The American Page 21

  They have been joined by a pair of new entertainers. They appear to be a couple. The man is in his mid-twenties, handsome in an aquiline way with dark, flashing eyes. He wears a loose-fitting shirt like that of an eighteenth-century dandy or a Sixties rock star, and he has a large gold earring dangling from his left lobe. He juggles. According to his act, he tosses balls, empty bottles and eggs, with as many as seven in the air at once. Whilst juggling, he talks in a quick patter which has some of his Italian audience in stitches of laughter.

  His partner is a girl in her late teens who squats or kneels on the pavement and draws paintings on the paving stones with coloured chalks. She has long, unkempt, dark hair which hangs over her face. Every so often, with a reflex action, she pushes this aside and greys her hair with chalk dust, tinting it vaguely with the colour she is using. She has a shapely waist but almost no bust and her bare feet are dirty. Around her neck, on a chain, hangs an ankh. She, too, could be a Sixties hippy not grown up.

  I watch them for five minutes, at the same time looking over the crowd of spectators at their show and at that of the puppeteer. I do not see the shadow-dweller.

  The steps up to the church are crowded. A party of middle-aged tourists is waiting for the arrival of a coach, sitting on the steps, standing in the narrow shade of the doorway fanning themselves. They are of various nationalities, each as easily recognised as flowers in a field. The Americans carry cameras suspended on straps around their necks; the men have the top two or three buttons of their shirts undone, the women lean upon the stonework of the church. The British sweat profusely and fan themselves with their tour brochures; the women talk to each other about the heat, the men stand disconsolately and are silent. The French sit on the steps. The Germans stand resolutely in the direct glare of the sun. The tour guide is a young man in a blue cotton jacket who flits from group to group anxiously assuring them their transport will be arriving imminently.

  I push through the throng and open the heavy door of the church. As it closes behind me on a sighing hydraulic hinge, the clamour of the secular world is muffled and the delicate muted sounds of the holy world swell.

  The church is cool and wide. The black-and-white chequerboard of the marble floor is loud under my feet, every footfall echoing upwards. There are no pews towards the altar, only a few rows to one side. Congregations are small. I stare up at the monstrous gold ceiling and inset paintings: the spotlights have been switched off for a shaft of sun is cutting through the air, striking off the floor and glinting on the carvings. An American, undeterred by the impending arrival of his transport, is lying on his back on the marble floor, the modern upended equivalent of a mediaeval supplicant, photographing the ceiling.

  I approach the altar. Above it hangs a lurid, life-sized plaster Christ nailed to his cross, which is made of real wood. From his wounds and down the side of his bearded face drips scarlet plaster blood. The nails, it appears, are genuine metal stakes rammed through the sculpture. On either side of the crucifix are white marble angels ascending into heaven. The background is an oil painting of Calvary, with a brilliant blue sky in which hangs one black thundercloud. Beneath the cloud is a row of distant crosses, bearing insignificant figures who do not count.

  I gaze at this rococo example of infinitely bad taste and then turn to survey the church, like a shepherd priest surveying his flock of sheep now that the bleating of the prayer is over.

  The American has stood up and is brushing his trousers. A friend is frantically signalling to him in silence from the doorway but he has not noticed him. A woman in a shawl is making her way to the door. She walks with faltering steps. A young couple are over to the side of the church, lighting electric candles on a display by inserting coins in a slot. They might be in an amusement arcade, playing a game. The coins fall noisily into the receptacle beneath the table.

  There are no doors in the church walls. I pass behind the altar where there is a sacristy. It is a musty room filled with church garments hanging on racks, several large antique chests with modern high security padlocks, shelves of books and a desk littered with papers on the edge of which is a stinking cup of cold coffee. I look behind the rows of garments. There is no hidden door. The only place remaining which could cover an access to the roof is behind the saint’s tomb.

  I am about to leave the sacristy and go towards the lavish tomb when I see him. The shadow-dweller.

