A Winter's Night (47 page)
Authors: Valerio Massimo Manfredi,Christine Feddersen Manfredi
Â
“â
Venenum quod semper mecum habere consueram, sumpsi.'
Â
I drank the poison that I always kept with me. The Latin is quite easy to read, it's taken from an author that we did our first translations from in the seminary . . . He ends up with a phrase which begs for God's mercy. â
Miserere mei Domine
.'”
“But why did he choose to die there, on Pra' dei Monti? He always said it was possessed by a demon.”
“To drive the demon away? Did he sacrifice his own life to exorcise this demon? We'll never know.”
“So that's why the umbrella mender was so strange. That's why he spoke like a fortune teller, or a prophet . . . Don't tell anyone what happened tonight, Amedeo. Nor you, Iofa.”
They both nodded in silence. Savino and Iofa returned home and buried the bones of Don Massimino at the foot of a century-old oak tree, on the edge of the field that bordered on the consecrated land of the cemetery.
Â
The winter that followed was particularly harsh and, just before Christmas, there was a big snowfall. It was said that a wanderer surprised by the storm hurried down a road followed many a time in the past, sure to find refuge at the end and a bowl of warm soup. It wasn't a man, but a woman. A ragged old woman, dragging herself through the deep snow in her broken shoes, clutching a worn shawl around her shoulders. It was Desolina, who had vanished without a trace such a very long time ago.
She entered into the Bruni family courtyard, strangely plunged into darkness. She looked around in bewilderment, as if she couldn't quite recognize the place. Her eyes set on the jumble of burnt beams and crumbled walls where the enormous stable had once stood: the great Hotel Bruni. The house was still there. There was no doubt about it, that was the house. She knocked again and again, calling out with a querulous voice: “It's Desolina, poor Desolina. Open the door for Desolina . . . ”
But no one could answer her from the dark, empty house. The old woman looked around, at the ancient walnut tree lifting its naked branches into the twirling white flakes and then, again, at the closed door. She curled up on the threshold to wait, unable to believe that Hotel Bruni might not welcome her. Surely Clerice would soon show up in her white apron, with the soup ladle in her hand.
Iofa, the carter, found her like that the next day, covered with snow, her head leaning against the door, the tears frozen on her ashen face, her eyes staring in pained surprise.
Â
THE END
Valerio Massimo Manfredi is a professor of classical archaeology at Bocconi University in Milan. He is the author of many works of fiction, including the Alexander trilogy,
Spartan
, and
The Last Legion
, which was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley, directed by Doug Lefler. His novel about the assassination of Julius Caesar,
The Ides of March
, was published by Europa Editions in 2010.
