A Prince Without a Kingdom

  Mademoiselle stayed on the bench.

  Next to Ivan, behind the window, his interrogator was keeping a close eye on this scene.

  “Who do those children belong to?”

  “Me,” said Ivan.

  The man fell quiet and took out his glasses.

  “They’re yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  “They were passing by.”

  “And?”

  “The woman is their tioten’ka,” Ivan explained. “The one you gave us to keep in our home.”

  The man was still watching through the window.

  “One, two . . . three.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Three children.”

  “With Andrei, yes, but —”

  “The little girl, in front . . .” said the short man, screwing up his eyes behind his glasses.

  Ivan sighed softly, while his interrogator sat there on the desk, muttering to himself.

  “The little one . . . the . . .”

  Suddenly the man let go of the bolt, which rolled onto the ground. Then he walked toward the door, made his way over to the car, and crouched down so that he was level with the window. The little girl was pretending to drive.

  He knocked once. Setanka turned toward him.

  He signaled for her to open the window, as if they were at a wartime roadblock. The driver didn’t move. Zoya and Kostia were sitting bolt upright in the backseat, and Kostia was wearing a hat belonging to one of the men. Setanka, who had both hands on the steering wheel, wasn’t sure what to do.

  The man tapped on the window again.

  “Open the window, comrade driver,” said Zoya, very seriously.

  Setanka turned the handle and wound down the window.

  “Hello,” said the man.

  Setanka was staring straight ahead.

  “What are you doing here, Svetlana Iosifovna?”

  “I’m setting off on a journey.”

  “Where to?”

  “With my friends.”

  “Tell me where, Svetlana? Where are you going?”

  “Italy.”

  In a flash, Ivan Ivanovitch Oulanov saw the man open the back door and shout orders, grabbing hold of Kostia’s arm and dragging him out of the car. On the other side, the second man was doing the same with little Zoya, who was screaming. Mademoiselle rushed over and held the children close to her, while Setanka clung to the steering wheel.

  The children’s father ran out of the office, but they caught him before he could join his family. As he tried to defend himself, Ivan was elbowed in the face. He was thrown onto the backseat, where he was flanked by two men. In front, Setanka was huddled on her seat, having been pushed to the passenger side by the driver. The car started up with its headlights on full beam; it knocked over a cart, reverse-accelerated out into the street, and disappeared from sight.

  Mademoiselle was left alone with the two sobbing children. Zoya kept repeating Setanka’s name over and over again, and Kostia was calling for his father. Their tioten’ka couldn’t stop trembling. Perhaps all this was her fault. The day before, in the park, she had finally entrusted little Setanka with her letter for Doctor Basilio, requesting that she post it as discreetly as possible. Had she been found out?

  Mademoiselle hugged the children’s heads in her lap as the garage boss stormed furiously toward her.

  “Get out of here. I don’t want any trouble.”

  In the car, Ivan had given up struggling.

  “I knew I wasn’t mistaken,” crowed the man with a cold.

  Ivan had sustained a bleeding lip and several broken teeth.

  “But I hadn’t imagined this sort of monstrous situation. You will explain to us what you were intending to do with the daughter of Comrade Stalin.”

  Ivan Ivanovitch Oulanov didn’t understand anything anymore. Something was trickling down his neck. His mouth was a jumble of words and broken teeth. If the listener had carefully pieced together the fragments of his speech, he might have heard the name of Ivan’s son and this one question, repeated over and over again: “Why are you doing this to us?”

  Off the shores of Sicily, a month later, February 16, 1937

  Suddenly, Vango saw the islands.

  A northwesterly wind had slowed their approach, and the voyage had been misty. But at last the Aeolian Islands appeared.

  Vango didn’t know how this rosary of stone, greenery, and fire in the middle of the sea had become the root of his life. These seven or so islands were the only place where he truly felt he could breathe.