  He is standing in the very centre of the nave as if he has just risen from the floor. He is almost looking in my direction. I duck back and look out from the comparative security of the sacristy door. He appears not to have spotted me. He turns, walks slowly across the church and stands before the tomb. The fluted pillars and gold flecked black marble tower over him and I think, in a flight of fancy, that if an earthquake were to strike now he would be crushed by the grotesque grandeur of the hideous edifice.

  From behind the tomb appears Father Benedetto. He is carrying a dustpan and brush. The shadow-dweller beckons to him and they move towards each other.

  I watch avidly, my ears straining to catch even a snatch of their conversation but they are keeping their voices low and any sound is lost in the immensity of the church.

  Father Benedetto does not put down his dustpan and brush. The shadow-dweller does not point to the tomb, to the altar, to the ceiling. It occurs to me that they are not discussing the artistic or architectural merits of the building.

  After a few minutes, the shadow-dweller shakes the priest’s hand and walks quickly out of the church. Father Benedetto goes towards the automatic candle stand and, putting his dustpan and brush down, fumbles under his soutane for the keys.

  ‘Hello, my friend,’ I say as he bends to the machine.

  He is startled. Two people speaking to him in rapid succession is not common in the church. He stands up quickly. His face is pale.

  ‘You!’ he exclaims. ‘You are here. Come with me.’

  Ignoring his dustpan and brush, locking the money box again, he ushers me towards the altar and into the sacristy.

  ‘A man was here asking questions about you.’

  ‘Really?’ I feign surprise. ‘When?’

  ‘Just . . .’ He looks at the door as if he half expects the man to reappear. ‘. . . but two minutes. No more.’

  ‘What did he ask?’

  ‘For where you live. He informed me he was a friend from London.’

  ‘And you told him?’

  The priest looks at me with vague disdain. ‘Of course, I do not tell him. How do I know him? He is maybe the police. Certainly not a friend.’

  ‘Why do you say so?’

  ‘A friend would know your house. Besides, friends carry no guns when calling.’

  He glances shrewdly at me. I sense his eyes searching into me.

  ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘If you live in Italy, and you are a man of the cloth, you meet many people. All kinds of men, of women. And I was once in Naples . . .’

  He grimaces as if it stands to reason that anyone who has lived in Naples, if only for a short while, can tell the difference between a fat wallet and a shoulder holster.

  So the shadow-dweller carries a piece. This puts a different light on the matter. He is no ordinary tail, for the man who carries a gun knows how to use it.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I said I had met you several times but did not know you. I had never visited your lodging. He asked for your lodging, not your address. He asked if you came to the church. I said sometimes you came. Not too much.’

  ‘Good.’

  There is, I know, a sense of relief in my voice.

  ‘It is all true, my butterfly-hunting associate,’ Father Benedetto replies. ‘I have not visited your home. I do not know of the location for I have not been there to see it for myself. I have only the word of Signora Prasca. You come sometimes to church, if only to look. And I do not know you.’

  He smiles sadly and I touch him on his arm.

  ‘Thank y
ou,’ I say. ‘You are a true friend.’

  ‘I am a priest,’ he states as if this not only explains everything but is also a contradiction of the fact.

  ‘Tell me,’ I ask as I reach the sacristy door, ‘is there a way on to the roof of the church?’

  ‘No. Only God’s way,’ he answers enigmatically. ‘You are safe.’

  I leave the church with extreme caution. The tour group has departed and the entertainers are taking a break. Only the flautist works, his fluid music drifting in the hot air. No one pays him the least attention. I cross the piazza before the church, tossing a coin into his tin as I pass. For luck. I quickly descend the steps and, at the bottom, look back. I am not being followed.

  Back in the apartment, I sit quietly and think. The shadow-dweller is no nearer to discovering me. No one appears to have betrayed me. Visconti has led the man nowhere and the others will know by now to keep mum as well. Father Benedetto has avoided giving the information without perjuring himself in the eyes of his god. Signora Prasca cannot have been approached for otherwise the shadow-dweller would know of my address. This leaves only Galeazzo and the two girls.

