The Detour (7 page)

At long last, I cleared my throat and gestured to my damp lap. “Excuse me …”

Enzo looked up, startled. “Oh? Yes?” He recognized the jacket suddenly, as if it were an object he’d forgotten somewhere and rediscovered only now. “Of course! It bothers you? Is that better? Are you comfortable? We promise to Mister Keller to make you comfortable, all the way to the border.”

Cosimo took his eyes off the road to glance at Enzo, who pretended not to notice. “Don’t you worry,” Enzo said. “Yes? Am I saying it correctly? Don’t worry.”

“Is there a reason I should worry, Enzo?”

“No, that is why I say it: don’t worry.”

Several hours had passed since we’d unloaded one of the two crates from Cosimo’s truck, and, with the help of the four Roman policemen, loaded it onto the train. It had not been heavy at all, an obvious decoy. When the policemen had failed to transfer the heavier
Discobolus
crate to the train, I’d been only mildly surprised. Keller had mentioned improvisation. Minister Ciano’s approval of the statue’s sale had been strongly protested by many prominent Italians, including the minister of education, Giuseppe Bottai. Many were unhappy with Mussolini’s waiver of a key export permit. Plenty of people would have been thrilled to see our transportation of the statue disrupted.
(I reminded myself that King Ludwig’s purchase from Rome of the
Barberini Faun
, a century earlier, was beset by similar difficulties, requiring ten years of political finagling and attempts at confiscation before the statue itself could be whisked north, to Munich.) For the sake of art—for the
security
of the art we were transporting—I couldn’t ignore all of this tomfoolery entirely, as much as I would have liked to. “Trust Enzo,” Herr Keller had said. Did I have any other choice?

Now we were past the traffic snarls and blaring horns. We were driving alongside green fields. In the distance: the glinting curves of a blue-gray river, also fleeing the clamor of the city. I asked Enzo, who seemed to prefer answering for them both, “Are we driving to another train station, outside Rome?”

“As I explain: we are driving.”

“But—to a different station, or all the way to Germany?”

“Yes. All the way to the border. It is better, because of the way things are today.”

“And how
are
things today?”

“Not so good. But the weather is better away from Rome, as Mister Keller say.”

“The weather, really?” The sky had been clear and blue all morning, uncomplicated by clouds or breeze.

Enzo smiled, pleased with himself. “Not really the weather. How do you say it?”

“The atmosphere,” Cosimo said. His eyes flickered rhythmically, checking the side-view mirror every few seconds.

“Keller said I should ask you both about that—about some increasing gloominess. Has something changed in the last day or so?”

“Everything changes,” Enzo said, and smiled. “Everything always changes. That’s why it is good to keep driving.”

“I don’t understand.”

The second truck, following closely behind, accelerated to pull up alongside us, driving in the path of oncoming traffic. One of the Roman policemen leaned out of the passenger window—“
benzina
,
benzina
”—exchanging words with Cosimo, who bared his teeth in a distracted grin, nodding. The Roman truck pulled all the way in front of us. Cosimo’s chest swelled with a deep, anticipatory breath. Up ahead, the other truck took a small side road, crossing railroad tracks on its way into a small village where fuel was sold, just off the highway.

We could still see the loose canvas flaps beating against the back of the second truck, when suddenly, ignoring the exit, Cosimo stepped hard on the accelerator. It took a moment for the truck to respond, and when it did we bucked forward and I bit my tongue. The taste of iron filled my wounded mouth as the truck battled to gain the next hill, rattling and groaning with the effort.

When I pressed him for information, Cosimo interrupted by raising a protective arm in front of my chest, pushing me back into the seat. The truck slowed, reaching the top of the hill, lurched, and kept going—down the other side, much faster now, fast enough to make my stomach drop. A man on horseback, riding toward us, reached up to touch his flat cap in greeting, then thought better of it and leaned forward, urging his horse to the narrow shoulder. As we passed, the horse sidestepped nervously, stirring up dust, while the angry rider flicked the underside of his chin, cursing us.

Enzo had pushed his left arm out the open window and was grasping at handfuls of wind, whooping with glee. Now he pushed his entire head out, and his loopy blond curls parted, regrouped and parted again, like a golden field bending in a storm. When he finally settled back into his seat, his hair looked twice as long, with hanks standing nearly straight up, a great, leonine ruff.

“The other truck? We’re not waiting for it?”

Cosimo gripped the shuddering steering wheel, pushing the truck to its maximum speed.

Enzo dug a finger into his watering eye, still smiling. “We cannot. The other truck—
inaffidabile
.”

Seeing my confusion, he brought his fingers together and bumped the tips gently against his lips, trying to kiss the word that was eluding him. “
Sospetto
.”

“
Suspekt?
”

“Yes, it’s no good. Keller say to leave the other truck behind, in case they have friends who like this cargo.”

“
Like
it? Want to steal it, do you mean?”

“Yes, maybe.”

“You mean, the same policemen who were helping us?”

“No, no. But they turn their backs, they give information. You notice they want very much to stop in this place, even though we are just leaving the city. Let me tell you, some things that happen …”

And Enzo proceeded to describe another incident a month earlier when a cargo of newly liquidated seventeenth-century paintings had gone missing from the back of a police truck like the one following us. The truck had stopped for a midday
break. The driver and one partner had stepped into a small restaurant. A third man had stayed in the cab but conveniently fell asleep in the drowsy afternoon sun.

