Vango (25 page)

Vango headed back down toward the monastery. As he approached the gardens, there was a freshness hovering in the air, even though the hottest months of the year would soon be upon them. He entered the kitchen garden overhanging the cloister, on the south side. The water was flowing through channels of baked earth alongside a low wall a meter high. He could smell the melons on the ground, splitting in the sun. White bindweed wove knots through the low chestnut-wood fencing. It looked for all the world as if Adam and Eve might appear at any moment in this Garden of Eden, but that morning, the first man was wrapped in a black apron and was busy sifting through the lettuces.

His name was Pippo Troisi.

“Ah, Vango, it’s war! Can you take these into the kitchen for me? The padre’s rabbits attacked my lettuce in the night. It’s all-out war, Vango. They’re burrowing! My chickens would never do anything like this. Zefiro should throw his rabbits into the sea. . . .”

As could be heard, Pippo Troisi had not made a vow of silence. The quieter the monks were around him, the more he babbled. His one-man shows amused the community. Not counting the rabbits, he had forty pairs of ears bent in his direction, which was enough to fulfill the dreams of any chatterbox.

Vango noticed the hunting gun by Pippo’s side.

“And anyway, you don’t go putting rabbits on an island. It’s a question of principle. When will Zefiro understand this? I’m telling you, if they get anywhere near my lettuce again, there’s going to be some lead shot in everyone’s stew — before you can so much as say Arkudah!”

Vango bent down to pick up the crate of lettuce.

“And another thing,” Pippo went on. “The padre’s not thinking straight. . . . He’s got a visitor this morning. A visitor! If we start letting just anyone come here, there won’t be anything invisible left about this monastery. It starts with one visitor, and before you can so much as say Arkudah, you’ll end up with boatloads of pilgrims. I’m telling you, it’s just like the rabbits: we’re not dealing with the invisible here, but an invasion!”

He paused for the warning to sink in, but Vango was already on his way. He could hear Pippo still yammering on about his lettuce.

“Invisible, invisible . . . I ask you . . .”

What was so comical was that Vango knew Pippo Troisi was the only real invader of the island.

Vango just had to pass by the orchard, to add some fruit to his crate. Then he would make his way to the refectory to start work with Brother Marco, the cook.

He spent two days a week in the kitchens, and all the monks looked forward to those days as if it were Easter time. Vango’s culinary talents and know-how, passed down from Mademoiselle, had been polished during his year of travel in the zeppelin, followed by his time at the seminary.

In Paris, he had even prepared a Shrove Tuesday dinner for three bishops. He had become a proper chef.

On the days when he was working in the kitchen, the monks tended to stray oddly in the morning, so that they could carry out their holy readings close by, inhaling all the aromas. During the midday prayers, their nostrils could be seen quivering like butterfly wings. And at a quarter past midday, Zefiro would bless the food in record time, they would all sit down together, their napkins tucked into their robes, their cheeks already turning rosy, and, according to the season, they would sink their teeth meditatively into a morel mushroom clafoutis or stuffed apples.

When it came to doing the washing up, there was no lack of volunteers to scrape out the bottom of the saucepans.

For the forty days of Lent, a period of fasting and privation, Vango didn’t set foot in the kitchen.

Brother Marco was far from being jealous. He admired Vango’s handiwork. He would sit in a chair not far from Vango, his glasses pushed up on his forehead, staring at him just as, two centuries earlier, the greatest musicians in Vienna had sat behind the young Mozart in order to watch his hands on the piano keyboard.

Vango arrived at the orchard. The trees were young but collapsing under the weight of their fruit. The monks couldn’t keep up with them. All the coulises, compotes, fruit pastries, marmalades and jams, tarts, candies, and liqueurs they concocted weren’t enough to use up the fruit harvest.

Twice, Vango had secretly left a laden basket by Mademoiselle’s front door. The next day, with his nose in the wind, he had tried to sniff out, across that stretch of sea separating him and her, the scent of the cordials she used to brew slowly with thyme.

Vango began picking the cherries. They kept slipping through the gaps in the crate, so he went hunting for some large leaves to cover the bottom. But as he was making his way over to the clump of fig trees, he heard voices.

Zefiro was by his hives, behind the tree. Vango could glimpse him between the branches. He was talking. His voice was muffled by his beekeeper’s hat, which was like a helmet with wire mesh. There was another man with him, clad in the same fashion, but because he was shorter, the wire mesh came down to his chest.

“The law needs you one last time. Once he’s safely locked up, you’ll be left in peace.”

Vango dropped down into the grass. It seemed improbable, but he recognized the voice, which was speaking in French.

“Be reasonable,” the short man advised the monk.

“You know I have no choice but to obey,” said Zefiro. “You’ve trapped me with your barbarian methods. . . .”

“Don’t be angry, Padre.”

“Last time, in Paris, you weren’t up to the job of catching him.”

Superintendent Boulard didn’t answer the accusation leveled at him. He was sweating beneath his mask. His travel suit was too heavy for this climate.

“Ask someone else,” said Zefiro.

“Nobody knows him like you do. I promise your life won’t be in danger.”

Zefiro lost his temper.

“I’m risking a lot more than my own life,” he retorted. “I don’t care about my own life.”

Boulard knew the monk wasn’t lying.

“Well?” asked the superintendent. “Are we agreed?”

Zefiro removed his helmet, and the bees started dancing around their master’s face. Boulard took a step backward.

“You’re a bully, Superintendent,” said Zefiro.

“Is that a yes?”

This time Vango heard a clear and resolute reply.

“Yes.”

“Right, then, you’ve got all the instructions,” said Boulard, heading off. “I’m leaving now. I’ll see you back there. Remember: before the end of the month. Good luck, Padre.”

Zefiro was alone again.

