The American (24 page)

‘I suppose so. I have not tried to visualize it.’

Standing, he turns the nut on the umbrella, tilting it to keep the sun off the prosciutto. I think maybe he is also doing this to have an uninterrupted view of the sky over his head. Just in case.

‘Hell,’ I say, ‘is like your cellar: dank, musty, dark with a fire in one corner and dead flesh suspended from the ceiling.’

He smiles ironically as he sits down.

‘Hell is to be without love. To be without hope. Hell is to be alone in a place where time never ends, the clock never stops ticking but the hands never move. Do you know the writing of Antonio Machado?’ He wets his lips with the armagnac. ‘“Hell is the blood-souring palace of time, in whose most profound ring the Devil himself is waiting, winding a Promethean watch in his hand.”’

‘Bearing in mind this house of yours is off the Via dell’ Orologio,’ I remind him, ‘and has a hellish cellar – and was once the abode of a watchmaker – I should suggest you might seek another lodging. This cannot be a healthy place for a priest.’

This supposition amuses him. I help myself to the bottle.

‘I like to be alone,’ I go on. ‘There is nothing I prefer more. To be alone in the mountains with my paints . . .’

‘That is not alone!’ Father Benedetto interrupts. ‘You are merely without human company. But the butterflies you paint are with you, the trees and insects, the birds. God. Whether you acknowledge Him or not. No! To be alone is to be in a void. Without even memory. Memories are a great weapon against solitude. Even the memory of love can be salvation.’

‘So what do the frescoes depict,’ I ask, ‘that they can remind you of hell?’

He makes no answer. Instead, he forks some ham into his mouth and chews slowly upon it, savouring the flavour. This is one of the best hams he has produced in a decade of illicitly stoking his private inferno.

‘The frescoes – yes! They depict hell as men see it. Flames and demons, Satan in all his corruption. The three gates are open – lust, anger and greed. The dead are being punished for this. But . . .’ He sighs. ‘Their faces. They are blank. They show no emotion. They do not grimace at the fire, do not fight the heat. They have no memory of love, have no love to stave off the horrors, to strengthen them in their trials. To save them.’

‘They had an inadequate artist paint their picture,’ I reply.

‘This may be so. But they are still without a past. A past of love. God has not touched them with love. His love saves us from hell. The memory of love can save us all from hell.’

I drain my brandy. It is time to go. I do not want to become embroiled again in the historical argument we always have. History simply exists. It is best to forget it, live for the future.

‘You know,’ I comment, ‘the good thing about Muhammad is that when he invented Islam, he forged a religion with no inferno.’

‘Perhaps this is why,’ Father Benedetto replies with uncharacteristic wit, ‘the Muslims eat no pork. They cannot smoke it without an inferno in their hell. When you eat prosciutto you are eating the fruits of hell. To devour them is to destroy them.’

He forks a large slice of cured ham into his mouth and grins. He is eating the devil and all his works, he thinks, rending the evil one with his own teeth, savaging him. Later, the devil will pass the way of all filth, and the concept of this is immensely pleasing to him.

‘Two hundred years ago, my friend,’ I advise, ‘you would be accused of devilry, taking the hellish into yourself just as you take the flesh of Christ in the sacrament. It is just as well the Inquisition is over.’

‘Then you should see me burn in the Piazza Campo de’ Fiori. Like Giordano Bruno.’

‘I should not attend. I have no wish to see you enter the flames of hell.’

‘For me, there is no hell. I have the memory of the Love of Christ.’

‘I shall let myself out,’ I say. ‘Do not get up.’

We shake hands.

‘Come again, Signor Farfalla. Next week. Early.’ He lifts his index finger in self-admonishment. ‘No! On Monday I go to Firenze. I return on Wednesday. After that . . .’

As I leave the garden, I look back. It is a little Eden in which he is seated, pouring out another brandy under the shade of a beneficial bank. I pause momentarily. He is a good man and I like him, despite his underhand attempts to drag me back into the smothering folds of his belief. I shall remember him always like this: the plate of prosciutto, a good armagnac and the blue and white umbrella over his head.

