Two Lives

11

The old man showed me what he intended, passing on to me the gist of the deliberations that had taken place the evening before, how the Italian had pointed out that in order to create the different levels a mechanical digger rather than a ploughing machine was necessary. This, too, he could supply and operate himself. The General showed me where the terracing and the flights of steps would be. Part of the garden would be walled: the Italian had machinery for demolishing the half-ruined stables and moving the stone to where it could be attractively put to use.

The General repeated that the garden was a gift. But he did not feel he could make such drastic alterations without my agreement. He showed me where a fountain would be, and where the shade trees would be planted.

‘It’ll be beautiful, General.’

‘A garden should have little gardens tucked away inside it. It should have alcoves and secret places, and paths that make you want to take them even though they don’t lead anywhere. What grows well, you cherish. What doesn’t, you throw out.’

The digger would bite into the slope beside the sunflower field. As well as terraces, there would be sunken areas. The Italian who’d come was a man of imagination; he’d entered into the spirit of the challenge. A separate well for the garden might be necessary, rather than the pipeline he’d first suggested. The old cypress tree beside the stables would remain.

‘This’ll be costly, General. Are you sure –’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

Then, for the last time in my presence, the old man mentioned his daughter. We stood among the rank growth of that wasted area, to which the dilapidated old buildings and rusty wheels and axles lent a dismal air. The General stared down at the ground of which he expected so much. In his daughter’s lifetime he had resented the fact that what wealth he left behind would be shared with her husband. ‘I would happily give all the days remaining to me if it might be now,’ he murmured, and said no more.

So it was left. I had accepted gifts from men before, but never one like this, and never without strings that tied some grisly package. I was moved afresh by what was happening, by faith being kept in so many directions at once, by frailty turned into strength. The timbers of these useless buildings and the discoloured iron that had sunk into the ground would be scooped away, the fallen walls given an unexpected lease of life; an old man’s dream would spread on the hill beside the sunflower slope. He knew, as I did, that he would not live to see his garden’s heyday. But he knew it didn’t matter.

That day was hotter, even, than the days that had preceded it. At half-past ten Aimée and her uncle went for a walk, advised to do so before the day became oppressive. There is a selection of straw hats in the outer hall, kept for the tourists, since people who come here always want to walk about the hillsides no matter what the temperature. I insisted that Aimée should wear one, and her uncle also; I warned them to keep to the roads and tracks for fear of snakes. For a few moments I watched their slow progress through the clumps of broom and laburnum, Aimée in a light-blue dress, her wide-brimmed panama too big for her, he in shirtsleeves and fawn cotton trousers, and a hat with a brown band. When they passed from sight I hurried into the house and made my way to his bedroom.

I’d hoped to find a photograph of Francine that would confirm the picture I had formed, but there wasn’t one. His clothes hung neatly in the simple wardrobe, a tie was draped over the back of a chair. A sponge-bag contained an electric razor, toothbrush and toothpaste, aspirin and deodorant. Airline tickets and cufflinks were on the dressing-table; soiled laundry had been folded and placed at the bottom of one of the black Mandarina Duck bags. On the bedside table there was a grey-jacketed volume entitled The Case for Differentia. I opened it, but could not understand a word. Convoluted sentences trailed sluggishly down the page. Words were brandished threateningly, and repeated for good measure: empirical, behavioural, delimit, cognitive, validation, determinism, re-endorsement. Can this be designated an urban environment? a question posed, followed by the statement that a quarter of the ‘given population’ are first-generation immigrants. From what I could gather these were ants, not human beings. I closed the volume hastily.

Beneath it there was a blue notebook full of jottings in what I took to be the handwriting of Mr Riversmith. The script was more than a little difficult to read, pinched and without any attempt at an attractive effect. ?Is evidence, co-operation economic activities, exchange goods, service. ?Trade, familial lines. Pilsfer’s recreation theory shaky. Recurrent exchange gifts cannot be taken recreational. ?Sanctions on miscreant. No evidence Pilsfer’s sleep motive. Seasonal migration dubious. No evidence P’s hospital theory. This surely invalid.