  The former I shall speak with, spin him a line about a creditor or somesuch. Anything will do and he will be trustworthy. Of this I am sure. And Clara, too. Dindina is not such a safe bet though, not since she was so publicly belittled.

  As the sun drops and the evening gathers outside the window, pulling its shadow skirts over the valley, I consider that it may be time to decide upon a hideout and any action I should take should someone sell me out.

  The track up to the castle—the fortification which stands like a rampant, gray and ragged cockscomb above the valley—is very rough. Rain has gouged deep channels in it, and rocks as large as grapefruit litter the ground. The bushes on either side overgrow the way and necessitate driving with the windows closed. An added obstacle is the steep angle of the track which was made for slow moving chariots and horses, not the internal combustion engine. The farmers never come up here for the hillside around the castle is strewn with boulders and grass cover is poor. Furthermore, the two hundred metre cliff upon which the castle perches makes it unsafe for livestock. Only historians and archaeologists, and very occasionally rock climbers, venture up this far.

  At the top of the track is a crude turning circle. I get the Citroën up to this, taking twenty minutes of grinding in first gear with several two-point turns at the hairpin bends. The hood, when I get out to lean on it, is too hot for the touch. There is a long scratch down the offside door.

  I park the car under a dense tree and, taking my rucksack from the back seat, lock the doors.

  From the turning circle, a pathway wends through scrubby, wind-pressed bushes to a stone bridge over the dry moat in which butterflies are thronging to a patch of yellow flowers. I ignore them. I have not come here to paint butterflies. The castle entrance, no more than a horse-cart width, is still sealed with the iron grid. The titanium steel chains and heavy duty padlocks remain in place as they were when I last came here, though one of the locks has been tampered with, unsuccessfully. The keyhole cover is wrenched awry. A few more fresh, as yet unrusted hacksaw blades litter the ground but the chains are none the worse for them. The bars have been jacked slightly wider apart.

  They do not think, these modern invaders, do not credit the thirteenth-century builders with guile. The front gate is not the only entrance.

  I rattle the chains as if by doing so I ring the bell. I am coming, I say to the ghosts within.

  Around the end of the castle, just before the precipice, the moat comes to an end in a bank of rock through which a low, short tunnel was constructed. The moat was never intended to be water-filled and any water which might collect in it was allowed to drain off down the sheer face of the cliff. Yet from this tunnel leads off a second, at right angles, hidden behind an apparently unmovable boulder. It was a means of surreptitious escape in time of siege. It is about two metres high and a metre wide, with an arched roof and a paved, stepped floor. It rises through a series of sharp-angled bends at each of which are plainly visible the massive stone bolts upon which once stood defensive doors. Without hacksaw or hydraulic jack, one can gain access to the castle grounds armed with nothing more than a reliable flashlight.

  I am certain no one alive knows of this entrance. Each time I visit, I place a twig across the passageway, a few metres in. It has never been disturbed.

  Careful not to be observed, though I have yet to meet anyone at this precarious place, I enter the sluice and, switching on the pocket flashlight, start up the passageway. I step over my twig alarm. My footsteps are flat. There is no echo here. I arrive beneath a tangle of brush. It is easily pushed aside, and I am in.

  The castle is built along a ridge. The area of the keep, some two hectares I should guess, is far from flat. In the centre, where the land is highest, one can look over the curtain walls which are still substantial even if crumbling around the few windows cut in them. Into the rocks and slopes of the hill within the fortress are what were once stables, workshops, storerooms. Above them were quarters for workers, for soldiers and serfs. The buildings are reduced to rubble now, with no walls higher than three metres, the hollow notches for timber trusses and stays in the stonework are crammed with the debris of birds’ nests. Even these appear to be derelict and no longer used. Narrow lanes pass between the buildings, grassed over. Trees grow from within the stonework, spreading leafy canopies where once were wooden and tiled roofs. Creepers festoon some of the walls—ivy and a kind of clematis. Several fig trees grow out of the natural rock, spreading over the stone remains of men.

