After Hannibal
“We can’t communicate at any but a basic level,” Chapman said, “but I want you to know that my wife, Cecilia, is a pain in the arse. Mia moglie è un dolore in culo,” he said laboriously. Seeing nothing in the nature of comprehension rise to the other’s face, he gave it up and returned somewhat unsteadily to his table.
She didn’t move, that was the other thing. When they made love she didn’t move. Cecilia was not … What was the word? Ardent, that was it. Cecilia was not ardent, not in the physical sense of the word. Excitable enough in the first year or two, yes, he was not the man to deny it. But between excitable and ardent, he told himself sagely, there is one hell of a big difference; they are worlds apart. Nowadays Cecilia remained more or less motionless and let it happen.
He fell to thinking, not for the first time, about his new secretary, Miss Phelps. Shirley. Fifteen years younger than Cecilia and her opposite in every way, brisk and scented, with pearl-painted fingernails, concerned about the plight of characters in television serials. Heart in the right place obviously. Everything else in the right place too. Black tights with a design on them of butterflies. Narrow skirts that drew across the line of her thighs every time she took a step in any direction. Tight-fitting blouses that showed you where the hollow of her back was and where the curve of her bottom began, matters a man could not easily determine when looking at Cecilia. Miss Phelps was a woman who had the courage to look like a woman. She was probably a good little mover too …
At this moment, occupied as he was with thoughts of movement, the earth itself seemed to move beneath him, momentarily to pitch as if staggered by some massive sideswipe. The table felt precarious and he seized his glass as if it might slide off and fall. It was over in a second or two and Chapman was too drunk by now to be sure whether the threat to balance was personal or cosmic. But in the immediate aftermath perspectives seemed to shift, a brief clarity of focus came to him, he saw Cecilia’s face before him with that do-gooder glow it had on it when she was telling him something about painting or poetry. She was talking now about Raphael. All these years, he thought, art rammed down my bloody throat. Fed up to the back teeth with it. If I want to make jokes about tits I will. Or bums, he muttered to himself. A woman who lay like one dead while he did his best to come up to scratch and improve their standard of living, who spent half of the day arranging flowers in vases. Lecturing him, correcting his quotations, constantly in flat-heeled shoes. Enough was enough, bloody twaddle, he would cross art off his list. He would cross Cecilia off his list if she didn’t watch her step. Rabbiting on about Raphael. Raphael this, Raphael that …
“Fuck Raphael!” he said loudly.
Ritter made no attempt to investigate the sound he had heard. He went directly back to the streamside, taking the shortcut that led below the road, out of sight of the houses. He noticed almost at once that the stream was silent; in this brief interval of time the water had dwindled, lost its voice.
He stood at the bank and listened to the silence. The impulse that had started him on this work of clearance had not been accidental, he knew now—had known it back there in the village listening to Adelio’s wine-thickened voice. He had not been guided or helped to it; he did not believe in any agency beyond the human. But some necessity of his nature had been revealed to him, looking down at that tangle of creeper and bramble and thorn, that slow suffocation of the hopes and designs of man. A thing planted is a hope expressed, he told himself as he stood there. A hope of continuing, if nothing more.
His impulse had expressed a kind of hope too. Through it he had found the place of execution, the ditch, the trench. His fellow countrymen with their dynamite, old Adelio with his neglect. Both seeking to cover the traces. But he had found a trace. His fingers closed over the cigarette lighter in his pocket. It did not matter who had dropped it there, or when. Fashioned in hope of life from the shell of a bullet, found on a killing ground …
At a distance of fifty years small differences of time are canceled out. Giuseppe’s tearstained face, that strangeness of the empty basement, words that could not be true from the mouth of a loved father, these things had happened while that stumbling soldier came down here to die by the streamside. At the precise same time. And everywhere in the world such things were happening then, just as they were happening now while he stood there. Not only to me, he told himself, not only to the child I was then. The logic of the heart is strange. It was only the sense that he had not been singled out that brought Ritter now to a kind of peace.
Ideas can take some time in the fermenting, a fact that is well known, and it was not until some three weeks after the wrecking of the Greens’ hopes that Stan Blemish gave voice to his. Sitting with a bottle of Pinot Grigio before him in the cavernous kitchen of their house, watching Mildred’s motions about the stove, scenting the aromatic steam, he began to talk about the need to diversify.
He had been going through a period of gloom lately. No new clients had presented themselves, Esposito had not yet paid his commission in full despite numerous reminders. Moreover, he had been subjected to what could only be termed persecution in the form of requests by the authorities for details of his source of income and tax situation. “If that is the way they treat guests in this country,” he observed bitterly to Mildred, “no wonder their tourist industry is dropping off.” It would do him no real harm, he felt sure of that, he had weathered such storms before. There was nothing in writing anywhere, no proof that he had ever been gainfully employed in Italy. All the same it was depressing, it was inhospitable, it made a man feel unwelcome.
“All businesses have to diversify when they reach a certain point,” he said. “It is a law of growth. The alternative is shrinkage. There is no standing still, Milly.”