I turned the pages. There were diagrams that looked like family trees without names, but with all the lines joined together, suggesting an electrical circuit of unusual elaboration and complexity. There were further references to recreation and to Pilsfer, who didn’t at all appear to know what he was up to. A particular observation caught my eye, since it was heavily underscored. Maeslink’s theory exploded, premises no validity now: 3 April ’87. Impossible extrapolate. By its nature, sensation indefinable. The last entry, marked Italy July ’87, was: Sleeping-bag theory ignores monoist structure. In what I’d read the word theory occurred four times.

All this was what occupied him. All this was what fuelled his ambition. All this was what made him reticent. I knew a man once who was scarcely able to address a word to anyone, but that reserve was as brittle as the ice it seemed like, and when it cracked there was a flow I couldn’t stop: there was little evidence to suggest that Mr Riversmith was like that, even if he was more voluble when upset. He was eminent and distinguished and looked up to. There were people who would listen, intrigued, when he explained the world in terms of ants who bred in bark: you could tell all that by his manner. He was not aware of ordinary matters, as the Italian who was bulldozing out my garden was; in fact, he had so far displayed no signs of awareness whatsoever. His cleverness was there as a substitute and it could hardly be worthless. That’s what I thought as I left his room that morning, 24 July 1987, a date I have never forgotten.

I have not forgotten it because what happened on the afternoon of that day was that I received one of the most unpleasant shocks of my life. Mr Riversmith asked permission to make yet another telephone call to Pennsylvania; I said of course, and went to my room. He was remarking, when I lifted the receiver, that he had never before encountered a romantic novelist. Then, distressing me considerably, he referred to as ‘trash’ what last night he had called most interesting. He referred to the grappa we’d enjoyed together as an unpleasant drink. The word ‘grotesque’ was used in a sentence I couldn’t catch. The brief, and private, revelations I had made – in particular the death of Mrs Chubbs – were described as ‘a drunken fantasy’. He said I’d gone to Idaho thinking I’d find the Wild West there, which had he listened he would have realized wasn’t so. ‘Some honey!’ the hoarse voice at the other end more than once interrupted.

I couldn’t understand it. In good faith I’d shown him my titles. I’d gone to a great deal of trouble to arrange an outing to Siena. I’d given him drink after drink and had not even considered entering them in Quinty’s book. ‘Her imagination has consumed her,’ he said. From his tone, he could have been referring to an ant.

I replaced the receiver and simply sat there, feeling weak, as though I had been bludgeoned. He hadn’t even become familiar with the books’ contents: all he had done was to read a few lines because I asked him to, and to glance at the illustrations on the jackets. I smoked, and drank a little, hardly anything really. Quinty knocked on my door and said there was tea downstairs; I thanked him but did not go down. He knocked again at dinner-time, but again I chose to remain on my own. I watched the dusk gathering and welcomed it, and welcomed darkness even more. When I slept I dreamed a terrible dream:

It was Otmar who brought the thing on to the train. Long before they’d met in the supermarket he and his friends had picked the girl out. They knew all about her. She was suitable for their purpose.

In my dream I saw Otmar as. a child, in the dining-room with his mother and father, Schweinsbrust on the table. There is a sudden crash, the battering down of the outside door; then four men enter the dining-room and greet the diners softly. The tears of Otmar’s mother drop on to the meat and potatoes and little stewed tomatoes. His father stands up; he knows his time has come. For a moment the only sound is the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, between the two bronze horsemen. Otmar’s mother does not cry out; she does not attempt to fling herself between the men and their prisoner. A long time ago she endeavoured to accept her husband’s fate in anticipation; she, too, knew the men would one day come.

For crimes committed in Hitler’s war he is the four men’s prey, and the clock still ticks when they have taken him away. It ticks even though there will be no trial; the execution will be discreet. It ticks as sportingly as ever, while the tears of Otmar’s mother fall on to the little stewed tomatoes, while she decides she does not wish to live herself. It ticks when she stands up and goes away, and when Otmar finds her, tied up to a light fixture in another room.

‘Otmar it is,’ an unhurried voice states, the children of the fathers locked in another turn of the wheel, a fresh fraternity of vengeance. Broken matchsticks are cast as lots. ‘Otmar is the chosen one.’

In Carrozza 219 he strokes her arm. She’ll carry the vengeance through Linata Airport, on to the plane that’s bound for Tel Aviv. The victim, as Otmar’s father was, is occupied now with other matters; the past is past. In the fields the sunflowers are brilliant against the pale sky. Is it Madeleine’s hand that is like an ornament in the air, the same hand that dislodged the stack of mustard jars?

