‘… Are a genius, my new English friend!’
She was blushing and could feel the heat in her face. Fratelli, a sensitive man caught by his own enthusiasm, saw this and let go of her fingers, refused to meet her eye.
‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘Italians have strange habits for you. I understand this but sometimes I forget. What we view as everyday warmth you see as an unwanted intrusion…’
‘It’s all right,’ she replied, amused by his embarrassment. ‘I’m not a stranger to Italy or Italians.’
‘No?’ he asked.
‘Why am I a genius?’
He nodded, as if thinking this through for himself. Food arrived. Cheese and bread, olives and other antipasti.
‘Because you asked the right question. Where would one buy an old cockerel? Like a fool I said… a farm. Which is possible, of course. But if I wanted one I wouldn’t dream of going there. I’d go to the market. The real one, not that tourist trap in the centro storico. To Sant’Ambrogio. If it moves, if it’s edible, they’ll sell it.’
Fratelli raised his glass again.
‘Salute,’ he said, and took a hefty swig.
‘And the comb?’
‘Haven’t a clue,’ he replied. ‘You?’
Julia Wellbeloved shook her head and found herself laughing. His meandering way of thinking and sudden, sharp, unpredictable intelligence intrigued her. She was also struck by the idiosyncratic nature of his conversation. Threads and questions entered it and never reached a resolution, unless his companion asked for one. Was this because Fratelli was using her as a sounding board? Or did his illness — whatever it was — make him forgetful at times?
‘You said something,’ she pointed out, ‘when we left the church. About how I had an excuse.’
‘For what?’ he asked, seemingly baffled.
‘For not seeing everything you did. About the paintings, I imagine.’
Fratelli thought for a long moment, chewed on some more of the fatty, half-raw meat and then prodded a stubby forefinger in the air.
He retrieved the book for which they’d braved the Grassi dragon, opened it, found the right page, thrust the photograph before her and said, ‘It was this.’
His finger indicated the serpent behind the beautiful Eve. The creature possessed a woman’s face, one that was very much like Eve’s own; lovely, with blonde hair, though tied back behind the creature’s neck.
‘Think,’ Fratelli urged. ‘Remember.’
She felt tired, not least from this man’s intense presence. Yet still he tempted her with his mysteries.
‘I do!’ she cried, recalling what she’d seen in the Brancacci Chapel, beyond the blood and the strange defiled frescoes on the wall.
This serpent was unadorned. Slyly triumphant, as it led the original Adam and Eve away from Paradise, into the world of flawed and mortal humanity.
‘Today it had something over its head…’ she whispered.
‘What?’ Fratelli demanded.
The memory and the reality were both so faint she wondered whether either could be real.
‘An oval. Lightly drawn in blood. Not blatant, like Eve’s face. More like a…’
She hesitated. She was no more religious than Pino Fratelli. Still the idea seemed sacrilegious in the extreme.
‘Like a halo perhaps.’
‘A halo, exactly. Executed with a glove I think,’ he said, indicating his own index finger, scrawling an ellipse in the water left on the bar by his icy glass. ‘He didn’t simply wish to punish Eve for her nakedness. But also to reward the serpent, the female viper, a hellish, womanly Satan, for dragging her down from the heights of Heaven in the first place. An intellectual point, I imagine; one he made while ensuring he left no fingerprints behind. So he’s a practical man too.’
Fratelli raised his glass and said, ‘Congratulations. You get better by the hour.’
‘What can it mean?’
‘A guess? It’s the best I can do.’
‘I think your guesses are probably good ones.’
‘My guess is that what we’ve seen is not the end but the beginning. Of what,’ he added quickly, before she asked, ‘I cannot know.’
He looked at his watch.
‘One hour, you said. I’ve taken enough of your time. Too much. I’m sorry. Sometimes I don’t know when to stop.’
‘Don’t worry. It was an interesting day.’
She meant it, too. More interesting, if she was honest with herself, than waiting hours for dry Uffizi officials to grant her interviews in which they did little except keep glancing at the clock.
‘Home,’ he said, with a self-deprecating smile. ‘Tomorrow you go to meet a true Florentine, one with centuries of history in his blood. And I shall nag Walter with my crackpot ideas.’
‘They don’t sound crackpot to me,’ she said.
‘They should,’ he insisted. He shook his white-haired head. ‘Really. And I hope — I’d pray if I could — they are.’
The blue sweater had ridden up as she struggled. He could see the pale, smooth skin of her stomach. By the tight, disordered bundle of flesh that was Chavah Efron’s navel lay a butterfly, a tattoo in red and blue, small and a little amateurish. As he stared at it she murmured something in a language he couldn’t understand. The words were strange, exotic, like an incantation. A prayer, perhaps.
I’m not what you’d call a good Jew either.
They all found God in the end. If they didn’t, God came to you, one way or another.
He climbed half over her, put his hand to her throat, peered into her face, wondering at how calm she looked. As if she expected this, had brought it on herself.
‘Get on with it then,’ she said. ‘I’ll lie here and not move a muscle. I won’t even notice. Promise.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he muttered, wary of her.
‘Ari will kill you…’
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
‘When he gets back…’
His hands gripped hers, his face came close.
‘Don’t lie to me. Your man’s dead,’ he said. He looked into Chavah Efron’s bright, alert eyes and said, ‘Shot in Rovezzano two weeks ago. I saw his photo in the paper. Same man.’ He tapped his bald head. ‘I remember things.’
Wished he didn’t sometimes.
There was no emotion on her face at all now. Except, perhaps, curiosity.
After a while he stared at the tattoo again and said, ‘This dream of yours…’
‘You don’t know anything about my dreams.’
He nodded towards the door. ‘When I came here I saw the dope and the guns. Your man was a Calabrian crook who got what he asked for. What you get for pushing poison to suckers who know no better.’
He thought about this ramshackle, falling-down farmhouse, set alone on a hill outside Fiesole.
‘Good place to hide. He was smart that way. The cops wouldn’t come looking here.’
‘Smart?’ She glared at him. ‘He’s dead. How smart is that?’
She drew back her head and spat in his face.
He wiped the saliva from his cheeks.
‘I need to go,’ she said.
‘Go where?’
‘Where do you think? Idiot!’
He walked into the room with the dope and the guns, picked the best he could find, a recent East European pistol, loaded it, came back, showed her the thing, untied her hands, waved her to the bathroom. He left the door half open and kept his eyes on her as she squatted. To make sure she didn’t try to get out of the window. That was why, or so he told himself.
‘Now what?’ she asked, reaching for the toilet roll. He led her back to the bed, bound her hands again, then her feet at the ankles. Legs tight together. It had to be that way.
Then watched her struggling on the duvet. He could run again now. Take the weapons and the dope and the van and go back to the city to turn them into cash. After what he’d seen she wouldn’t do a thing. Couldn’t have the police sniffing round this place, asking searching questions. Listening to her plead, ‘But it’s all for the farm, you see. Biologico. Macrobiotic or something. What’s a little dope and gun-running, a dead Calabrian hood for a husband, next to that?’