  Higher up the castle interior are the grander buildings. Here were the lord’s apartments, now destroyed completely, here a small chapel of which only the altar remains, cracked and subdued by the weather. In winter, this place is under snow. In summer, as now, the sun beats down as mercilessly as a plague fever.

  At the highest point is a fortification. It, too, has all but crumbled away. Yet here the curtain wall is low, not from time’s ravages, but from choice. Here there is no need for a wall at all. The cliffs suffice.

  I lean carefully over, sure to have a firm handhold on the pliable but strong trunk of a woody bush. It is a sheer drop from my chin to a village below, tucked in against the base of the cliff. If I were to throw a stone outwards, it would surely arc out and hit a rooftop. I can see the pantiled roofs spread below me like a crazy patchwork, like the bleak fields of East Anglia, but painted reddish and viewed from an aircraft. The campanile of the church is not a tower but a protuberance. The village piazza is a dusty oblong upon which children no bigger than mites are riding bicycles. In the streets, in the shadows, a cube moves. I see the vehicle yet no sound rises.

  I stand erect, step back from the brink a pace or two. From here, the whole of the valley is in view. I can see the town, far off to my left, squatting on its hump of hill like an Italian Jerusalem. I can just make out the dome of S. Silvestro and can judge the whereabouts of my apartment: somewhere in the haze lies my temporary home and the Socimi.

  The builders of this place were like me. They controlled death. In the valley below, on the mountains behind, nothing stirred without their knowledge or consent, nothing lived save by their concurrence. Their enemies were treated with chivalry. Imprisonment was dishonourable. It was better to die. They killed and were killed, swiftly, with the vengeance of their gods bunched in their fists and forged into their steel. There was not a sword, not a spear head, not a quiver of arrows or a crossbow in this whole place which was not blessed at the altar.

  I sit on a flat-topped boulder and swing my rucksack to the ground. A skink rustles through the tough grass and dead leaves. I see its tail flick under a stone.

  For all intents and purposes, I am come home. Whatever I may say to Father Benedetto about the role of history—and he says to me—I have to admit this much: I am part of the process. It is just that I do not allow it to affect me. I accept I ow
e allegiance, owe precedent to the men who lived here once, to the ghosts who inhabit these walls and tangles of branches. They, too, were a part of the process.

  For them, they were not shaping history, not letting it shape them. They thought only of today and the consequence of it upon tomorrow. What was done, was done. They existed to see things improved.

  This is just what I am doing. Seeing things improve. Through change. Through the young lady in the skirt with my handiwork pressed to her shoulder and her eye to the ’scope. The future is, as youths say these days, where it’s at. I cause where it’s at to happen.

  There is a great debt due to me, to the young lady. Without us, things would never change. Not truly. Not drastically. And drastic change is what moulds the future, not the gradual, tidy metamorphosis of government and law. Only floods cause the building of arks; only volcanic eruptions the making of islands; only epidemics the discovery of wonder-drugs.

  Only assassination alters the world.

  And so I acknowledge now, in this place, high in the mountains of the Old World where the dreams began, where bees make smoky honey in the ruins and the lizards scuttle, where the birds wheel in the mountain updraughts and the thermals of the plain, the debt I in turn owe to men who blazed the trail of the spear, the trail of the sword and the gun.

  I open the rucksack and spread upon the rock beside me a meagre picnic. This is no feast such as I took to the alpine meadow. Just a hunk of bread, some pecorino, an apple and a half-full bottle of red wine.

  I break the bread as if it is the host of some long-forgotten god, some pagan deity. This is not the white fine bread of Rome or London but a local loaf, brown as the desiccated earth and just as gritty with wheatseed and the occasional husk which escaped the winnowing. I bite into it and then, in the same mouthful, snap off a fragment of the cheese. It is hard going on the jaw but satisfying. Before I swallow, I take a swig of the wine. It too is local: not the magnificent vintage of Duilio but a coarse crude liquid better only than vinegar. I masticate these flavours in my mouth and swallow hard.