The Woman at the Window (12 page)

‘She fell in love with him?'

‘According to the Principessa she did. Principessa tried to put up a warning hand but that put a stop to her visits. There were no limits to Mario's priapic powers. People could only get at her through him.'

‘What about this other one?'

Griffiths tapped the figure on Mario's left in the photograph.

‘He looks quite happy here sandwiched between the two.' 

‘Yes. Well that's Giusi. During his military service in Calabria, Master Mario had become engaged to Maria Giuseppina Vizzini. That's little Giusi. Then the warrior returned home and working, so to speak, so hard at Capestri, he conveniently forgot Maria Giuseppina. Slipped his mind. Until Giusi's babbo turned up all gold rings and bracelets. You could say dressed to kill.'

‘Oh dear,' Griffiths said. ‘This sounds like opera without music. You are about to tell me the mighty Mario had to plead for his life.'

‘In a sense yes. But to Annette, not to Vizzini. There were startling reports of a meeting in Salvatore's cantina. Not in the house, according to the Principessa, out of respect for Vennenberg's ghost. Mario stuck out his chest and demanded marriage and an immediate flight to Germany. It wasn't a case of him being afraid of Vizzini but there was an entire clan to contend with. In any case Annette had all the money in the world to finance any kind of transfer. And he, Mario, would quite like to see the world in comfort. She would have none of it. She was married to Capestri and to Vennenberg's ghost. How could she possibly marry a peasant who couldn't tell the difference between German and English? He had obliged her and served her well but he was no more worthy of marriage to an educated heiress than one of her dogs. It got very heated. In the end Mario stalked out to meet his Calabrian obligation. He had been so hurt, so wounded, he would never return to Capestri. Never!'

‘Well he did,' Griffiths said. ‘He must have done. And there's this photograph to prove it.'

‘People are strange.'

A liturgical note crept into Marloff 's voice. He spoke so Vennenberg's Ghost softly that Griffiths had to lean forward like a man sharing a secret.

‘Up there it seemed that Vennenberg would be canonised. He had come from nowhere like wandering saints used to do and his wealth had brought a new prosperity to the district. Village children brought flowers to lay on his tomb. Annette took to wearing his old jackets and began to look like the high priestess of the cult. The dogs were a problem. They bit her arms and legs but she didn't feel it. Anaesthetised by alchohol. Then Salvatore's old aunt was bitten. She died in fact of natural causes but Annette paid out some compensation. Mario turned up for the funeral. Annette's car wouldn't start. Mario fixed it.'

‘Aha.'

‘Aha nothing. Everything is an accident until it happens. Then it becomes Fate. Mind you Salvatore was always on the look out to give Fate a helping hand. He could see through the window a woman peering in the mirror to search out the wrinkles around her eyes.'

‘Just the facts,' Griffiths said. ‘Never mind the fancy bits.' 

‘Salvatore sent messages south. It was time for Mario and Giusi to move back. There was a convenient apartment vacant at Ponte Gavello no more than seven kilometres away. Then Mario was back in the garden so that Annette could see the sweat rolling off his bare back. It became part of her routine to watch Giusi bring the mighty Mario his food and flask of wine. The turning point came when Giusi ran into the old servant's hall screaming and begging Annette to stop Mario going windsurfing. She had had a dream of losing him in a sudden storm, and the women of her clan had a second sight which was as much a curse as a gift…'

‘Southern superstition versus northern romantic illusion,' Griffiths said.

‘Well there was a storm. Mario didn't go. And there was a man drowned. From that time on Annette treated Giusi with a new respect. She was in the house as much as Mario was in the garden. When Giusi became pregnant, Annette stopped being jealous. They came to an arrangement.'

‘That's what it all amounts to in the end,' Griffiths said. ‘Living arrangements.'

