—
He watched the bus drive down the road past the Rocca. He waved, and thought that he saw a hand at a window, waving back at him. It was a warm morning and the heat of the sun was heavy on the back of his neck. He felt curiously flat; he had enjoyed the last few days with Gloria, sharing in the pleasure of her discovery of Montalcino, showing his temporary home to her as a proud local might do. Now that she had gone it meant an end to the walks together, to the sheer pleasure of having the company of an old friend to whom one had nothing to explain, nothing to apologise for; an old friend, like a familiar set of clothes. From being embarrassed by her arrival, he had gone to being glad of it. And he was surprised to discover that during her stay he had barely thought of Anna, at least after he had confessed his interest in her to Gloria. He regretted that confession now, as one is always likely to regret revealing the secrets of the heart too freely. He was no longer sure how he felt; he liked the idea of Anna—she was attractive, her conversation was stimulating, but the idea of being in love with her seemed excessive. He was no longer an adolescent, ready to fall head over heels for somebody he barely knew. Or was he? Did we ever outgrow that stage? Was it as simple as that? You fell for a face, for a figure, for a way of walking or standing, prompted by a primal biological urge that somewhere or other along the line had become mixed up with a sense of beauty, so that the desire for beauty became the desire to possess another. That urge famously launched ships, inspired poetry, destroyed the most ordered lives, but at heart was something so simple and basic that its potency, viewed in the cold light of day, was absurd. And yet it existed, and none was immune to its Siren draw.
His desk awaited him, but Gloria had been both taskmaster and friend, and with her departure he felt freed of the claims of work. He would return to his manuscript later that day, but for now he would sit in the Fiaschetteria and simply watch the life of the town. He would order a coffee and think. He would let life happen to him rather than make it happen.
Onesto was there, but not by himself. Seated opposite him was a slightly younger man, dressed in clerical black, a tall glass of iced water in front of him. Spotting Paul, Onesto signalled for him to join them at their table.
“This is Father Stefano,” said Onesto, as Paul sat down. “He is, as you’ll see, a priest. He’s actually the priest, although I am not one of his flock, being liberated from all that.”
The priest grinned. “There is always a road back for you.”
Onesto shook his head vigorously. “No thank you, Stefano. That road goes downhill as far as I’m concerned.”
Paul made the connection. This was the Stefano to whom Tonio had referred; this was the younger brother.
“I believe I’ve met your brother, Tonio. I’ve been to his place.”
This brought a quick exchange of glances between the other two men, and Stefano reddened slightly. “My brother, Tonio,” he said quickly. “Yes, Onesto told me you had visited him. I go there quite often myself for meals. Tonio is a better cook than he lets on.”
Paul remembered what Tonio had said about his wife having left him. “Your brother was married once, I believe.”
Stefano nodded. “He was. She left him and went to live in Milan. I haven’t seen her for years.”
A look of anger came to Onesto’s face. “Shameful,” he said. “She went off with a communist, originally from Palermo. Bad wine, bad people.”
“Oh, I don’t know about their wine,” said Stefano. “Not as good as ours, but hardly bad.” He looked at Paul. “You’d agree, would you not, dottore?”
“I think I would,” said Paul cautiously. “Some Sicilian wine is very good.”
“But not the people,” said Onesto.
“They are just people, same as anywhere,” said Stefano. “We shouldn’t condemn them just because of where they come from.”
“But where you come from makes you what you are,” argued Onesto. “If you’re born in a stable, that makes you a horse.”
“Our Lord was born in a stable,” observed Stefano.
“I’m not talking about him,” snapped Onesto. “I’m talking about Sicily.”
Stefano made an effort to change the subject. “Your Italian is very good,” he said. “We get few foreigners who speak it well. Nobody bothers to learn it because it is spoken only here and nowhere else.”
“I like the language,” said Paul. “I like the country.”
“Don’t fall in love with this place,” said Onesto. “Italy is a seductress. Remember that.”
Stefano gave Onesto a discouraging look. “You tasted my brother’s wine, I take it?”
Paul smiled. “I did. And I thought it very good.”
“It’s Rosso di Montalcino, of course,” continued Stefano. “That means he doesn’t get the prices that Brunello attracts.”
“Snobbery,” said Onesto.
Stefano made a gesture of acceptance. “Perhaps, but the world is the way it is, I’m afraid.”
Onesto crowed at this. “You say that, do you? You, of all people, Stefano! You say that the world is as it is and we just have to accept it. Then why are you dressed the way you are? Why do you tell people to pray that it gets better? Pray to what, I ask you? To the sky?”
“Our prayers are not to the sky,” said Stefano quietly. “They are to…”
“Somebody who lives in the sky,” interjected Onesto. “Up there, where Michelangelo painted him. Up there. Yes!”
Stefano smiled patiently, glancing at Paul as if to excuse his friend. “You have a very crude idea of what we believe, Onesto. You yourself believe very firmly in certain things—I know you do: human rights, reason, things like that—but you can’t show me those, can you? You can’t point to something that I can touch or feel and say, That, you see, is Reason. You can’t do that, and yet you expect me to be able to show you God and say, That, you see, is God.”
