The American Page 19

  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 license plates is pulling away from the curb, 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 recognise 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 realise 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 pigeon-holes he takes an envelope. It is fat, was posted in Switzerland but not registered, and separate from the bundle of general delivery correspondence. I recognise 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 root 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, recognising 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 instance 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 over.

  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 realise 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.

  I leave, drive quickly back to town and park the car in a piazza I have previously not used. From now on, I must leave the car in different places every day.

  Back in my apartment, I open the envelope. The bank draft—typically in triplicate: the Swiss are so thorough—is there, awaiting my signature and presentation. An accompanying letter informs me of how much pleasure th
e bank has in dealing with my affairs, and appended to it is a statement of my account. I check the figure neatly typed upon the draft. It is, of course, correct.

  My heart is racing, with anger and annoyance. I take a beer from the refrigerator and climb to the loggia. Here, I am safe from the shadow-dweller, the little red robin of a devil which squats on my shoulder. I sip the beer, it is cool and my heart slows, my anger dissolving. I try to figure out where he is from, for whom he is working, what his orders or his motives are, what it is he is planning to do. Yet there are no clues and for now I must ignore him. The delivery date draws near and there is work to be done.

  There was, yesterday, a bit of a contretemps between the girls. It began after our love-making. I was lying on my back in the centre of the huge double bed. Across the Windsor chairs was spread our clothing and upon the dressing table was Dindina’s handbag. Clara’s shoes were next to it.

  Dindina was sitting up on my left, running her fingers through her hair whilst Clara was to my right, lying on her side facing me. Her breasts were pressed against my arm and her breath, still coming in short pants from the exertion of our romp, was hot upon my shoulder. The dim street light in the Via Lampedusa was barring through the slats of the shutters to stripe the ceiling. We had switched on the lamp standing upon the dressing table, its bulb casting a rosy glow through the red silk shade to fill the room with warmth. In the tall mirror, I could see Dindina’s front, her full breasts hanging slightly and swaying as she methodically combed her hair with her fingers.

  Clara moved her head so that her mouth was nearer to my ear. Her breasts stuck to my biceps with sweat as she moved.

  ‘Dear one . . .’ she whispered, her sentence cut short.

  I turned my head and smiled at her then kissed her brow. It, too, was damp with cooling perspiration. I could taste the salt.

  ‘Your shoes,’ Dindina remarked, out of the blue and in English. ‘They are on the table.’

  Clara made no response to this obvious fact. They were new shoes, made in Rome, purchased that day: she had yet to wear them and was proud of her acquisition. Quite why she had not left them under the chair with those she was wearing I did not know but I should imagine they were placed upon the glass top of the dressing table in order to catch Dindina’s eye.

  ‘On the table,’ Dindina repeated.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is bad to put shoes on a table. They have walked the streets.’

  Clara did not reply. She looked at me and winked. It was a wickedly mischievous wink and I felt a warmth for her and her conniving gambit.

  ‘Take them down.’

  ‘They are not dirty. There is no harm and we go soon.’ She looked at me for affirmation.

  ‘Yes,’ I said and I sat up. ‘It is time. And I have a table booked for us in the pizzeria. The town is full of tourists.’

  Dindina slipped off the bed. I watched her smooth, round buttocks move against each other as she walked across the room and, with a sweep of her hand, cast the shoes to the floor where they clattered on the wooden floorboards by the edge of the carpet.

  ‘Sporcacciona!’ Dindina spat out.

  Clara leaped from my side and gathered the shoes up. One was scuffed where it had hit the floor. She showed the damage to me in mute silence, her eyes both appealing for my support and flashing with suppressed Latin anger.

  ‘Only north peasants put shoes on the table,’ Dindina remarked acidly as she reached behind her back and snapped the clasps on her bra.

  ‘Only south peasants have no regard for riches,’ Clara rejoined, deliberately replacing the shoes upon the table and tugging on her panties.

  I wanted to laugh. Here was I, sitting stark naked, on a huge double bed in the top floor room of a bordello in central Italy, with two semi-naked girls arguing in English for my benefit. It was the stuff of Whitehall farce.

  ‘Do not argue,’ I said quietly. ‘It will ruin a good night of love-making. I am sure,’ I stood and took the scuffed shoe from Clara’s hand, ‘this mark will vanish with polish.’

  Dindina and Clara said nothing but gave each other looks fit to kill. Whoever it was that first realised that a woman wronged is a dangerous animal, and I suspect he was a neolithic half-ape, was immeasurably correct.

  We left the bordello, walking arm-in-arm along the Via Lampedusa and through the streets to the Via Roviano. It was a balmy night, the air warm and the bats audible in the sky. The stars were out so brightly one could see the strongest of them through the glare of the lights. Clara carried a plastic carrier bag with her old shoes in them. She wore the new ones to spite Dindina, who carried only her small black handbag.