I park the Citroën by the end of the row of trees in Mopolino, stepping cautiously out to avoid the projecting roots and a fresh pile of dog turds covered with bluebottles. My feet grind on the gravel. The flies buzz obscenely in the air, hover about and return to their banquet. The door to the village post office has been fitted with a garish red-and-yellow plastic-strip curtain to keep insects out and the coolness in.

There is not one customer at either of the bars. I sit at the usual table, order an espresso and a glass of iced water and unfold the day’s edition of
La Repubblica
.

For thirty minutes or so, I sip my coffee, glance through the newspaper and survey the piazza. I am particularly careful to observe the shadows. The sun is high and the doorways dark, the alleyways in deep shade – there are two leading off the piazza, one in the direction of the little church and the other leading out of the village towards a channel cut in the mountainside behind, to divert either avalanches or meltwater away from the settlement.

The farmer with the cart and rotund pony arrives, the wheels squeaking. He halts by the other bar and offloads a sack of nondescript vegetables, gossiping for a few moments with the patron who has come out to pass the time of day with him. He departs and, shortly afterwards, a truck arrives and collects the sack. One of the two pretty girls walks past me and goes into the general store down the street leading from the main road. She smiles sweetly at me as she goes by.

As I drain my coffee, one of the dogs lying asleep by the trees sits up and barks. Another takes up the call with a staccato refrain of yaps. They are not barking at each other, squabbling as village dogs do the world over. This is not usual. I look up to see the shadow-dweller standing some ten metres from my car. He is wearing the same clothes as when I last saw him, only he is now also wearing a straw hat shaped a little like a trilby. It has a brown band around the crown.

He has seen me, is suddenly flummoxed, like a wild animal caught in the open by the hunter. He did not expect to find me also in the open, apparently at ease and taking a coffee.

Quickly, he turns and walks smartly back the way he came. I leave my table and follow him, walking as quickly. I must get a closer look at this man, perhaps have words with him.

Mopolino is not my usual terrain. I am out of my territory here, not exactly insecure yet not entirely safe. At times like this, and when I sense the faint smoke of threat in the air, I do not go unprotected. I feel inside the pocket of my jacket: the Walther is there, the metal cold despite the warmth of the sun on the material.

At the end of the street, a blue Peugeot 309 with Rome number plates is pulling away from the kerb, its engine revving hard. In the rear window is a small sticker indicating it is a Hertz hire car. Like a flash of déjà vu, I recognize the vehicle: it was in the street outside the wine shop when I first saw the shadow-dweller. It was the car the driver of which I saw talking to the old man on the day I went to visit the derelict farmhouse and found the frescoes.

I return to the table and drink my glass of water. I am suddenly thirsty, my throat dry and sore. I do not sit down.

He does not know why I come here, does not realize I use the post office. That much is obvious. If he knew, he would not have blundered into the piazza. As he is now out of the village, it is safe; so I promptly pay for my coffee and cross the piazza to brush aside the strips of bright plastic.

The old postmaster is behind the counter upon which he is smoothing out a memorial notice to Mussolini.
Il Duce
is still remembered here with affection, and the anniversary of his death is celebrated with black-bordered squares of paper pasted on street corners.

‘
Buon giorno
,’ I greet him in my usual manner.

In his, he grunts and juts his chin.

‘
Il fermo posta?
’ I enquire.

‘
Sì!
’

From the pigeonholes he takes an envelope. It is fat, was posted in Switzerland but not registered, and separate from the bundle of general delivery correspondence. I recognize the hand which wrote the address. I feel the weight of the article: documents for me to sign. As usual, he does not ask for any identification. I place the fee on the counter and the old man grunts again.

There is no point in avoiding the Citroën. The shadow-dweller knows it is there, at the end of the row of trees, against the projecting roots and the dog turds. I go directly to the car, get in and start the engine. I am in a hurry to leave the piazza, which could trap me as readily as the ring of sand does the bull.

As I drive off, the old lace-maker from the doorstep shuffles by. She lifts her hand in a half-wave, recognizing me. I wave back, almost automatically.

