Chapter 31
"Paolo, I still need a sperm sample I can use."
Friday, September 7th
Paolo...
I have to admit the priest did a very nice service for Angelina. I did think there was too much singing and I know I paid for more flowers than I saw. I don't like that much singing in church. Christmas songs, Ave Maria, that's all right and Messiah at Easter. Otherwise, just be quiet.
It's too bad it was a closed casket for she was a beautiful woman, once. The hardest part of funerals was the inevitable shaking of hands with everyone that had honored you to come. A philosopher once said that funerals were for the living, to help them deal with the loss.
The way I had been feeling, a dumpster would have been too much. The thought of my years in Italy all being a sham was very sad and I began to cry, for myself and my lost marriage, for my daughters who had lost their whore of a mother and whoever loved the two dead bastards that were fucking my wife.
People at the cemetery were convinced that I was heartbroken to the point of tears. Italian men don't cry, they had too much machismo and I could hear quiet comments about how much I must have loved her from the women. I didn't know what the men were thinking and honestly didn't care. The people of this village had treated Marisella cruelly and I even considered selling everything and moving away.
It was true, I had loved her but the woman I had loved died right after we were married. The moment she tried to kill me she was a dead woman.
After the burial, attended by most of the people from the village, I went to the next town to see if the police had any leads regarding the death of my wife, her driver and my overseer.
**********
The station was in the town hall opposite of the mayor's office, probably so they could keep an eye on each other. Small town politics are the curse of the citizenry and trying to get anything done without making someone's cousin rich was sometimes next to impossible.
"Signore Vincenzi, we are very sorry but there is really no information we can find. Evidently, your wife told the other servants to go to town and see a movie. She even gave them the money to eat afterwards. Gave them the whole day off. So, as you can imagine we have no witnesses to question.
"Now, Signore, I cannot help but find it rather strange that this happened when everyone else was gone. I can only think that there was someone watching for a chance like this.
"Do you have any idea where they could have been going?"
"No, I was with the priest discussing the upcoming festival. We were shocked that it happened. Do you have any ideas? Do you think they were kidnapping her, perhaps?"
"It's possible... one can never tell these days with the damned Mafia. Please, I don't mean to be disrespectful to either you or to the memory of your wife, but I have to ask these questions and I realize that you have just buried her. Was there any insurance?"
"No, there wasn't. I have insurance to take care of her and our children but, no, she didn't. There wasn't any reason for it."
"Is there a possibility your wife was...?" I could see he was ashamed of himself as soon as he asked the question although, God willing, he would never find out how right he was.
"What! How can you ask that! She loved me; we have two wonderful children. I'm just grateful to God they weren't with her."
"Yes, about that... where are your daughters?"
"They went with their cousin to America. Marisella has been given the chance to go to Los Angeles and stay with a friend of mine there. She's hoping to go to college, possibly UCLA. After what happened..." I let my voice drop off.
The sergeant continued to write on his notepad. Without being too obvious, I tried to read but it was upside-down and his handwriting looked more like scratches than letters.
"I'm sorry about what happened to the young woman, Signore, but we're going to have to close this case. After the first kidnapping, you understand. There's nothing you can tell me? Maybe, when you've had time to think about it, please give me a call."
He gave me his card and walked with me out to my car. I shook his hand and drove back to my villa to clean out certain things of Angelina's.
I couldn't sleep in the girls' room forever and needed to clean out the bedroom of everything she had used, including our bed. There was no way I was going to sleep in the filthy thing, now.
I called the three women working for me and taking them upstairs, told them to take all her clothes away and what they didn't want, give to the priest for charity. I let them think I couldn't live with the memories.
I had already taken Angelina's jewelry box the night before and went through it. I wasn't surprised to find things there that I hadn't given her, cheap rings and the like from her lovers.
Those went straight into the trash. The good pieces from me... half were missing. She probably sold them to support her times with Gio and Tomaso. The treachery of the bitch continued to amaze me.