When I pushed the shutters back from my window the next morning the first person I saw was Mr Riversmith. He was bending over a tiny apricot shoot I knew well, no more than five inches of growth, which Signora Bardini had marked with a bamboo cane. Signora Bardini suspected it had sprouted from a stone of the fruit, either thrown down or possibly dropped by a large bird. Clover rather than grass thrived in this area at the side of my house. Two circular beds had been dug by Signora Bardini, but nothing grew in them. Only the day before the General had noticed these beds and said he intended to plant roses in them.

Although it was early I poured myself a little something on my way through the salotto. I sat down for a moment, bracing myself. The memory of the telephone conversation was sharper than ever in my consciousness. I wanted to dull it just a little before I spoke, again, to Mr Riversmith. I poured myself a second glass, mostly tonic really, and felt much better when I’d drunk it. I lit a cigarette and put on my sunglasses.

Mr Riversmith had moved from the apricot shoot when I reached him, and was shading his eyes with a hand in order to admire the view of the hills. Naturally I wanted to say I’d been hurt by what had been said. I wanted to refer to it in order to clear the air immediately. I felt that, somehow, there might have been an explanation. But I knew it was far better to wait.

‘What a lovely morning, Mr Riversmith!’

‘Yes, indeed, it is.’

‘I love this time of day.’

He nodded so pleasantly in agreement that I wondered if I could possibly have misheard a thing or two on the telephone. It sometimes isn’t easy when you can’t see a person’s face. But his face was there now, and it seemed more disarming than I remembered it, certainly more relaxed than it had been in my private room. Perhaps he had indeed been suffering from jet-lag and was now recovered. I said what I had planned to say.

‘I’m afraid I was a nuisance to you when we talked on the terrace two evenings ago, Mr Riversmith.’

‘No, not at all.’

‘When I’m nervous I have a way of going round in circles. I’m sorry, it must have been disagreeable for you.’

He shook his head. I didn’t speak at once in case he wished to comment. When he didn’t I said:

‘Jet-lag can be horrid.’

‘Jet-lag?’

We had moved a little further away from the apricot shoot by now.

‘They keep searching for a pill to take, but I believe they haven’t had much success.’

He indicated his understanding by slightly inclining his head. He did not speak, and I permitted the silence to lengthen before I did so again myself.

‘You were tired and I delayed you. I offended you by presuming to address you by your Christian name. I’m truly sorry.’

‘It’s perfectly all right.’

‘You were not offended?’

‘No.’

‘It’s friendlier to call you Tom.’

‘By all means do so.’

‘Professor makes you sound ancient.’

It had occurred to me that in spite of his protests to the contrary on his first evening in my house, he might have been offended that this title was never used. I said the apricot plant had grown from a stone, dropped possibly by a bird, and again wanted to mention the telephone conversation. I wanted to get it out of the way, to be told I had misheard and then to leave the subject, not ever to think about it again. But I knew it was not yet the moment. I knew there would be embarrassment and awkwardness.

‘Let me show you where the garden’ll be,’ I said instead, and led him to the back of the house. In Italy you long for lawns, I said; in Africa too. I described all that the General and Otmar and their friend the Italian intended. I pointed to where the herb beds would be. The azaleas would be dotted everywhere, in their massive urns.

‘Should be impressive,’ he said. Would later he say to Francine that it was all an illusion? Would he say it was trash and only wishful thinking that an old Englishman intended to make a gift of a garden? Was he wondering now if the experience on the train had taken a greater toll of me than had been at first apparent? He looked away, and I thought it might be in case his expression revealed what he was thinking.

‘Let’s walk a little way, shall we?’

I led him along the dusty road I was so familiar with, by slopes of olive trees and vines. Endeavouring to keep the conversation ordinary, I was about to apologize for Quinty’s conversation in the car on the way back from Siena, but then I remembered I had already made an effort to do so.

‘I hope you find it peaceful here,’ I said.

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘There’s an Italian expression, professor – far niente. D’you know it?’

‘I don’t speak Italian, Mrs Delahunty.’

‘No more do I. Far niente means doing nothing. Dolce far niente. It’s nice to do nothing.’

‘Far niente,’ he repeated.

‘You’d say it about sitting in a café. As we did in Siena. Or doing as we’re doing now, ambling aimlessly. Enjoying the peace.’

