The Savage Garden (29 page)

    "Hello."

    Fausto looked up, squinting. "You?" "Me."

    Fausto was mixing mortar in an old tin pail. He was stripped to the waist, revealing a wire-and-whipcord body. Wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm, he rose to his feet.

    "You like it?" He nodded at the low stone, tile-roofed structure he was working on. The building itself was finished; he was erecting the walls of a small yard out front.

    "For the pig?"

    "For a whole family of little pigs."

    "It's beautiful." Adam looked around him. "It's all beautiful."

    He wasn't being polite. The modest farmhouse was set among a run of terraces carved out of the wooded hillside just south of San Casciano. It was an isolated spot, accessed by a precipitous dirt track barely passable on foot, which probably accounted for the old U.S. Army jeep parked beside the farmhouse.

    "Yes, it's not bad. Are you thirsty?"

    "Yes."

    "Go and get a couple of beers from the fridge. I have to do this now or the mortar will set."

    As with Antonella's farmhouse, the living accommodation was on the first floor. Unlike Antonella's place, Fausto's home was stuffed to bursting with furniture, pictures, books and other curiosities. In the middle of the kitchen table was an upturned German helmet, painted pink and doubling as a flowerpot, a bushy fern sprouting from it. The ramshackle shelves in one corner of the room were almost exclusively given over to books on warfare and historic battles. Knowing that to delay anymore would mean he'd been snooping, he grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge and headed back outside.

    As soon as Fausto was done slapping the mortar around a few more blocks of stone, he took Adam on a tour. They inspected the vines, the olive trees, the orchard, the maize and the sunflowers.

    There was also an extensive vegetable patch, as well as a large jerry-built coop with chickens busy turning table scraps into eggs. The crops were clearly suffering from the lack of rain, but it didn't seem to bother Fausto. "Everything a man needs," he declared with pride. "Except a woman to share it with."

    They drank the next two beers in the shade of a vine-threaded pergola beside the house. Adam asked about the books on battles heaped up on the shelves in the corner of the kitchen.

    "I'm interested, it's true. So much of who we are, what we are, comes down to a bunch of men fighting in a field."

    Adam smiled. He hadn't thought of it in those terms before.

    "In twelve sixty," said Fausto, "Florence and Siena went to war. September third. It was a Saturday."

    Adam's Italian wasn't up to catching all of the details, but as he understood it, this was how things unfolded. Siena was already a divided city, and the Florentines weren't fools. They waited till the different factions were at each others' throats before sending in their messengers, two horsemen carrying with them a simple yet stark ultimatum: If the Republic of Siena didn't surrender at once to Florence, then the city would be razed to the ground. It wasn't an idle threat. The Florentine army massing to the east was more than capable of following it through.

    The one thing the Florentines hadn't banked on was the Sienese burying their differences overnight. Sworn enemies gathered before the cathedral that same evening and greeted each other like brothers. Then they called on the Virgin Mary to help them in the forthcoming battle.

    The two armies clashed the following day at Montaperti. According to eyewitness accounts, there was enough blood flowing at one point to drive four watermills. By far the greater part of it was Florentine blood. That field near Montaperti was home to a massacre, and it was years before any animals ever ventured near it.

    "Imagine it," said Fausto. "The next day was a Sunday. That's when the Sienese army returned. They dragged the Florentine banner through the streets behind an ass. You think those bastard Sienese have forgotten that day? Of course they haven't. It's what they teach their children in school. It's in their eyes every time we play them at football."

    Fausto paused to light a cigarette.

    "People think of Italy as an old country. It isn't. We're young, younger than the United States. We only united in 1870, not even a hundred years ago. We're not a country yet, and we won't be for a while. These things take a long time. No, those bastard Sienese haven't forgotten Montaperti. It's part of who they are. In the same way Hastings is part of who you English are. That's one of the great battles. You know why? Because a bunch of men fighting in that one field changed the whole course of your country's history."

    Fausto took a slug of beer.

    "But you didn't come here to talk about this stuff. Am I wrong?"

    "No."

    "So tell me."

    "I have a question. It's about Gaetano."

    "Gaetano?"

    "The gardener who left last year."

    "I know who Gaetano is."

    "Where is he now?"

    "Viareggio. By the sea. He owns a bar there, a fancy place—La Capannina."

    "You've been there?"

    Fausto spread his arms to indicate his disheveled appearance. "What do you think?"

    "How much does a fancy bar in Viareggio cost?"

    "Apparently he inherited some money from his family down south." There was a note of skepticism in his voice.

    "You don't believe it?"

    "How do I know? More to the point, what do you care?"

    Adam gathered himself, then took the plunge. "The last time I saw you, you said Gaetano changed his story about what happened the night Emilio died."