  Our table was by the window. I wanted this changed but the pizzeria was full: the patron shrugged apologetically. I was insistent and, in the end, he succumbed to shifting us to a table only half in the view of the street. I sat in the chair out of sight. To be on show in a window, like a mannequin or an Amsterdam whore, was tantamount to stupidity in my situation.

  In truth, our love-making had not been so grand. Whenever the curtains of bliss began to descend upon me, to cloud over my mind and cut off the real world, a vision would dance in front of them, the shadow-dweller in the piazza at Mopolino, the shadow-dweller in the amphitheatre, the shadow-dweller leaning on a parked car as he had been when first I saw him, the shadow-dweller and the old man pointing, waving, pointing at me. I had to struggle to exorcise this Banquo’s ghost from my sexual feast.

  We ordered our usual: a pizza napoletana for Dindina, pizza margherita for Clara. I requested a pizza ai funghi. I was not in the mood for eating. Perhaps the girls’ argument had soured the evening. Perhaps, somewhere close, was the shadow-dweller waiting for his chance. I should, I knew, have to be very cautious returning home. Night hides many things.

  Conversation was not forthcoming from the girls. I had to make the going and it was difficult. They would talk to me, each of them in turn, but they would not address each other no matter how hard I tried to make them. In the end, I gave up, drank my wine and cut into my pizza, keeping an eye on those who entered through the door.

  As the waiter brought my bill, Clara leaned across the table to me.

  ‘I am sorry. I do not want to make you unhappy but her . . .’ She flashed a dour look at Dindina. ‘She insults me.’

  Dindina, overhearing this and upset at not having taken the initiative of apology first, huffed and turned away. As she did so, she knocked over my glass of wine. It was only one-third full and that from the bottom of the bottle. I had no intention of drinking it.

  ‘In the south,’ Clara said in a forced tone of sweetness, ‘it is the custom of peasants to spill wine upon the table. It is a custom . . . I do not know the English for this. We say in Italian, pagano: for ignorant people of no god.’

  Dindina could do nothing in response. The waiter was between them, offering the bill, accepting my payment.

  ‘Come!’ I said. ‘It is time to go. I must walk far into the mountains tomorrow to paint. To the only place where the butterfly I need to see lives. The only place in the whole universe.’

  Normally, were I to make such a comment, Clara would want a description of the butterfly, knowledge of the location; Dindina would want to know how much the painting would be worth. Yet now, neither spoke.

  We left the pizzeria to discover a queue of tourists waiting for a table. Looking up and down the street, I did not see him.

  Dindina gave me her uncle-style kiss and I gave her her evening’s earnings. I then turned to Clara with the same amount of money folded in my hand.

  ‘No, grazie. I do not need so much today. For you, I love. I am no puttana.’

  Dindina flew at her, her fists flailing. Clara dropped her plastic bag and raised her arms in front of her face for protection. I picked the bag up and moved aside. There was nothing I could do.

  After a few swift but ill-placed punches, Dindina paused for breath. Clara took this opportunity and smacked her face. The blow was so h
ard, Dindina’s head jerked to one side. She stumbled, half fell and regained her balance. Then she came for Clara, clawing and scratching and the two of them closed up, tearing at each other’s clothes, pulling each other’s hair, trying to kick each other’s shins.

  Their fury was both comical and terrifying. When men fight, there is an urgency to it. Emotion seems suppressed: the whole act of fighting takes them over with its coldness. With women, the emotions are as sharp and as obvious as the blows, the fighting merely an extension of the feelings.

  The tourist queue broke up. This was a side to Italian life not promised in the brochure. They had not expected to witness such a local custom and they crowded round with all the avidity of a bull-fight audience. They shouted and chattered. They were joined by locals who enjoyed the spectacle as a form of free entertainment.

  The fracas lasted scarcely three minutes. In the end, Dindina retreated. Her shoulder was bare where her blouse was torn and there were two gouge-marks on her skin beginning to weep blood. Clara was just tousled, her clothing awry but undamaged. Both of them were heaving and panting with the exertion.

  ‘Megera!’ Dindina ground between her teeth.

  ‘Donnaccia!’ Clara quipped adding, ‘In English, we say Beetch.’

  I stifled a grin. Several men in the crowd clapped and there was much masculine laughter. Dindina, not able to accept this loss of face, stalked off, bending painfully to pick up her handbag which had fallen to the gutter.

  ‘Do not put the handbag on the table,’ Clara called after her. ‘It has walked the street.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Like her,’ she said.

  The crowd dispersed with a cruel joviality and the tourists re-formed their queue. I handed Clara her plastic bag and we walked slowly down the Via Roviano.

  ‘That was not kind, Clara,’ I mildly remonstrated.

  ‘She fight first. She threw my shoes to the floor.’