After Hannibal (11 page)

“It is possible, yes.”

“We have got to present a united front. They are trying to blackmail me.”

Launched thus, he told Ritter the story from the beginning, from the morning that the Checchetti had come to announce the fall of their wall. “We left the check with the lawyer. All they had to do was sign a paper freeing us from further responsibility. We got back from England yesterday, I phoned my lawyer and he told me that they had refused to sign. I don’t know the whys and wherefores yet—we’ll be seeing him later today—but the reason isn’t far to seek, is it?”

Chapman was stocky but not very tall. He had to look up slightly to meet the other’s eyes and he did so now in the hope of seeing some reflection there of his own sense of outrage. But the German’s eyes were vague and remote, as if the voice that spoke to him, instead of issuing from close at hand, came from some distant
point among the hills. After some moments he said, “Ah, that is a troublesome thing.”

“Troublesome? What it is, you see, they are hoping to get the money without giving any written acknowledgment at all.”

Ritter nodded slowly. “So that they can ask for more.”

“And more again.” Chapman uttered a short and mirthless laugh. “I offered the money for the sake of good neighbor relations. Those blighters don’t know the meaning of the term. They think I am frightened they will block the road—naturally they only see things from the lowest possible moral perspective. I just wanted you to know the facts. They might come round with a different story, trying to put the blame on me for any inconvenience the people along the road might be caused. But I am getting in first. I intend to call on everyone who lives on this road and tell them the true story. I thought I’d start with you and work my way along.”

Chapman paused. It had not been a very promising start; not much in the way of solidarity could be expected from a man who did not possess a car. “If there is going to be a war of words,” he said, “I intend to win it.”

“War of words?” Ritter’s eyes were for the first time focused sharply on the other man, who was already turning away. Any folly could carry the day in a war of words: to win, it was only necessary to be believed. The phrase remained in his mind as he watched Chapman’s blazered figure receding, as he turned to look down again at the steep and densely overgrown slopes of the gully. Any madness could carry the day in a war of words.

Nothing much had happened since Blemish’s offer of a contract to change the situation of the Greens. The hole in the wall remained, no repairs were effected to the roof tiles. A lorry came with bags of cement and then with a load of sand. These were deposited in unsightly heaps immediately in front of the house. The driver was out of temper because he had been obliged to spend some time clearing away pieces of the Checchetti wall that prevented him from passing.

Other than this, nothing. The Greens kept anxiety at bay by making plans. They had always enjoyed making plans together, the element of affectionate conspiracy in it, creating a future, things to look forward to. It was a kind of game played with time, more compelling as one got older. Waiting till the house was finished before going to see the loved Verrocchio painting at the Uffizi was a very smart plan, they both felt. Their whole Italian enterprise was the result of a long-term plan: every month for years now they had put aside what they could afford into a separate bank account, a special house fund. Now, in their uncertainty, they went around the house making plans about the things they would do. They would have a pergola to give shade to the front. They would plant roses and make a trellis for wisteria. They would have an arch made in the wall between the kitchen and the room that had been used as a granary, to make a large sitting room.

Then Blemish arrived with a copy of the contract. “If everything is to your satisfaction,” he said, “Esposito and you can sign it. We will have it witnessed by a notary in Perugia and that will be that.”

He watched them as they scanned the document. The estimated
sum was stated there, also the dates of beginning and completing the work. The builder had set a limit of twelve months for completion. “Rather a long time, isn’t it?” Mr. Green said.

“Common practice. Esposito has to protect himself against accidents, unavoidable delays and so on. He will finish well within the time.”

“What is
salvo imprevisti
? The estimate is written here and then on the line below there is
salvo imprevisti
. That means ‘excepting things unforeseen,’ doesn’t it?”

“That is correct,” Blemish said. “There again, the builder has to protect himself. He might encounter something totally unexpected.”

“Such as?”

Blemish permitted himself a smile. “How can we say? It can’t be predicted—that is the meaning of the phrase. It is nothing to worry about, just a formality. It is the way we operate. It obviously does not include any of the work already discussed, the excavation of the downstairs part, the laying of the floors and tiling, fireplaces and chimneys, the plumbing and wiring and carpentry. All that is included in the estimate.”

“And he will start when he says?”

“Certainly. He can’t afford not to, that is the beauty of this document. If you look over the page you will see that the builder is liable to penalties for any delay in starting and finishing. A hundred thousand lire for every day he goes over.” Blemish craned his neck and blinked softly. The Greens were going to buy it, he could tell. “Quite punitive,” he said, “but that is the way we operate, our clients’ interests come first. We will deploy all our resources in the
management of your project. This property will be a bijou residence of striking originality and period flavor.”

Before Blemish left, the Greens had signified their assent and he had made an appointment with the notary on his portable telephone. He hummed and sang to himself as he drove along. The estimate was for a hundred and sixty million lire, about sixty-five thousand pounds at the present rate of exchange—a sum exactly gauged to the limits of the Greens’ disposable capital. Genuine costs of labor and materials for that minimum of work they intended to do might amount to a fifth of this. He would have to keep an eye on Esposito to make sure he didn’t exaggerate his costs. How much could be extracted from the Greens before they understood matters was purely conjectural of course, but with any luck it could be as much as forty thousand. He would get his share of this from Esposito. Quite a bit of
cotto
there. Then there was his forty thousand lire an hour while all this was dragging on. And drag on it would, for quite a while yet. And the whole thing was legal. In the exuberance of these thoughts he raised his voice in song as he drove homeward, promising to be like the ivy on the old garden wall, faithful and true forever.

