Water Theatre (20 page)

Allegra smiled with delight. “Fra Pietro, how lovely!”

Stromberg leant in through the doorway to switch on the outside light. Its glare heightened the yellowish cast to the newcomer's skin, which shone like vellum. Dark eyes glimmered within its wrinkles. He was in his late sixties, Iguessed, hisgrey hair tonsured, his thin body robed in a brown habit.

“If you're looking for Adam,” Allegra said, “I'm afraid he's not here. In fact…”

“No, it was you I wanted. I have been working on the
canzone
since I saw you last. I wondered if you would care to sing tonight? The air is soft. It promises to be a beautiful evening.” With a shy nod he acknowledged my presence, then his smile broadened as he said, “
Buonasera
, Lorenzo.”

“Perhaps later,” Allegra said. “Maybe I could ring you?”

“Of course.” As the newcomer stubbed his cheroot against
the wall, he studied her mildly flustered face. “Something has discomposed you?”

“No, not really,” she answered uncertainly. “It's just that there were a couple of surprises waiting for me when I got back.”

Allegra glanced my way, introduced me briefly and explained why I had come to Fontanalba. Fra Pietro listened gravely as she answered his tactful, concerned questions. “This is distressing news,” he said. “Perhaps the time has come for reconciliations?”

“I was hoping so,” I said.

“And Marina? She too must be concerned.”

“I haven't had a chance to talk to her yet,” Allegra said. It's part of what I want to sort out tonight.”

“Then of course the singing must wait for another time.”

“The other thing,” Allegra frowned, “is that Adam has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Well, nobody seems to know where he's gone or what he's doing. I was sure he'd be here when I got back, and the more I think about it…”

At that moment every one was startled by the trilling of my mobile phone on the round table. Even as I drew in my breath and answered “Yes?” I realized it was unlikely to be Gail – there had been no prospect of swift contrition in her voice – but I was thrown into further confusion when a voice asked, “Is that Guerino il Meschino?” Then I remembered the story.

“Contessa?”

“I have spoken with Marina.”

“What did she say? Is she there with you now?”

“You are in too much of a hurry still. She is here but…”

“Let me speak to her please.”

“One moment.”

As I looked up from the telephone, all the others glanced away except Allegra. I waited until Gabriella said, “Marina says you have either nothing further to say to one another or
a great deal. In any case, she would prefer not to speak by telephone.”

“So what does she propose?”

“She will eat with me at the villa tonight. If it is truly important for you to see her at this time, then you may join us.”

“You will be present?”

“If that is what Marina wishes.”

“I see. What time would you like me to come?”

“Shall we say in about two hours?”

At that moment Allegra stepped closer to me and said, “Do you think I could have a quick word with my mother?”

“I'll be there,” I said into the phone. “Can you tell Marina that Allegra wants to speak to her?”

“Allegra? She is with you?”

I handed over the phone and turned to where Larry Stromberg studied me through dubious eyes. “I confess I'm amazed,” he murmured. “I doubt I'll ever begin to understand Marina! You're quite sure you know what you're doing?”

“I'm sure I don't,” I said, “but it has to be done.”

I was less preoccupied with his question, however, than with my efforts to eavesdrop on Allegra, who was quietly saying, “No, of course I didn't, not a word.”

Fra Pietro favoured me again with his long, donkey-headed smile. “Will you be staying with us in Fontanalba for some time, Mr Crowther?”

“I'm afraid not. I have to get back.”

“He thinks I should talk to you about all that,” Allegra was saying. “Now I come to think about it, I'm astonished I haven't done so sooner. Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was…” But Allegra was halted by an interruption there.

“A pity!” Fra Pietro smiled. “I myself have not been to your country for many years. Tell me, are there Beefeaters at the Tower of London still?”

“I suppose so.”

“But I fear they will soon be quite mad, alas,” he mourned, “like your English cows!” He took in my briefly puzzled frown. “The beef – is very diseased, yes?”