  He was hugging his knees as he sat beneath the mast pole. The sun in the sails reflected a saffron color around him. A woman was sitting next to him with some chicks in a wooden box. She gave them her finger to peck on. With her veil to protect her from the sun, she looked like the Virgin Mary. A dozen passengers were asleep around her, as if the splendid view was nothing new for them. Vango scoured the horizon for the plume of smoke from the volcano of Stromboli.

  It had taken him a long time to get this far. He had collapsed along the way, back there in France, on another rocky island. He had come close to death.

  After the ocean liner had pulled into Cherbourg, he had felt lost. Over in America, Cafarello had taken his secret to the grave with him. Vango didn’t know how or where to begin his life again. He had spent several days in Normandy, wandering between the port and the station. There were boats leaving for England, and he could have continued on to Scotland. But he was afraid of what he might find at Everland.

  And so he had headed south along the coast for several days, escorted by seagulls, forgetting to eat or sleep. A covering of frost crunched beneath his feet. In the villages, the children were frightened of him.

  He had arrived at the foot of Mont Saint-Michel in the middle of the night.

  High tides had swept the seabed. The rock rose up in the middle of a moonlit desert of sand. The tip of the abbey could be glimpsed high above, blacker than the night itself. Haggard and frozen, Vango headed up the little lanes. He wanted to knock on the giant door of the Benedictine monks and ask for their hospitality, as if he were en route to an imaginary Jerusalem. But he felt ashamed. He hadn’t washed since leaving New York. He wasn’t on his way to anywhere. He looked more like a piece of wreckage than a pilgrim. He climbed the wall and performed his high-wire act over the rooftops, his shadow flickering under the moon. He scaled the church and found shelter behind the zinc columns of the bell tower. In his exhausted state, he lay down, watched over by the archangel Michael.

  Vango felt as if he were losing his mind. He could hear the canticles being sung, and thought he saw the glimmer of flares. He couldn’t even feel how cold the stone was. He was barely breathing. Down below, the Night Office had begun. The monks had filed into the church singing, but it was as if they were traversing Vango’s head and body, their flares in their hands.

  He no longer had any strength left to make even the slightest gesture. He wanted to stay there for what remained of his life. The smell of incense wafted up to embalm him. For a moment, he was afraid of this numb feeling. Zefiro had told him not to flee anymore, and to make choices instead. But he dismissed any idea of resisting. It felt good to forget about being permanently uprooted. The cold and the hunger were carrying him off.

  A monk had found him there the following day. At dawn, the gulls had made a racket under the spire. The brother responsible for masonry wanted to repair any damage, so he had climbed up despite the lashing morning hail.

  A harsh winter was under way, and it was very rare for anyone to climb the bell tower, so the monk assumed that the boy had been dead for some time. The glacial wind brought all sorts of surprises: once, after a stormy season, he had even found some fish in the bell tower. So why not this bohemian swept off a cliff by the wind? The mason put his coat over Vango’s body and blessed him. It was only then that he took the young man’s pulse and discovered that he was alive.

  Two
men hoisted Vango down into the church using ropes. They found him a bedroom and some warm milk. Three days later, he was already doing better. He forgot about time and made the most of this gentle reprieve. He stayed there until Christmas, then Epiphany, and then Ash Wednesday.

  Those winter months went by in a flash, like the first mysterious minute after waking up. Vango was simply aware of a freedom that reminded him of his childhood. His strength had returned. He deliberately kept a low profile with the monks, leaving the bay every morning and walking among the tall grasses. On finding a black horse, Vango didn’t give it a name, but he taught himself to ride, like the first Amerindian in the world. His staple diet was bread and butter in the kitchen, as well as winkles. He walked out into the sea, against the freezing current, as the tide was rising. He went diving. He set off to climb the high surrounding wall at night.

  Vango was waiting. He joined in the monks’ worship by lying behind the stained glass windows.

  One day, high up in the sky, he saw a falcon flying in circles. Heading back in the direction of the abbey, he thought of Mademoiselle, who had disappeared because of him, and of the invisible monastery, whose monks believed they had been orphaned by Zefiro. Had Brother Marco found a way of stepping into the padre’s shoes? He thought of his home. He knew he needed to set out in that direction first.

