The Art of Killing Well (9 page)

“In any case, signorina, I am pleased that you have honoured me with your trust. Believe me, I am truly touched, and I would be happy to reciprocate.”

“Do you mean that?”

“It has been a long time since I last lied to a woman, signorina.”

“Good. Then you would be doing me a great favour if you found a way to sprain your ankle.”

Ah, it's finally happened, said Artusi's eyebrows. Either I'm becoming deaf, or I'm losing my mind.

“I'm afraid I do not understand.”

“You see, Signor Pellegrino Artusi, like you I find the hours spent at Mass could be put to better use. Especially when one finds a person of the world with whom one can converse about things of substance, which is something that rarely happens to me.”

“I understand, signorina, but—”

“Please be so good as to let me speak, since you seem to me the only resident of the castle who is kind enough to listen to me when I speak. You are a guest here, and master of your time, which means that you can do what you like, but for me not to be present at Mass would be considered highly reprehensible, and would certainly result in punishment. But, if a guest hurt himself while I was with him, it would be even more reprehensible if I didn't help him. That is why, if you demonstrated that you had sprained your ankle, I would be able to bandage it to perfection, after which we could walk to the castle. You would have to go slowly, since you are infirm, and I, as the master's daughter and an expert nurse, would have to help you. We would miss Mass, it's true, but we would arrive just in time for lunch.”

Artusi looked at the girl, and a slow smile wrinkled his stern whiskers.

They walked slowly in the sun, Artusi and his makeshift handmaid, laughing like two old friends or two people amusing themselves behind each other's backs.

They were close to the castle and had slowed down even more. Artusi had already rattled off two or three of his stories, and was now telling Cecilia about the cholera outbreak of 1855, and how he had saved the life of a coachman.

“I had with me this large bag of chamomile, given to me by my father, and I said, ‘This poor man is surely in a bad way. Let's try, it won't do any harm.' No sooner said than done. I put a big pan on the fire and made him a chamomile broth, with as much sugar
and lemon as I could dissolve in it. Just between ourselves, the thing had a smell so sweet and syrupy that if I had been him, I would rather have given up my soul to the creator than knock that back; but the coachman was so parched by the fever that he drank it all down without leaving a drop. Believe me, because I still have difficulty in believing it myself, the next day the coachman's temperature had gone back to normal and there was not a single symptom left of the cholera. You should have seen him: every time he passed through Florence he insisted on coming and saying hello to me, and he bowed and scraped so much that I was almost embarrassed.”

“What a story!” Cecilia sighed as she walked with Artusi holding tight to her arm (quite unnecessarily but, let us be honest about this, he was rather taking advantage). “I envy you, you know, I really envy you. There are few things more beautiful and more honourable than to cure a person and restore him to health, however humble and uncouth he is. I think it gives meaning to a whole life.”

“You certainly are good with bandages,” said Artusi, and laughed. “Since you bound my ankle, I haven't felt any pain at all.”

“Go on, make fun of me. I've read a lot about medicine, you know.”

“Really?”

“When I was a little girl, I had the good Canon Mazzi bring me books of all kinds. One day, he brought me
Robinson Crusoe
, and I was fascinated by how a man alone on an island was able to cure himself of his own infirmities with tobacco. I decided to find out
more. Every month after that, the canon would bring me a book that he chose from his library, because his predecessor had been very interested in medicine and had put together a fine collection. I could tell you the name of every bone and muscle in your body.”

“A genuine passion, then. A very praiseworthy thing.”

“For someone else, perhaps. My father found me reading the
Anatomy
of the Salerno School in bed and became furious. Away with all the books I had under my bed and, in order not to fall into temptation, away also with candles for three months. Before going to sleep, if I wanted to take my mind off things, I could say my rosary.”

Again, Artusi said nothing.

“I'd give anything to—” said Cecilia, her eyes lowered.

To study medicine, she would probably have said if she had been able to complete the sentence. But that is something we can only imagine. Because just as she uttered the word “to”, a shot rang out across the clearing. Followed a moment later by another identical shot.

The two shots filled the space for a moment, and when they faded it was as though something had broken.

Artusi looked at Cecilia, who looked at him in her turn.

By way of reply, a stentorian voice came from the orchard: “Barone! Barone!”

Cecilia turned pale. She looked at Artusi, who looked at her. Then, lifting the hem of her dress, she set off at a run through the mud.

Even though his ankle was fine, Artusi still had a cruise speed equal to two kilometres per hour over dry ground, and had not done any running since 1858. By the time he got to the orchard, a good fifteen minutes had passed since the shots, and the garden was full of people.

