In the Wolf's Mouth (26 page)

‘Meanwhile, in the real world, Messina.’

‘But this is the real world. Frightened princes, criminal conspiracies, people slitting the throats of dogs, witches.’

‘It’s not my real world.’

‘It is for now. We have to make sense of it.’

‘We have to control it.’

‘Precisely.’

43

To Angilù, his own family was so beautiful and strange. You live as a shepherd and you might as well be living on the surface of the moon. You sing songs, you make fires and keep yourself warm, but you’re always alone. You live in the distance. You know that you are a fly on a wall, a tiny figure moving up the hillside surrounded by the coloured points of your animals, flowing and halting. You know that their bells can be heard from far away. To the person in town they’d be quieter than stones clicking underfoot or the noise of a grasshopper. There’s so much space you can’t come back from it, even after years, years of people.

Sometimes from across the table Angilù felt himself looking at his wife and daughters as if he were looking at Sant’Attilio from the hills. Staring at them now he felt that there was nothing he could do, that the empty air around their heads would be there after his death, offering no protection. There had to be something he could do.

He looked and couldn’t think of anything. He wanted to escape. He had the urge to get up into the hills, to be in that place again. Maybe it would help.

There was a mule on the estate, a good one, four years old, that Angilù decided he would take.

The mule was a good mule, strong and intelligent.
He sat on it with his shotgun on his shoulder and started uphill, the reins pulling at his hands, the sun strong on his arms and shoulders, heating the air caught inside his hat.

In front of him the ground flinched now and again with jumping crickets. Around him they made their dense, wiry sound, the sound of heat and stones and dry plants.

He crossed into an area where the battle had been. This was new to him. The familiar land was altered, ulcerated with small craters. Something had happened here that didn’t care about the land. It had been used. The atmosphere was strange. There was a large burned-out gun still standing. It looked like a humiliated and foolish creature, its long nose blackened by flames. Angilù wondered at it. A place of fury, where men had run for their lives. A tinkling below him: the mule had dislodged rifle bullet casings and they rolled along the ground. Glinting gold pellets. As he moved, the light caught others and he saw them scattered around.

Angilù didn’t know where he was going particularly. Up was his only thought as he followed a route he remembered, a path that was like travelling into his memories. Going hard uphill, the mule snorted and snaked its neck. Angilù saw a tuft of a particular kind of plant growing along a crack in a rock and stopped the animal. Swinging one foot over its skull he got down to strip a few leaves from the fibrous stalks and chew. Sharp lemon and a young green astringency, slightly dusty. It was just as he remembered. A flavour in the hills. Something waiting to happen inside him
or whoever passed. Angilù felt sweat as a coolness trickling in his beard. He ran a hand around his chin, flapped the hot air into his face with his hat and then, groaning, remounted.

Riding on he saw that someone had been along there not too long before. Outside a little rock-shelf cave someone had left two snares for foxes. Nothing in them, they lay ready. A fox could be eaten if you really had to and killing them meant that it was more likely you would get to the rabbits or partridges before they did. He hadn’t been up here for so long but it was all coming back to him. It returned him to an old unhappiness that was soothing in its simplicity.

He remembered that around the next height he would be able to look down at Sant’Attilio. And there it was. He dismounted by some low, woody bushes that would keep the mule there browsing. Angilù walked towards the view, his back hurting a little from the ride. Sitting down on the ground, he stared at the huddle of terracotta roofs, the stripe of road, the church tower, the little streets that seemed turned away from the main road for privacy, the houses whisperingly close to each other. Always interesting: to look down at Sant’Attilio and work out what was where, who was here and there. This distracted Angilù for a moment and he felt calm until his fears returned. They swarmed around him, getting closer, tighter.

The Englishman seemed like he would be no help. Angilù hadn’t trusted the look on his face while he listened to him. And what had he said in reaction?
The Princess had translated for Angilù. ‘It sounds like you’re in a bit of trouble.’ Something like that. A bit. He had no understanding at all.