    "Was I drunk?"

    "You lied?"

    "Why do you want to know?"

    "Just tell me what you meant."

    Fausto sighed. "Look, it was something Gaetano's uncle told my father the next day."

    "What?"

    "He said he was almost run down by the Germans when they were leaving."

    "Gaetano said that?"

    "To his uncle."

    Adam digested this news. "He turned up later. He wasn't there when it happened."

    "It was a long time ago. Who knows what really happened? Who cares?"

    "I do."

    Fausto leaned forward in his chair. "Listen to me. The Doccis' business is their own. Who are you? You've been here—what—a week? You didn't know them before and you'll probably never see them again. Just leave it alone."

    "How do you know I didn't know them before?" "What?"

    "How do you know I didn't know the Doccis before?"

    "You said."

    "No I didn't."

    "Yes you did."

    "No."

    
"Porca l'oca!
Look at you. Look at you! I'd chuck a bucket of water over you if the well wasn't dry. I warned you about that place. Didn't I warn you? Pull yourself together, this isn't normal behavior, you're acting like a crazy man. Just leave it alone."

    Adam wanted to tell him that he'd tried to leave it alone—more than once—but he couldn't. He no longer had any choice in the matter.

    "Did Maurizio kill Emilio?" he asked bluntly.

    "I'm not going to answer that."

    "Why not?"

    "Because how the hell should I know?"

    "But you think it's possible . . ."

    "Anything's possible."

    "Well, I think he did it."

    "What if he did?"

    "I think I can prove it."

    "What if you can?"

    "You don't believe in justice?"

    Fausto gave a short, despairing laugh. "This is madness. You should go now. I'm serious. Go. Leave."

    Fausto got to his feet to press home his point. He made no move to shake Adam's hand, so Adam turned and left.

    
Signora, are you awake?

    
Yes.

    
Shall I open the shutters?

    
Thank you, Maria.

    
Did you manage to sleep?

    
Not much.

    
Antonella called. She has bought fish for dinner this evening.

    
What kind of fish?

    
Does it matter? She knows I don't like cooking fish.

    
I'm sure she didn't do it to annoy you.

    
I'll mess it up. I always mess it up.

    
Maria, I've never known you to mess anything up.

    
Except the wild boar in chocolate sauce.

    
Yes, that was truly terrible. It was also twenty years ago.

    
Twenty-three.

    
It's good to see you've put it behind you.

    
Maurizio and Chiara have arrived.

    
Did they come by the villa?

    
No, I saw their car over at the farm.

    
We should invite them to dinner.

    
Antonella already has.

    
Oh, has she?

    
I like Chiara.

    
So do I, Maria. Where's Adam?

    
He went for a bike ride.

    
In this heat?

    
I was wrong about him.

    
Don't go soft on me now.

    
Signora?

    
In all the years we've known each other, I've never once heard you admit to being wrong about anything.

    
He's no fool.

    
No. But he's young, and therefore naive.

    
He's twenty-two next month.

    
He told you?

    
I saw his passport.

    
I'm not sure it's acceptable to go rifling through the guests' belongings.

    
I was cleaning his room. It was on the sideboard.

    
Then you're forgiven.

    
I think I'll bake it.

    
Excuse me?

    
The fish, Signora.

     DINNER WAS A TRYING AFFAIR.

       It didn't help that the meal was billed as being in his honor. He had always struggled with that kind of thing. Some children glowed with self-importance at their birthday parties; others blushed, even when they managed to blow all the candles out.

    It didn't help that he was seated directly opposite Maurizio down one end of the table. It didn't help that Harry and Antonella had returned from Florence the worse side of two cocktails each, giggling like love-struck teenagers. And it didn't help that he now knew for certain that someone—someone at the table, or the someone serving them—had been going through his papers in the study.

    He knew, because he had laid a trap, stacking his notebooks in an apparently careless (yet very particular) fashion, laying his ballpoint pen on a pile of loose papers so that its tip pointed directly to the upper left-hand corner of the top sheet. Simple yet effective. The idea of lacing the bait with something had only occurred to him at the last moment. He had slipped a sheet among the papers.

    On it was written in big bold capitals: i know you're looking through my things.

    Whoever it was had done a good job of covering their tracks. Not good enough, though. The notebooks were too neatly stacked, the pen slightly out of alignment. Fortunately, Antonella was beyond suspicion. He had set the trap after her departure for Florence with Harry, and it had been sprung before their return.

    The ruse with the sheet of paper served him less well than he thought it might. In fact, about the only thing he learned was that it's impossible to second-guess someone who knows you're trying to second-guess them. He saw signs of guilt wherever he turned.