A Short Story by Giacomo Papi Translated by Michela Martini & Elizabeth McKenzie

“Mystery at the Bagni Piero Beach Club”

(from Vanity Fair, August 14, 2024)

The corpse washed up at the Bagni Rosina Beach Club in Forte dei Marmi aboard a pink air bed. It was a man, maybe seventy years old, face down, his arms and feet dangling in the surf, his white butt shining in the sun. At first, only a seven-year-old boy took notice, raising his arm to point and grab the attention of his nanny, when a small but violent freak wave pushed the air mattress ashore and tipped over the corpse, depositing it next to the red lifeboat. Within a few seconds, swimmers, families, honeymooners and clandestine couples, pot-bellied men, tattooed women, nuns from the summer camp and pimply adolescents congregated around the dead man to observe him and determine whether or not he was a VIP or a relative of theirs. 

In one of those cases of destiny that seem to spring from the imagination of a novelist, in that moment in front of the Bagni Rosina – which is like a buffer state between the sober wealth of the Bagni Piero and the flashier Twiga Beach Club –inspector Frederic Frascherelli, Fritz to his friends, was taking his morning walk. His first instinct was to continue on his way. He had come to Versilia (unwillingly) only to see his daughter, and hated the sea with all his might, and – rather than staying on the beach with his ex-wife – he was prepared to walk ten kilometers every day from his lodgings. On the other hand, the last thing he wanted to do was investigate another murder: the case of Klaus Signori, the old billionaire artist found stiff in a freezer of the cellars of his castle, had drained him.

Frascherelli carried on, but then turned back. It wasn’t a sense of guilt – of which he was devoid – that waylaid him, but rather curiosity, which he had received in abundance at birth. More than the dead man, lying peacefully at the water’s edge, it was the spectacle all around him that drew him back. Everyone inched closer to look: the customers of the Bagni Rosina, Bagni Piero and the Twiga, including the papier-mâché giraffes. Then there were those passing by, like Frascherelli, street vendors carrying towels, bags and jewelry; Filipino masseuses; African braiders and even the members of the Bagni Perché of Marina di Pietrasanta, very chic in their linen and raw silk sarongs. However, no one seemed interested in his death nor in establishing its cause. They weren’t looking for wounds, ecchymoses, signs of bites or poisoning. And no one seemed to give a damn about who he was. The issue everyone was passionate about was establishing where he came from, the geographic – and therefore social – status of the cadaver.

An obese old man, a constitutionalist from Pisa who had been going to the Bagni Perché for fifty years, approached. Frascherelli heard him proclaim: “I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe, cruise ships sinking at Isola del Giglio, disco laser beams flashing in the night at the gates of the Twiga. and even a corpse at the Bagni Rosina. And all this will be lost in time, like tears in a mojito.”

Frascherelli concentrated on the cadaver. Was it a homicide, a suicide or an accident? Could it be heat stroke? Had the man failed to use enough sun protection? And yet, he was mostly very tanned. Maybe he jumped in the sea after eating? Did he fall from a boat?

“He fell off Ibrahimović’s yacht,” a very thin gentleman said, scandalized, pointing to the soccer star’s ship of pure gold moored offshore. He was a famous cardiologist from Milan and, though he was wearing a bathing suit, had a lobster-colored cashmere pullover draped around his shoulders, like they do in Versilia. 

“And we’re still separating trash for recycling, while billionaires throw everything in the water,” said his wife, wrinkling her nose in disgust. 

“It’s not possible, Ibra’s air beds are not shocking pink, they’re cheetah-patterned,” ruled a very pale young woman with a phone in her hands. In a lightning-fast move, she lay down next to the dead man to get a selfie with him. 

“Is that Mary Blinge Faretto, the famous influencer?” an excited child from the Bagni Piero screamed, while yanking her grandmother. “I didn’t know she was at the Twiga!” 

“Indeed, I would have the Twiga shut down!” the old lady commented. 

Mary, while getting up, nodded with satisfaction. Without taking her eyes off her little fan, she pushed her index finger on the screen and posted the image, and then pointed south, towards the Viareggio pier. “I have a feeling he’s a poor devil from those baths down there or, worse, from the free beach. Hic sunt peones… The pink air bed is Chinese junk.”

Frascherelli, in the meantime, had crouched down. The corpse was neither fat nor thin but had the oval belly of a confident male, wearing no tattoos, bracelets or rings. The only distinguishing mark was his nudity and his sex which – respectfully speaking – had significant dimension. “I think he’s one of Ibra’s sailors,” said a woman in stilettos that sank into the sand as her eyes widened. 

“You can’t tell. I met one just like him in Biarritz. He belonged to a prince of Liechtenstein,” said a woman as tanned as a moccasin.

Frascherelli continued to examine the body. There were no gunshots or stab wounds, no signs that indicated a traumatic event: it was without the typical jellyfish burns or the stings of the very insidious weever fish. The inspector looked at the man’s nails and fingertips, but they had been in the water too long to reveal calluses or if he’d had a manicure or pedicure recently. In sum, it was impossible to establish whether he had performed manual labor during his life. The hair was grey, lush, without highlights, with very bushy sideburns.

“Doesn’t he look a little like Flavio?” Stiletto Heels asked. 

“Flavio wouldn’t die like a fool,” Moccasin denied. 

“He looks like my uncle Pasquale!” said the boy selling coconut, putting down his bucket.

