"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 09" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

stranger might be just what was needed to make his
evening. To defuse the situation before it got out of hand,
Zen leaned over to the three men.
'Excuse me,' he said in his best Reto Gurtner manner.
'Could you tell me if there's a garage round here?'
'A garage?' the man replied after a momentary hesi-
tation. 'For what?'
Zen explained that his car was making a strange knock-
ing noise and he was worried that it might break down.
'What kind of car7'
'A Mercedes.'
After a brief discussion in dialect with his companions,
the man replied that Vasco did repairs locally, but he
wouldn't have the parts for a Mercedes. Otherwise there
was a mechanic in Lanusei, but he was closed tomorrow, it
being Sunday.
'You're on holiday?' he asked.
As Zen recited his usual explanation of who he was and
what he was doing, the man's expression gradually
changed from hostility to sympathetic interest. After a few
minutes he invited Zen to join them at their table. Zen
hesitated, but only for a fraction of a moment. This was an
invitation which he felt it would be decidedly unwise to
refuse.
Three quarters of an hour and another flask of wine
later, he was being treated almost like an old friend. The
hook-nosed man, who introduced himself as Turiddu, was
clearly delighted to have a fresh audience for his long and
rather rambling monologues. His companions said hardly
a word. Turiddu talked and Zen listened, occasionally
throwing in a polite question with an air of wide-eyed and
disinterested fascination with all things Sardinian. Turid-
du's grievances, it turned out, were global rather than
personal. Everything was wrong, everything was bad and
getting worse. The country, by which he appeared t~>
mean that particular part of the Oliastra, was in a total
mess. It was a disaster. The government in Rome poure.i
in money, but it was all going to waste, leaking awai
through the sieve-like conduits of the development agen-
cies, provincial agricultural inspectorates, the irrigation
consortia and land-reclamation bodies.
'In the old days the landowner, he arranged everything,
decided everything. You couldn't fart without his permis-
sion, but at least there was only one of him. Now we've
got these new bosses instead, these pen-pushers in the
regional government, hundreds and hundreds of them!
And what do they do? Just like the landowner, they look
after themselves!'
Turiddu broke off briefly to gulp some more wine and
accept one of Zen's cigarettes.