After Hannibal (4 page)

Fabio suspected nothing of this. Sitting there at the kitchen table they talked together about the future. Things were getting better. For the past three summers they had had paying guests in the season and this had brought in extra money, though of course involving more work. With their twenty acres of land they were self-sufficient in vegetables and olive oil and wine. If things went well, in two or three years more they could hope to have a swimming pool installed.

Fabio was contented as he sat there drinking his coffee, eating a slice of the delicious
crostata
that Arturo had made. Their future, their life together, seemed full of promise.

The man who had saluted in so courteous and friendly a manner when Monti gave way to him was an Englishman named Stan Blemish and he was on his way to visit an elderly American couple called Green, who also lived on this road, having bought an old farmhouse some way up the hillside with a view to having it converted.

Blemish noticed the car as by long habit he noticed anything indicative of wealth or status. One never knew what might be useful. A Fiat Uno, pretty basic, with a Turin registration. A man living in Turin, or any sizable Italian city, would normally not run a big car unless he needed to make an effect, not in that sort of traffic; but
there were small cars on the market with more dash than this one. Poverty, indifference? Bespectacled, mild-faced man behind the wheel.

He had made a point of waving acknowledgment because it was a part of his policy of Britishness. Italians did not go in so much for this courteous stuff. The gestures they made at the wheel were nearly always expressive of contempt, or impatience shading into fury. Blemish felt that standards should be kept up. We are all fellow travelers along life’s highway, he was fond of saying. Once an Italian stepped into his car, he shed all sense of common humanity, he acknowledged no limits. Individualistic, some might call it—Blemish called it anarchic and antisocial. So he smiled and nodded and waved quite elaborately at any smallest concession and made a point of stopping to allow cars to come out of side roads or pedestrians to get across the streets, while his fellow drivers jostled dangerously to take advantage of such weakness, and those trapped behind, furious at having to wait, shouted that he was a shit of loose consistency.

Abuse Blemish did not mind if he felt in the right. He was whistling lightly between his teeth as he drove on. It was a fine morning, and the Greens were an excellent prospect. He felt cheerful as he negotiated the scattered stones and pieces of masonry that lay partly across the road at this point—it looked as if the wall had collapsed. These neighborhood roads were a disgrace anyway, even without walls collapsing on them. Unthinkable in Britain, of course.

However, with a swing entirely characteristic in its suddenness, he was swept now by feelings of violent antipathy for the country of his birth, polluted offshore island, riddled with snobbery and kinky tories, who would want to live there? Not me, Blemish told the
landscape. He would never go back. He had been unfairly dismissed from his post in the Public Works Department of Lambeth Borough Council. Lucky to escape prosecution, they had said. What kind of language was that?
They
were bloody lucky he had escaped prosecution; he could have told a few stories, by God, yes. And they knew it. Anyway, nothing wrong with taking gifts, it was sound business practice. Gifts, commissions, rake-offs, they were what made the world go round. Life was a pattern of giving, receiving, giving again. Like the Three Graces. No good saying that to the Lambeth Public Works Department, of course—no play of mind there whatever, no culture worthy of the name.

A road like this was in itself a gift for some people, he thought: the people who might come from time to time to level it off, build up the verges, lay some gravel down. All work done by private agreement; they could charge what they liked, especially where foreigners were concerned. His own house was six miles away, on the western side of Lake Trasimeno, a vast ruinous palazzo in need of extensive restoration, with twenty-three rooms, most of them presently uninhabitable except for insects and small mammals. He and the companion of his life Mildred were striving under difficult circumstances to have the place restored to its former splendor. At least there was a good road to it, well packed down with stone, easily passable in all weather.

He thought of Milly now. She would be in their little green-house probably, or in the kitchen garden. She had said she was going to plant out the seedlings of marjoram and hyssop, her medieval herbs as she jokingly called them—it was their dearest wish, his and Milly’s, to convert the whole ground floor of their house into a medieval restaurant with a medieval kitchen adjoining. He could picture her as she went about her tasks, slow of movement, ample of form. An earth mother, he thought, that’s what you are. To coin a phrase.

The Greens’ house was well above the road, at the end of a rocky driveway. Some way beyond, Blemish saw the roof of another house. Newly laid tiles, he noticed. He had heard that an English couple named Chapman had bought it. Foreigners buying houses all over Umbria now, excellent for business.

The track went round in a curve, climbed fairly steeply for a few yards, leveled off as it neared the house. Both the Greens, having heard him approach, appeared at the top of the external steps that went from ground level to the upper floor—the ground floor was not yet fit for habitation, having long been used, as customary with Umbrian farmhouses, for keeping pigs and cows in. As he opened the car door, Blemish looked up and saw the couple standing side by side, both silver-haired, both the same height, both wearing smiles that seemed closely similar, slightly peering and bemused. There was a symmetrical, emblematic, fairy-tale quality about this, as if the Greens were waiting for the disguised benefactor who would recognize
their worth and grant them a wish. Blemish was not a benefactor but he was superstitious in his way and he sensed in that moment that the occasion was auspicious.

