After Hannibal (12 page)

“I can never come to terms with it somehow,” Mrs. Green said. “When St. Francis was alive this was all there was, this little place, not much more than a hut, with nothing but forest all around, and wolves and bears prowling about. It’s not that easy to imagine in these surroundings, is it?”

It had been there more than two hundred years already when St. Francis came upon it in 1208, ruinous and long abandoned, a small oratory dedicated to St. Mary of the Angels. Attracted by the
seclusion and tranquillity of the place, the saint had rebuilt it with his own hands, living a life of poverty and prayer here with a handful of devoted companions.

Before leaving through the west gate they turned and looked down the full length of the interior, a hundred and fifteen meters, their guidebook informed them. From here it could be seen how the little oratory so lovingly restored by St. Francis had, by a paradox of history, been both preserved and abandoned within the huge and pompous hangar that had grown up around it, built to accommodate the thousands of pilgrims who came in early August for the Festa del Perdono. This elaborate carapace had drained the oratory of meaning—the meaning was all in the opulent decoration of the surroundings: the marble madonnas and gilded scrolls and trumpeting angels—a display of wealth and power that Francis had sought through the example of his life to oppose. The humble oratory, like the poverty of the saint, was no more now than a quaint survival, reminder of some former, outmoded perversity or eccentricity. “St. Francis’s house,” Mrs. Green said and sighed. “Better if they had left it to the wolves again once he had gone.”

In the evening they went over the money again. They had bought the house on an impulse, immediately drawn to the peace of the place, the warm colors of the landscape and the way the house itself had settled into the hillside and seemed so securely to belong there. It was rather larger than they needed but family and friends would come to stay. The estimate for the conversion was at the limit of what they could afford but when it was done, they told each other, they would live cheaply—they were not materialistic, their needs were simple. They made another of their innumerable planning
expeditions around the house. Here they would have the fireplace, set in an angle of the walls so as not to take up too much room; here they would have their bookshelves. There was enough space for them both to have a separate studio and they had already planned the way they would arrange these and the things they would have there.

Later they went out to admire their three rows of vines below the house. The plants had not been pruned while the house stood empty and it was too late in the year to cut them now. They had trailing outgrowths, low to the ground, and thin unproductive shoots growing vertically upward—it would be a poor crop this year. But Mr. Green had bought a book on viticulture—in Italian, so he could improve his knowledge of the language and learn about cultivating vines at the same time. These slopes above Lake Trasimeno produced light, agreeable wines and Mr. Green was keen to go into things properly and make his own wine and keep his own cellar.

They stood there for quite some time, admiring the small gushes of new leaf that were breaking out all along the length of the vines. Miraculous to see the stems, bare and dead-seeming for so long, begin to produce these fountains of green, the pinkish rosettes of the buds opening from day to day and spreading outward from the heart in bursts of leaf, as if there were some inexhaustible source of life and renewal in the brown, fibrous trunks.

“Nothing could look newer than these leaves, could it?” Mrs. Green reached out and touched gently the soft, slightly spongy leaves.

The light was fading now and it grew cooler. A nightingale began to sing from somewhere not far away. They listened to the
first tuning notes, the sudden loud release of song. Another bird joined in, then another. Any lingering anxiety the Greens might have felt was dissolved in that lyrical nightfall. As they turned to go back indoors they felt quite certain that they had done the right thing to come here and buy this house.

The following day the Chapmans had two visits, about an hour apart. The first was from Bruno, the Checchetti son-in-law, who had been dispatched with an ultimatum. His round face fixed in its faint, mindless, embarrassed-seeming smile, he delivered his message in the manner of one repeating a lesson—Cecilia felt sure he had been schooled in it. His wife had learned, he said, through her important contacts in the town hall, that the minimum legal width of a neighborhood road was two meters. At present, throughout the kilometer or so of its length, it was two meters and a half wide. It was slightly less than this below the Checchetti wall because of the rubble along the edge. But not much less, Bruno said. The Chapmans had a week in which to reconsider their position. If at the end of that time they had not paid over in cash, without any interference from a lawyer, the million lire they had promised toward the building of the new wall, they, the Checchetti, would put stakes in the road outside their house at an exact distance of two meters. This would still allow the passage of a car; but vans and lorries would not be able to get through.

There was not much point, both the Chapmans saw, in expostulating with Bruno. He was merely doing what he had been told to
do. “We will not give in to blackmail,” Harold Chapman said, and heard with habitual impatience his firm tones transmuted to the gentle, wavering ones of his wife, which seemed to thin out in the air and drift away. Cecilia was doing her best, he knew, but she did not sound like a woman who would not give in to blackmail.

“We must be firm with these people,” he said as they sat together afterward over coffee in the kitchen. “We are coming to a crucial point in this business; it is fatal to show weakness.”

Without quite knowing how she had offended, Cecilia knew that this was an indirect reproach to her. She knew too that any attempt to answer directly, even if in firm agreement, was liable to make him crosser. “I wonder who Signora Checchetti’s important contacts in the town hall are,” she said. “It is difficult to imagine that a woman like that …” Under Harold’s indignant gaze she heard her voice falter and trail away.

“I don’t know how it is, Cecilia,” he said, “but you always seem to get led away into inessentials. What matters is not who she knows at the town hall, but whether this two meters business is true or not. I shouldn’t have thought that I needed to point that out.”

“It’s no good taking it out on me, Harold,” she said with sudden spirit. “The real point is, what are we going to do about it?”

