author photograph © Rica Rosa

  Hand lettering © Erik Marinovich

  v1.0219

  1

  Tells of water, mongrels, shadows and deliziosi, and of the family’s worries about Poldi’s inner equilibrium. Poldi is now a star in Torre Archirafi and has tasted blood, which means that a clash with Commissario Montana is almost inevitable. Once the call of the genes rings out, however, Poldi is not to be deterred by heat, showers of volcanic ash or German tourists.

  Someone had not only cut off the water supply to the whole of the Via Baronessa but poisoned Lady. Thirst and murder—in other words, my Auntie Poldi’s two pet hates. They upset her inner equilibrium even more than the sight of a handsome, immaculately turned-out Sicilian traffic cop.

  Lady was one of two friendly mongrels that belonged to Valérie, my Auntie Poldi’s neighbour. A stumpy, shaggy, yappy mutt with a pronounced underbite, she used to hunt Femminamorta’s rats with her twin brother Oscar and welcome visitors to the property. Everyone, simply everyone who knew Lady, had loved her because she generously gave her heart to them all. Whenever visitors came calling, she would go crazy with eagerness to make the acquaintance of strangers or celebrate a reunion with friends. She even endeared herself, in the space of a tail-wag, to Valérie’s misanthropic French relations. The workers at Valérie’s palm plantation could be heard calling “Lady!” all day long, followed by Lady’s hoarse, delighted response. Until one morning, when her shaggy little body was found in the courtyard, stiff as a board. Poisoned bait, according to the vet.

  So it went without saying that my Auntie Poldi, being the obstinate Bavarian she was, had to rebalance things and get them back on an even keel. In other words, get the taps running again, find Lady’s murderer and see justice done.

  Especially as it mustn’t be forgotten that my Auntie Poldi already lived on the knife edge between joie de vivre and melancholy. The least she wanted was to straighten things out, because straightening things out was always something of an aid to getting over her fits of depression.

  Auntie Poldi was the widow of my late Uncle Peppe, who, in contrast to his parents and his sisters Teresa, Caterina and Luisa, had not returned to Sicily in the 1970s but remained in Munich like my father. My Uncle Peppe was a Münchner through and through. I can’t remember him when he didn’t have a stein of beer in one hand and a cheap cigar in the other. He spoke only Bairisch and Sicilian, never ran to regular German or Italian. Uncle Peppe had always been the black sheep of the family, the cool dude notorious for his countless affairs, shady cronies, wild parties, falls from grace, spectacular car crashes, walk-on parts in films, bankruptcies and hare-brained business ventures. My favourite uncle, in other words. All that stabilised him somewhat was his marriage in later life to a certain Isolde Oberreiter, known as Poldi. They were a glamorous couple, Peppe and Poldi, svelte as rock stars, chain-smokers, boozers, open-handed and generous and, according to my mother, the most caring friends imaginable. At some stage I recall my parents saying that Peppe and Poldi were getting divorced, and they didn’t seem particularly surprised. Uncle Peppe remarried the following year; then he died and we lost touch with Poldi. A few years later we heard from Aunt Teresa that Poldi had bought a house in Tanzania, but that was pretty much all anyone knew.

  And then, out of the blue, Poldi reappeared in Munich. Having inherited her parents’ small house, she sold up, burnt all her bridges and, on her sixtieth birthday, moved to Torre Archirafi, a peaceful little town on the east coast of Sicily between Catania and Taormina, intending to drink herself to death in comfort within sight of the sea. Suicide with a sea view was her plan, nobody quite knew why. All my aunts did know was that someone had to do something about it, and “someone” included me because, in their view, I was as good as unemployed. Thereafter I flew to Sicily to spend one week a month in Poldi’s guest room at No. 29 Via Baronessa, working on my family epic and helping to dispose of her liquor supplies.

  Although in the past few months Poldi had temporarily thwarted death thanks to solving her handyman Valentino’s murder, her romantic encounter with Vito Montana (Polizia di Stato’s chief inspector in charge of homicide cases), her friendship with her neighbours Valérie and sad Signora Cocuzza, my aunts’ efforts and, last but not least, her own love of the chase, we all know the way of the world: peace reigns for a while, the worst seems to be over, the sun breaks through the clouds, the future beckons once more, your cigarette suddenly tastes good again, the air hums with life and the whole world becomes a congenial place pervaded by whispers of great things to come. A simply wonderful, universally familiar sensation. And then, like a bolt from the blue, pow! Not that anyone has seen it coming, but the wind changes. Fate empties a bucket of excrement over your head, chuckling as it does so, and all you can think is “Wow, now I really need a drink!” And the whole shitty process starts again from scratch.

  So it was no wonder my aunts became alarmed when Poldi still had no running water after two weeks and Lady was murdered. No doubt about it, the wind had changed and the ice was growing steadily thinner.