Onesto turned to Paul. “You must forgive our theological argument. It is rude to argue about theology in the presence of others, but Stefano and I go back a long way and have talked about these matters ever since he went off to the Gregorian. I think he regards me as a project.”
Stefano laughed. “There is no need for me to convert you to anything, Onesto. You are a good man, and in the eyes of God that is enough. His mercy is freely given to all.”
“That’s very condescending,” Onesto said. “What if I don’t want his mercy? What if I deny the existence of such a thing?”
Stefano ignored the challenge and pointed, instead, through the door into the piazza outside. “Our friend from Florence. See.”
Paul looked out into the square. A heavy-set man with a rather peevish expression was speaking intently to a smaller, bespectacled figure. A point was being driven home—strongly, thought Paul, in view of the gestures being made by the larger man.
“Ah, there he is,” said Onesto. And to Paul he explained, “The big man—not the one in spectacles—is a very wealthy man from Florence. He is a property developer who bought a house here. He is very rarely here, even in the summer, but it’s kept ready for him by a housekeeper who lives in it. He is a very arrogant man.”
“He is certainly not humble,” agreed Stefano.
“He built a wall recently,” Onesto continued. “He walled off an orchard that local people liked to walk through. It was a very unpopular move. Not only did he prevent people walking where they had walked for a very long time, but he spoilt the view from the Casa di Riposa, the home for the old people. They used to sit on their balcony and look over the valley; after the wall, they couldn’t.”
Stefano spoke quietly. “No. But it’s different now, isn’t it?”
Onesto grinned. “It certainly is. His wall fell over one night. Miraculously. Suddenly people could walk in the orchard again and the old people could see the valley once more.”
“A miracle,” said Stefano.
Onesto’s expression was hard to read. It was as if there was something he would like to say but could not
. “There was a certain justice in what happened,” he mused. “He built the wall against everybody’s wishes.”
Paul waited for further explanation. Stefano provided it. “You need permission to build, you see—the days when you could build whatever you like are over. You have to go to the Commissione Edilizia and get their say-so. He didn’t bother—he just built.”
“Had he bothered,” Onesto said, “the Commissione would have taken into account the community’s objections. But, as it was, he just went ahead and did it.”
Paul wondered whether there was any remedy: Could the Comune not simply order the demolition of an unapproved structure? He recalled somebody at home who had been obliged to lower a roof that had been built higher than the planners had authorised—could the same thing not happen here?
“In theory, yes,” said Onesto. “But what he did was to raise a complicated legal appeal. If you want to slow things down in Italy, the answer is to have recourse to law. A very simple matter can take years to resolve. You delay proceedings; you come up with all sorts of pleas and counter-pleas; you appeal every interim decision, every procedural ruling; and you can tie things up for ten years or even more.”
“He’s right,” said Stefano. “It would have taken at least that long to get a decision on that wall, and by then he would have been able to argue that the opposition had been withdrawn, and it would probably remain exactly where it is.”
“Very cynical,” said Onesto. “He’s cynically used the system to overcome local opposition.”
Stefano was smiling. “But, of course, everything is different now that the wall has collapsed. His contractor will have a court order slapped on him to prevent his building again. The Comune is alerted to him now—that’s the Mayor he’s talking to. But it won’t do him any good.”
“No good at all,” agreed Onesto.
Paul was lost in thought. “What actually happened to the wall?” he asked. “Was it badly built? Was it unstable?”
“Oh, no,” blurted out Stefano, “it was very well-constructed…” Onesto glanced at him, and he stopped. “I don’t really know,” he continued lamely. “It’s a complete mystery.”
“Exactly,” said Onesto. “These things sometimes happen without any obvious explanation. Very odd indeed.”
He’s Loved Her All These Years
Paul had imagined that it would be for him to contact Anna once she returned from Siena, but it was she who made the first move. This came in the form of a message left the following day—a Saturday—at the Fiore. Paul was taking a break from his manuscript and had wandered down to the car park to check on the bulldozer and discovered the note on his return. May I invite you to a picnic? she wrote. I have no idea where to go, but I could get some things from the alimentari at the end of the road and you must know some places. Tomorrow? Here’s my cell number.
Going back up to his room, he dialled the number and stood at the window while the phone rang.
“I’m looking out of my window,” he said when she answered. “Are you in your apartment?”
“I am.”
“I’m not sure which is your window—can you wave to me?”
He looked down and across the hotel garden to the sloping roofs and the shaded walls. A shutter opened suddenly—not the one he had expected—and he saw her. She waved, and he returned her signal.
“It’s very odd,” he said. “Speaking to somebody on the phone when you can see them is just odd.”
She moved inside. “Is that better?”
“You’ve been in Siena?”
“It was very successful—that’s why I stayed a bit longer than I’d planned. But it’s good to be back.”
“Too hot down there?”
“Boiling. But the library I was working in was cool enough. Those old buildings keep the heat out.”
“And the cold in during winter.”
She laughed. “I suppose so. Mind you, I don’t think of this place as having winter.”
“It can get very cold.” Onesto had told him that the previous winter had been particularly hard, coming early and all but ruining the olive crop.