“In any case,” Cosimo spoke up, eyes flickering to the side-view mirror, “we will not stop. We will go until we lose them.”

“But how will you do that?”

“It’s not as exciting or difficult as you think,” Cosimo explained. “We only take a smaller alternate route.”

Enzo saw the turnoff to this lesser road ahead, and pointed with gusto.

“
Certo?
”

“
Sì, certo
.”

Cosimo seemed less sure, but he took the turnoff without decelerating, pushing me hard into Enzo’s shoulder.

I asked, “But don’t you need more
benzina
, too?”

“In the back, we have containers. Out of the cities it is not always easy to find.”

“But this alternate road, it must not go too far out of the way because we have very limited time. And it must not be too bumpy, do you understand? We can’t have the statue rattling and jostling the entire way.”

“
Ja, ja
,” Enzo agreed, unconcerned. “All roads have bumps. And the train, it rattles as well.” He tried to be reassuring. “Don’t worry. This is Mister Keller’s plan. Anyway, you have two good men traveling with you. They say you need us because my brother and I speak your language. But there is more. They ask us because we are from the North. We have different friends and responsibilities. Things in Rome are”—he paused—“very complicated.”

“Complicated. That’s a pretty word for corruption.”

Enzo misunderstood or misheard and thought I was praising the landscape out the window, which, to be honest, I had not bothered to evaluate. “Pretty? Yes very pretty. This is a good drive for you, much better than the train. We show you our Italy, where Cosimo and I grow up. It is much better than Rome.”

I kept my eyes fixed on the road, watching for the simple stone kilometer markers shaped like little gravestones, which proved we were putting distance between ourselves, the second truck, and all of Rome.

But Enzo suggested I was noticing the wrong things. He gestured toward scenic highlights—fields spread across rolling hills, a small church topping a rise. He had no facts to share, no history or architectural insights. He simply pointed and said, “There, look. There she is.”

He said the same thing an hour or so later, when he pulled a creased photo from his pocket and showed it to me: a dark-haired girl, young and pretty, her lips—painted scarlet in real life—nearly black in the photograph. To be honest, she looked a little plump.

“There.”

“Yes. I see.”

“Yes? There.
Bella
.”

“That is her name?”

“No—
Bella. Schön
.” Beautiful.

Yes, well, to each his own.

Cosimo interjected without taking his eyes from the road: “Farfalla. That is her name. Not
Bella
, not
Schön
. She is called Farfalla.”

He loosened his grip on the wheel for a moment to flutter two fingers, for my benefit. Ah yes,
Butterfly
.

“When you care for someone,” Cosimo scolded his brother, “you say her name. You see who she is—a real person. Not just ‘my girl’; not just ‘
pretty
girl.’ ”

Enzo mocked Cosimo’s rebuke, linking his hands and fluttering crazily. “Of course, Farfalla. You want me to say it again, to our guest? You want me to say it again for you to hear because you don’t hear it enough?
Farfalla. Farfalla
.”

Then he dropped his hands just as quickly, sighing, and smiled, his gaze occupied by the view out the window. “When I see the fields like this, in the country, I think of her.”

Ahead of us, a thin carpet of greening crops struggled to break through a dry crust of mustard-colored soil, dotted with troublesome rocks. Higher on a slope, silver-leafed olive trees grew in five or six stubby rows, blocked at the boundary of a neighboring field, this one planted with grape vines, more woody than lush. The patchwork had a haphazard quality in this corrugated landscape and many steep gullies were completely wild, clotted with scrubby growth.

“It is beautiful, yes?” Enzo persisted.

We saw all too easily into the backyards of tiny farmhouses, with their lines of laundry, free-roaming goats, and kitchen gardens, scraggly with tomato plants. These were not the noble villas of antiquity. Parallel to the route we traveled,
chalky white tracks switchbacked in a half-dozen directions. I had thought the farms would be larger. I had thought Romans built only straight roads. But maybe that was because we were off the main route, heading away from imperial roads toward obscure valleys known only by
contadini
and their donkeys.

I gestured toward the accordioned map at Enzo’s feet. He reached forward, then sat up straight again. “More easy when we stop, I think.”

“But,” I persisted, nudging the poorly folded map with my right foot, “please, if I could just see it.”

Enzo made a halfhearted effort to lean forward, then sat back, shrugging. I reached again, doubled over, stretching myself across his lap, fingers splayed.

“Please—”

He studied me one more time, and then finally, seeing I was not going to give up, reached forward with good-natured enthusiasm, as if looking at the map had been his idea, after all, rather than my own. He wore a bemused smile, enjoying himself as he tested my irritation. With his golden locks and smooth, tanned skin and biceps, which challenged the fit of his dress shirt, I imagined that he got what he wanted most of the time and managed to quietly obstruct plans that were not to his liking.

When I had the map in my hands, I inhaled deeply, trying to center myself. “Where are we, exactly?”

“Outside Rome.”

I made a guess, pointing at one junction where a thinner line veered away from the darker route.

“Yes, probably there.” He turned to the window, bored,
his energies sapped: first by hunger, and now by a bittersweet heartache of some kind.

“Would you say we have gone a hundred kilometers by now?” Cosimo granted me a half nod.