In the Wolf's Mouth (23 page)

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay.’

‘Did you sleep well?’ Luisa shook her head after that question, at the absurdity of inquiring after this man like a guest at a house party.

‘I slept okay. I woke up.’

‘Why don’t you sit down?’

‘Okay. Okay, I will.’ Ray instructed his muscles to move, to let go. They wouldn’t until suddenly, like an avalanche, they did. He arranged himself against the wall by the spot with the bird’s nest, his knees drawn up. He rubbed his face with his hands, groaned, opened his eyes wide. ‘So who are you?’

‘Who am I? My name is Luisa.’

‘Luisa. Luisa.’ Ray mused on this for a moment. ‘Okay, but that’s just a name. I mean, who are you? I mean, where am I?’

‘You’re in my house, in my father’s house, Prince Adriano.’

‘Prince Adriano?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like, he’s a prince?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what are you?’

‘I’m a princess.’

‘You’re fucking with me. You’re not serious.’

‘No. I am serious. There are plenty of us in Sicily. Don’t be too impressed.’

‘It is a big house.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘And only you two?’

‘And servants and sometimes people who work on the land. It’s a sad story. The house is very big. We get lonely. But my father prefers it to the city.’

‘Cities aren’t always nice.’

‘You are from a city?’

‘From New York.’

‘The big city.’

‘Yep, it’s big.’

‘My father will go out later. I can bring you down into the house and give you more food.’

‘Okay. That would be good.’

‘Did you use the pot?’

‘What? Oh sure. Over there.’

‘Okay, I will take it.’ Luisa walked over and picked
up the chamber pot that Ray had covered with the napkin she had provided. Its weight slewed from side to side as she walked. ‘I go now,’ she said. As she descended the stairs, she caught the strong animal aroma of Ray’s urine. Luisa never carried her own chamber pot. The sensation of holding a strange man’s was extraordinary. She felt a calming abasement in her soul. She was a servant. She was performing one of the acts of the saints.

32

Mattia ran back with the news: the Prince’s car had just pulled up at the town hall. Cirò left the house on the hunt for Angilù. Today the new currency was going to be distributed and Angilù would surely be coming on the Prince’s behalf. The car was there but Angilù wasn’t; he must have gone inside. Cirò couldn’t see him in the small crowd. The place was busy. Stupidly, some of the people had brought things they hoped to sell in exchange for more currency. A man was being told at the door that his two chairs weren’t wanted. A woman stood with a hen under her arm, its long red legs reaching out to steady itself on something, its talons closing around air. There were guards standing by the car, two of them, looking around with more of a display of vigilance than the action itself. A pair of pea-brained peacocks, twitching their heads from side to side. In America, those two would not have had those jobs. So stupid they were. It wouldn’t take long to get them on side.

Cirò threw down his cigarette butt and walked over. He thought he’d play with the guards while he waited, ostentatiously admiring the car, tracing the swells of its bodywork with his fingertips, persisting until one of them complained.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Cirò said. ‘You’re the chauffeur, yes? You’re the chauffeur for a shepherd?’

When Angilù emerged and saw Cirò, the expression fell from his face. He had a child with him, one of his daughters. Cirò saw his hand tightening around hers. Angilù’s other hand travelled to his breast pocket.

‘Your wallet?’ Cirò asked. ‘You’re worried about thieves? About people taking things that don’t belong to you?’

Angilù said nothing for a moment. He dropped his hand and pointed to the car. ‘I’m well protected.’ Cirò smiled. ‘Is that your daughter? I hear you have three daughters, is that right?’ He stepped forwards until he was close enough to drop his hand onto the hot, silky hair of the little girl. He felt her hair and skin shift as her skull tilted back and she looked up at her father. Her face full in the light, she narrowed her eyes. Long trembling lashes and glittering brown eyes with drops of sunlight in them.

‘She’s so beautiful,’ Cirò said. ‘She looks almost alive.’

33

The arrival of the new currency made this a good time to start visiting people. Fresh water and the bird will dip its beak. Neat and quick. He took Mattia with him, part of his education. Let him see what respect meant and how life could be for him.

Cirò started with Jaconi, poor Jaconi, arriving in the man’s shop and waiting for the other customers to leave.

All Cirò had to do was glare at the little steel box he kept the money in and Jaconi understood.