The Greens too felt that there was something to celebrate, a prospect of some action at last. To mark the occasion they made a trip to Assisi to look again at the frescoes in the Basilica di San Francesco.

Assisi was a very special place for both of them, a place of pilgrimage. It had been one of the first Umbrian towns they visited on that winter honeymoon of theirs which they had spoken about to Blemish, a visit of undimmed wonder through all the years between.
Their love for Italy had been sealed that day and it had become part of their love for each other.

They had borrowed a car and driven from their hotel in Perugia on a morning in early January, a morning of mingled sunshine and mist. They had left the car below the walls and entered the town by the Porta Nuova, passing the Basilica di Santa Chiara on their left, with its great rose window and arched buttresses and patterning of bleached white and pale pink stone. On an impulse, instead of going on to the main square, which had been their original intention, they had turned aside and begun to ascend the steep streets toward the upper part of the town. They had followed a series of stepped alleyways, with houses abutting closely on either side, come out finally high above the town at the remains of the fortress known as the Rocca Maggiore, site of the twelfth-century stronghold of Barbarossa.

They had climbed the ruined tower and from there had looked back down over Assisi. It was past noon but mist and sunshine contended still and they saw the town in zones of varying distinctness: the lower part and the plain beyond were a lake of mist with buildings and trees and the lines of streets half glimpsed and half surmised below the surface as if below clouded water; then a muffled borderland of pale roofs and dark pinnacles of cypress trees; then, immediately above this, clear sunshine, bell towers and bay trees and the blaze of winter jasmine, the cathedral with its leaded dome and Gothic tympanum, the great Basilica di San Francesco lying on its spur of rock, lapped by the mist, freighted with its tomb of the saint. To the east rose the sheer slopes of Mount Subasio thrusting up into sunlight from the obliterated valley below. There was a slight graining
of mist still, even so high as this, and the cool scent of the night’s distillations still lingered in the air.

That was an experience in the nature of things impossible to repeat. Today they went directly to the Basilica di San Francesco, to the lower church, built as a crypt to house the mortal remains of the saint. By another of those gently conspiratorial pacts which were so much a feature of their life together, they did not enter through the splendid Gothic doorway on the west side but went round to the smaller entrance adjoining the cloister. This way, passing from daylight to the devotional gloom of the interior, one was abruptly, dazingly presented, at eye level and very close, with the Giotto
Crucifixion
and the Cimabue
Madonna Enthroned
side by side on the wall of the facing transept.

There was a special place where they were accustomed to sit and they made for it now—habits like this were established easily between them, and kept to with a sort of devotion, a repeated affirmation of the fact of sharing. It was almost directly below the cross vault of the transept, slightly south of the apse. It was a marvelous point of vantage because from there you could look upward at the celebrated allegorical paintings in the broad webs of the vaulting; or straight before you at the Giotto frescoes running along the wall—great dramatic images of persecution:
The Flight into Egypt, The Massacre of the Innocents;
or—easily seen by turning the head—the Lorenzetti
Crucifixion
with its cloudburst of weeping angels. Masterpiece on masterpiece, Sienese and Florentine in unique competition, arguably the greatest concentration of genius under one roof anywhere to be found. Sistine Chapel notwithstanding, as Mr. Green was fond of saying.

As people do under the assault of beauty, after a while he generalized his feelings, became aware of the minglings of light, shaft of white daylight from the narrow entrance, filterings of ruby and blue from the stained-glass windows, pallid electric light from bulbs slung high above. From somewhere along the nave, out of sight, a guide was speaking in steady monologue, but he could not distinguish the language. Everywhere one looked this extraordinary proliferation of images, ceiling and walls covered with them, haloed saints, cloaked mortals, white angels with rose-tinted wings, meekly inclined heads of martyrs and mourners.

From time to time his attention sharpened, he saw in clear focus the dune-like landscape of
The Flight into Egypt
, blue-robed Mary on the ass, a palm tree bending in worship at her passing, the Gothic sprawl of the bled Christ in the Lorenzetti
Deposition
, St. Francis holding up his hands to be pierced with the stigmata. Nothing in the homely piety of his upbringing had prepared him for the awe he experienced in places like this. He felt the mortal struggle that underlay all this devotion. Fear was just below the surface. Something more than fear …

“The dread of faith,” he murmured to his wife. “Look at those faces, those long brows and narrow eyes swept back toward the temples. You wonder whether they are looking at heaven or hell.”

“Why, Sammy,” she said, “you know as well as I do that the faces are stylized; there was a convention for brows and eyes.”

But technical explanations never seemed sufficient to Mr. Green. He saw cruelty and strife in these looks, both the knowledge of it and the practice. Such faces derived from a time when the weak had small protection in law or custom. Is our time so different? he
wondered as they emerged into the sunlight. Our faces are different, certainly, the stare is masked. There came suddenly into his mind a memory of Mr. Blemish’s face, blinking softly as he explained the terms of the contract.

His wife had seemed to enjoy the visit to the church in the usual way and Mr. Green said nothing to her of his feelings, of how oppressive and even frightening he had found the paintings this time. It was a lapse from the full confidence they enjoyed together, almost like a mild form of betrayal—or so at least he felt it; but he judged it worse to spoil her mood with his doubts and glooms.

On the way back they visited the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli on the plain below Assisi, not so much for the sake of the church itself—it was too enormous, too grandiose, too lavishly baroque for their taste—but for the little cluster of much older buildings within it, associated with the life of St. Francis and his companions, including the little cell where the saint died. The Greens stood immediately below the vast dome in the very center of the great echoing basilica and looked at the tiny low-roofed house known as the Porziuncola, improbably preserved among the swirling splendors all around.