It was actually I who came up with the nickname. It just happens that I christened him with it one occasion after a bunch of us had had far more than our share of a memorable wine he’d brought from Bologna (was it Bologna? Let’s stick with Bologna for completion’s sake. No, I don’t think it was Bologna at all. It doesn’t matter). He knows his wines, the fella. I’ve got to admit it was terribly foolish of me – absolute recklessness would be more the right way of putting it. You don’t go about sticking nicknames on convicted murderers just for the thrill of it, but there you go. Yet he didn’t seem in the least bothered about it. If anything I suppose he warmed to it immediately, so much so that when a few weeks later he came up with the idea for the shop, he phoned me up to tell me that that was what he intended to name it, which he did, as you know. That was when everyone started calling him it. He practically advertised it himself with that disproportionate sign over the shop door. I wonder how many people have the slightest idea where it came from. Oh, yes, categorically, he’s always been a total oddball, everything but the conventional type, as damaged goods as they come. But who wouldn’t be? You don’t just go and wipe out the bloke your wife got into the habit of copulating with and then fritter away the remaining half of your wretched existence behind bars to come out of it as an ordinary stock character. If he didn’t belong to the idiosyncratic stripe already, that is. Anyway, he never seemed to hold any qualms about the whole affair, or about anything, for that matter, I could swear he’s not remotely familiar with the concept. Let me tell you a little story and you’ll understand what I mean. One afternoon, not long after he bought the house here, the lot of us were playing cards by the sunset, idly sharing hyperbolic tales of boredom as we do. He joins us. We’d barely come across him at that point, he was practically a stranger. Knew of the individual, obviously, but that was about it. So he joins us, not to play, but to pay for rounds. For a while it looked like all he was interested in was the view and the waves, but after, I don’t know, fifteen minutes? – fifteen never-ending minutes of awkward muteness – he launches into this long-winded soap opera his life had turned into. No detail was too small to be left out. But that wasn’t even the most peculiar thing of it all. The truly disquieting part wasn’t the account itself, it was the tone, the pace, the warmth, the softness in the timbre of his voice. He could very well be talking us through his daughter’s confirmation photo album, it just happened to be about how he twigged he had been taken for a ride, the process of deciding what the better means of inflicting a decent amount of suffering on the bloke would be, before disposing of him, why, as soon he was finished with the guy, he drove straight to a police station because that’s what honourable men do, and how he got on with the Spartan, almost blissful years spent in prison where he eventually attained his closure. Four old fogies over a deck of cards ruminating on how life could have been had it not perversely turned out to be the drab way it was, and this chap soliloquising as a background cacophony of doom. Her? No, he didn’t kill her, but he wasn’t exactly gentle either. He put her in a hospital bed for a few days, though nothing serious, or so he said. From Paris? I see where you’re coming from, the Tabarro thing. No, not from Paris, nor from Rouen. From the south coast, Toulon I believe, but don’t quote me on that one, I wouldn’t swear to it, I’m not great with places. There are boats involved, mind, though bigger ones. He used to work as a ship engineer and would spend long spells at sea. But it wasn’t because of that either. They had a girl – not a little child, a teenager –  that at some stage got herself mixed up with all sorts of hard drugs. Then the rehabs, the stints of depression and in the middle of one of those she gets to kill herself, as they do, you know, the thousand-times replayed tale of heartbrokenness, highly talented at school, promising at everything and subito fortissimo, out of the deep blue, all starts to go awry. They were an okay couple and all that before, but then, all of a sudden, the house is built on sand and the whole thing starts crumbling. He immerses himself more and more in his work and she, well, I bet she wouldn’t see much of a husband for months anyway, and one sunny day she might have bumped into someone a tiny bit more attentive and caring. Grim and predicable as life persists on being. And the name stuck. Tabarro. Michele Tabarro. It’s actually his name. Michele, that is. What beggars belief is that he now goes and does the same thing again. Oh, yes, flabbergasted, it appalled us all. Truly shocking. It still gives me the goosebumps. Unbelievable. The first time was extreme and messy and all that, but in the end it was all fine and dandy, well it wasn’t, but you see my point, the circumstances, the grief. But this was such an adorable lass, a spark of joyful gaiety when she cycled up this road every morning. She used to work at the hotel at the very top, by the one where you’re staying, yes, that’s the one. Worked there for years. And now worked at their shop, of course. Didn’t I have my misgivings when they started getting all cosy? I did. She was almost thirty years younger, wasn’t she? Right, love stops at no age barriers and all that luvvie speak. But she could be his daughter, and our fella didn’t exactly have a glorious experience with his own daughter, nor with his wife for that matter. But in, what, three months?, they were walking down the aisle together. Her whole family refused to attend the ceremony, that sort of drama, which in this case wasn’t totally unforeseen. He couldn’t be less bothered and in all likelihood neither could she, besotted as the poor thing was. By that summer they had a screaming sprog, which I could literally hear all-guns blaring because at the time they lived quite close to mine. The boy must be almost two now, clever monkey he is. To be fair, they seemed to get on quite well, the three of them. She never lost her ever-charming smile and always struck me as perfectly content selling CDs and all the other paraphernalia they sell to tourists there. Used to sell. I was expecting you to ask me that. No, she wasn’t, at least as far as I can tell she wasn’t, but I would be very surprised. But he was. And I know it for a fact because he himself told me, and not that long ago. In his factual and apathetic way of speaking, as if everything he says always comes covered in a thick coat of banality. And here’s exactly how it all happened. She found out, somehow. I don’t even think he made a big secret of it. But she lost it big time and let loose the mother of all public scenes. Then she took the kid and stormed off straight to Orosei to her parents. That was last week. Then yesterday morning he went there to do what you know already. But let me tell you something really bizarre. This morning I put the Tabarro CD on and whilst listening to Guleghina’s flamboyant jeremiad over her lost hopes and nostalgia, it hit me. I swear it was the soprano he felt connected to all along. In a twisted fashion this might be his way of going back to his Belleville. Far-fetched? Maybe it is far-fetched, but believe me, I’ve seen stranger things in this place.