“I am sure you are right, dearest,” Mildred said, stirring the pan with her long-handled wooden spoon.
She was making a medieval pottage of leeks and onions and chicken stock, using saffron to give the whole an authentic golden appearance. The movements of her broad behind, together with the odors of the simmering stew, worked their usual magic on Blemish. “We have the estate-agency side and the project-management side,” he said. “It is time to go into the property-development side and I know where we could begin.”
Milly turned to him, spoon in hand, her face in its usual damp glow. She saw Blemish stretch his neck and blink softly and she realized with joy that her man was his usual self again, all those doldrums forgotten. “Where, dearest?”
“The Greens’ house is up for sale. Seventy million lire, that’s all they are asking. It is a great opportunity.”
“What a brilliant idea. We could do it up and sell it again.”
“Cheaper to build a new house on the foundations. A bijou residence affording ample views. We could clear fifty million at least. That is twenty thousand pounds, Milly, quite a bit of cotto.” Blemish’s face clouded a little. “We would have to do it through a third party, that’s the problem. It is so difficult in this country to find someone you can trust.”
Driving to Perugia, where he was due to consult Mancini, Fabio had again the sensation, frequent since Arturo’s desertion of him, that nothing looked the same—or rather that in their very sameness things somehow looked different. He knew every meter of this road, knew the landscape that surrounded it on either side. He must have driven along it hundreds of times, perhaps thousands. He began to work it out. Ten years, an average of three times a week—not far short of two thousand. Multiplied by two for the return journey … And all that time Arturo had been a constant element in his life, never completely understood but deeply familiar, confirming the familiarity of everything else. It was this familiar world that Arturo had exploited and abused. The natural camouflage of treachery … He experienced a feeling of nausea. This is what he has done to me, he thought. This is what he has done. Out of the familiarity he fashioned a trap for me and watched me walk into it.
He naturally did not speak of these feelings to Mancini. It was not the
lawyer’s province, after all. Though Fabio, like all Mancini’s clients, experienced a peculiar difficulty in determining where the limits of this province lay. What had brought him on this occasion was a written notice from Arturo’s lawyer to the effect that he questioned the validity of the promissory notes and that he intended to subject them to the most stringent investigations that modern science could afford.
“In other words,” Mancini said, “they will hire someone to test the age of the ink.”
“But that will ruin everything. Our whole case will collapse.” Fabio was aghast. “Not only that, it will be seen that we have presented a false document.”
“No, no.” Mancini held up a large, pale, immaculate hand in the gesture of one stilling turbulent waters. “No, you are mistaken, or confused rather. It is an error on your part to use the plural pronoun. It is not our case, it is yours. We are not presenting these promissory notes, you are. It is not my ink on them, but yours—used for your signature, not mine. I am merely your advocate. As far as I am concerned and to the best of my official knowledge, they are genuine documents. In any case, as you will remember, it is not I who will be presenting them to the court but the lawyer engaged by your friend in Carrara, who is suing you for repayment of the debt. If they were discovered to be other than genuine I would maintain that you had deceived me. This may seem harsh to you …”
“It does.” Fabio struggled to resist the hypnotically persuasive flow of the lawyer’s words. “I thought you had my interests at heart,” he said.
“So I have, so I have. All my professional resources are at your disposal. And they are considerable. But reflect a moment, my dear Signor Bianchi. It might be easier if you thought of it in terms of medicine. If the doctor were required to suffer the same fate as the patient how could he continue to function? It is not like the skipper who must go down with his ship. But this matter of the ink test is not so serious in any case. You must get hold of an ultraviolet lamp.”
“You mean the sort people use for tanning?”
“It simulates the sun’s rays, yes. Better to buy it rather than borrow, for reasons I am sure you understand. It will involve you in some expense, I am afraid. But you can always use it afterward.”
“Afterward?”
“Yes, these lamps have an infrared component very efficacious against rheumatism.”
“I do not suffer from rheumatism.”
“I am glad to hear that. However, time passes, one gets older. The area around Lake Trasimeno is very damp in winter.”
“Excuse me,” Fabio said, “I am a man who likes to get things clear. What use will it be to me in the meantime, this sun-ray lamp?”
“In the meantime?”
“Before the dampness begins to affect me.”
“I had thought you understood. You will need the lamp in order to age the ink.”
Fabio looked blankly across the desk. There was something ineffable about Mancini, a sort of absolute imperturbability, something that disarmed all power of reaction. He radiated a wholeness of being so complete that it defied question. I am he that is, he seemed to be saying. Than me there is no other.
“You will have to be careful,” he said now. “If you make a mistake it will not be possible to put it right again. We can make things older but we can’t make them younger. That is because aging is in line with the natural tendency of the universe and the second law of thermodynamics.”
“How long must I do it for?”
“What is the date on the promissory note?”
“The tenth of April 1992.”
“Let me see now. That is three years, two months and four days ago.” Mancini extracted from a drawer a single blank sheet of writing paper and took from the inside pocket of his jacket a platinum fountain pen of impressive proportions. “Bear with me a moment,” he said. “A little elementary calculus.”
