Man on Fire (15 page)

He nodded and explained about Pinta's parents being away. She was sympathetic.

"It's only natural that a child should want her parents along on a day like this."

She took his arm. "Never mind. Today you are a surrogate father. Come and have a drink. The hundred-meter doesn't start for half an hour."

She took Creasy into the marquee and gave him a cold beer and introduced him to one or two parents. He still felt uncomfortable and was relieved when everyone moved off to watch the first events.

It was a warm spring day, and the girls, many of them maturing, were an attractive sight in their tiny running shorts. Creasy looked on approvingly. But when Pinta appeared for the start of the hundred-meter, he didn't see her in the same light.

Many others did. She was the most beautiful and vivacious girl on the field, but to Creasy she was simply a child and a friend.

He watched critically as they prepared for the start, and felt a twinge of anxiety. He willed the girl to do well.

He need not have worried. The training had paid off. She left the blocks well ahead of the others and broke the tape five yards clear.

She continued running to where he stood and threw her arms around his neck.

"I won, Creasy! I won!"

He smiled down at her proudly.

"You did well. No one else was in it."

For Pinta, it rounded off a perfect day-it was the first time she had seen him smile.

"Happy birthday, Creasy."

He was laying the tartan blanket out on the grass and looked up in surprise. She held out the small package.

"What's this?"

"A birthday present."

"I told you no fuss."

She plumped down on the blanket.

"It's just to say thank you for helping me win the race."

He put the package down and went to the car to get the picnic hamper. He was confused-not used to saying thank you. He remembered now that Pinta had gone shopping with her mother in Milan earlier in the week. She must have bought it then. He hoped it wasn't something expensive or silly. He didn't know how to pretend and say the right things. The package lay untouched as Pinta opened the hamper.

She was in tune and recognized his mood. Maria had taken trouble over the picnic lunch, and Pinta exclaimed in delight as she unwrapped it all. There was a cold roast chicken, eggs wrapped in veal and ham in the Florentine style, and small flat pizza called gar-denera; crusty bread with pepper cheese, a selection of fruit, and finally two bottles of dry white wine, heavily wrapped in newspaper and still chilled.

They had picked a spot above Lake Maggiore. It was high summer grazing land studded with clumps of pines. Away to the north and west, snowcapped mountains rose ever higher toward Switzerland. In front of them, to the south, the Po Valley swept away to the horizon.

Soon the blanket was scattered with plastic plates and tinfoil. Creasy poured wine into two beakers.

"A votre santé."

"What does it mean?"

"It's French. It means 'Cheers.'"

"Yamsing," she replied, and laughed at his look of surprise. "It's Chinese."

"I know, but how... ?" and then he remembered the book on Marco Polo. She absorbed everything.

They talked about different languages and he told her a joke.

A Texan went to Europe for the first time, traveling by sea on the steamship France. The first night out, the chief steward put him at a dinner table with a Frenchman who spoke no English. When the food arrived, the Frenchman said: "Bon appetit," and the Texan, assuming he was introducing himself, replied, "Harvey Granger."

The next morning at breakfast the Frenchman again said, "Bon appetit." The surprised Texan again replied, "Harvey Granger." This went on at every meal for the next five days.

On the last night out the Texan was having a drink in the bar before dinner and struck up a conversation with another American.

"Strange people, these French," remarked the Texan.

"How so?"

The Texan told how he'd met the Frenchman at least a dozen times and that he always introduced himself.

"What's his name?"

"Bon appetit."

The American laughed and explained that that wasn't the Frenchman's name. He was merely wishing him a good appetite.

The Texan was very embarrassed and, when he sat down for dinner that night, he smiled at the Frenchman and said, "Bon appetit."

The Frenchman beamed back and replied, "Harvey Granger."

The girl laughed and clapped her hands, and Creasy reached out, picked up the package, and unwrapped it. Inside was a small box, and as he opened it, Pinta's laughter stilled as she waited for his reaction. It was a solid-gold crucifix on a thin, finely wrought gold chain, and he knew why she had given it to him. They had talked once about religion. For him, it was a subject of massive contradiction. His parents had been Catholics, and he had been raised in that faith. His mother, like Guido's, had been fatalistic. God would provide-God hadn't. The grinding poverty had finally condemned his mother.

Ill with pneumonia, with no money to pay for adequate attention, she had died. A year later his father followed, in his case the passing eased by alcohol. Creasy, aged fourteen, had been taken in by neighbors and used in the fields as the cheapest form of labor. At sixteen he ran away and a year later had joined the Marines.

That early experience, followed by a lifetime of war, had not brought him to God. He could not fathom a Supreme Being so disinterested as to allow millions of innocents to die in all the wars he had seen.

A baby roasted in napalm could not have been punished for a sin. A young girl, endlessly raped, could call upon God and hear nothing. A sadist could torture a priest to death and live to a ripe age. Then to be consigned to hell? After spending a lifetime creating hell for others-for innocents? Creasy could not see the logic of it.

But he had seen the hierarchy of it, the panoply and wealth. He had been in the Philippines when the Pope visited. The biggest Catholic country in Asia and perhaps the poorest. Beautiful churches set in a sea of poverty. The bishops of the area had convened in Manila to meet the Pope. Creasy had flown to Hong Kong a few days later, and a half a dozen bishops had traveled homewards on the same plane. They sat in first class and drank champagne. There was no logic to it.

