Vango

  All three of them knew exactly what Esquirol was talking about.

  Before Hitler had come to power, plenty of voices to the political left and center in Germany had asked Hugo Eckener to run for office. He had refused so as not to offend old Marshal Hindenburg, who would have been his opponent.

  The marshal was elected. But he couldn’t halt the Nazi rise to power.

  Hindenburg had died the previous August, and Hitler had pounced on his seat.

  This episode was perhaps Hugo Eckener’s greatest regret.

  In the dark, he could hear the voice of his friend Esquirol: “Now I understand why your zeppelins bear the Nazi insignia. . . .”

  Eckener sliced through the water to throw himself on the doctor, but Joseph got in the way. Despite his small stature, one wouldn’t want to cross the boxer-barber of Monaco.

  “Stop it!”

  All three of them looked at one another.

  In the small hours, returning to his house, soaking wet, Hugo Eckener found that his wife was still up.

  “Did you go for a swim, Hugo?” she inquired, taking a towel to rub him down.

  For some time, her husband had been behaving like a teenager going through an identity crisis. . . .

  “Where’s Ethel?” he asked, purple lipped.

  “I offered her a bedroom, but she’s back on the road. I’ve taken rather a shine to her.”

  “Yes,” agreed Eckener. “Me too.”

  He closed his eyes but didn’t sleep a wink.

  Eckener already regretted what he’d done. He spent the rest of the night thinking about Zefiro and Vango. It was a curious destiny that had reunited these two hunted lives on one island.

  Eckener had just provided his friends with the exact location of the island of Arkudah.

  Arkudah, two weeks later, June 1935

  Small damp clouds caressed his face.

  Vango was hanging from the top peak of the island in a giant cotton net. He had climbed up there that morning before the mist had cleared and was gazing at Mademoiselle’s house in the distance, a tiny white dot among others on the island of Salina.

  As far as he could tell, his nurse’s life was almost back to normal again following the incident with the two armed intruders one year earlier. The good doctor Basilio had restored the blue tiles on the walls, while Mazzetta stood guard with his donkey, a few strides away.

  On the first day of each month, since returning to the monastic life, Vango had borrowed a boat without mentioning it to anyone, tied it up at the foot of the cliffs of Pollara, and gone to stalk around Mademoiselle’s house. Always waiting in ambush, Mazzetta would suddenly rise up and nearly knock him out.

  “It’s me!” Vango would whisper.

  Mazzetta would groan and lower his arm.

  “It’s you?”

  When he finally recognized Vango, Mazzetta would lead him into his cave without making a sound, so as not to attract Mademoiselle’s attention.

  She had taken a long time getting her strength back after her house had been ransacked. She was convinced that her aggressors were after Vango. But she chose to explain to the doctor that they must have been hoping to steal her savings in the belief that this woman who lived all alone, and who came from a foreign country, had a pile of gold stashed away in her underwear drawer.

  After loitering in the area for a few days, the visitors had set off again. Mazzetta had discreetly escorted them as far as the port of Lipari, to make sure they actually left the Aeolian Islands.

  “Let me speak with Mademoiselle, now that they’ve gone,” Vango would beg Mazzetta.

  But the older man always managed to discourage him.

  Don’t say anything to her, remain hidden, don’t pay her a visit. This was the only way to protect her. If the two men came back, they would stop at nothing to make her talk. Vango had to resist the temptation to rush over to the white house and throw himself into the arms of his nurse.

  And so, perched in his net every morning, with his head in those clouds of mist, he would stare emotionally across the sea at the island of Salina. Then he would clamber down, loop by loop, until he reached the ground, where his work awaited him.

  Vango began by untying the ropes that held the masts in place. These five gigantic nets were hoisted every night above the monks’ island. Zefiro had devised this system. And it was the secret to his enchanted gardens.

  One day, when Vango had first discovered the island, while staring at the abundant and healthy lemon trees, he had quizzed Zefiro: “Where does the water come from for all that, Padre?”