  “You must come!” Aunt Luisa told me on the phone. “Right away!”

  I tried to wriggle out of it. “I can’t,” I said. “I’m working on an ultra-urgent pitch for TV. A pre-watershed, parental-guidanc
e thriller. Not my genre, exactly, but it could be a slam-dunk.”

  “Just a moment.” With a sigh, Luisa handed the receiver to her sister Teresa, who’s the boss in our family.

  It was obvious what that meant: game over.

  I heard Luisa whisper something in Italian, then the gentle, still-youthful voice of my Aunt Teresa.

  “How are you, tesoro? Making progress with your novel?”

  I might have known.

  “I’m getting on pretty well,” I prevaricated. “The first chapter’s as good as finished. All I need is a bit of . . .”

  “You’re frittering your time away,” Aunt Teresa told me gently. “What you need is to concentrate on essentials.”

  She had a point.

  “And you could keep an eye on Poldi at the same time.”

  I said nothing, and Aunt Teresa switched to Italian, the invariable sign that a storm was brewing.

  “She’s fond of you, you know.”

  “Eh?”

  “She is, for some reason. We often talk about you.”

  “In what way?” I asked suspiciously.

  Aunt Teresa didn’t pursue the matter. “This television thing—is it very important to you?”

  Direct hit, holed below the waterline.

  I landed at Catania at lunchtime next day, was regaled by Teresa with spaghetti al nero di seppia, and meekly answered all the aunts’ enquiries about the welfare of the family members in Germany. That evening I was back on the sofa in my Auntie Poldi’s house in Torre Archirafi. And the strangest thing was, I felt thoroughly at home and far closer to my mess of a family saga than I had for a long time.

  “You’re developing a little tummy” was the first thing Poldi said when she came to the door.

  “Thanks a lot! I’m glad you’re glad I’m here again.”

  She ushered me inside. “I’m only saying. A little tummy suits any man. As long as it’s firm, that’s all. Bear this in mind for your novel: doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about art or sex, it’s all a question of proportion.”

  I ignored her aphorism and scanned my surroundings. There was one reassuring feature: her plan to drink herself to death with a sea view seemed to be in abeyance. I could detect no caches of empty liquor bottles, the house made a clean and tidy impression, the potted plants on the terrace had been adequately watered, and the fridge was full of vegetables. No signs of neglect. But, as I said, it was a knife-edge situation, a somnambulist’s dance on the rim of a volcanic crater. Not even the aunts seriously expected Poldi to remain stone-cold sober from one day to the next, but she really did drink no more than a bottle of Prosecco a day, plus half a litre of beer at lunch and a little corretto—coffee with a shot of cognac—in the afternoon. She was looking as fresh as a daisy. Titivated and fragrant in a billowing silk caftan, with her wig skilfully dressed, she undertook a daily passeggiata along the esplanade. On Mondays she went down to the beach, on Tuesdays she accompanied Uncle Martino to the fish market in Catania or sunned herself at the Lido Galatea with Aunt Luisa, on Wednesdays she took classes at Michele’s language school in Taormina, on Thursdays she took tea with Valérie. Fridays meant bed with Commissario Montana, Saturdays gin rummy with Signora Cocuzza and Padre Paolo, on Sundays she occasionally went mushroom picking with Teresa and Martino, and at all times she relished the new-found local notoriety she had earned by solving the Candela case in such a spectacular fashion. What am I saying, local! Even the Augsburger Heimatkurier had interviewed her on the subject.

  In short, my Auntie Poldi was on a roll. Ever since she figured out who killed her handyman, she was the star of Torre Archirafi. Everyone asked her for selfies and sent her wedding invitations. She even attended Mass regularly, Padre Paolo officiating, because this more or less accorded with her new social status in the town. She had also acquired a Vespa. Not just any old Vespa, either, but a restored PX 125 cc, decorated like a carretto siciliano by my cousin Marco, who has a talent for such things. It was adorned with traditional designs like those on Sicilian donkey carts, which make even Indian tuk-tuks look drab and boring: ornamentation in vivid colours, plenty of curlicues and, in this particular instance, artfully airbrushed illustrations of Poldi at work on the Candela case.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said a trifle enviously when she showed me the Vespa, “restraint is a sign of weakness.”

  “Hey, don’t go thinking I’ve lost the plot. I like colourful things, that’s all. Vanity doesn’t come into it. It’s just a tribute to our traditions.”

  “Our traditions?”

  “Being Sicilian is a question of heart, not genes, and I know a thing or two about matters of the heart, believe you me. I’ve always known I was Sicilian in an earlier life—Masai and Sicilian, I just sense it. Kate told me that back in Los Angeles.”

  “Which Kate would that be?”

