A Cold Death. Antonio Manzini
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4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
First published as Adam’s Rib in the United States by Harper in 2016
Originally published as La costola di Adamo in Italy in 2015 by Sellerio Editore, Palermo
Copyright © Antonio Manzini 2015
English-language translation copyright © 2016 HarperCollinsPublishers
Antonio Manzini asserts the moral right
to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover images © Christie Goodwin/Arcangel (figure);
Johanna Huber/SIME/4Corners (background)
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008124335
Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008124359
Version: 2016-06-10
To Uncle Vincenzo
A man has every season while a woman only has the right to spring.
—JANE FONDA
CONTENTS
They were March days, days that bring splashes of sunshine and hints of the springtime to come. Shafts of sunlight, warm, not yet hot, and fleeting, but still: light that colored the world and kindled hopes.
But not in Aosta.
It had rained all night long and pellets of watery snow had pelted down on the city until two in the morning. Then the temperature had plunged by many degrees, handing defeat to the rain and victory to the snow, snow that continued to flake down until six, covering streets and sidewalks. At dawn, the sun came up diaphanous and feverish, illuminating a city washed white while the last straggling snowflakes fluttered lazily down, spiraling onto the sidewalks. The mountains were swathed in clouds and the temperature sat several degrees below freezing. Then a malevolent wind sprang up unexpectedly, charging into the city’s streets like a raiding party of drunken Cossacks, rudely slapping people and objects.
On Via Brocherel, the wind had only objects to slap, given the fact that the street was deserted. The NO PARKING sign tossed and wobbled while the branches of the small trees planted along the road creaked like the bones of an arthritic old man. The snow, which hadn’t yet been packed down, whirled through the air in little wind funnels, and here and there a loose shutter banged repeatedly. Gusts of icy powder swept off apartment building roofs.
As Irina rounded the corner of Via Monte Emilus onto Via Brocherel she was caught by a punch of cold air straight to her face.
Her hair, gathered in a ponytail, swung out behind her; her blue eyes squinted slightly. If you’d taken a close-up of her and knew nothing about the context, you might think she was a madwoman without a helmet riding a motorcycle at 75 miles per hour.
But that sudden icy slap in the face actually felt to her like a gentle caress. She didn’t even bother to tug closed the lapels of her gray woolen overcoat. For someone who’d been born and raised in Lida, just a few miles from the Lithuanian border, that blast of wind was nothing more than a mild spring breeze. While it might still be winter in Aosta in March, back home in Belarus they were dealing with ice and temperatures around 15 degrees, well below freezing.
Irina was walking briskly, her feet clad in a pair of knockoff Hogan sneakers that sparkled with every step; as she walked she sucked on a piece of honey-flavored hard candy she’d bought at the café after enjoying her breakfast. If there was one thing she loved about Italy, it was breakfast at the café. Cappuccino and brioche. The noise of the espresso machine steaming the milk, churning up the frothy white foam that the barista then blended with strong black coffee and finally sprinkled with cocoa powder. And the brioche, hot, crunchy, melt-in-your-mouth sweet. Just the memory of the breakfasts she used to eat in Lida … those inedible mushy gruels made of barley and oats, the coffee that tasted like mud. And then, the cucumbers—that bitter