After Hannibal (28 page)

Mancini made the gesture of someone playing a barrel organ. “Turn the wheel and money comes out.”

“They have made these great cracks everywhere,” Mr. Green said, speaking at a tangent in pure self-defense. “New ones keep
opening up all the time.” Mancini’s office overlooked the Corso Vannucci and from where he was sitting he could see a corner of the Cathedral Square, a section of the splendid marble fountain made by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano in the thirteenth century and part of the great curving facade of the Priors’ Palace, built in the days of the city’s greatness, when she was still a free republic. This partial view of famous beauty seemed to symbolize all they had been hoping for from Italy, all they seemed likely now to lose. He glanced briefly at his wife. She met his eyes and smiled a little and he knew that she understood what he was thinking and shared his feelings. “A money factory?” he said. “How do you mean? We knew we would have to pay extra for the
imprevisti
, anything unforeseen that came up in the course of the work.”

“My dear Mr. Green, who can say what is foreseen? In the courts, in the absence of anything in writing, how could we establish what was agreed beforehand? No, you see, anything, anything at all, can be an
imprevisto
.” Mancini laid down the pencil and made a wide, spreading motion with his hands. “Anything in the wide world,” he said, and smiled as if in pleasure at this universality of application. “All the details of the work must be specified in the contract. Anything not specified can be an
imprevisto
, you understand? And in your case nothing was specified, nothing at all. That is what I meant by saying that they made you into a money factory.” He made the motion of turning the wheel again. “Whenever they want some money they find an
imprevisto
.”

“And of course it always has to be paid right away, before the work can go on.” The bitterness of the cheated was in Mr. Green’s voice now.

“Of course, yes.” Mancini’s smile faded as he watched the Greens struggling with this concept. They were people who would always find it difficult to absorb the idea of dishonesty. Just as the man Blemish would always be a fraudster, so these two would always be trustful, always believe. Two aspects of the human story that had never changed and never would. “The drama of deceit and belief goes back to the Garden of Eden, and lawyers have been living on it ever since,” he said. “The first great advocate was Satan. My main pleasure these days is in patterns. When I was younger I saw things singly—single threads to follow. Now it is … What is the word?
Ragnatele
. The things that spiders make.”

“Webs.”

“Thank you, yes. Now it is webs. I do not mean as traps so much, but more as structures.”

The two Greens regarded him for some moments with a complete absence of expression. Then Mrs. Green, with a visible effort of politeness, said, “I can see that might be interesting, Mr. Mancini, but it is kind of abstract for us just at the moment.” She wasn’t sure she liked this lawyer very much. He sat philosophizing there in the wreckage of their hopes. But he didn’t give an impression of not caring. He didn’t seem quite real to her, as if he were occupying some other kind of space. She was a mild woman and well disposed, but it was annoying, in their misfortune, to be regarded as simply illustrations of the human condition. “What we would like to know,” she said rather tartly, “is how to get ourselves out of this interesting web.”

“We cannot contest this, so much is certain,” Mancini picked up the contract by one corner and held it before the Greens. “It has
been signed by both parties and witnessed by a notary. It would not be legal in some countries, probably not in America—that is to say, it would not be valid without details of the work to be done—but it is legal and enforceable here in Italy.”

Mr. Green turned toward his wife. “That is what he meant, that is what Blemish really meant when he talked about mediating between cultures, bridging the gap.”

“Quite so,” Mancini said. “It is in these margins that people like Blemish operate. Wherever there is a boom in building, wherever foreigners are flocking to buy property, you will find the same thing. Today Umbria is such a place. Laws differ from one country to another. The differences may seem hazy but they can get very sharp. In the region of Perugia alone there are a number of these project managers, some British, some German, some American. Italians are there in strength also, it goes without saying. Often they combine the function with that of estate agent, which is a useful way of making first contact with their unfortunate clients.”

Mancini paused and after a moment sighed and shrugged a little. “Yes,” he said, “they are all busy bridging the gap.” It was incredible, what lengths people would go to, what money they could be persuaded to part with, for the dream of a house. It was unlike any other dream of ownership—a way of life went with it. He sympathized with these two people more personally than usual. In general his clients represented interests which he saw it as his function to serve. But these two had lost more than money; they had been dispossessed of a vision. “I will do what I can for you,” he said. “We will have to bargain with them.”

Mr. Green sat forward rather tensely. “How much will it cost?
If this Esposito is going to ask for a large sum in compensation …”

“He will ask for a large sum and then come down. Each time he comes down he will intensify his threats. The art of it lies in not forcing him so far down that he thinks he will be better off going to law. In short, it is the usual process of blackmail and bluff that goes under the name of negotiation, whether legal or political.”

“And your fee?”

“These days I like things to be interesting. I will ask you for five percent of what I save you. If he started by asking for fifty million and came down to ten my fee would be two million lire.” Mancini paused, smiling a little. “This will be an incentive for me.”

“What line shall we take with Blemish and Esposito?”

“Do not enter into discussion with them at all. If they appear, show them the door. But it is not likely that they will.” Mancini made fists of his hands and rested his large head on them. “Excuse me, I will think a moment,” he said.