I would take what was left and donate them to the church. The priest could sell them and use the money to fix up the old church a little. At least, some good would come from her death.
When the women had finished clearing out Angelina's belongings, I had the men still working for me take the furniture outside behind the outbuildings and chop them up for firewood. It was too bad, in a way, I really had liked several pieces but I knew I couldn't bear to look at them anymore.
That night, we had a big bonfire and it burned until early the next morning. The ashes of the fire flew away just as the ashes of my marriage disappeared into the night. When the firemen showed, I just told them I couldn't live with the memory and decided to destroy everything so I wouldn't have to look at it again.
I knew in my heart Marisella was never coming back so I moved into her room. The women seemed to understand and that worried me. I think they knew more than they were admitting to and were ashamed for not telling me. It is possible they didn't want to say anything to spare my feelings but I needed greater loyalty than they had shown and gave them all a year's pay and sent them away.
With the winter season soon approaching, I didn't have any need for the men, either and sent them away also. If I decided to continue producing wine grapes, I would worry about it next year.
It felt strange walking the huge empty house alone and I made a game of entering a different room each day and relearning everything that was in it. I was amazed at how much junk accumulated in just time I had been married.
When I finally got around to the girls' closet I found a small box hidden away on the top shelf under some blankets. I would have thought that in the day of the computer photographs were no longer used, but I was so wrong.
My whore of a wife had printed out photos of her and her one, two, three, four, I quit counting, men doing all sorts of things. In some, I recognized our bedroom and other rooms while others were a mystery to me. I knew I had to get a cleaning crew into the house to scrub the place down from top to bottom and dispose of anything I could see in the photos.
The woman's unfaithfulness surprised me. It was beyond just having a lover because she was lonely or wanted a child; she was an outright slut and I wondered how many men had been invited to lie between those creamy smooth thighs and enter the warm, tight wetness she offered so freely. Her constant 'headaches' all made sense, now. She wasn't even willing to try to make love with me... make love, that's a joke. It would have been just sex, another dick in her mouth or elsewhere.
In the end, I decided to gut the house and throw everything away. I didn't need everything that was in the house now that I was the only one there. Hiring a couple of men, what they didn't want became another bonfire. This one lasted almost three days and the fire truck arrived again the first day to see if everything was all right. Six cases of good wine and everyone was happy. They waved as they left me to watch my fire in peace.
I was determined not to fall into the trap of alcoholism, a strange concept considering all the wine I had stored away in the lower sections of the house.
**********
Resolved to get my health back where it should have been, I scheduled an appointment with a doctor four towns over.
You can imagine my surprise a few days later when she called and told me to meet her at the hospital immediately.
"Signore, I'm amazed that you're still alive. You have a toxin in your blood that should have killed you."
"What! What do you mean?" I was incredulous but shouldn't have. With everything else that bitch Angelina had done to me, trying to kill me should have been expected.
"Fortunately, now that we know I can immediately start you on getting better. This particular poison causes low blood pressure and affects every organ of the body."
"Doctor, what symptoms should I have seen?" Now, I was becoming worried. I had been thinking that I was just out of shape a bit and getting older, slowing down. Now the doctor had opened an entirely new path of thought. Ah, shit.
"Low blood pressure causes fainting, dizziness and especially erectile dysfunction since the penis depends on blood pressure to become erect. You're only 52... has this been a problem with you?"
My head was reeling. What I had thought was a problem of aging was because of poison? That miserable excuse for a wife.
"Uh, yes... from about four or five months after we were married. I thought I was just getting old, you know, and never thought of something like this. Will this be fixable?"
"Yes, as I said, we can get you started today. I've already registered you and the orderly will take you up to the room. We're going to aggressively flush your blood through a dialysis machine and over the course of the next few weeks allow it to work itself out of your fatty tissue. You should be fine, hopefully in about a month.
"Your dysfunction should go away very soon as your blood pressure starts to become normal again."