  “Why, Kate Hepburn, of course. Not a lot of people know this, but she had the gift. Fantastic woman. Crazy, but all heart. Hey, maybe I should go to a fortune-teller and do a regression, what do you think?”

  My Auntie Poldi wasn’t the type to put things on the back burner—or put up for long with thirst and unsolved murders.

  And that was always a source of trouble.

  October is one of the loveliest months in Sicily. It’s when summer opens its fist again, letting a little breeze into the house and allowing you to breathe again; when the light becomes as mellow as my Aunt Caterina’s limoncello and you take a sweater along in the evenings, just to be on the safe side; when the shacks and timber decks on the Torre Archirafi’s esplanade have disappeared along with the charivari of children’s cries, raucous laughter, flirtations, minor dramas and covert glances at suntanned skin; when you’re still receiving envious text messages from home about the weather you’re enjoying; when waiters in bars become talkative again and the first snow falls on the heights of Etna; when the grape harvest is in progress somewhat lower down, between Trecastagni and Zafferana, and you’re faced with the alarming question of whether the local café has run out of granita di gelsi, or mulberry sorbet. But this October was different. Still as hot as a molten glass bubble stubbornly pressing down on the whole island and intent on withering the last remaining wisp of greenery. A sirocco from North Africa was blowing half the Sahara across the Mediterranean, sandblasting throats and the bodywork of cars, and migraines and forest fires were rife. What exacerbated the situation was Etna’s continuous activity. For weeks now, the main crater had been surmounted by a column of smoke more than a thousand metres high, and spectacular eruptions and streams of lava were on display every night. The Mongibello, the mountain of mountains, groaned and snorted every minute of the day and night, emitting muffled salutations from the bowels of the earth that preyed on people’s nerves and shook them to the core. When the sirocco took a breather, Etna showered Torre Archirafi with fragments of pumice and particles of volcanic ash until snow shovels were all that could deal with the inches-thick deposit in the streets and on the roof terraces. Sicily was once more giving my Auntie Poldi a hard time. To make matters worse, she had recently been reminded by the persistent throbbing of an old crown, top left, that a visit to the dentist was long overdue. It was only a minor problem, but now that Poldi was more self-controlled drink-wise, that minor problem could not, alas, be solved by imbibing several stiff dry martinis, only by stubbornly ignoring it and taking half an ibuprofen. With the best will in the world, Poldi was not yet ready to undergo any Sicilian dentistry.

  As if that were not enough, there came a morning when every tap in the Via Baronessa emitted a dry cough. No need to panic, normally speaking. Sometimes the old water mains are to blame, sometimes just drought. Cuts usually last a day or two at most, and the blue plastic tank on your roof will tide you over. It’s a nuisance if the cut lasts any longer. A week, say, or two. Or, as in this case, three. It’s even more of a nuisance if the reason cannot be found and if only one particular street is affected, namely yours. To a Sicilian, the situation wil
l usually be self-evident: Cosa Nostra is exerting pressure on one of your neighbours.

  The reasons can be many and various. Perhaps the neighbour is to be incentivised into signing a contract disadvantageous to himself. Perhaps he is behind with his payments under an existing contract, and cutting off his water is stage one in a two-stage admonitory process. Stage one: a veiled warning. Stage two: violence directed at you and your family. Then again, your neighbour may simply have been sent a message to keep his trap shut in some current court case. Nobody knows for sure, but the whole street suffers as a result. All the better—it only increases the pressure. Cutting off the water has long been one of Cosa Nostra’s most effective forms of coercion. It demonstrates total control. Whoever controls the water supply rules Sicily.

  Like everyone else in the Via Baronessa, Poldi had been obliged for three weeks to fetch her water in a jerrycan from the public taps at the old mineral water bottling plant. Not a really satisfactory option, because the four taps were besieged by queues all day long. Even when her turn came, it took Poldi an age to fill her jerrycan, after which she had to tote the whopping thing home or heft it onto her Vespa. One jerrycan was just enough for one person per day. Showering, using the toilet, washing, cooking—everything became complicated. All at once, her daily routine revolved around water alone. The level of water in the jerrycan became a measure of her inner equilibrium, and “full” was only a fleeting moment, a dot on the timescale.

  “You’ve no idea what a thirst I’ve got,” she gasped, mopping her brow.

  She did not, however, favour me by removing her wig.

  “You’ll tell me it’s only psychological, of course. I know that myself, but it doesn’t help. I could kill for a drink. Like another beer?”

  “No thanks,” I lied. “So who is it, in your opinion?”

  “Who’s what?”

  “The neighbour the Mafia is putting pressure on.”

  Poldi stared at me blankly. “What sort of daft question is that? It’s me, of course, who do you think? The Mafia have had me in their sights ever since I solved Valentino’s murder. That’s as plain as the nose on your face.”