Of all of them, the one who stood out was Ispettore Artistico, who was crouching and holding between his fingertips, as if it were a disgusting animal, a hunting rifle with an ornamented stock.

Behind him on the ground, the seventh Barone di Roccapendente lay face down with his legs pulled under him, in a pose that was not at all noble – any more than were the invocations of the name of Our Lord that emerged in strangled cries from his throat – while Cecilia, bending over him, pressed on his bloodstained shoulder.

As Artusi arrived, he was passed by a man on horseback so heavily bearded that it could only be Dottore Bertini. Once he had arrived, the doctor dismounted clumsily and approached the group, crying, “Do you need help? I was here in the hills. I heard shots and screams …”

“Yes, we need help,” said the estate manager, opening his mouth for the first time that day. “The baron's been shot.”

The problem with being brought up in a dogmatic way lies in the fact that, if we should ever find ourselves in situations other than the well-known, well-defined ones with which we feel perfectly comfortable, we usually lose our heads.

The rules of etiquette for the respectable nobleman, for example, did not explain at all how to behave when someone shoots our kin through a hedge. It was quite true that this code envisaged a large number of situations in which someone might have the right to shoot someone else, for example in a duel with pistols. If one considered one had been offended in some way, the rules told one everything about the formal aspects of challenging the scoundrel to a duel, and everything one had to do to fire at one's peer according to the rules of good manners. If one behaved properly, following all the dictates point by point – the responsibilities of the seconds, the offer to wipe out the offence, and so on – one could happily riddle someone with bullets without public opinion finding anything to blame one for.

Whereas shooting at someone from behind a hedge was the action of a peasant. It simply was not done. It was a sign of bad manners. The nobleman's code of etiquette did not even deign to consider such an eventuality.

That was why, when the shot had rung out and the baron had slumped to the ground and begun taking the name of the Lord in vain in such an unpleasant manner, the first moment of confusion had been followed by complete pandemonium.

Signorino Lapo had turned pale, and when the second shot came, convinced that he was under fire from a sniper, had dived straight into the well.

Signorina Barbarici had remained indoors, luckily for her, because otherwise Lapo would probably have landed on her.

The dowager Baronessa Speranza, also indoors, was sitting petrified in her wheelchair, looking about in search of her granddaughter Cecilia, the only intermediary between her and the world, seeing that Signorina Barbarici was still in her room.

The sisters Cosima and Ugolina Bonaiuti Ferro, hands joined in prayer, were begging forgiveness of Our Lord for their dear cousin's seriously blasphemous expressions, which even when one is lying on the ground with a rosary of bullets in one's back are, as everyone knows, a deadly sin.

Signorina Cecilia was outside: having come running, she had bent over her father and, while also invoking divine intervention to strike the two bigoted old maids with a thunderbolt, had torn off his jacket, put a leather glove between his teeth, and
was now holding his hand tightly in hers.

Gaddo, after a moment's dismay, had set off at a run after the marksman and had followed his tracks for some thirty metres across the cornfield, after which, worn out from the effort, he had half collapsed and had lain down amid the ears of corn, his heart thumping in his throat.

The dog Briciola had begun barking furiously and had also set off in pursuit of the marksman, probably not so much to make itself look good as because it was aware that with all this commotion there was an increased likelihood of being kicked.

Signor Ciceri had been standing there when the shots rang out, with his magnesium lamp in one hand and his pump in the other, having just taken a photograph of the baron in hunting pose with his two sons, also armed with rifles, beside him, and had not immediately understood what had happened. Now, still standing motionless, he was protecting his precious but extremely fragile bellows camera from the hullaballoo around him and wondering if it was worth the money to put up with all this shambles.

By the time Artusi got to the orchard, then, everything was in a complete mess, so he walked to one side with measured steps and stood observing the scene, puzzling over the fact that whatever untoward incident occurred in and around the castle always seemed to get in the way of lunch. In the meantime, the doctor,
having politely but firmly moved Cecilia aside, had bent over her father and given him an injection. Then, having placed a hand over his noble forehead, he had asked him calmly, “I have just given you morphine to help you bear the pain. Now we have to transport you into the house. Do you feel up to moving by yourself?”

The baron did not reply, but his eyes regretted the rules of etiquette he had learned in his youth, which prevented him from telling another person to go to hell in public. After a moment, he shook his head.

“I thought so. Your servants will prepare a stretcher. Until we get you to the house, you must absolutely avoid moving. I don't want earth or other dirt to come in contact with the wounds.” The doctor turned to Cecilia. “Did you keep your father still, in a prone position, and put a glove in his mouth?”

Cecilia nodded.

“Well done, signorina. You did what you had to do and what you could do, no more and no less.”