“Yes, all right, if you say so,” Allegra said, then returned the conversation to her own priorities. “But Lorenzo tells me Adam's not back yet. Yes, he's here – with Giovanni. Adam was on retreat, wasn't he – in the mountains?” As she listened, her blue eyes shifted restlessly – to me, to Stromberg and back down the darkening valley.

“So sad!” Fra Pietro lamented confusingly. “I admired their bright clothings very much.”

Marina must have overheard his voice because Allegra said, “Yes, he's here too. He was hoping to make music tonight… I'll ask him if you like. But are you sure you want us there? I mean, if you're going to do some serious talking… Okay, if you'd rather. I'll see you soon.”

Allegra snapped my phone shut and returned it. “It looks like we're going to have the chance to interrogate one another after all.” Then she smiled at Fra Pietro. “You're invited to dinner at the villa. And you're to bring your lute.”

The Franciscan reached for one of Allegra's hands and held it gently in his own. “Now I am so happy,” he said, “You see, all is for the best.”

“Except,” Allegra said, “I get the feeling that Marina's more concerned about Adam than she's letting on.”

“Oh you shouldn't worry your head too much,” Larry said with unconvincing nonchalance as he crossed to speak to Giovanni, “Adam was always one for the enigmatic gesture.”

“Don't tell me you're not worrying,” Allegra replied. “He should be here, and we've no idea where he is. Anything might have happened to him.”

“I am sure Lorenzo is right,” Fra Pietro said reassuringly. “I think you will understand me if I say that your uncle is one of God's fools.” His sallow face was gentle with affection. “So wherever he is, and whatever he is doing, you may rest
assured he is safe in God's hands.” His smile looked to me for agreement, but as a confirmed atheist I was not the likeliest source of assent, and amazement must have shown plain on my face at this improbable description of the friend who had long ago taught me to share his disdain for God-botherers everywhere.

Adam might certainly have been a fool in his time. But one of
God's
fools?

Surely not in a million years?

Not long afterwards the others dispersed, leaving me alone in the cottage. From its arid rock on the sitting-room wall the painted lion glared down at me. The wild woman stood gowned and wimpled in her long white hair.

I thought about ringing Gail, but decided it was too soon. Better to wait until she'd had time to cool down. Meanwhile there were other calls I could make, but they felt arbitrary and futile, so I picked up Larry's little book again and took another look at his essay on the oracular springs at Clitumnus. Citing lines from Virgil it told how the hides of oxen were reputed to turn white when they were bathed in those waters, and went on to relate this legend to the myth of the Apis Bull, which was born from a cow impregnated by moonbeams. According to Larry, all this had something to do with the lunar nature of prophetic insight. I was fast losing patience when I saw a heading that caught my attention:

Beneath it Larry had recorded a local folk legend that he'd heard from the lips of Angelina Tavenari, the wife of the village barber. According to the story, a young shepherd once took his flock up into the mountains to the high pastures, and during the lonely summer weeks he became obsessed with the mystery of where the sun goes at midnight. Determined to find the answer,
he climbed onto a high ridge through the late evening light, lost his balance as he strained to peer down into the dark gulf where the midnight sun was vanishing, and fell to his death on the rocks below. A year later he returned to his homestead at dawn, radiantly transfigured into a woman. When this magical creature struck the ground with a shepherd's crook, a fresh fountain of spring water bubbled from the barren rock. Hence the name of the town that grew near that place:
Fontanalba
– the Fountain of Dawn.

I can't say that the tale made much impression on me. In comparison to the tales from Grimm that had so enchanted me as a child it seemed thin and colourless. But Larry saw it differently:

On first hearing this story eloquently told by a simple woman who had learnt it at her mother's knee, I was immediately struck by the familiar motif of the midnight sun. Where had I come across it before? In the mysterious eleventh book of
The Metamorphoses
of Apuleius, of course, that ancient picaresque novel, more commonly known as
The Golden Ass,
where we are given the fullest account we possess of the secret rites of Isis as they were once practised in the Graeco-Roman world
.