“I assume you got my note,” she said.
“I did. And a picnic’s a great idea—since it’ll be Sunday. Well, even if it weren’t, it would still be a good idea.”
He toyed with the idea of asking her whether she was free for dinner that evening, but he did not. He felt anxious, and did not want to crowd her. The rest of the conversation was about arrangements: she would get everything, she said, but he could perhaps choose a bottle of white wine, as she knew very little about what was available. Could he chill it in the fridge at the Fiore? He thought he could. And would they need to go by bulldozer?
“I feel so silly asking that question,” she said. “I still can’t get over the fact that you have a bulldozer.”
He laughed. “Nor can I. Sometimes I think it’s a weird dream and that I’ll wake up, but then I see my bulldozer and I realise that it actually exists. But no, we won’t go by bulldozer—we can walk.”
They ended the conversation—reluctantly, he thought, on both sides—and for a moment he remained where he was, looking down towards her window. He had been unaware of it during the conversation, but now he felt his heart thumping hard within him. It was sheer and simple excitement—the feeling that precedes a meeting with a lover, or somebody one hopes will become a lover. He closed his eyes. Was that what he wanted?
He moved back from the window and lay down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling above him. His eye slipped down to the wall directly behind him, and stopped at a tiny red mark, like a teacher’s red tick on the page of an exercise book. Somebody had swatted a mosquito at that precise spot, too late, as the mosquito had already drawn blood. He had heard a mosquito the night before, an insistent drone like that of a tiny night fighter, and he had buried his head under the sheet in order to protect himself. But they always found some small landing place of skin and got what they were looking for.
He closed his eyes. Why am I doing this? Why am I bothering about somebody who has her own life? We won’t see one another again after this, even if…For a moment he imagined himself with her, and the thought filled him with need. It could happen, and he wanted it to happen. And why not? Why should he be ashamed of his yearning for tenderness, for love?
He stood up and made a deliberate effort to put such thoughts out of his mind. Between now and the picnic there were eighteen hours—eighteen hours to get through somehow without…absurd thought, exploding. But that was what it’s like, he thought. That’s what being in love is like. It’s like waiting for something terribly important to happen; it’s like being on the edge of something; it’s like hearing loud chords of Bach resonating in some great cathedral; it’s like surfing a giant wave, being carried, barrelled along by the roaring watery creature beneath one.
No, he thought. It can’t be. She has somebody else and she’s simply being friendly. There is no point—no point at all.
—
Somehow he made it to eleven o’clock that Sunday morning. The nearby church bells were ringing out over the roofs of the houses, while in the distance, from another tower somewhere far below, came a faint answering toll, audible only because there was a breeze from that direction. He had bought a bottle of wine the previous evening—a light Tuscan wine, a Vermentino from the coast. He had just finished a section of his book in which he talked about the coastal wines and their special qualities. He had talked about sapidità, and had tried, unsuccessfully, to translate the word to convey the taste of the grape variety. He would leave it at that: sapidità would remain just that, just as those who are simpatico could remain untranslated.
She had suggested that he call round for her. She had a rucksack, she said, in which they could carry the food and there would be room for his bottle of wine. “We can wrap it in newspaper to keep it cool,” she said.
He counted the minutes and was there at exactly eleven. A piece of paper had been
taped above one of the two door bells: Appleton. Her name. Anna Appleton. AA. It was perfect. Thoughts on Florentine Painting of the Quatrocento by Anna Appleton. Or Raphael Revealed by Anna Appleton.
She came to the door. She was every bit as attractive as he remembered; even more so. There was a brilliance to her now; a sort of light, like one of the women in those paintings of hers. Light from the street and sky, across her face, against the darkness of the small hallway behind her; an effect of chiaroscuro, as she would say.
“You’re very punctual,” she said.
He laughed nervously. “I always am. I’ve never missed a train in my life.”
“That’s good. I miss them all the time.”
He saw that the rucksack was on the floor behind her. He noticed that she was wearing hiking boots—a sensible decision, even if they would be on paths all the time. “Ready?”
She nodded. “I am. And Andrew will be down in two seconds. He was doing something with his camera—putting in a memory card, I think. He takes very high definition photos and they use all…”
He did not hear the rest, but when she stopped he found himself saying, “Of course.” And then, after a brief and painful silence—painful for him at least—he asked her when Andrew had arrived. “I didn’t think he’d be here yet,” he said.
“He arrived yesterday,” she said. “He’s four days early. He managed to get an extra few days’ holiday.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“Yes. It means that we can take a few days to go to Florence. And Verona, too—Andrew says that he’s always wanted to see Verona. He loves opera. I’m trying to get tickets to Aida.”
He said, “Live elephants?” but without enthusiasm.
“I wish.”
He heard a door close somewhere within and then Andrew appeared.
She stood aside to let them shake hands. “This is Andrew,” she said. “And this is Paul.”
Paul reached out and took the other man’s hand. He met his eyes; he saw the large red-wine-stain birthmark across the forehead. He saw that it extended down to the right eyebrow to end just above the eye. He flinched. He could not help it, and it must have been felt in his handshake as Andrew increased the pressure exerted by his own hand.