He unwound his long-legged frame from the Vauxhall, called up a cheery good morning and took the steps at a fast pace. Shaking hands at the top, the couple were full of apologies for the state of chaos within. Tall and narrow-shouldered and long-necked, Blemish towered above them, blinked soft brown eyes, murmured quite so, quite so, only to be expected.

The interior was indeed cluttered. The Greens had left their furniture in storage in Michigan and were making do for the time being with the bits and pieces left by the previous owners. But their clothes and books and smaller possessions were still half in and half out of the various packing cases they had arrived in. They were like elderly castaways, beached up here. There were extensive stains of damp on the walls. “The water is getting in from somewhere,” Mrs. Green said.

They offered him coffee but Blemish explained that he had a hernia and coffee was not good for it. This was quite untrue but Blemish often had an impulse to falsehood, and especially with prospective clients. A successful lie put you ahead psychologically, gave you the moral ascendancy you needed, right from the word go. It belonged to the same order as the briefcase he carried, the tweed jacket, the neat collar and tie.

Herb tea then. They had bought some orange blossom tea, Mrs. Green said. They had got it at a wonderful little shop in Perugia, in the Via dei Priori. It was a shop that had just about every
kind of dried flower and herb that a body could possibly imagine. “The scents from it just kind of wash over the street,” Mrs. Green said. “You don’t find shops like that back home.”

“This is back home now, honey.” Mr. Green went to a carton of groceries still lying on the floor, took a jar and unscrewed the top. “Just you smell this.” He held out the jar. He had very bright blue eyes, wide and undefended now in the pleasure of imparting something to their visitor. Mrs. Green was smiling in full approval.

Blemish declined his long neck and sniffed. “Wonderful.” He experienced a deep, malignant throb of hostility toward these people. They were condescending to him, treating him as a hireling, someone who could be subjected to random odors on a whim. A professional man like himself. Well, he thought, he who laughs last … “A real scent of the south, that is,” he said.

While the tea was being made and while it was being drunk the Greens explained their situation. They were in quite a mess with the house, it seemed. “We got to know about you quite by chance,” Mrs. Green said. “A friend of our daughter’s, who is teaching in London, saw your advertisement in the Sunday
Times
, where you offer expert advice to people who have bought houses in Umbria and want to have them put to rights.”

Blemish nodded. He had registered the fact that the Greens had friends, family, possible support. But it was distant; it did not seem likely that they had close connections in Italy. “Yes,” he said, “we undertake the management of the whole project from the moment of purchase.”

“We got off to a bad start,” Mr. Green said. They had made
the cardinal mistake of trying to get the work done while they were still living in Michigan, attempting to communicate by phone and fax, and making occasional visits.

“We were spending a whole lot of money and getting nowhere,” Mrs. Green said. “People made promises but nothing happened.”

Blemish sighed and shook his head. “Yours is a story we hear frequently. In this country they tell you what they think you would like to hear. That is their way, you know. That is the Mediterranean temperament. One of the most important aspects of our work here is mediating between different cultures, bridging the gap.”

“We could never find out the true situation,” Mr. Green said. He looked at Blemish and smiled. His face was fine-drawn and the smile came slowly but it was as guileless in its way as the eyes. “We were beginning to lose trust in folks and that is one mistake we don’t want to start making at our time of life.”

Unable to see any meaning in this last remark, Blemish blinked softly and waited. He had a slow, strangely voluptuous way of lowering his eyelids when he wanted to show sympathy.

“We always thought of coming to live in Umbria when we retired,” Mrs. Green said. “We came here for vacations when we could afford it and sort of looked around. Our daughter wanted us to go to Florida but we always loved Italian art and history, especially the early Renaissance.”

“And the landscape and the light,” Mr. Green said. “The whole deal.”

“All that too.” Mrs. Green smiled at Blemish. “That is the
setting, isn’t it? I mean it can’t be separated. This is where those wonderful artists lived.”

“Well of course,” Blemish said; “it makes the property more desirable, without the shadow of a doubt.”

Mr. Green widened his eyes with a sort of gleeful solemnity. “We came to Italy for our honeymoon, you know.” He pointed at the wall behind Blemish. “We bought that print in Florence forty years ago,” he said. “At the Uffizi Gallery.”

Turning, Blemish saw a picture of a nearly naked, long-haired man standing in a stream and another pouring something over his head out of a sort of metal cup. A white bird hovered above with outstretched wings and there were two blue-gowned kneeling figures at the side. “A highly professional piece of work, that is,” he said. “Yes, very striking.”

“First thing we did when we came to live in this house was to put it up on the wall. Andrea del Verrocchio. One of the greatest painters of all time. We saw the original all those years ago when we were just married and we never got to see it again.”

“We are saving it up,” Mrs. Green said. “We are saving it till the house is finished. When everything is done and we are really settled in we are going to make a trip to Florence and stand in front of that picture.”

“We were both art teachers, you know.” Mr. Green smiled at his wife with open affection. “We met at art school. Lucky day for me.”

“A fair number of our clients have artistic leanings,” Blemish said, “especially in the Trasimeno area.”

“We took the plunge, sold up and came over here. It seems to be the only way to get things done. Then the architect kept revising the estimate—it doubled in the course of a single month. We have got rid of her now.”