Driven by his desire to acquire the powers of witchcraft, Lucius, the narrator and central character of the story, is transformed by mistake into an ass. Only after many scabrous adventures is he restored to human form by the goddess Isis, into whose sacred rites he is subsequently initiated. Though the narrative does not disclose the exact nature of those rites, Apuleius does permit Lucius to make this cryptic revelation: “I approached the boundary of death and returned from there, having crossed the threshold of Proserpine and been carried through all the elements. I saw the sun shining at midnight with a brilliant light, and stood in the close presence of the gods below and the gods above to worship them.”

Now, to an African such as Apuleius (he was a citizen of Madaura in what is currently Algeria), the Arctic phenomenon of the midnight sun would have been quite unknown. His narrator Lucius is alluding, therefore, to an experience outside the usual realm of the senses. A transformative experience. An experience of rebirth such as is obtainable only at death's door, and which evidently depends on the reconciliation of opposing principles
.

A moment's thought will show us how the story of the Revenant of Fontanalba moves along a parallel trajectory to that followed by the ancient mystai of Isis in the course of their initiation. The philosophical shepherd is preoccupied with the mystery of light at the heart of darkness. Where, he wonders, does the sun go at midnight? To solve that mystery he climbs upwards to the sky only to fall to his death in the earth. When he is reborn it is in female form, and from his death flows a new access of the waters of life. A transfiguring mysterium has been performed. As surely as was the case with Lucius the Ass, the shepherd has undergone a rite which ushers him beyond the blind world of the senses into the midnight light of spiritual vision. Considered in that light, what might otherwise be dismissed as a mere fancy of the peasant imagination emerges as a faint, but faithfully preserved, folk memory of rites that were once performed in the sacred places of these Umbrian hills. That those rites were Isiac rites may further be adduced from the town's abiding devotion to the icon of the Black Madonna which stands in its little Romanesque church – African Isis comfortably ensconced as a curiously androgynous Virgin Mary!

I snapped the book shut. My head felt heavy: sleep tugged at me again. Yet my mind was turbulent. Larry might be excited by fantasies of seeing the sun at midnight, but my world was still thick with darkness at noon. In place of Larry's comforting black Madonna, I saw a woman in a yellow turban howling
over the small, mutilated body of her child. Around her lay the dead in the streets and compounds of Fontonfarom, toppled among hibiscus bushes and canna lilies, dumped in the storm drains, wallowing in the sluggish waters of the Kra. I saw the peevish flap of vultures against the heat haze overhead.

When I dozed, I dreamt fitfully of Gail, unable to tolerate any longer the pain of living with me as I was – going away, beyond recall, leaving me lying on our bed in Camden with rain falling through the ceiling onto its rumpled sheets.

A sense of utter loss then – my life bereft and desolate – from which I woke briefly only to be pulled back into sleep, where I found that my mother had moved out of the cellar in Cripplegate to live on some remote landmass. I needed to visit her there, but the journey meant crossing a wide desert like no desert I had ever seen – a torrid, undulating plain composed of some igneous ruby-red substance, as though the hot melt of lava from a volcano's mouth had covered the surface of the earth and congealed in its flow before the colour could fade. It was like walking on vitrified fire. When I reached my mother's house and looked back, I saw a vivid light drifting across the mountain range beyond the desert, tinting all things in its progress until the whole world was rinsed in its rainbow tide.

Waking, I lay with my eyes closed, yearning to be back in that vanished country; but my heart felt lighter when I rose. I showered, changed, decided to ring Gail, sure that I could talk her round. There was no answer. But it was about Marina I was thinking as I drove out to the villa.

Oddly, I felt more optimistic than at any time since my arrival in Umbria.

Far to the east the evening sky was shot with silent lightning as I parked the car at the villa. Orazio took me through to the terrace, where I sat over a gin-and-tonic, watching the bats scud through silky air. He had made it plain that the Contessa would shortly join me. Meanwhile, a moonflower fragrance on the dusk left me feeling closer to Africa than England.