After Hannibal (8 page)

So much better off, Arturo pointed out, his slightly indirect, dreamy gaze on Fabio, his mouth in the pauses between speech set in that humorous, rather self-deprecating pout. There would have to be a bill of sale of course, witnessed by a notary, but that was the merest formality. He took care not to be too pressing, not to seem too insistent. Fabio liked to mull things over, to take ideas and shape them into his own. Please let him swallow this, Arturo thought. Let him digest it well.

The financial advantages were undeniable. Certainly it was something to think about, and before they went to bed that night Fabio had promised to think about it.

There now began a period of anxiety and discomfort for the Greens. Their new project manager presented them with his first bill and it seemed a lot in view of the fact that nothing but damage had been done to their house since he had undertaken to manage the project. They phoned to express their discontent and Blemish called on them to explain matters. He sat at their kitchen table, chair pushed back, long legs crossed to show his paisley socks and trust-worthy brogues. His soft brown eyes moved from one Green to another. He had the details of his bill typed neatly on a sheet of paper which he took from his briefcase. He had spent time with the builder, Esposito, and the
geometra
, Signorini. He had been on several occasions, as they themselves knew, to have a look at things.

“It is not that
we
question the hours spent,” Mr. Green said. “It is that there is nothing much to show for it.”

“Nothing but a leaking roof and this hole in the wall.” Mrs. Green pointed to a raggedly gaping hole below the window. “We had to stuff it with newspaper to keep out the draft. I have taken it all out now, so you can see.”

“A man came about ten days ago, armed with a drill,” Mr. Green said. “He was an immigrant—North African, I think. He spoke very little Italian and no English of course and so communication was difficult.”

“Communication was impossible,” Mrs. Green said. “He came and drilled this hole in the wall.”

“He just came,” Mr. Green said, “and made this hole in the wall and went away again.”

“That is for the wiring,” Blemish said. “An essential first step.”

“Then there is the roof. Two men came and walked about on the roof. They said they were checking what tiles needed replacing. However, since they came the roof has been a whole lot worse. The water comes through now, onto the floor, here in the kitchen and in our bedroom.”

“We have had to move the bed,” Mrs. Green said.

“When it rains we have to run with buckets.” Mr. Green felt incredulous himself at this, even as he spoke the words. Indeed, a kind of incredulity had been his main feeling since they had engaged Blemish as their project manager. During the night he would wake and would go to make sure the buckets were positioned correctly in case of rain and he would be possessed by a painful wonder. What were they doing here? Had they come all the way from Michigan only to listen to the wind moving over their broken roof tiles? At odd times during the day he and his wife would look at each other without words and in their glances there was a kind of fear.

“We have a feeling of disconnection,” Mrs. Green said.

“Well of course the wiring will need a thorough—”

“My wife is not talking about the wiring, Mr. Blemish. She means that the steps that should accompany things are somehow missing. The hole remains there, just a hole. No one comes to do anything further. You get to feel that the hole could stay there forever, that the roof will go on leaking through all eternity.”

“Nothing much can be done as yet to the roof as such,” Blemish said.

“The roof as such?”

“We are still waiting for the report of our
geometra
, who is the prince among—”

“Yes, you have told us his virtues.” Mr. Green’s voice held a tone of impatience very unusual in him.

Blemish looked at Mr. Green, at the ash-gray, slightly curly hair, the childlike eyes in the thin face, and he felt a gathering of vengeful dislike. He would make them pay for this lack of respect. “It has only been a month or so,” he said. “As Americans that may seem a long time to you, but the scale is different here, the concept of time is different. As I told you, one of our most important functions here is mediating between cultures, bridging the gap.” Even as he spoke, he knew that the moment had come to offer the Greens the security of a written agreement. The timing of this always required a nice judgment: it did not do to seem in too much of a hurry; on the other hand, it was much better to do it before being asked. He sat forward, a slow inclination of the body at odds with his usual rapidity of movement. “Well,” he said, blinking softly, “if it will set your minds at rest, I can ask Esposito to give you a contract.”

Not much later, in the cavernous and echoing kitchen of their house, he was telling Mildred about this coup. “I knew at once from their faces that my instinct had been right. Of course, you need more than instinct. You need psychology, you need shrewd judgment, you need experience. The client’s insecurity has to be fostered—that is
standard practice. There is nothing that makes people grasp at a contract more eagerly than being left for a week or two with holes in their roof and walls, though the hole in the Greens’ wall may well have been a happy accident. Esposito employs illegal immigrants in order to save on wages. So far so good; on one level it makes sense, but the snag of it is that they don’t speak much Italian usually and so they get mixed up. For all I know, this fellow should have gone to some quite different house to make a hole in the wall. Still, never mind, it’s all grist to the mill.”