But also there was no logic to the other side of the coin. He had seen missionaries, in the Congo and Vietnam, who had worked a lifetime for no material reward, who had never tasted champagne. He remembered driving with Guido to a mission hospital outside Leo-poldville.

They informed the four Belgian nuns that they must leave. The simbas were coming within twenty-four hours. They could not be protected. The nuns had refused. Their duty was to stay with their patients. Creasy pressed them hard, finally describing graphically what they could expect. They stayed. One of them had been young and attractive. As he sat in the Land Rover, reluctant to drive away, he beckoned her over. You will suffer the worst, he had told her. You will suffer long and then you will die. He had seen fear deep in her eyes, and also resolve.

"Go with God," she had said, and smiled at him serenely.

Their unit had been forced to retreat, and it was a week before they had regrouped and fought their way back. He and Guido had been the first to reach the hospital. A generation of viewing barbarity had not prepared them for what they saw that day.

They had taken spades and dug a grave and tipped what was left into it. Later that day they caught up with the simbas and Creasy had killed more than his share, many more-long into the night. Guido had driven the Land Rover while Creasy manned the mounted machine gun. Perhaps he killed more than had raped and mutilated the young nun. Who knows? God's will? God's revenge? Logic? Where was it? He had heard the argument that faith must be tested. But who was doing the testing? The bishops with champagne? Officials at the Vatican? But some met the test. So could they all be fools? He had met enough to know that intellect and faith could go together, but he didn't understand how.

He had tried to tell Pinta some of this, how he saw the contradictions. She had surprised him.

You can never know, she had said. If you know for sure, you don't need faith.

Yes-the ultimate contradiction. The faith to be ignorant. She had a very simple and uncomplicated view herself. She would believe until someone proved, beyond doubt, that it was all a load of rubbish. "And how will you know if it's proved?" he had asked. She had smiled at him impishly and answered: "It will be announced on television!"

"I bought it myself, with my own money," she said. "I saved it."

He didn't say anything, just looked at her.

"It can't hurt, can it?" she asked with a smile. "At least keep it until the announcement."

Now he smiled back, and lifted the chain and dropped it over his neck.

"Thank you." He reached out a hand to her shoulder and squeezed it and said, "I suddenly feel very holy."

She laughed and jumped up.

"If you ever meet the devil, Creasy, you must hold it up in front of you."

He smiled wryly. It would make a change from holding a machine gun.

A tinkling of bells intruded and a herd of cows came over the rise, being driven to the upper pastures. They moved toward the picnic spot and a dog bounded ahead to investigate.

Pinta offered a piece of ham in friendship, and it was gratefully accepted. She ran off with the dog to play while Creasy poured the header a beaker of wine.

It was an afternoon to be remembered. The two men sat, talking casually, with the cows grazing around them and the girl and dog chasing each other among the herd.

"You have a fine girl," the herder remarked, and was puzzled at the look that crossed Creasy's face.

At sunset they packed the hamper and walked back to the car in the twilight.

The fresh air and exercise had made Pinta drowsy, and as the car wound down the hills toward Como she yawned and slipped lower in her seat. Finally she tucked up her legs and rested her head on Creasy's lap.

He drove home very slowly, occasionally glancing down at the girl's sleeping face. In the fading light his scarred features and brooding eyes were relaxed in rare contentment. He was at peace.

Chapter 8

The day of the piano lesson.

It had become fashionable in Milanese society for parents to develop their children's musical talents-if they had any. Rika couldn't picture Pinta playing a trumpet or a flute. It had to be the piano.

An appointment was made with an eminent teacher and Creasy drove her to the all-important lesson. If the eminent teacher declared that Pinta had even a glimmer of talent, a piano would be purchased and regular lessons would start.

Pinta was not enthusiastic. Neither was Creasy. The thought of listening to the girl fumbling through her exercises was not pleasant.

Still, it was only a small cloud on the horizon. He had cut down his drinking to virtually nothing, merely taking a glass or two of wine at meals. He had started the morning exercises and had located a small gym in Como that stayed open late into the evening. The fence around the property was now repaired, and he would concentrate on getting fit.

His mood would have been less sanguine had he overheard a conversation between Rika and Ettore soon after their return from New York.

"He must go, Ettore, and quickly. I insist!"

"But why, cam, after you were so pleased with him?"

There were two reasons, both genuine, but she could explain only one.

"She is getting too fond of him-to the exclusion of everything else."

"You don't think there's anything sinister to it?"

She shook her head. "Not in that way. It's mental-he looks on her as a friend." She paused for effect. "And she looks on him as a father."

"That's ridiculous."

"It's not. It's been developing, I just haven't noticed it before. Oh, I've known she's been fond of him, but since we got back this time it's become so obvious."

Ettore thought about it and said, "You exaggerate. Certainly she's fond of him. She's with him a lot, and perhaps we have been away too much-but as a father?"

Rika sighed. "Ettore, you have always been distant with her. Too distant. You never really talk to her. I wouldn't have believed it, but Creasy does, and she responds. She looks up to him, respects him. She begrudges every minute that she's not with him. God! She can't wait for dinner to end so she can run into the kitchen."

He had to admit the truth of it. He was made uncomfortable by the realization-found wanting

"I've just been so busy, Rika, and when I get home I like to relax, not listen to a lot of childish chatter."

She sighed again. He really didn't know his daughter.

"I understand, darling, but you're going to have to make an effort, and if you listen to her you will find she's not so childish. She's very intelligent. Beyond her years."