  Vango left a translucent sapphire in the salt box of the monks’ kitchen, to pay for his bed and butter. Then he was off again. The horse with no name followed him as far as the first village, before they each went their separate ways.

  A few weeks later, he arrived at Salina, by the western port of Rinella. His intention was to head off on foot around the wild coast and cliffs separating the village from the hamlet of Pollara, where he had grown up.

  The Virgin with the chicks was greeted by a group of little girls. She gave the youngest one permission to take a chick in her hands.

  Vango stayed on the dockside, watching them from a distance. He was thinking of Laura Viaggi and her sisters. They had grown up here, in the sweet sea air. And now there was nothing left of them.

  “Don’t hold it too tightly,” the woman was chiding. “Treat it like a butterfly.”

  The little girl was so eager to do as she was told that she let it slip through her fingers. Laughter broke out. The chick hopped over the fishing net and Vango ran after it, sneaking between piled-up crates. The children applauded. They followed, calling out, but Vango was lying in ambush and signaled to them to keep quiet. Perfectly hidden behind two large floats, he waited patiently. The chick thought it was safe and stopped to catch its breath just three meters away from him.

  Augustin Avignon was wearing a straw hat. He stumbled across a group of children, who seemed to be waiting for something to happen down at the port. There was a woman with them. The scene was like a painting. They were all staring hard in the direction of a chick snuggled against a tire.

  One of the fishermen who was accompanying the lieutenant tugged on his arm. The other fisherman was already waiting for them in the boat. They had agreed on a price for the day. They couldn’t afford to let nightfall creep up on them. Avignon climbed on board. The two men never stopped talking to him, even though he didn’t understand a word of their language.

  As they left the port of Rinella, Avignon heard a cry go up. He could picture the excitement around the chick, which the children must have caught. They had formed a tight cluster around a boy who was obscured from view.

  “Avanti!” said one of the fishermen.

  “No,” Avignon corrected him. “Not ‘Avanti!’ ”

  Anxiously, he opened out the map of Sicily. He put his finger on a small gray dot (the island Boulard had ringed in red) and said clearly and slowly, “A-li-cu-di.”

  Vango was carrying two dozen eggs in a box. The Virgin with the chicks had given them to him. By midday he was above Pollara, staring down at those few houses scattered at the bottom of the baked-earth cupola, which split in half toward the sea. In this season, the sun didn’t reach the bottom of the crater.

  Vango headed down slowly. He stopped from time to time to stare at the white of his house. He would have liked to see a wreath of smoke emerging from it. If only Mademoiselle could appear on the terrace. Vango gazed out at the other islands on the horizon and spotted a tiny white sail that was heading into the distance. The stems of dry fennel plants snapped underfoot, and he was afraid of treading on the small birds that threw themselves at his legs. He could feel the humidity rising up from the crevices in the lava stone.

  He paused in front of Mazzetta’s former refuge. The entrance was blocked with branches, but the ring for tying up the donkey was still embedded into the stone.

  Vango then headed for the two white cubes of his home. The cool and shade were spreading as he found the key in the hollow of the olive tree, put the eggs down on the terrace, and opened the door.

  Avignon peered at the small boat with the lowered sail that was waiting for him down below. He hoped they wouldn’t abandon him here. He had paid for everything up front. Avignon had been climbing for two hours, but the stone steps just kept multiplying ahead of him. There seemed to be no summit to the island of Alicudi.

  He knew how much was at stake with his exploratory trip. Voloy Viktor referred to this refuge as “the burrow” and had gathered plenty of information about it, including the list of names of those who hid there and a letter from Zefiro to the Vatican explaining his project. But he had nothing on the whereabouts of the burrow. Viktor had ordered that the pockets of the pope and his secretaries be searched, and the unexplored limits of Europe visited, including every possible hiding place: eagles’ nests, hollow mountain peaks, and disused mines. He would gladly have had two or three cardinals boiled like lobsters in order to make them talk.