“You are so clever, Stan.” Mildred spoke through the steam of her cooking. She was standing at the stove with head lowered, slowly stirring the contents of a pan with a long-handled wooden spoon. It was to be Giant’s Eyeballs that evening, a dish Blemish was particularly fond of. He was lovely to cook for, he enjoyed his food so much.

“So we offer them a contract,” Blemish said. “A casual offer, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, just arising naturally out of the conversation. It will contain the estimate for the conversion and the date by which the work must be finished.”

Mildred was adding now the
powder fort
, her special secret, a magic mix of black pepper, ginger, cumin and cloves. A steam at once fiery and savory began to expand through the huge kitchen. “What happens if it goes over?” she said, in her gruff, reluctant-seeming way. “What if the costs go over the estimate?”

Blemish shrugged. “That is not the way we look at it, my love. We never take the negative view, it’s not good business. What the Greens can’t pay for is of no concern at all. It is only what they can afford that interests us.”

He did not, however, go on to explain to Milly the basic principle of estimates, which is that they are based not on what the labor and materials will cost but on what it is believed the punter has to spend. Some degree of professional reserve had to be maintained, after all. Besides, while Milly was top of the league as gardener and cook, she had not a great head for business. “It all depends on what there is in the kitty,” he contented himself with saying now—it was one of his favorite maxims.

He felt well contented with life as he sat there, long legs out-stretched, waiting for his Giant’s Eyeballs. The kitchen range gave off a cheerful heat, agreeable odors spiced the air, he was on his second glass of Chianti Classico. As always, he was roused to tenderness by Milly’s hampered movements about the stove, her gruff voice and that bemused way of lowering her head. “Yes,” he said, stretching his neck and blinking softly, “I can see quite a bit of
cotto
in prospect. At this rate we will be able to have a swimming pool into the bargain.”

Mildred rubbed a hand down the front of her apron, a habit of hers when moved or excited. “Oh, Stan,” she said, “wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a
medieval
swimming pool.”

“God, yes, with a cloister running round.”

“Marble tiles.”

“Marble might be slippery.”

“Well then, some sort of plastic done up to look like it.”

“We could have busts of famous people from the Middle Ages.”

“Dante, Machiavelli, William Tell, people like that.”

“We could get plaster casts of them made and put them all round the cloister in niches.”

“No, on stands.” Milly’s pale eyes were wide open and full of emotion. She brushed damp wisps of hair from her brow. “With their names underneath in those Gothic letters.”

During this time Monti heard nothing from his wife and he himself did not write. He had a visit from his landlord, Lorenzetti, a hard-faced, beaky man whom he did not like. Lorenzetti was concerned about the state of the road where the Checchetti wall had collapsed. Nothing much had been done as yet to clear it. There was some kind of quarrel going on with the English couple who lived further along the road. They were away now but Lorenzetti was intending to get to the bottom of the matter. Meanwhile he wanted to assure his tenant that the road would soon be back to normal. It was clear the Lorenzetti was concerned only to safeguard his rent; but he was glancing around, obviously curious, and might have asked about Laura’s absence. In a sort of panic to forestall this, Monti spoke rapidly and too loudly. No, the state of the road did not matter to him, so long as he could get out by car, he was not waiting for supplies of anything, he had enough wood for fires in the evening, the gas cylinder was still more than half full. He began to usher Lorenzetti out before the latter was really ready to leave. It seemed to him as they shook hands in parting that Lorenzetti
looked at him oddly. As if, Monti thought later, he suspected I had hidden her somewhere or killed her.

He pursued his researches into the history of the Baglioni family with growing absorption. The base treachery surrounding the murder of Biordo Michelotti on that March day six centuries ago continued to hold a strong fascination for him. He had not so far succeeded in tracing any connection between Biordo’s bride and the murder; there was no evidence that her family had any political ambitions in Perugia. Nevertheless, he was reluctant to relinquish his notion of the wife’s guilt; the politics of the time were complicated; members of powerful families like the Orsini had often followed private aims, not necessarily those of the clan as a whole.

In his weekly seminar he suggested to the half-dozen under-graduates sitting round his room an approach to the dynamics of power in late medieval and early Renaissance Perugia through the chain of property, the process of driving out the proprietors, sacking the houses and then acquiring them on the cheap.

“Consider it,” he said. “After the murder of Biordo, the Guidalotti were driven out of the city and there is nothing to show that they ever came back. Their last sight of Perugia might well have been their own burning
palazzi
. Highly symbolic that, don’t you think, their power going up in smoke? After that they disappear from the annals, historically they cease to exist. It would be an interesting line of inquiry to find out who acquired those houses and whether they were acting for others. Certain it is who benefited ultimately. The death of Biordo destroyed the power of the Comune and left the way open for the return of the exiled families—the
fuorusciti
, those outside the gates. They reentered
Perugia, you will recall, in triumph, under the leadership of the great
condottiere
Fortebraccio. And who came in Fortebraccio’s wake?”