‘I see.’

That brought another subject to an end. Nothing was said for a while: then remembering that my companion had revealed he’d been married twice, I asked something about that, whether he considered that divorce was like death in a marriage.

‘As great a sadness?’ I hinted.

‘Yes.’

‘It cut you up, Tom?’

‘Yes, it was painful.’

I dragged from him the name of his first wife: Celeste Adele. Sometimes there is not the slightest difficulty in visualizing a person spoken of, perhaps because of the intonation or expression that accompanies the reference. This was so now: the woman who appeared in my mind was kittenish and petite, dark-haired, much prettier than Francine.

‘When was your first wife’s birthday, Tom?’

‘Adele’s?’ He had to think. Then: ‘May twenty-nine.’

I stopped. ‘No wonder it didn’t work out, Tom.’

‘I don’t imagine our break-up had to do with her birthday!’

This opinion was delivered lightly, possibly intended as a joke. If it was, it was the first time he had endeavoured to make one since his arrival in my house.

‘What’s Francine’s birth sign, Tom?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not aware of it.’

‘When’s her birthday?’

‘August eighteen.’

‘Oh, Tom!’

He frowned, appearing to be genuinely bewildered. When I explained he said:

‘I’m afraid I can’t accept that individual characteristics have much to do with when a person’s born.’

I didn’t contradict that. I didn’t argue. We walked on again. In a companionable way I slipped my arm through his. The truth was that when I’d picked up the receiver and overheard that unpleasant conversation I’d already had a drink or two, though not much by any means. Sometimes things aren’t as crystal clear as they might be when you’ve had a drink. On top of that the line to Pennsylvania had not been all that good. He’d said something about what he called a ‘little-girl voice’, and that, of course, might well have been a compliment. I couldn’t help thinking that it was nice to have your voice likened to a young girl’s. For some reason my thoughts kept harping on that, and while they did so I kept wanting to tell him about the couple in the travelling entertainment business who’d perished when their motor-cycle soared towards heaven over the top of a Wall of Death. It was ludicrous of course, but I wanted to tell him – of all people – about taking that dog for a walk by the sea, and about the person I’d assumed to be my father importuning me in a cinema and in a shed and finally in a bedroom. I even wanted to tell him about the Oleander Avenue scandal. But he was cautious himself in what he said and in time I caught caution from him.

‘Was it a hell with Adele, Tom?’

‘We were unsuited.’

‘She left you in the end?’

‘No.’

‘Geminis often do the leaving. I only wondered. Did Adele have children later on?’

He replied, rather curtly, that Adele was forty-three when they parted and had not had children, though in fact she had re-married. I said I was sorry it had been a hell with her.

We paused and looked back. I pointed out a hill-town in the misty distance, and a few more landmarks, a tower that two Swedish women had begun to renovate and then had given up, a rock formation that looked like human figures. As we walked on again I said:

‘Why did they dislike one another, Tom? Your sister and your wife?’

He was reluctant to supply this information. His eyes had a faraway look and I remembered the jottings in the notebook at his bedside. No doubt he was among those jottings now, no doubt castigating Pilsfer for some fresh inadequacy. I pressed him, very gently. He said:

‘They didn’t dislike one another. It was simply that my sister wanted me to try again with Adele.’

‘But it was your life, eh?’

‘She didn’t seem to appreciate that it was.’

Time had passed, they hadn’t made it up: there was more to all this than the bald explanation I’d been offered. Perhaps he didn’t know: men sometimes don’t. But I sensed that his sister had recognized Francine for what she was and made it clear to her at the time of the divorce. ‘It won’t last, Tom’: he didn’t confess his sister – less outspoken and quieter in his presence – had said that, but I guessed she had. I also guessed that the wound this opinion left behind was deep.

‘There’s another very good Italian word, Tom. Colpa.’

‘What’s it mean?’

Again I was careful not to alarm him. Colpa meant guilt, I explained. The General experienced guilt because of his daughter. Otmar experienced it because he was responsible for Madeleine’s presence in Italy. ‘And you quarrelled with your sister instead of standing up to Francine.’

He said something I didn’t catch. We turned off the road on to a path that wound up a hill where umbrella pines grow in clumps. Here we must keep a special eye out for sleepy vipers, I warned. Better to have worn rubber boots, but Quinty’s would be too small for him, and it was only after we’d begun our walk that I realized there was something on that particular hill I wanted him to see.