There was a brief period of silence which the Greens occupied by making faces of resignation one to the other. Then Mancini raised his head. “This is what we will do,” he said. “We will first of all obtain the services of a reliable
geometra
. I know of one who is
ben introdotto
here, in the courts. How do you say that, well introduced?”

“You mean someone with pull.”

“Exactly. We will ask him to make a full report on the state of the building. He will want money for doing this of course, but if he thinks you are going to take him on as your
geometra
for the rest of the building work he will not ask for so much.”

“It is unlikely now that we can go on with the building work.”

“I know that and you know that. But there is no need for the
geometra
to know it. I understand from you that the work has been badly done?”

Mr. Green nodded. “Dangerously so.”

“We will make a counterclaim for damages. The house is in a seismic zone; it is almost certain that this Esposito has not observed the precautions officially laid down. And there will probably be infringements of
permesso
for the volume of the space permitted. The authorities are going through a phase of strictness just at present; you need a friend in the right place before you can even have a pergola.” Mancini smiled again and placed his hands flat on the desk before him, his usual way of indicating that the interview was coming to an end. “I will keep you informed,” he said.

The Greens began to get to their feet. “Well,” Mr. Green said, “we leave things in your hands, Mr. Mancini.”

“Mr. Green, Mrs. Green, you could not, and I say this in all modesty, leave them in better.”

It was at this moment, as the Greens were turning toward the door, that the world seemed to lurch for a moment or two, not long enough to make it necessary to clutch at anything or stagger. The whole building seemed to undergo that brief shudder that swallowing a bitter drink might produce in the human frame. Mrs. Green saw Mancini’s hat, a rather stagy-looking, broad-brimmed black affair, like that of an old-fashioned conjurer, swing on its peg on the hat stand as if in a sudden wind.

Blemish and Milly did not notice the earth tremor, as they had taken a sort of holiday that afternoon, after a light lunch of medieval oat cakes and quince jam, and were dressed up in their medieval gear and scampering excitedly around their bedroom when it took place. The bedroom was of large proportions, having once been the monks’ refectory. There was still a stone pulpit there, with worn steps leading up to it, from which the designated monk had read works of a devotional nature to his brothers as they ate.

Blemish and Milly had spent quite a lot of money—part of the proceeds of a previous piece of project management—on an antique four-poster, which they had set in the center of the room. Milly planned to make a medieval canopy for it but in the meantime its fluted mahogany posts stood bare and served as supports for her, keeping her on her frantic course as she ran squealing around the room in her tight bodice and voluminous petticoats, hotly pursued by Blemish in his doublet and codpiece and lovat-green hose.

He was almost there, he was within an ace of grasping her amidships and heaving her onto the bed. That deep shudder of earth came and went without either of them having the faintest inkling of it.

When the world was still again, Ritter turned away from the stream and clambered up the slope of the bank. His mind was vacant; he had no sense of having made a decision. He began to walk along the track in the direction of the village, passing his house without a glance. As he came toward the point where the track began
its long curve to the public road, he saw the figure of a woman descending the hillside. It was the Englishwoman, Mrs. Chapman. At the same moment that he recognized her she waved to him, sweeping her arm from side to side in a gesture that seemed too exuberant, out of character. He raised his arm in reply and smiled but she would have been too far away to make out any expression on his face.

When he reached the village, obeying a sudden impulse—it seemed the first independent movement of his mind since setting out—he went into the small bar and asked for a
grappa
. His entrance caused a certain tension of awareness among the four men playing cards in there. He had never been in the bar before and it came to him now that he must cut an odd figure, bearded, disheveled, his clothes marked with the clay of the gulley. He wondered if these people had felt the tremor but a kind of shyness prevented him from asking; it seemed a question too eccentric for a stranger to ask. He finished his drink quickly, paid and went out.

Adelio was alone in the small house near the church where he had a room—the house belonged to his daughter and son-in-law. Roberto was at work, the daughter was visiting friends in Badia. Adelio explained these matters as he led Ritter into the kitchen. He had been sitting there; a glass of wine was on the table and a bottle half empty. He had shown no surprise at the visit though it was the first Ritter had ever made. Moving with the deliberateness of the infirm, he reached down a glass from a cabinet above the sink and without asking poured out wine for his visitor. “Our own wine,” he said. It was intended as a recommendation. “Roberto has a small vineyard, eighty plants.”

“Where is that?”

“Here behind.” Adelio moved his head in the perfunctory way of one who expected these things to be known.

“It gives you enough?”

“Four hundred liters it gave us last year.”

Ritter widened his eyes and nodded, as politeness required, but he was impatient to come to his question. “There was something I wanted to ask you,” he said, and he began at once to tell Adelio about his clearing of the gully. “I knew,” he said, “from the time of uncovering the mouth of the cave, I knew this was something I must ask you about.” Perhaps not so much something that happened, he thought suddenly, in the pause before the old man’s answer, but something that needed to be covered over. “I thought it was strange,” he said. He had not mentioned the finding of the lighter.