He thought for a moment, his face settling into the dogged and slightly suffering look which had always made Cecilia feel pity for him, though recently much less. “I will phone the lawyer,” he said. “I will phone Mancini and make another appointment. Presumably Italy is a country subject to the rule of law.”

“That’s not quite the impression Mancini gives, is it?”

The phone call was no sooner made and the appointment fixed
with Mancini’s secretary than they had their second visit of the afternoon. This was from a middle-aged couple who introduced themselves as Professor and Mrs. Lorenzetti. Cecilia asked them in but they declined. There was a certain stateliness about their behavior, not unfriendly exactly, but suggestive of grave matters. They had come about the road, they said. The wife seemed not to speak any English but the professor knew a little. He was a stiff-faced, beaky-looking man with small, round eyes like a bird’s. She was rosy and plump and her face creased in soft folds when she smiled.

It was soon clear that they had talked to the Checchetti already, because they began by merely repeating the Checchetti view of things. “You tell this family you will give them money for their wall, then you say you will give them nothing, then you set the lawyer onto them.” The professor spoke as if the lawyer were a dangerous hound that the Chapmans had unleashed.

Chapman looked from one to the other for a moment or two. They were both heavy-bodied and seemed very solid, standing there side by side, united in disapproval. He felt the welcome beginnings of anger.

“They are simple people, not like you and me,” the professor said.

“You and me? How do you come into it? You don’t live on the road.”

“Professor Monti, he is my, how do you say it, my
inquilino
.”

“Tenant,” Cecilia said.

“I see,” Chapman said. “That is your house, the one down the road from us. You are worried about your rent, I suppose. Well, let me explain the true situation.”

He went through it slowly and carefully, as he had done with Ritter. He was word perfect in it now—it was like a lesson he had learned by heart. They were still prepared to pay the money, though patience with the Checchetti was running out. Under no circumstances would they pay anything without proper legal form.

But their visitors were not really listening, Cecilia saw that at once, neither to Harold nor to her when she translated the main points for the sake of Mrs. Lorenzetti. She could see it from the air of patience the professor had assumed, from the wreathed smiles of his wife. They had already formed their ideas about the situation, the first and main one being that as foreigners the Chapmans did not understand the mentality of Italian peasants in general and the Checchetti in particular. This was confirmed when the professor interrupted Harold’s story with a short, disagreeably barking laugh. “These people is very strong,” he said. “Strong-headed. You do not know them.”

“He means strong-minded,” Cecilia said. She was developing a feeling of dislike for this couple quite at odds with the usual gentle forbearance of her nature. The reverse side of our ignorance, she thought, is their knowledge. The more the first can be stressed, the more the second will come glowing through. They, of course, while superior in rank and worldly endowment, do thoroughly understand the mentality of the
contadini
. The pair of them were positively oozing with self-congratulation.

“Also these people is
furba
, cunning,” the professor said.

“Well,” Cecilia said, “we are not
furbi
, but we are not so stupid that we don’t know a viper’s nest of blackmailers when we see one.”

This was the first time she had intervened directly in the discussion.
She had spoken in English and Harold felt cheered and encouraged. “Yes, by Jove,” he said. “Blackmail. Tell them that word in Italian, sweetheart, make sure they understand it.”

“
Ricatto
.”

“No, no,” Lorenzetti said. “
Ricatto
, no, it is not a question of money. The Checchetti are unhappy and also
perplessi
 …”

“Perplexed,” Cecilia said.

“Perplexed, yes. So naturally they ask protection to
la legge
, the law. And
la legge
says two meters.”

“Naturally, eh?” Chapman was silent for some moments. The suggestion was that the Checchetti, being weak and defenseless, were right to protect themselves from the oppression of the powerful in the only way known to them. He looked at Lorenzetti’s face, close-shaven, beaky, smiling still with that hypocritical sympathy for the underdog. And as he did so he experienced a fierce joy: for the first time in all this business he had found someone he understood. “Not a question of money, eh?” he said.

Mrs. Lorenzetti, perhaps sensing an increase of tension in the atmosphere, now spoke at some length in Italian, smiling and turning her head coquettishly as she did so.

“What does she say?”

Cecilia’s mouth, which tended naturally to turn down at the corners, showed now a marked increase in this tendency. “She says you have to fall in with their ways. She says she is a teacher but when she comes out here she plays the country girl and they love her.”

“Good God.”

“I know these people,” Lorenzetti said. “It is not about money, it is about pride. Self-respecting, dignity.”

“So what do you suggest we should do?” Cecilia asked.

Lorenzetti’s answer was prompt. “Do? Give them the money.”

Harold uttered a laugh of genuine amusement. “So it is not the money that matters to them, it is pride. So we give them the money.” He paused, looked again at Lorenzetti’s face, saw the self-interest written there, understood it perfectly, shared it completely. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You are obviously concerned to protect the feelings of these people, these sturdy peasants and so forth, and obviously of course it is not the loss of your rent that concerns you, or fear of losing your tenant, but the principle of the whole thing which makes you come here as an ambassador and sacrifice your time and so on, trying to pour oil on troubled waters, etc.…”

The professor had not been able to follow this rather elaborate phrasing and Cecilia translated it as best she could, at once alarmed and exhilarated by the broad sarcasm and by the gleam that had come to her husband’s eye.

“And since you don’t think receipts are all that important and so on,” Harold said, “here is what I suggest. With the Checchetti it is not money but pride, with you it is not money but principle. So why don’t
you
give them the money and satisfy their pride and your principle both at the same time.”