Mattia was watching this silent exchange, not really understanding. Things were no clearer when Jaconi said, ‘Oh no, I don’t owe you anything. Not after what I did.’

Cirò said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Jaconi was wiping his hands with a cloth. He looked at Mattia, hesitating.

Cirò shifted on his feet. Mattia watched him. He breathed in, widening his shoulders a little, and he lifted his chin. A mute display. Albanese just sent out the force of himself, his presence. He made visible his will and whatever decision the old shopkeeper was about to make, he changed. Jaconi’s unformed words were reversed back down his throat. His shoulders drooped. His thick hands, trembling slightly, opened the cash
box and pulled out one of the clean new notes. He held it out to Albanese who took it and put it in his pocket. Jaconi said, ‘Here, Cirò. I’d like you to look out for my business, to make sure everything’s okay.’

Albanese said, ‘Whatever I can do.’

Turning his back to Jaconi, Albanese winked at Mattia. This sudden secret liveliness in the slow-moving Albanese made Mattia feel strange. The whole thing had been strange.

As they left, Jaconi called out after the boy, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what happened to your father.’

Mattia didn’t know what to say. He looked up at Albanese for guidance but the man’s face was set. Mattia waved at Jaconi in helpless acknowledgement.

Outside, in the vertical heat of the sunshine, Albanese said to Mattia, ‘You’re learning. Soon you’ll know so much it’ll be too late. Don’t worry. It’s good. Everything will be good.’

34

Ray refused to leave the attic. He didn’t think it was safe. Luisa sat on the floor, cross-legged, her hands fidgeting in the sling her skirt made between her thighs.

‘What is New York like?’

‘Busy. Dirty. Lots of people.’ Ray pulled thoughtfully on one of the cigarettes she’d brought him. ‘Here, apart from the war, everything’s Italian, right?’

‘Sicilian.’

‘Sure, Sicilian. In New York, Italian is like a few streets. Sicilian is one street. And then it’s something else. Jews over here. Chinese over there.’

‘It sounds very interesting.’

‘Sure it is. It’s … everybody’s there. It’s crowded, crazy. I don’t go too far, to be honest. You don’t know what trouble you could get in. I mean my life is the Italian streets but I can see the other things. I go to the movies. I like the movies.’

‘Oh, yes? I do not get to see them. In Palermo, the cinema is not a place a princess could go. Maybe in Palermo now it’s different.’

Ray wasn’t really listening. He asked, ‘Is that rocking horse yours?’

‘That what?’

‘The horse. The wooden horse.’

‘Oh, yes. From when I was a child, yes.’

‘I thought so.’

‘Now, I ride real horses.’

‘You do? Like a cowboy.’

Luisa laughed. ‘I don’t think so. I like to ride, I like to be outside in the sun, and riding, moving.’

‘But you can’t do that now, right?’

‘What?’

‘It’s dangerous out there, very dangerous. Lots of bombs. Don’t go riding about on a big dumb horse for chrissake.’

‘I am careful.’

‘You have to be. It’s very dangerous.’

Luisa paused. ‘You didn’t tell me, you didn’t tell me what happened to you.’

Luisa’s father caught her leaving this time so she was forced to take a guard with her. They rode out in the direction that Ray must have come from if he’d seen the house on his right as he approached. Wind. A hawk swinging overhead. Away to the left, a half-dozen goats on their hind legs stripped growth from a shrub with tough tearing sounds, their necks upstretched into the branches as though they were suckling.

When they met the road, they headed west and found the burned-out truck. Luisa rode up close and looked at the bubbled paint and exploded tyres. It was such a quiet thing it made a silence inside the noise of the wind. It was like something at the bottom of the sea. The crisis of gusting flames and fleeing men, the truck blown up and over, might have happened centuries ago when the Romans were fighting here or the Arabs
or the Phoenicians. Ezio jerked his head away from the smell of the metal.

She struck him with her heels and he stepped forwards. A small crater twenty yards away. There were scattered things that she slowly understood, parts of a man spread out. A body full of incomprehensible space. There were long flutes of exposed bone and a torso with a small, burned, peevish head. Its eyes were empty. The noise of flies was the noise of the chaos in her head. Luisa’s lungs couldn’t take in air. She yanked the reins over and Ezio plunged around. She kicked and kicked.