  Zefiro had pointed one finger at the sky, and at first Vango had thought there must be a metaphysical explanation. But he had quickly realized that the monk was simply pointing to the clouds.

  There was no water source on the island.

  Water from the clouds, captured each night on the summit, slowly soaked through the cotton nets and flowed as far as the little channels that supplied the underground cisterns.

  Two thousand liters, per net, per day. The winter and autumn rains were carefully collected to supplement these enormous reserves of pure water.

  There was enough to slake the thirst of a herd of a hundred cows in this desert.

  When he left the chapel in the mornings, Vango’s first task was to lower the nets from the top of the island in much the same way as the sails of a boat are collapsed.

  In twelve months, Vango had got under the skin of what it meant to be an invisible monk. Everyone admired the speed with which he had re-adapted.

  He studied and prayed just as they did. He was able to conform to the strict order of this existence, following each stage of their day.

  In chapel, his voice blended in perfectly when the monks were singing.

  And he was always ready to work hard.

  “For it is thus that they are truly monks, if they can live from the labor of their hands,” Brother Marco used to say, citing the rule.

  Vango did everything to enter into the monastic rhythm.

  Since the early Middle Ages, the centuries had polished and perfected the equilibrium of these monasteries so that it was like a beautiful pebble that had spent thousands of years in the waves.

  Vango would have given anything to enjoy the kind of peace that people thought he experienced.

  But he knew that his life was an illusion. Despite all his best efforts, he was in a cyclone. The mysteries of his past troubled him from morning to night, and from night to morning. Where did he come from? Who was after him?

  He didn’t sleep, but spent his nights kneeling on the stone floor of his bedroom. He was trying to understand. His prayer was a silent cry.

  And yet for ten years he had dreamed of this existence. At the seminary in Paris, despite the walls surrounding him, he had questioned himself every day to make sure his choice wasn’t merely a childish whim. Despite Zefiro’s reticence, he was sure this was the right path for him.

  He wanted a life without limits. And for him, that meant a life here.

  He had reached this decision so simply, one rainy day when he was twelve years old. It was as if someone had entrusted him with something, saying, “Look after this for me; I’ll be back.”

  But now he found himself alone, still holding this “something” in his hands, and life was going on all around him, full of mystery and pain. He couldn’t let go of what he’d been entrusted with, still less bury it; he couldn’t leave it or hand it over to the first person who came along. Because in his eyes it mattered.

  And then there was Ethel, another horizon that never left him.

  Some evenings, lost in the midst of these desires and fears, he would dive from the cliff tops, behind the monastery. Vango was no longer afraid of the sea. He launched himself off like a bird. He emerged from the water, his skin glowing white in the moonlight.

  Vango headed back down toward the monastery. As he approached the gardens, there was a freshness hovering in the air, even though the hottest months of the year wou
ld soon be upon them. He entered the kitchen garden overhanging the cloister, on the south side. The water was flowing through channels of baked earth alongside a low wall a meter high. He could smell the melons on the ground, splitting in the sun. White bindweed wove knots through the low chestnut-wood fencing. It looked for all the world as if Adam and Eve might appear at any moment in this Garden of Eden, but that morning, the first man was wrapped in a black apron and was busy sifting through the lettuces.

  His name was Pippo Troisi.

  “Ah, Vango, it’s war! Can you take these into the kitchen for me? The padre’s rabbits attacked my lettuce in the night. It’s all-out war, Vango. They’re burrowing! My chickens would never do anything like this. Zefiro should throw his rabbits into the sea. . . .”

  As could be heard, Pippo Troisi had not made a vow of silence. The quieter the monks were around him, the more he babbled. His one-man shows amused the community. Not counting the rabbits, he had forty pairs of ears bent in his direction, which was enough to fulfill the dreams of any chatterbox.

  Vango noticed the hunting gun by Pippo’s side.

  “And anyway, you don’t go putting rabbits on an island. It’s a question of principle. When will Zefiro understand this? I’m telling you, if they get anywhere near my lettuce again, there’s going to be some lead shot in everyone’s stew — before you can so much as say Arkudah!”

