"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 07" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

apartment while she had been watching television.
Zen himself was still in shock from what had hap-
pened, and it was left to Gilberto to bring up the question
of what was to become of his mother during his absence
in Sardinia, now that their home was demonstrably
under threat. In the end, Gilberto insisted that she stay
with him and his wife until Zen returned.
'Quite impossible!' Zen had replied. His mother hadn't
left the apartment for years. She would be lost without the
familiar surroundings that replicated the family home in
Venice. Anyway, she was practically senile much of the
time. It was very difficult even for him to communicate
with her or understand what she wanted, and it didn't
help that she often forgot that her Venetian dialect was
incomprehensible to other people. She could be demand-
ing, irrational, bad-tempered and devious. Rosella Nieddu
already had her hands full looking after her own family. It
would be an intolerable imposition for her to have to take
on a moody old woman, contemptuous and distrustful of
strangers, someone who in her heart of hearts believed
that the civilized world ended at Mestre.
But Gilberto had brushed these objections aside.
'So what are you going to do with her, Aurelio? Because
she can't stay here.'
Zen had no answer to that.
And so it came about that early that morning an
ambulance rolled up to the front door of Zen's house. The
attendants brought a mobile bed up to the apartment,
placed Zen's mother on it and took her downstairs in the
lift before sweeping off, siren whooping and lights flash-
ing, to the General Hospital. Thirty seconds later, siren
stilled and flasher turned off, the ambulance quietly emer-
ged on the other side of the hospital complex and drove to
the modern apartment block where the Nieddus lived.
Throughout her ordeal the old lady had hardly spoken a
word, though her eyes and the way she clutched her son's
hand showed clearly how shocked she was. Zen had
explained that there was something wrong with their
apartment, something connected with the noises she had
heard, and that it was necessary for them both to move out
for a few days while it was put right. It made no difference
what he said. His mother sat rigidly as the ambulancemen
wheeled her into the neat and tidy bedroom which Rosella
Nieddu had prepared for her, having shooed out the two
youngest children to join their elder siblings next door.
gen thanked Rosella with a warmth that elicited a hug and
a kiss he found oddly disturbing. Gilberto's wife was a
very attractive woman, and the contact had made Zen
realize that he had neglected that side of his life for too
long.