And Angilù’s fears were immediate and real and he had to do something, but what? In his pain he cried out loud. He dug his hands into the earth either side of him and pulled. He wouldn’t go back down again until he knew what to do.

44

Teresa thought that the only thing you could trust was God, only the saints on the wall staring out of their gold, suffering and shedding light. The saints stared into a filthy world, where a husband vanishes, leaving a young wife alone with nothing, not even a child. The rites of mourning were terrible and weightless with no body to bury, with nothing to hold Teresa to the earth. Only God above. From that time on, Teresa’s feelings, her pain or alarm, climbed upwards into the sky. Whenever she panicked, her eyes rolled upwards. She clasped her hands to her bosom and her soul called into the blue.

A strange mourning. There were those who didn’t care about her grief and didn’t try to hide it. She felt the curses active in their silences like cockroaches in the darkness when the lamps are out. Even Cirò’s family were difficult with her, thinking she knew something they didn’t. If only she had.

Years later a man without fear emerged and that was Silvio, of all people. And then life. Children.

Then a war comes that kills many in other places, that starves people, and brings the resurrection of Cirò Albanese. A miracle is hard to bear. It is terrifying. It changes everything. She knew how they felt, those women in the Bible, Samson’s mother, the
mother of our Lord, or the friends of Lazarus.

And then the end of Silvio. What can you do? Nothing. Claw at your own skin. You can’t do anything. You live.

Teresa was not from one of those families, the Albaneses, the Zuffos, the Battistas, but when she married Cirò she knew what she was doing. She was joining the strong. She would eat. If you’d been hungry as a child you’d understand.

Mattia would not now be hungry. For as long as he lived, however long that was. Her heart raced up into the silence where there was stillness but no answers. When she was dead, finally the saints and angels would appear and speak.

45

‘By it and with it and on it and in it,’ said the Rat. ‘It’s brother and sister to me.’

The book always fell open there at the beginning, flat as a table, the spine cracked, the white stitches of the binding loose and stretched. Will flipped on.

The Mole had long wanted to make the acquaintance of the Badger. He seemed, by all accounts, to be such an important personage and, though rarely visible, to make his unseen influence felt …

And again.

It was a cold still afternoon with a hard steely sky overhead, when he slipped out of the warm parlour into the open air
.

That was the note he was after – warm parlour, those plush and modest and comfortable English words. Will wanted to climb into the book, to cover his mind with it. His day had been extremely annoying.

Will had sent a scrupulously composed message to Messina commissioning himself for action against Albanese. Neat. Decisive. Reasonable. Will was pleased with it and mentally was preparing himself for the next step and what he would say to Albanese when he apprehended him when the reply came. It was signed by Captain Draycott, of all people, and urged him to inaction, to avoid fuss or trouble. He was to
remain a quiet and dutiful servant. Permission was not granted. For Will, this was intolerable. He wouldn’t have Africa repeated. Showing no sign of it except a light sweat appearing on his forehead and a jiggling knee, Will was filled with rage.

He would do it. He would find a way.

46

The saddle and bridle were made from dark red leather. The stitching was strong yellow thread diving down and up through the material. Ray ran his finger over the taut stitches. He could see where the straps down to the stirrups had been folded around and sewn to the right width. He could imagine the pieces before they were sewn together, laid out on a table. They would be different shapes, flat and so much larger than the finished product. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to guess what they would turn into. Ray’s own father worked in leather. Ray remembered the shocking reek of his workshop, the bare lightbulb and dim walls with clock and calendar and cross. The piled leather had an acid tang. His pa sat there bent over the work. His hands were strong and skilful. They had to be to drive the thread through the tough skins. The spectacles on his nose caught the light in two half-moons. They were a concentration of focus. Sometimes he sang to himself. Ray would visit him occasionally to wheedle out of him small change to go to the movies. Afterwards, he would shut the door and leave him there, making things to sell, sewing skins into useful shapes, making a life for his family, alone in that room.

