The American (32 page)

‘As a purchase, it is of course a triumph. To find such a complete set, in southern Italy, in such fine condition, is the proof of a true book-hunter at work. Still, it is the most obscene and pornographic book in your shop.’

Knowing Galeazzo to have a private collection of Italian erotic literature, most of it illustrated quite graphically, in his bedroom, to not a single volume of which I have been privy, this statement has the desired effect. He stares at me as if I am a buffoon.

‘This is literature,’ he exclaims. ‘The best of literature.’

‘Obscenity and pornography are not restricted to stories of two girls and a man sucking each other’s privates,’ I retort. ‘There is more gross profanity in one corner of the political world than in the whole of the red-light areas of Naples, Amsterdam and Hamburg all rolled into one.’

He decides not to enter into this argument. Instead, he pours out a glass of wine. It is pale red in colour and
frizzante
. I take a mouthful of it. It is dry and has a tarlike aftertaste.

‘Parasini. From Calabria. It is good, you will agree?’

‘It is good.’

The sun streams in through the grimy window and I undergo what is a unique experience for me, a positive longing to repeat this afternoon many times in the future.

*

I have a strong presentiment that matters in my life are coming to a head. I may merely feel this way because the gun is delivered, the money in the bank, my not altogether unlucrative career at a close. It may be in the stars, although I am not an astrologically minded individual and I do not eagerly anticipate the weekly assessment of my horoscope in one of the tabloids. I dismiss astrology as irrational drivel.

The truth, of course, lies in the fact that the shadow-dweller is about. I feel him every waking hour and meet him, on occasion, in my sleep. I have not seen him for several days but he is somewhere in the town, his presence itching my spine like a creeping cancer. For certain, he is closing in, street by street, alleyway by alleyway, bar by bar, biding his time until his moment arrives. All I can do is wait.

Father Benedetto is to be away longer than he anticipated. He has left a message for me with his housekeeper. He has gone from Florence to Verona for he knows not how long. His bedridden octogenarian aunt, he writes, is dying and has asked for him to give her absolution. She may die tomorrow, she may last the month out. To me, the visit seems to need to be only a brief one. At over eighty, and confined to her deathbed, she can hardly commit more sins before she dies.

I am sad: I want to drink good wine and eat his home-cured ham with him, share with him my misgivings, my dilemma, perhaps ask his advice. The grapevine in his little garden is surely laden with dark mauve fruit by now, and he is certain to have offered me abundant tastings of them.

I have a horrid and insidious feeling I shall not see him again. What this means, I cannot tell. He might be able to divine it. I do not feel I am going to die: it is not time for me to turn, in panic, back to the church and stutter out a lengthy confession, struggle through an act of contrition. Be assured I shall never do that.

I want to give him a present and have painted a watercolour of his garden for him. It is not a painting of which I am particularly proud, for I am not a landscape artist. It is an impressionistic daub of only twenty by fifteen centimetres, and I am not skilled at imprecisions. I prefer meticulous detail, as in a butterfly’s wing or the rifling of a barrel. But then his little patch of tranquillity is hardly a landscape.

Seldom do I ever admit to emotion, having no room for it in my life. When emotion enters the soul, reason does a runner. And reason is my saviour. Yet I should be a liar if I were to say there were no tears mixed with the colours of that picture.

I have never been adept with wood unless it is the carving of it into the smooth firmness of a stock. It takes me three attempts to get the mitred corners of the frame to fit. Metal is so much more obedient, so much more forgiving. It is hard and whispers all the time one is working it. Every rasp of the file says, ‘Go easy, go easy.’ Eventually, though, the surround is done and I mount the painting. It looks well from a few metres away. He will be pleased with it.

To accompany this tiny gift, I write a letter. That this is unusual for me is something of an understatement: apart from keeping contacts of a business nature, I am not a correspondent. Yet I feel a need to communicate with Father Benedetto.

I use Italian notepaper, the variety which bears no watermark and can be purchased cheaply in the market. It is made in the backstreets of Naples from recycled newspaper and rags and is not white but yellowish, for no bleaching chlorine has been passed through it.

To write this letter, I go up to the loggia and sit at the table with the sun cutting a bow across the floor, the overhead panorama cast in deep shadow. The valley and mountains are swimming in the liquid air of midday, the pinnacles of the row of poplars in the Parco della Resistenza dell’ 8 Settembre shimmering as if being tugged by a manic wind, but there is not the least breeze in this torrid hour.

I sit facing the valley. The castle on its rock is barely perceivable. I look in its general direction and think of the man astride his girl in the ruin under the sweet chestnut, his loins coyly hidden by the folds of her fallen skirt. I begin to write. This will not be a long letter. I begin
Dear Father
and pause.

This will not be a confession. I have nothing to confess.

If one does not believe one has sinned, one cannot be remorseful. I have not sinned. I have stolen nothing since I last went to confession: that was when I set up in my profession and ceased fencing. I have not been adulterous: all my liaisons have been with single, willing ladies and, if my sex has occurred out of wedlock, I do not consider myself sinful on this account. We live at the end of the twentieth century. I have studiedly avoided taking the Christian god’s name in vain. I have respect for the religions of others: after all, I have worked for the cause of several – Islam, Christianity, Communism. I have no intention of insulting or demeaning the beliefs of my fellow man. Nothing can be gained thereby save controversy and the dubious satisfaction of insult.

I admit I have lied. More accurately, I have told untruths. I have been economical with the truth in the very best traditions of those who govern us. These lies of mine have never done harm, have always protected me at no expense to others and are, therefore, not sins. If they are such, and there is a god, I shall be prepared to answer my case in person when we meet. I shall take a good book to read – say
War and Peace
or
Gone with the Wind
or
Doctor Zhivago
– for the queue for this category of sinner will be very long and, knowing the arrogance of the Christian church, will be headed by cardinals, bishops, papal nuncios and not a few popes themselves.