‘Every Sunday Giusi and Mario take over the kitchen and make Annette a splendid meal. They keep on filling her glass until she's in a satisfactory stupor and then they put her to bed. You can see from the photograph Annette is a pretty hopeless drunk. The Principessa says she is worn down by wealth and committing suicide by stealth. She thinks Mario is after the place.'

Griffiths struggled to his feet to stretch himself. 

‘God! What a world,' he said.

‘There are murmurs of disapproval in the village.' 

‘What's it got to do with me? I'm just a narrow-minded old maid anyway…'

‘Mario's the man to deal with.'

Marloff was absorbed in his own penetrating assessment of the situation. He held out both hands to indicate that in the final analysis a comfortable place in the world was like a balance sheet where profit and loss were the essential factors. 

‘In this harsh world, Griff, if you want to get anywhere, you sometimes have to do business with the devil. It's a marvellous cascina. Great potential. It can only go up in value. Marjorie will love it. And Myfanwy of course. That goes without saying.'

‘I'm not sure we'd fit in up there. Settle I mean. Planted. For good, for heaven's sake.'

Marloff hastened to reassure him.

‘Detachment, Griff old dear. Cultivate observation. “Italy! Paradise of exiles.” There's a lot to be said for polite indifference. Minding your own business. Don't idealise anywhere. Immoderate love turns so easily to immoderate hate. It's only a photograph. You can see the two women have come to an understanding. Who knows one day if he misbehaves they'll turn on him! Life in the sweet south, Griff, old boy. Let's have another beakerful.'

Griffiths shook his head.

‘I don't know. If I have to stay here I want a bedroom with a window facing north.'

‘And a curlew calling?'

Marloff laughed, gripped his arm and drew him along the terrace for a last look at the lake in the moonlight. In the distance someone afloat was singing to the strains of a guitar. ‘Let's sleep on it,' Marloff said. ‘Wrap yourself in moonlight and luscious music. This is the place to be!'

Nomen

WHEN the wars were over and the skies began to clear he appeared among us as if he had always been there. He could have been another casualty since he appeared even stiffer than we were in the open air, yet we accepted him for the most part as a good omen. He was so ready to appear as one of us: the same waxen pallor, the same rodent brightness in the wide-open eyes. A more flexible mouth perhaps capable of greater extremes of joy and sadness. In any case his voice was melodious and we were very ready to listen to anything he might have to say.

The young in danger and sharing the same stressful circumstances easily congeal and coagulate and for those first few days of blissful ceasefire we stuck together. Without being oratorical or loquacious, in that low vibrant voice that so easily commanded our attention, he said how lucky we were to have survived in such good condition and the implication was the world was still there for us to repossess. Even transformations were possible. He emphasised the word new, as if it had never been used before, in several languages; until he settled on the dialect that he understood 
was native to us. We called him Nomen, and he didn't object. He was with us to reassure us. It was a new dawn and so it could be a new beginning. The girl called Candida was a little older than most of us, a postgraduate she said, and therefore harder to satisfy.

‘All dawns are new,' she said. ‘All they do is announce the here and now. What we have to decide is what we are going to do about it. What country, for example, what constitution, what style, and what century even if, as you say, the choice is ours. For my part, I have to tell you, I see the world and all its pathetic histories from a proactive woman's point of view.'

It was clear she was struggling to resist his sympathetic smile. We were able to move freely out of our dark corner of the deserted city because he knew his way through the open sewers and the shattered streets. In the chaos of war you can acquire an affection for ruins. They offer a minimum of shelter, and bombs in their own way are a form of excavation. They give a glimpse of the strata of the centuries. It all seems so old it makes you feel invincibly young. In what had been the palace gardens, headless statues leant at awkward angles among the blasted trees and he had some difficulty in persuading us to follow him to the tranquil lakes where he assured us we would begin to feel things differently. 

‘There are fish in the lake still,' he said. ‘And Pepe Pescatore knows just how to catch them and grill them.' 