At the main road, I stop and look both ways. There is no traffic coming save a man on a moped, billows of smoke puttering from the exhaust. I allow him to pass. He wears a beret and is sour-faced. The blue Peugeot is nowhere to be seen. I set off towards the town, keeping a vigilant lookout for the shadow-dweller’s motor. He is nowhere along the road. He does not appear in the driving mirrors. In the next village, which curves around the contours of the mountain, I pull in to the kerb by a small shop. I wait. The Peugeot does not appear. I set off again.

In the countryside, near the village of San Gregorio, where the fields are golden with a waving heat haze and shimmering wheat interspersed with patches of lentils and, occasionally, saffron, I spy the car. It is stopped, some way down a lane. The shadow-dweller has left it to walk along a path towards a small ruined Roman amphitheatre surrounded by poplars.

The shadow-dweller has not given up the chase. He is just informing me he is not a threat to me at this distance and that he knows of Mopolino.

I halt behind a derelict building by the roadside. Now might be the time to confront the shadow-dweller. I need only walk down through an apricot orchard, cross the stream on a modern concrete footbridge beside an irrigation pipe and go on a hundred metres to the amphitheatre. He would see me coming and could have time to prepare for my arrival, but he could not plot an ambush. The element of surprise lies with me. I shall need to get close to him. The Walther is a useful gun at close range but not accurate over more than thirty metres, even in the hand of a fictional hero. And I am no such shot, not by a long chalk.

This amphitheatre, with its round walls of thin red bricks and steps sloping like the terraces of a football stadium, its arena of short, sunburnt grass, was the place in which San Gregorio was martyred, the field of his final hours, his humiliation, castigation and pain. Perhaps it is time for the wheel of fortune to turn full circle, the ancient stones give new audience to another expedient execution.

Certainly, if I am to kill him, here is the place to do it. There is no one working in the fields and my shot, our exchange of fire, would go unheeded. Anyone hearing it would assume a man was out shooting birds. It would be an easy matter to dispose of his body. I could drive the corpse into the mountains and dump it in a gully, heap stones over it to keep the signalling crows off.

Yet I do not want to kill him unless there is no alternative. It would be untidy and someone will miss him, will come to look for him, will come to look for me. They will know he was on to something around this area, will follow up his tracks and nose about, start the whole process again.

It would be best to drive him off. I know this, yet at the same time I know such a resolution to my problem is unlikely. shadow-dwellers do not just go away.

I want to know what he is after, what mission he is on, what is so relentlessly pushing him that he follows me but does not challenge me, does not draw near and pull his gun or flick the blade of his switch-knife.

Standing beside the car, my legs deep in wild flowers strewn about by the majestic chaos of nature, I realize my love of the mountains. I do, I know now, wish to remain here after the last commission is done, after the final farewell to the girl and her gun. This would be my haven, my final retreat after the years of wandering and working, of dodging the shadows and the shadow-dwellers.

Just as the girl is my last customer, so must this damned man in the blue Peugeot rental car be my last shadow-dweller. There must be no more of either of them. I want to be left in the peace I have found, regardless of what Father Benedetto may say on the subject. But the man in the fields below is going to prevent this, is going to ruin it all.

I am faced with the dilemma of him. There seems no way of resolving it. I kill him and I risk his confederates: I try to scare him off, he will only return, perhaps with others, in the sure knowledge that I am worth the hunt.

Right now, however, I must act in some way. Indecision is weakness. I shall move into the immediate future and see what develops. Fate will decide the outcome and I have to trust in it, like it or no.

The sun is hot on my head. The shadow-dweller is standing in the very centre of the amphitheatre, a single character in a drama all of his own making. As I watch him, he removes his hat, wipes his brow, replaces it upon his head and, although he is several hundred metres away, I can tell he sees me. I start off walking down through the apricot trees, but as I reach the concrete bridge upon which is spattered a trail of sheep droppings, I hear a car engine start up. I run to the end of the bridge and watch the blue roof of the Peugeot gliding by beyond the stone walls of the amphitheatre.

He does not want a confrontation. Either he is scared of me or he is playing with me, biding his time and enjoying my discomfiture: for it is no more than that. I am not afraid, just severely inconvenienced and angry. This I must control. Emotion is as much an enemy at times like this as the shadow-dweller. He will not face me in this uninhabited valley, for it does not fit his plan. I shall have to draw him to me elsewhere, cannot risk him choosing his moment in the town. That would ruin everything.