  Vango bent down to pick up the crate of lettuce.

  “And another thing,” Pippo went on. “The padre’s not thinking straight. . . . He’s got a visitor this morning. A visitor! If we start letting just anyone come here, there won’t be anything invisible left about this monastery. It starts with one visitor, and before you can so much as say Arkudah, you’ll end up with boatloads of pilgrims. I’m telling you, it’s just like the rabbits: we’re not dealing with the invisible here, but an invasion!”

  He paused for the warning to sink in, but Vango was already on his way. He could hear Pippo still yammering on about his lettuce.

  “Invisible, invisible . . . I ask you . . .”

  What was so comical was that Vango knew Pippo Troisi was the only real invader of the island.

  Vango just had to pass by the orchard, to add some fruit to his crate. Then he would make his way to the refectory to start work with Brother Marco, the cook.

  He spent two days a week in the kitchens, and all the monks looked forward to those days as if it were Easter time. Vango’s culinary talents and know-how, passed down from Mademoiselle, had been polished during his year of travel in the zeppelin, followed by his time at the seminary.

  In Paris, he had even prepared a Shrove Tuesday dinner for three bishops. He had become a proper chef.

  On the days when he was working in the kitchen, the monks tended to stray oddly in the morning, so that they could carry out their holy readings close by, inhaling all the aromas. During the midday prayers, their nostrils could be seen quivering like butterfly wings. And at a quarter past midday, Zefiro would bless the food in record time, they would all sit down together, their napkins tucked into their robes, their cheeks already turning rosy, and, according to the season, they would sink their teeth meditatively into a morel mushroom clafoutis or stuffed apples.

  When it came to doing the washing up, there was no lack of volunteers to scrape out the bottom of the saucepans.

  For the forty days of Lent, a period of fasting and privation, Vango didn’t set foot in the kitchen.

  Brother Marco was far from being jealous. He admired Vango’s handiwork. He would sit in a chair not far from Vango, his glasses pushed up on his forehead, staring at him just as, two centuries earlier, the greatest musicians in Vienna had sat behind the young Mozart in order to watch his hands on the piano keyboard.

  Vango arrived at the orchard. The trees were young but collapsing under the weight of their fruit. The monks couldn’t keep up with them. All the coulises, compotes, fruit pastries, marmalades and jams, tarts, candies, and liqueurs they concocted weren’t enough to use up the fruit harvest.

  Twice, Vango had secretly left a laden basket by Mademoiselle’s front door. The next day, with his nose in the wind, he had tried to sniff out, across that stretch of sea separating him and her, the scent of the cordials she used to brew slowly with thyme.

  Vango began picking the cherries. They kept slipping through the gaps in the crate, so he went hunting for some large leaves to cover the bottom. But as he was making his way over to the clump of fig trees, he heard voices.

  Zefiro was by his hives, behind the tree. Vango could glimpse him between the branches. He was talking. His voice was muffled by his beekeeper’s hat, which was like a helmet with wire mesh. There was another man with him, clad in the same fashion, but because he was shorter, the wire mesh came down to his chest.

  “The law needs you one last time. Once he’s safely locked up, you’ll be left in peace.”

  Vango dropped down into the grass. It seemed improbable, but he recognized the voice, which was speaking in French.

  “Be reasonable,” the short man advised the monk.

  “You know I have no choice but to obey,” said Zefiro. “You’ve trapped me with your barbarian methods. . . .”

  “Don’t be angry, Padre.”

  “Last time, in Paris, you weren’t up to the job of catching him.”

  Superintendent Boulard didn’t answer the accusation leveled at him. He was sweating beneath his mask. His travel suit was too heavy for this climate.

  “Ask someone else,” said Zefiro.

  “Nobody knows him like you do. I promise your life won’t be in danger.”

  Zefiro lost his temper.

  “I’m risking a lot more than my own life,” he retorted. “I don’t care about my own life.”

  Boulard knew the monk wasn’t lying.