  Avignon hadn’t said anything to Viktor about his expedition. Voloy Viktor hadn’t forgiven him for sparing Boulard when the superintendent had visited his lieutenant’s apartment to seek refuge. So Avignon was here on a reconnaissance mission. If he discovered the burrow, he would ask Viktor for his freedom back in exchange for revealing the whereabouts. The policeman might be able to start again from scratch and rediscover the joys of an innocent life. He’d had enough of being torn in two: serving and betraying at the same time, every moment of the day.

  He had begun this double life just after the war, because of a Catalan petty criminal, a tailor, whom he’d caught and who had promised to deliver Viktor up to Avignon if he let him go.

  The arrest of Voloy Viktor! At last, Avignon had found a way of dazzling his boss, Boulard, and gaining his respect. He had agreed. But the tailor kept putting off his promise. Week after week, he requested additional favors, which Avignon also granted. The cogs were turning. The Catalan met him in a cellar in Faubourg Saint-Martin. He offered him bespoke suits while whispering in his ear. Avignon stole files from Boulard’s office, got messages sent into prisons, and covered up political stories.

  On the day when Lieutenant Avignon was finally due to meet with Viktor face-to-face, he realized that it was already too late. Avignon was now the person to whom all the traffickers came. He had become corrupt to the bone. There was no going back.

  When Viktor was finally presented to Avignon, he recognized the tailor he had tried arresting two years earlier and who had been manipulating him ever since. Voloy Viktor was the tailor. And the tailor was just one of his many disguises. The arms dealer had played the game perfectly. Avignon was caught in the trap.

  Avignon picked up his pace. He looked at the island around him. Who on earth could live on this barren outcrop of scree? Boulard must have made a mistake.

  The fishermen had tried to make him understand there was nothing to see on the rock. Nothing. Avignon had shown them his camera and taken three stones out of his pocket.

  “Me geologist. Me not tourist.”

  He gesticulated at them, overpronouncing his words as if he were talking to the indigenous people of the Nicobar Islands.
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  Finally, he reached an area that was almost flat and that extended toward the north of the island. Two rabbits bolted in front of him. He had Superintendent Boulard’s directions before his eyes. The sketched map was clear enough. He had to take this high plateau for a few hundred meters, with the mountain on his left. Finally, Avignon climbed a small steep slope, headed back down into the grass, and came to a stop. His heart began to beat very fast.

  The rock formation below him was in the shape of a rectangle, just like the one Boulard had drawn.

  Avignon tucked himself between two rocks and surveyed all around him. It was as if he were in the ruins of an ancient capital, a temple that had been returned to nature. The invisible monastery had become a jungle. Dense vegetation surrounded the stone walls, insinuating its way into narrow cracks. The wooden and terra-cotta irrigation system was broken in many places, and the water ran into the earth. Climbing plants choked the branches of the orchard. A rabbit was asleep beneath an almond tree that had collapsed onto a terrace. Not a single sign of human life remained, just the memories of an ancient civilization.

  A few years earlier, in Paris, the temples of Angkor had been reconstructed at the foot of the Eiffel Tower for the Colonial Exhibition. Avignon had visited them several times. He felt the same fear now as he had back in Paris in 1931: he was frightened of treading on snakes or of a tiger watching him through the palm trees.

  Avignon dared to venture through a doorway, where he discovered dark and dank-smelling rooms that were completely empty. The floor was damp and the windows half blocked up; all that was visible was the moss invading the walls. Where had the builders of this place gone?

  Avignon’s mission was a failure. He stood there in the shadowy room, his horizons having just shrunk again. No Zefiro. Everyone had vanished.

  The policeman flanked a wall and stopped in front of a stone shelf that had been inset under a window. His eyes fell on a small pile of orange-colored strips. He bent over and discovered that they were carrot peelings. Peelings that hadn’t had time to turn black. Peelings that were less than an hour old. Avignon picked one up.