For so long it seemed trucks had rattled through the empty streets carting away corpses. Now as if by magic he found an empty truck and we climbed into it, a living cargo, and he drove us away singing half-remembered songs like children on an outing. Could it be a return to innocence on which to build a regenerated world? By the lake, he assured us, we could rest and recuperate and decide what course to take. When we ran out of tunes I could hear Candida muttering to herself as she clung to the rail above the driving cab.

‘Do we have any choice?' she was saying. ‘We've lived on Illusions for so long. They kept us going. Now we are being rolled out on the road to Reality. Can we stand it? They say the Tyrant is dead. But in my mind he was dead and buried long ago under a great mound of wishful thinking.'

I was far more inclined to sing. The death of the Tyrant and the end of the war were surely facts to sing about. When the guns are silent you can hear the birds singing. He drove our truck through the trees and the walls of reeds and rushes to where the fisherman moored his boats in secret at the narrow end of the lake. The evening sun turned the shallow water into gold and through a gap in the reeds we caught our first glimpse of the two islands in the distance and on one of them a bell tower that stood intact. This was Pepe's kingdom, of no strategic value, ignored by the missiles and advancing troops in too much of a hurry to stop and lay the place waste. There were deep wells and caves on both islands where Pepe had hidden barrels of wine and demijohns of olive oil and bags of flour. We were rowed over to Bell Island and next to the ruined church there was a barn of delightful antiquity that Pepe was resolved to convert into a tavern. Nothing had ever tasted so good as the white fish, the rosé wine, and the thick brown bread. Pepe and his old mother took such pleasure in watching us eat we felt like cheerful characters assembled at the happy ending of a fairy story. Along the walls behind us there were white marble Roman tombstones and Candida took obvious pleasure in deciphering the inscriptions while she sipped her wine. She became eloquent and began to insist that the future simply had to be different otherwise the wheel of Fate would just turn and present us with the same old sequence of calamities. She was ready to formulate transforming remedies. The world should be placed under the control of women. The terrors of technology could best be contained by an oligarchy of highly qualified women. Bombing would be banned. Just as the Chinese mandarins had restricted the use of gunpowder, a revered order of lady doctors of philosophy would be in charge of technology and might even transform control panels into shining altars of worship. There was much light-hearted discussion of the merits of the great world religions for future use. Could they at last be empowered to calm mankind's unruly fevers and bring rest to the multitudes as much as to the chosen few? In our unusual state of repletion and contentment the murmur of mild contention was enough to send us into a long untroubled sleep.

When I opened my eyes to meet the morning sunlight and the smiling faces around me, it was as if the years of war had never happened. What was that old hymn about the thousand ages being forgotten as a dream that dies at the opening day? All around me was the embryo of a new society and I saw it reflected in Nomen's smiling face. The days would be so full we would forget to count them. By mid morning the waters of the lake would be warm enough to swim in, and by the evening Pepe would take those who cared to join him night-fishing by the light of the moon. It soon became the custom for Candida to take two or three companions with her to weed and chatter in Pepe's garden and to harvest any produce under his mother's benevolent instruction. There was everything to keep us occupied and no compulsion. Nomen listened sympathetically when I told him this was the first time in my life I had not felt an urgent need to move on. No scratching about for food and shelter. No scramble to hide. He called this a small reason to rejoice. In which case, I wondered, what would be a great reason and how much greater would be the rejoicing? Everything he said was resonant with meaning and I listened as intently as I could and yet struggling to remember let alone memorise. I was too content with the springtime of life around me and perhaps his words combined too well with the language of the lakeside. His voice melted too easily into the music of the moment.

One of our number, Alberto, was particularly eager to organise games. Alongside the lake there was an area of firm level sand that we could use. With some ingenuity he created bats and balls of various sizes and we spent time in the evenings devising rules and regulations without which, as Alberto insisted, there would be no purpose or pattern to the activity. Myself I imagined we hardly needed a purpose. This was an interval of bliss to restore our spirits before turning to the tasks of building a city where healthy children could play unthreatend in the streets and gardens.