Back home, she ran up to her room and emptied the pitcher of water on her washstand over her head, a crash of coldness on her crown that fell down her neck and around her forehead. She stared into the ewer and breathed. She caught sight of her own mouth wide open in the mirror. Her skin was tight and yellow. Her eyes were flat. She wouldn’t meet them, wouldn’t look into them. She smoothed her hair to her head and went up to the attic, checking for sounds of anyone else. She opened the door and found the American again on his hands and knees.

35

‘God help us. It’s like a wet weekend in Margate.’ Swatting his book against his thigh, Will stepped outside to where Samuels and Travis were playing cards at a rusty table. In the twilight, the little scratchy garden was violet and lemon-grey but it wouldn’t be for long. The colours were changing, flaring and sinking.

‘We can deal you in, if you like.’

‘No, thank you.’

Will sat on a small stone bench by the wall. Behind him, the bricks released the stored heat of the day, a very comfortable fading of the sun into his neck and shoulders. He closed his eyes and relaxed.

The
thrip
of playing cards. Travis’s voice. ‘Ha-ha! Come to mother, little coins.’

The breeze was the perfect temperature and speed over Will’s skin. He opened his eyes to see the glowing garden, a white butterfly tumbling around some purple flowers. A wonderful ease filled him. Something was happening, the heat, the light, the sound of voices. Everything was exquisite. Everything blended. And from this harmony something else seemed to emerge, to arrive. There was a completeness to the moment that felt like a presence. It was … what was it? It was kind, reassuring. It felt enduring. It felt like a
refutation of Lucretius and his granulated universe crashing against itself. Will couldn’t explain it. He was for that moment at ease and perfectly happy. He was cared for.

Too strange, though. He didn’t have time for it. Will took out and lit a cigarette. ‘It’s nice out here,’ he said.

‘Then leave it out.’

‘Very droll. We haven’t met this prince yet, have we?’

‘The big landowner.’

‘No. His chap changed a lot of money, though. Same chap who came in ranting about his house.’

‘Did you ask Albanese about that?’

‘Not yet. Another denunciation of him came in today. Anonymous. He’s a thief apparently.’

‘But he’s not a Fascist.’

‘Fascists wouldn’t have him.’

‘Oh, that’s useful.’

‘What is?’

‘The eight of clubs Travis just threw out.’

‘I think I should go and talk to this prince.’

‘Probably you should.’

Will blew smoke upwards into the sky. It was starting to darken. Travis said, ‘What time is it?’

Samuels said to Will, ‘He’s got a woman in town, you know. They meet at night. I believe they discuss the progress of the war and read their favourite passages from the Bible to each other.’

‘Have you been following us?’

‘Just another poor girl who likes a soldier.’

‘Excuse me, an intelligence officer,’ Travis objected.

‘My pass is access all areas.
All
areas.’

Will flicked away his cigarette end, a zooming light into the grey of the garden. ‘Edifying as this is, I think I’m going to go and read.’

36

The attic was a tent of shadows suspended from the light of a single candle. When a draught pulled at the flame, all the shadows swayed. Outside was nothing, was night-time. Inside, their voices were small and secret and careful, crossing the air between them. Their faces were a golden blur.

‘It shouldn’t have still been there,’ Luisa said. ‘People here … someone must have seen it and yet no one did anything, no one ever does anything.’

‘Him.’

‘What?’

‘Not “it”. Him.’

Luisa clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Him. I’m sorry.’

‘Or “it”,’ Ray said. ‘It’s an it now.’

Luisa didn’t know what to say. She looked down at her fingers tangling together. A question occurred to her. ‘Did you see …’ but she stopped herself. There was something wrong in wanting to know, something greedy and obscene. But she did want to know, she wanted to touch the life that he had lived. ‘Did you see many people killed?’

A breeze caught the candle flame. Ray stared as it streamed sideways with a bubbling sound then fluttered upright again.

‘There is nothing after that I can see. I never saw any sign of it, no reason to believe it. It all stops. Just stops.’

Luisa nodded, waiting. Into the silence she said, ‘People here are always killed but I never see it. Once when I was very small one of the peasants died outside in the courtyard. I have a memory, I don’t know if I saw it or imagined it, this old man lying down like he’s asleep. That’s all.’