Angilù answered in Italian. ‘Do you not speak Italian? I don’t speak English and I’m not going to be able to make you understand anything if you can’t speak Italian.’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to speak a good deal slower than that if I’m going to understand you.’
‘I said, do you speak Italian? I need to talk about my house and the old landlord. I should have got the Prince to come with me.’
‘Did you say “Prince”? There is a local prince, isn’t there? Look, stay here, and I’ll get someone who can help. I can read a newspaper perfectly well but you don’t sound like what I’m reading. Stay here.’
Angilù watched the man get up and walk out on legs as red and bare as a hen’s. When he came back, there was another man with him. When Angilù had repeated what he had to say, they led him into a room with a table. Their names were Treviss and Worka. Slowly, Angilù explained to them his situation. Each time they definitely understood, he said ‘yes’ and stamped the side of his fist on the table.
They asked him questions about Prince Adriano and wrote down some of the things they said, pens circling on paper, small whirlpools of Angilù’s thoughts now lost to him. He could understand numbers and recognised the shapes of some names but he couldn’t read. When they were finished, they stood up and shook Angilù’s hand and showed him to the door. They were interested in his horse and came out and patted its neck while he mounted. They waved at him as he rode away.
Will said to Travis, ‘That was a little distasteful, didn’t you think?’
‘I’m not sure I trust anyone round here.’
‘I mean, if he got his house when the former occupant was driven away by the Fascists, then isn’t he the expropriator trying to hang onto his property? I mean, in a sense, he’s just come in here and declared himself a Fascist.’
‘Maybe. Though that’s going a bit far.’
‘Could be Albanese, of course. The person who was driven away.’
‘Nice horse, though. Handsome animal.’
‘Has this Cassini been mentioned in any of the denunciations? I’ll ask Albanese and talk to the police. And I suppose I should go and visit this prince.’
27
Ray checked every inch of the attic on his hands and knees, peering down into the cracks between floorboards for any signs of wires or devices. The place was huge, the size of the whole floor of an apartment building, only with no interrupting walls. It was an enormous container of empty space. He felt the terror of that space around him. Always some part of it was so far away he wouldn’t know. The search took him hours. Against one wall were a few boxes, some old paintings, a table and a rocking horse. He checked these first of all. They were the most frightening. Mouth hanging open as he crawled around them, sweat stinging his eyes. He reached his trembling hands inside the boxes and found only fabrics. The paintings were of old saints and landscapes. At one moment, he moaned, thinking it was all about to end but he realised that the wires in his hand were to hang the picture from.
Walls next. Shuffling around on his knees, he felt the plaster with his fingertips. There were cracks here and there. They didn’t look deliberate. Along one side, Ray could feel the sun’s warmth coming through, a slow pulse of heat transmitted through masonry and wood. At one spot along that side, something was happening. He heard scratching and leaned close. Silence. Then a snapping sound and a dry screaming started up. It was a bird’s nest. He remembered that sound from home. Sometimes walking under a subway bridge, up in the grimy iron darkness, you heard the baby pigeons screaming for food. The adult bird flew away again and the screaming stopped.
There were two small windows. He was lying down, looking out of one at a geometric garden with spooky white statues standing in their postures, pointing upwards or lazily leaning, when he heard someone coming up the steps to the little door. He got up and ran to stand beside it. As the door opened, he reached through and caught hold of the person and threw them down. He got his forearm over their throat and shouted, ‘Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck are you?’ He saw beneath him a terrified woman, the same woman who’d cut herself in front of him and taken him to this place. She was twisting and jerking, trying to lift her head. When he let her go, she scooted backwards away from him on her heels and her hands.
‘You are mad,’ she said. ‘Be quiet.’ She laughed and winced and touched her mouth to see if it was bleeding. Her head was ringing. So shocking, the attack and contact of his body, the force of it. What it told her: he wanted to live.
Ray cursed like his father, calling on the saints to help him. Her eyes widened.
‘You speak Italian. Are you American or Italian? If you are a hiding Fascist there will be a problem.’
‘I’m not a Fascist. Jesus fucking Christ. That’s the last thing I am. I’m an American.’
‘You have to be quiet. It’s a big house. But you have to stay here so no one hears you. You cannot go near the windows.’
‘I have to check if it’s safe.’
‘Of course it’s safe.’
‘And don’t come in without warning me.’
‘How can I warn you? And why do you speak Italian?’
‘I am Italian. I mean, my parents are Italian, from the south. I’m from Little Italy not big Italy.’
‘I see.’
‘Raimundo Marfione. But I’m Ray. Everybody calls me Ray.’
‘Okay, Ray. Is it all right if I speak English and Italian also when I can’t remember words?’
‘Sure.’
‘Good. Please will you stay on that side, where those boxes are? I’m going to go out for a while.’
She got up and smoothed her hair with trembling hands. She brushed the back of her dress. ‘You’ve got me all dusty. If my father had seen you touch me like that, he’d have had you whipped.’
‘What’s that?’
She said in English, ‘You know, hit. Like for a horse.’
‘Oh, whipped. I’m sorry.’
‘Just be quiet.’
She went out through the little wooden door and Ray fell back down where he sat. He could still feel her there, how she’d stirred the air around. He looked up and saw timber rafters. How had he not thought of those? He needed to check all of them.
28
Descending back into the house, wondering about the secret violence and desperation she now had stored in the attic, Luisa turned into the corridor and saw Graziana. The old woman looked down.
‘What do you know?’ Luisa asked her.
‘Beg pardon, miss?’
‘What do you know?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do.’
‘I’m sorry, miss, I don’t. There’s lots I don’t know, God help me.’
‘That’s good.’
‘And I don’t want to know it, either.’
‘Even better.’
Luisa walked on past her. As a child, Luisa had thought of the large atrium with the marble staircase as a kind of huge mouth, like the jaws of a lion. When she went out, it spat her out. When she came in, it swallowed her. The lion was sneaky: it would pretend it wasn’t there, that everything was normal, just a room and some stairs and a high, painted ceiling, but she knew it was there. She could feel it forming in the air around her.
She hadn’t thought of the lion for a long time or perhaps unconsciously she always did and it was something she took for granted in the nature of the house. Today as she hurried out she noticed and remembered. Across the courtyard, her father leaned on his stick. He was smoking his pipe, his preferred form of outdoor smoking, and was deep in conversation with Angilù. She waved at them and whispered to herself, ‘Just stay over there, don’t ask me anything.’ Her father raised his hand in lofty salute and rose to his full height as he saw her hurrying away.