But what of the murders, you are thinking. There have been no murders. There have been assassinations, to most of which I have been a party before the fact. But what of Ingrid and the Scandinavians? What of the mechanic and his lady friend? What of them? These were not murders but acts of expediency: I no more murdered them than the terrier does the rat.

At no time have I been associated with the bombing of a jet airliner full of innocents. I have molested no children, seduced no young boys, raped no women, strangled and burned no vagabonds. I have sold not one grain of cocaine, heroin, crack, uppers nor downers. I have rigged not one share issue, have taken part in no insider dealing at the Bourse or in the Stock Exchange: the FT and the Nikkei indexes have never been affected by me – not for my own advantage, anyway: I admit two of my assassinations caused the rate to fluctuate but that was because the death of the targets had been misinterpreted by the marketeers, who were loath to lose a buck before going to the state funeral. No one has lost his job because of me, save a few bodyguards, and they soon found alternative employment.

Assassination is not murder. The butcher does not murder lambs: he kills them for meat. It is a part of the process of living and dying. Just so am I part of the same process. I am like the veterinary surgeon who goes forth from his surgery armed with needle and syringe or captive bolt gun. He shoots the horse which has shattered its leg, he injects the old dog dying in pain and indignity.

A high court judge in all his finery and black cap is no different from me. There is no trial, I grant you, where assassination is concerned. Yet it is a waste of time and money, save to the Establishment and the law profession, the builders of prisons and courthouses, to hold a trial of a man known unequivocally to be guilty of his crimes. And no assassin has a target that is not already proven beyond all reasonable doubt to be guilty. The president with the unnumbered bank accounts in Zurich, the drug manufacturer with his luxurious hacienda in the jungle, the bishop with his palace near the slums, the prime minister with the misery and poverty of thousands in his responsibility. Or hers. A trial would be superfluous. The crimes are there for all to see. The assassin is merely doing the job of justice.

So I have nothing to confess and my letter is not a confession.

The sun has shifted on to the corner of the paper. I move the table into the shadow and begin to write.

Dear Father B
.,

I am writing to drop you a few lines with this gift. I hope it reminds you of our pleasant idling away of the sunlit hours
.

I fear I may be leaving the town shortly. I am not sure for how long I might be gone. This means, for the time being, we shall not be able to argue like the old men we are, with a bottle of armagnac between us and the peaches falling softly from the tree
.

I pause and read my words through. Between the lines I see my desire to remain, to return.

Over the time I have lived in your town, I have felt a happiness, an inner joy perhaps, experienced nowhere else. Where I go from here I shall try to take the essence of it with me. There is a distinct serenity here in the mountains which I have grown to love and cherish. But despite our talks, and my living in the centre of this bustling, hustling little mountain town, I am by nature a lonesome man, hermetic and ascetic. This may surprise you and I would understand that
.

When I am gone, do not, I beg of you, seek for me. Do not pray for me. You would be wasting precious time. I shall be all right and, I hope, beyond the need for divine intervention
.

You know of me only by my nickname. But now . . . I was never really interested in entomology and give you a name to think of me by
.

Your friend
,

Edmund
.

I seal the letter into a cheap, matching envelope and tape it to the wooden-board backing of the picture frame. This I wrap in tough cardboard and brown paper, tying it round with twine. Signora Prasca can take it to the priest when he returns.

It was early in the afternoon, the sun was high and not shining into the room. Clara lay back on the sheets and stretched. Our clothes were in a tangled heap on one of the chairs. The wine glasses on the bedside table were wet with condensation and the window was wide open. This did not bother Clara: she was quite audacious when it came to sex. It bothered me. The shadow-dweller might have found this room out and inveigled his way into the building opposite: but the bed was out of sight from the window.

I leaned over to my glass and sipped the wine. It seemed drier after our love-making.

‘Will you stay all afternoon, Edmund?’

It took me a second to reply: I was momentarily thrown by the name, then remembered.

‘Yes. I have no other work to do.’

‘And tonight?’

‘Tonight I have work.’

‘Artists should paint by daytime. They need the sunlight. It is not good to paint when the electric light is on.’

‘Generally, that is true. But miniatures are different. I use a magnifying glass for much of the work.’

‘A mag-nif-y-ing glass,’ she repeated, testing the word. ‘What is this?’

‘Like a . . .’

I could not explain. It is such an ordinary object it defies description. And I could not help thinking how wonderful it was to be talking of such nonsense in a bed with Clara in the middle of a hot, Italian day.

‘It makes things bigger to look at. Through a lens.’

‘Ah!’ she laughed. ‘
Lente
–
d’ingrandimento
.’

We fell silent then and she closed her eyes. I gazed upon her, lying in the reflected sunlight which softened every curve of her body. Her hair was ruffled on the pillow and her brow damp from cooling perspiration.

‘Will you stay?’ she asked suddenly, her eyes wide.

‘I have said I will.’

‘For all times.’

‘I should like to,’ I answered and it was the truth.

‘But will you . . .’

‘I cannot tell. From time to time I have to go away. Sell my work. Get other commissions.’

‘But will you return? All times?’

‘Yes. I shall always return.’

There was nothing else I could say.

‘That is good,’ she said and closed her eyes again. ‘I do not want you to be lost. Ever.’

Her hand reached out and rested on my thigh. It was not a sexual touch but one of the familiarities of love. She was too loving, too innocent, too naïvely artful to put pressure on me, yet she knew, as I did, this was her way to try and make me stay in the mountains, in the town, in her life. Yet her pretty guile was to no effect. She is wrong, for I am already lost. I have, I suppose, always been lost and nothing will change.