The American (25 page)

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 the 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 boards 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 realized 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 bag with her old shoes in it. 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 exorcize 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 keep it 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 hard 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 bullfight 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.’

‘Not that, just your last remarks.’

She had been smiling with her triumph but now her mouth turned down.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I have upset you.’

‘No. You have not. You have upset Dindina. I doubt we shall see her again.’

‘No . . . Will you be sad at this?’

‘Perhaps . . .’ I answered but this was a perverse dissimulation. I was extremely glad. It reduced the number of people to whom the shadow-dweller could make an approach, who could guide him to me.

We walked a little further and, as we passed a narrow alleyway, Clara took my hand and guided me into the darkness. For the fleetest of moments, my heart raced with instinctive panic. Such shadows, such dark niches in the walls of the town could contain my incubus, the shadow-dweller. What if, I thought, she was in league with him, that our relationship was just a ploy leading to this one moment of supposed emotion followed by the quick thrust of the bowie knife or the jab of the hypodermic.

Yet her hand was not grasping but soft in my own. There was no urgency in her movement save that of the lover wanting love, and my panic subsided as quickly as it arose.

She halted a few steps in, dropped her plastic bag and pressed herself against me, sobbing. I put my arms around her and held her close. There was no need to speak.

When she had stopped crying, I gave her my handkerchief and she wiped her eyes, dabbing at her cheeks.

‘I love you,’ she suddenly declared. ‘So much.
Molto
. . .’

‘I am not a young man,’ I reminded her.

‘This is no matter.’

‘I shall not live here for ever. I am not an Italian.’

As the words left me, I thought of how much I should like to remain in the town, in the valley, in the company of this young girl.

‘I do not want always to live here,’ she replied.

I handed her her plastic bag again.

‘It is time to go home.’

‘Let me come to your home.’

‘I cannot. One day . . .’

She was upset by my reply but decided not to press her demand. We left the alley and parted in the Corso Federico II.

‘Stay for ever here,’ she said as she kissed me. It was as much a command as a wish.

We parted and I made my way home by a very circuitous route. I watched and listened out for every movement, even dodging into the shadows once at the sound of a cat out mousing. The nearer I drew to the
vialetto
, the more meticulous I became. Yet, despite all the avid attention I was paying to my surroundings, I could not prevent a recurring thought: Clara had fought for me, not for her shoes or her bruised dignity. She loved me and wanted me and, I had to admit, I loved her in my fashion.

But I had to concentrate upon the shadows, upon the doorways deep in night, upon the alleys and the spaces behind parked cars. Thoughts of Clara could not be allowed to interfere, or she would be the death of me.

The mercury-tipped bullet is so simple yet so utterly devastating. It is more powerful than the Chicago gangster’s dumdum, more deadly than a commando raider’s soft-nose.

As I sit in my workshop, the music playing low in the background – Elgar, say: the Enigma Variations – I prepare the ammunition. Some is standard: the lead and the jacketed. The other, the explosives, I have to make.

It is a fiddly job. The cartridges have to be taken apart and a tiny hole drilled in the nose. This has to be held in a vice tightly enough to stop it revolving with the bit but not so tightly as to distort the slug. Once the hole has been drilled to a depth of precisely 3 mm, these being Parabellum, it has to be half filled with mercury. This done, the hole is then plugged with a drop of liquid lead. At no time must the bullet get too hot or else it will expand and deform.