Ray heard the Princess’s footsteps. He turned around and waited for the door to open. She came in, lit up
with the secret urgency that surrounded her every time. She said, ‘There are people now clearing away the mines. One of the peasants told me. Your friend. I’m so sorry.’

‘Please don’t. You don’t have to say anything. Thank you.’ He stroked his chin and felt his growing beard, the swarm of smooth fibres under his hand. Unsoldierly now. His body softening.

‘I brought you water.’

The Princess had a bottle in her hand. Not a bottle. What was it called? One of those glass bottles that widened at the top. Some people he knew who worked in restaurants had them at home. A carafe.

‘Thanks.’

Ray watched her walk over to him. She leaned down and he took the bottle from her. He glanced across at where his cup was sitting and she went over to fetch it for him.

She set the cup down and retreated a little way and sat. ‘You like that little horse.’

‘I guess. I like looking at it. It’s a beautiful piece of work. Look at the painting on it.’

She smiled at him fondly, her head on one side. ‘So strange. To meet a stranger. This is something that never happens. There are no strangers here. Usually I only meet the peasants, the aristocrats in Paler mo. We play cards in the same rooms. There are balls, with dancing, all the floors polished. I could go away to see new things but for a woman … It means the end of certain things. A reputation.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘You know, in America the wild west always was
interesting to me. Since I was a little girl I always imagine it.’

‘Yeah? Me too, I guess. The pictures anyways. I like those.’

‘For me, what I read. Such a big place, big plains. And horses.’

Ray looked at her. She was smiling quietly, inwardly. She inhaled and Ray saw her taking in that imagined space and freedom. She was picturing it. ‘Would you like to go to those places?’ she asked him

‘I don’t know. I never thought about it, really. I just know those places in movies. I’ve only ever thought of them like that, in black and white. The whole of the country didn’t really exist for me until the army when I met people from places other than New York or Italy. In the army you meet people from all over. I had a friend, George. I have a friend, George. I have his address.’

‘Who is that?’

‘Just this guy. A guy I knew in the army. He came from the Midwest not the far west.’

‘I see. But you could go to those places. They’re in your country and you are a man. You could go there.’

‘I guess.’

‘You seem better today.’

47

Angilù didn’t often carry a shotgun any more and he’d never owned a pistol. He still had a shotgun in his house, its wooden stock worn gaunt over the years, a farmer’s tool. But for this Angilù wanted a pistol. A shotgun could be misinterpreted. People would blame one of Albanese’s natural enemies. A pistol: that might suggest something else had happened. There was a phrase Prince Adriano liked to say in French, a saying from one of the old wars – to encourage the others.

Angilù had a key to the field guards’ room and went there early enough not to be disturbed, stars still bristling in the thick blue western sky, the east thinning out with streaky red. The bloom of lamplight revealed the room much as Angilù remembered it. A particular atmosphere of menace and relaxation and self-regard. Hair oil and clothes brushes and boot polish and oil for leather, hats, boots, a mirror, a Christ, a Saint Rosaria, chairs and ashtrays. Weapons were not visible. They were in a cupboard that the Prince called the armoury. (His own English shotguns were kept in an armoury in the house.) Angilù opened the door. Holsters and harnesses hung like bridles for horses. Long barrels of rifles pointed upwards. In a drawer Angilù found two pistols, holsters and bullets. He picked up a gun and weighed it in his palm. He spun
the barrel and listened to its clicks. He pocketed it. No need for a holster.

The door opened. One of the guards, a tall, thick-featured man named Giuseppe with violet marks of sleeplessness under his eyes. Angilù saw them as their eyes met. Giuseppe hesitated, his mouth shaping to say something. After all, he knew about the burned trees, the dead dog. Everybody did. But all he said was ‘Good morning’. And there it was, the silence that filled Angilù with rage. People in a trance, in a dream, blind with fear, silent even though they knew. Angilù would blow it all up but for now he said nothing. He picked up a cardboard packet and poured some bullets into his left hand. Golden and heavy, fat as bees. He dropped them into his other pocket, replaced the box, closed the cupboard and walked out of the room, out into the brightening day.