He crouched down and watched his worker bees sniffing the air at the door to their hives before setting off, each in its own direction. Others were coming back in, slightly tipsy, like workers at dawn just finishing their day while others were about to begin.

Zefiro could have spent hours in that spot, mulling things over, but when he looked up, he saw the barrel of a gun being pointed directly at him.

“What are you doing, Vango?”

“Don’t move. I won’t show you any mercy.”

“Put that weapon down.”

“What do you know about me? Tell me everything you know.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

When he’d heard Zefiro say yes, Vango had run toward the kitchen gardens. Pippo Troisi had his back to him. He was bent double, his nose virtually in the soil. He was pulling out the weeds around the artichokes and still grumbling: “Invisible, invisible . . . What about my backside, then, is that invisible?”

In fact, Troisi was all you could see, in the midst of that lettuce and cabbage.

Undetected, Vango had picked up Troisi’s gun and made his way back to the orchard.

He had checked the cartridges before aiming at Zefiro.

“Tell me what you know, and then I’ll disappear.”

“I don’t know anything about you,” the padre said. “I’d like to be able to help you, but I don’t know anything. You’ve never told me anything.”

“You’re lying. Boulard said that you knew about my life better than anyone.”

Zefiro stood up. Vango loaded his gun.

“Don’t move,” he ordered.

“Were you here when I was talking to the superintendent?”

Zefiro made his way toward the boy, who stood his ground.

“You’re mistaken, Vango. You haven’t understood properly.”

“I’m warning you: I will shoot.”

“If you really did hear what I was saying, you would know that I don’t care about my own life.”

“Don’t move, I’m telling you!”

“But I do care about your life, Vango. So put that weapon down. You don’t know what happens to the life of a man who has killed another man.”

“Oh, yes, I do. I know only too well.”

They stared at each other.

“Put that weapon down.”

“I’m defending my life,” said Vango, who was loading the second shot into the hunting gun.

The worried buzzing of the bees could be heard.

“Don’t get any nearer,” Vango warned again.

His finger was trembling on the trigger.

It took less than a second for the weapon to change hands.

Zefiro grabbed hold of the gun, wrenching it away in one clean movement and turning it to face the other way. At the same time, his leg flattened Vango, who found himself lying in the dust.

Zefiro removed the cartridges from the gun, slid them into the pocket of his brown cassock, and threw the weapon down onto the grass.

Vango was lying on the ground in front of him. He tried to raise his head, leaning on his elbows. The sun was falling directly on him, and there was no shade.

The monk wasn’t looking in the boy’s direction. He picked a fig from behind him, sat down at the foot of the tree, and, digging his thumbs into the red-fleshed fruit, began talking.

“Listen to me, Vango. I’m going to tell you a story. You’ll understand everything if you hear me through to the end.

“When I was thirty years old, I signed up as a war chaplain in the French army. It came about by chance. I was already a monk, in the west of France, in 1914, when war was declared. Two years earlier, I had been entrusted with the garden of an abbey, at the end of an island, in the middle of the ocean. I had been dismissed by two Italian monasteries before ending up there. I’d been given my own space in that community of fifty nuns. The only man alongside all those sisters. I was happy in my garden. I was an untamable monk, but I was a monk, and I didn’t want any other life than the one I had chosen. I often worked with the peasants from the marshes. I was a friend of the millers, the salt-marsh workers, and all the sailors in the port. I had the finest garden in the Atlantic.

“At the beginning of September 1914, all the young people from the island left to fight. Germany had invaded Belgium. France was going to war. I was the same age as them, and I wanted to join up too.

“The superior at the abbey was named Mother Elisabeth. She gave me her consent. She thought it would make me wiser. I took the train to Challans. I went to see the bishop in Paris, warning him that I was Italian. He replied that this wasn’t a sin. He needed men, so he took me.

“We were expecting a quick war, and I thought I’d be back in Rome the following summer to relax for a few days, climbing in the hills, walking through the orange trees of the Villa Bonaparte, where I had friends. After that, I hoped to rejoin my monastery at La Blanche, facing the ocean, surrounded by green oak trees, prayers, and potato fields.

“But, two years later, the war had sunk itself into the trenches of Verdun, in Lorraine. And I was blessing more corpses than fighters. We lived underground, together with shells that rained down into the mud, rampant epidemics, and men with beards who had aged by a hundred years and who cried like children. I had become chaplain to the rats.

“When I said mass in my trench, I didn’t know if the arm of one of the faithful would be ripped off by a grenade before it had made the sign of the cross. That’s war for you, Vango.

“On August fifteenth, my trench was filled to overflowing with bombs. Filled to overflowing, do you hear me, Vango? My battalion disappeared. But I was spared. I left with a young doctor I liked very much. He was named Esquirol. On his shoulders he carried a black soldier, Joseph, an infantryman whose stomach had been ripped open by a burst of shell fire. That’s war for you, Vango.

“There’s a small wood near the village of Falbas, with a clearing in the middle and a large five-hundred-year-old oak tree. The three of us stopped there. An airplane was caught in the tree’s branches, like a child’s toy. It was a German plane. The canvas on the wings wasn’t even torn. I climbed up to see if the pilot was alive. He wasn’t there, but the engine was still warm.

“The doctor lowered Joseph the infantryman and put him down on the grass. It was a fine day. The explosions seemed far off. Esquirol took out the implements he needed to stitch the soldier back up.

“Half an hour later, Joseph was saved. We lay down twenty paces from him to sleep.

“A man woke us up. A German officer in an aviator’s uniform: the pilot of the plane in the large tree. He was aiming his pistol at each of us in turn. He hadn’t seen Joseph.

“The German was wounded. His thigh was open just above his knee.

“‘You, you’re a doctor,’ he told Esquirol in French. ‘Treat me.’