Frascherelli moved his gaze and noticed that a larger crowd was gathering on the beach. They came swarming from the sea and from the other beach clubs, summoned by the influencer’s selfie. The word had spread. Uncontrollable rumors were starting to circulate. The corpse of an acquaintance of Zlatan Ibrahimović, killed by a blow from a ball, has made a sea landing at the Bagni Rosina. No, Ibra had nothing to do with it, he is one of Zelensky’s cousins poisoned by one of Putin’s relatives with radioactive polonium in a push-up ice lolly. But what are you saying, that was Briatore, not Flavio, but Fausto, his secret twin. 

The mob increased. There were men, women, children. They were poor and rich, tattooed and minimalist; there were sweaty notaries and peddlers. A priest in a black cassock showed up and started blessing the dead with sea water. Naturally the carabinieri arrived as well, dressed in black with red bands and shiny shoes in the sand. As a contact person they identified Frascherelli, still bent over the corpse, and asked him for information. “What is going on here? Who is the deceased?”

“The naked and the dead,” answered Fritz Frascherelli, who had read Norman Mailer.

And then a rumble came from above. A swarm of helicopters rose from the yachts. Now the crowd was immense, champing at the bit. Frascherelli grew scared. All of these human beings were crowding onto the shoreline, standing on tiptoe and jostling each other to see something, or else they were coming from the sea, swimming, on water scooters and paddle boats. One could no longer see the horizon, not even the white marble tops of the Apuan Alps, now hidden by a wall of inquisitive bodies and raised phones. Frascherelli remembered that he had read somewhere that, in the Middle Ages, during processions the faithful raised small mirrors towards the saints’ relics to intercept a reflection of them, under the illusion that owning that image meant to own the thing itself. Two thousand years later, on August 15th 2024, Ferragosto, people were doing the same: taking pictures of the corpse, hoping to possess something of him.

The inspector felt someone pulling at his sleeve. It was the child who had noticed the body first. “I recognize that gentleman,” he said. “It’s Rino, the lifeguard.” And by way of one of those miracles that occasionally happens when the crowd is quiet for a moment in unison, his words spread rapidly, and everyone heard them, upon which silence prevailed. It was true. The child was right. It was Rino. They had seen him since time immemorial, moving beach chairs, opening chaise lounges and beach umbrellas, barefoot, in his black trunks and red tank top. How was it possible they hadn’t recognized him? 

The famous Milanese cardiologist, still with the pullover on his shoulders, confirmed: “But of course, I ratify this, that man is poor Rino… a well-known heart patient, moreover.”

The constitutionalist from Pisa, the influencer, Mocassin and Stiletto Heels and the coconut boy nodded. The truth is that they had never looked him in the face. For them Rino was nothing more than a function, an element of the décor of the most eternal landscape in the world, that of the beach clubs that they attended every year and where they undressed to survey and be surveyed by the gaze of others. Places where every summer we observe the passing of time and the changing of bodies, and where the renewal of dynasties and generations is staged as reassuringly as possible. 

Frascherelli caressed the child’s head. There was no mystery to solve. The poor devil had died from a heart attack. Cases like that of Klaus Signori, the great artist found in his freezer, were few, luckily. Death happens, almost always without culprits and without reason. When the inspector looked up, the crowd had lowered their phones. Rino wasn’t a VIP, and so his death wasn’t an event. Yet everyone stared, with their mouths wide open and their eyes full of bewilderment, at the corpse of a human being.

Giacomo Papi is an Italian writer, journalist, and television author. His latest books include the mystery novel La piscina and the satire Il censimento dei radical chic, both published by Feltrinelli, as well as the anthology Italica, a history of 20th-century Italy through thirty stories and three prophecies, published by Rizzoli. He writes for Vanity Fair, Il Post, La Repubblica, and Il Foglio. He directs the Fondazione Mondadori’s Laboratory. He lives and works in Milan.

Michela Martini has taught Italian language and culture at Suffolk University, Indiana University, Cabrillo College, and the University of California SC. She co-founded and directed the Dante Alighieri Society of Santa Cruz. Her translations and co-translations from Italian into English and from English into Italian include the work of poets and novelists such as Edoardo Sanguineti, Giorgio Caproni, Gabriella Leto, Patrizia Valduga, Rossana Campo, Emanuele Trevi, Giacomo Sartori, Elizabeth McKenzie, Ellen Bass, Jewelle Gomez and Scott Hutchins. They have appeared in numerous journals and volumes, including The Literary Review, Poetry International, Gradiva, Catamaran Literary Reader, Chicago Quarterly Review, Journal of Italian Translation, Italian Poetry Review, Nazione Indiana, Poesia, Alfabeta 2 and The FSG Book of 20th-Century Italian Poetry.

Elizabeth McKenzie’s novel The Dog of the North was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in fiction. Her novel The Portable Veblen was longlisted for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, and received the California Book Award. It was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus, and many others. She is the author of the novel MacGregor Tells The World, a San Francisco Chronicle and Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and Stop That Girl, short-listed for The Story Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Tin House, and others. McKenzie is the senior editor the Chicago Quarterly Review and managing editor of Catamaran. 

Michela Martini and Elizabeth McKenzie were awarded a 2023 NEA grant for the translation of the novel Anatomy of the Battle by Giacomo Sartori, to be published in 2026.

24 December 2025