  “Well?” asked the superintendent. “Are we agreed?”

  Zefiro removed his helmet, and the bees started dancing around their master’s face. Boulard took a step backward.

  “You’re a bully, Superintendent,” said Zefiro.

  “Is that a yes?”

  This time Vango heard a clear and resolute reply.

  “Yes.”

  “Right, then, you’ve got all the instructions,” said Boulard, heading off. “I’m leaving now. I’ll see you back there. Remember: before the end of the month. Good luck, Padre.”

  Zefiro was alone again.

  He crouched down and watched his worker bees sniffing the air at the door to their hives before setting off, each in its own direction. Others were coming back in, slightly tipsy, like workers at dawn just finishing their day while others were about to begin.

  Zefiro could have spent hours in that spot, mulling things over, but when he looked up, he saw the barrel of a gun being pointed directly at him.

  “What are you doing, Vango?”

  “Don’t move. I won’t show you any mercy.”

  “Put that weapon down.”

  “What do you know about me? Tell me everything you know.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  When he’d heard Zefiro say yes, Vango had run toward the kitchen gardens. Pippo Troisi had his back to him. He was bent double, his nose virtually in the soil. He was pulling out the weeds around the artichokes and still grumbling: “Invisible, invisible . . . What about my backside, then, is that invisible?”

  In fact, Troisi was all you could see, in the midst of that lettuce and cabbage.

  Undetected, Vango had picked up Troisi’s gun and made his way back to the orchard.

  He had checked the cartridges before aiming at Zefiro.

  “Tell me what you know, and then I’ll disappear.”

  “I don’t know anything about you,” the padre said. “I’d like to be able to help you, but I don’t know anything. You’ve never told me anything.”

  “You’re lying. Boulard said that you knew about my life better than anyone.”

  Zefiro stood up. Vango loaded his gun. br />
  “Don’t move,” he ordered.

  “Were you here when I was talking to the superintendent?”

  Zefiro made his way toward the boy, who stood his ground.

  “You’re mistaken, Vango. You haven’t understood properly.”

  “I’m warning you: I will shoot.”

  “If you really did hear what I was saying, you would know that I don’t care about my own life.”

  “Don’t move, I’m telling you!”

  “But I do care about your life, Vango. So put that weapon down. You don’t know what happens to the life of a man who has killed another man.”

  “Oh, yes, I do. I know only too well.”

  They stared at each other.

  “Put that weapon down.”

  “I’m defending my life,” said Vango, who was loading the second shot into the hunting gun.

  The worried buzzing of the bees could be heard.

  “Don’t get any nearer,” Vango warned again.

  His finger was trembling on the trigger.

  It took less than a second for the weapon to change hands.

  Zefiro grabbed hold of the gun, wrenching it away in one clean movement and turning it to face the other way. At the same time, his leg flattened Vango, who found himself lying in the dust.

  Zefiro removed the cartridges from the gun, slid them into the pocket of his brown cassock, and threw the weapon down onto the grass.

  Vango was lying on the ground in front of him. He tried to raise his head, leaning on his elbows. The sun was falling directly on him, and there was no shade.

  The monk wasn’t looking in the boy’s direction. He picked a fig from behind him, sat down at the foot of the tree, and, digging his thumbs into the red-fleshed fruit, began talking.

  “Listen to me, Vango. I’m going to tell you a story. You’ll understand everything if you hear me through to the end.

  “When I was thirty years old, I signed up as a war chaplain in the French army. It came about by chance. I was already a monk, in the west of France, in 1914, when war was declared. Two years earlier, I had been entrusted with the garden of an abbey, at the end of an island, in the middle of the ocean. I had been dismissed by two Italian monasteries before ending up there. I’d been given my own space in that community of fifty nuns. The only man alongside all those sisters. I was happy in my garden. I was an untamable monk, but I was a monk, and I didn’t want any other life than the one I had chosen. I often worked with the peasants from the marshes. I was a friend of the millers, the salt-marsh workers, and all the sailors in the port. I had the finest garden in the Atlantic.