‘This is a beautiful country, Tom. There are beautiful moments hidden away in corners. I have seen, near the Scala in Milan, a stout little opera singer practising as he strolled to a café. I have seen a wedding in the cathedral at Orvieto, when the great doors were thrown wide open and the bride and groom walked out into the sunshine. Something choked in my throat, Tom.’

I believe he nodded. Sometimes his gestures were so slight it was hard to make them out. There was the tranquillity of my house, I went on; in time there would be the garden. Where there had been only rusted iron and tumbled-down buildings before, birds would nest. Bees would search for honey among the flowers.

‘It is as though, Tom, we are all inside a story that is being composed as each day passes. Does that explain it better?’

‘I guess I don’t entirely grasp what you’re suggesting. And about my sister –’

‘All right, Tom, all right.’ I pressed his arm a little closer. He was on the way to becoming agitated, and really there was no need for that. Why should not Aimée be healed, I asked him, as the scratches on my face had healed already, as Otmar’s stump would heal, and the General’s leg?

‘That is what we hope for.’

‘She is happy here, you know. Or as happy as she can be at the moment.’

‘My wife and I are extremely grateful to you –’

‘Is there not a sacrifice you would make, Tom? After years of keeping your young sister at arm’s length, through no fault of hers? Do you not owe something to her memory? As the old man does to his daughter’s and Otmar to Madeleine’s?’

‘I’ve come here to bring my sister’s child home.’ He spoke flatly; stolidly, I thought. For the first time he sounded a little stupid, although I knew that was ridiculous. ‘I am taking in my sister’s child,’ he said.

Again I was aware of the jottings in the notebook, the darting swiftness of a mind reflected in that impatient scribbling. He knew about the brains of ants. He knew about the nature of their energy. His own brain contained the details of their thought processes or whatever he liked to call them. Of course he could not be stupid.

‘Could it be, Tom, that you had to come here to know you should go back alone?’

‘Mrs Delahunty –’

‘Look,’ I interrupted, feeling it was necessary to do so. ‘That’s the grave of an American soldier.’

I pointed at an iron cross in the grass beside the path. I explained why there was no inscription.

‘It is in memory of one man, but it also stands for many. The soldiers of the official enemy gave food and cigarettes to the peasants when the peasants were near starving. One man in particular gave all he had; they didn’t even know his name. He died here in some pointless skirmish, but long afterwards they didn’t forget him. What a gesture, Tom, to give away your food because you can go without and strangers cannot! And what a gesture, in return, to put a cross up to a nameless benefactor! It can’t have been much food, or many cigarettes.’

I stepped forward when I’d finished and tore away grass and weeds from the base of the cross. Then we turned and retraced our steps. He had made no comment whatsoever on the soldier’s grave. I took his arm again.

‘They thought it was a miracle, Tom, that a soldier should do that. They put a cross up to a miracle.’

My sandals were covered with dust. So were his shoes. The paint on my toenails had temporarily been deprived of its gleam. Against the softness of my breast I could feel a tightening in the muscles of his arm.

‘May I tell you something, Tom? Will you listen?’

‘I have been listening.’

‘Two men in love came to my house, dying a little more each day. In my house a son was terrified of his mother because fear was what she’d instilled in him since his birth, because she couldn’t bear to let him go. In my house the women of a ménage à trois were cynically used. Pity made me gasp for breath, for there was no escape for any of them. It’s different now, Tom.’

There had been a terrible evil was how I put it to him, but in this little corner of Italy there was, again, a miracle. No one could simply walk back into the world after the horror of Carrozza 219. Three survivors out of all the world’s survivors had found a place in my house. One to another they were a source of strength. Again I referred to the garden. I quoted the lines that had come to me, only to bewilder me until the General spoke so extraordinarily of a gift.

‘Dare we turn our backs on a miracle, Tom?’

I sought his fingers, the way one does when one speaks like that, but roughly he disengaged himself. Suddenly he was cross and I thought he was going to shout, as other men have in my presence. But he didn’t. He simply looked at me, not saying anything at all, not speaking again, not answering questions when I asked them. I offered him a drink when we arrived back at the house, but he said he didn’t want a drink at nine o’clock in the morning.