After a period in which the only sound was the faint scratch of the nib the lawyer looked up. “At one time I would not have been so exact but these days I am a perfectionist. If you expose the documents to ultraviolet light for a period of thirty-four hours and twenty-six minutes, at a distance of one meter sixty-five, you will get it down almost to the moment.”
This at least was clear enough; but Fabio felt more fogged than ever as he rose to go. “But surely,” he said, “if you know this can be done, then Arturo’s lawyer, the one who is proposing to carry out the tests, he will know it too.”
“Of course. And he will know that we know it.”
“Also the judge who hears the case, he will know it?”
Mancini nodded his large head. “Certainly. All those professionally involved in the case will be fully conversant with the properties of the sun-ray lamp.”
“But in that case—”
“That is how the law works, Signor Bianchi, knowing and not knowing at the same time and always, under all circumstances, pursuing the tactical advantage.”
“To a man like me that is a nightmare,” Fabio said. “I am a man who likes everything to be crystal clear and in the open.”
“Are you sure? Think about it carefully sometime—when you find yourself at leisure. In my opinion you, and all mortal men, would soon be in a state of nervous collapse if everything were crystal clear and in the open.”
These words had little meaning for Fabio but he did not feel up to arguing the point. Mancini had not included himself in the ranks of mortality and this struck him as peculiar. He agreed to buy a sun-ray lamp and follow the instructions carefully. Then, with a certain feeling of relief, he took his leave.
It was time now for Mancini’s mid-morning refreshment. This took an invariable form: mint tea made for him by his secretary and accompanied by a brioche from the pastry shop on the corner.
It was cool and quiet in the office and he felt at peace. He thought for a while of the interview just past, the business of knowing and not knowing, the total dependence on tactics. Looked at one way, it was a kind of elaborate game, designed to show that the letter of the law had been strictly adhered to. A game for the benefit of the ignorant. Justice of course was another matter; it rested on moral distinctions, not legal. Above all it rested on common sense. These two men had joined together in a fraudulent enterprise. They were equally guilty in the eyes of the law. But one had done it to evade taxes, the other as part of a treacherous plan to cheat and dispossess his partner and lover. There was, to any but an idiot, a distinction to be made here.
Mancini sighed to himself, brushing small crumbs from his lapels. Judges were not always notable for taking the commonsense view of things. Justice in this case would best be served if Fabio kept the house and land and the income deriving from them and Arturo received a sum of money substantial enough to mark his contribution of work and service. By private agreement it would have to be, since Italian law did not recognize the rights of homosexuals in property settlements. The best outcome, if it could be done quickly. But Arturo would want more, his lawyer would encourage him to press the false bill of sale. If the device of the promissory notes was not accepted, the case would drag on for years and in the end Arturo would get nothing, his lawyer would get it all. This was not justice either. He had behaved with outstanding wickedness, but moral turpitude does not cancel property rights—another distinction important to preserve …
He had finished his tea now. He rang for the secretary to come and take the tray. She informed him that his next clients were already waiting and he asked her to show them in.
A group of four—two married couples, all of them Italian. They sat in line abreast before his desk and told him a story of misfortune, interrupting one another frequently. Mancini listened, looking from face to face. It was his long-established habit to make mental summaries of what he was told, to extract the essence from the often stumbling and repetitive statements of those who came to him. These people, old friends, had combined together, put their savings together, to buy an abandoned borgo in the hills near Umbertide, four houses in ne
ed of restoration, a ruined church, various outbuildings, ten hectares of woodland. Their idea had been to have the place put to rights so that they could live in part of it and sell or let the rest—there would have been space for two more couples at least. The man from whom they had bought the property, also an Italian, had produced letters of guarantee and bills of sale, all apparently in order …
“Yes,” Mancini said, “you discovered when it was much too late that this man did not own the property, not in any real sense, though no doubt he had legal title to it.” He nodded with his usual blend of dispassion and sympathy. “It is a story I have heard before. It was all in mortgage to a bank, wasn’t it? And this man, where is he now?”
The answer when it came did not surprise him. The present whereabouts of the vendor were unknown. He had decamped with their joint deposit, leaving them with a massive debt to the bank.
“Yes, yes, I see.” It was the same disastrous dream, the same haste to buy before another buyer came along and stole the dream away. But the real thief of dreams was generally not the one you feared but the one you trusted … “You should have come to me before signing, not after,” he said. “I will think for a moment. These days I like to study things. It is like a plan of campaign. You choose the ground that suits you best, you position your forces.”
He folded his large, pale hands into loose fists and rested his chin on them. For a short while silence reigned in the room. Then he looked up and lowered his hands again to the desk, causing glimmering reflections in the lustrous surface. “This is what you must do.”
BARRY UNSWORTH, who won the Booker Prize for Sacred Hunger, was a Booker finalist for Pascali’s Island and Morality Play and was long-listed for the Booker Prize for The Ruby in Her Navel. His other works include After Hannibal, Losing Nelson, The Songs of the Kings, Land of Marvels, and The Quality of Mercy. He lives in Italy.