The Ancient Curse

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Oh, man, that hurt. But . . . who are you?’

  ‘Who am I? I’m Francesca. Don’t you recognize me?’ she cried, flashing the torch at her face again. She started dialling for emergency assistance on her mobile phone, but Fabrizio stopped her and got to his feet, holding on to the bumper of her Jeep.

  ‘No, it’s OK. I’m fine. Just a few bumps and bruises . . .’ Then, as he suddenly remembered what had terrified him, he instinctively turned his back to the car and grabbed on to the girl’s arm. ‘The dog . . . the beast . . . it’s here . . .’

  ‘A dog?’ said Francesca. ‘A herd of sheep just passed by with a shepherd’s dog. You can still hear the bells ringing. Listen.’

  Fabrizio heard the distant tinkling of bells as the flock wandered off.

  ‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Francesca, shining the torch on him. ‘You look awful! Come inside. You need something to drink.’

  Fabrizio noticed that the neon sign had begun glowing again and soon regained full force. The outdoor lights were still off.

  He shook his head. ‘I just came from there,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t like it. But what are you doing here?’

  Francesca finally switched off the torch and came close. ‘I was coming to see you, heading towards your house,’ she said, ‘when I saw you sailing down the regional road, crossing the state road and then pulling off on to that track in the middle of the fields. I tried to keep up, and I even flashed my headlights a couple of times, but you must have had your mind on something else. I guess you didn’t see me. At a certain point I lost you and I took a wrong turn and ended up in the courtyard of a farmhouse. So I turned back and went the other way until, bang, I found you. I really found you. Are you sure there’s nothing broken?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ said Fabrizio. ‘Don’t worry. There’s just this bump on my head that hurts like hell. I could do with some ice. But why were you looking for me in the first place?’

  Francesca walked him back to his car. ‘I’ve got news for you. Big news. Listen, have you eaten? We can put some ice on your head and make spaghetti at my house and I’ll tell you what I’ve found. If you feel like driving, you can follow me. Just make sure you don’t take any wrong turns!’

  She gave him a kiss and Fabrizio responded with passion. The girl’s scent, her soft lips, her arms around his neck gave him a sense of security and warmth that he needed desperately just then. When he pulled her close he could feel her full, round breasts pressing against his chest. He’d never suspected as much, since Francesca usually wore oversized shirts and trousers that didn’t accentuate her femininity.

  He said, ‘Well, God bless you, Dr Dionisi. Are you still trying to kill me?’

  He got into his car, started up the engine and waited until she reached her Jeep. Then, when she had pulled out, he followed her.

  Once they were on the state road, Francesca turned right and then left down the local road that led to Poggetto, where she lived. She stopped to open the gate with her remote control and Fabrizio slowed to a stop as well. Just then the mobile phone rang. It was Marcello Reggiani.

  ‘Hi there, Lieutenant. How’s it going?’

  ‘Awful. The only good news to report is that we pinpointed the source of those phone calls.’

  ‘The woman’s voice?’

  ‘Yes, right.’

  ‘So where is she located?’ asked Fabrizio, mentally picturing the place he’d just left.

  ‘A spot about four kilometres from your house. It’s called La Casaccia and it’s owned by a guy named Montanari. Pietro Montanari.’

  The gate had opened and Francesca was pulling into the garage. Fabrizio was stunned at Reggiani’s information.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. At least the guys in the lab are. Why?’

  ‘What kind of a place is it?’ insisted Fabrizio, still thinking it might match up with the tavern.

  ‘It’s a farm with an old house on it. At the Val d’Era kilometre marker number five, on the left.’

  Completely the opposite direction from where he’d just been. Fabrizio didn’t know what to think.

  He said, ‘Nice work. Where do we go from here?’

  ‘I’ve put a bug on the line and we’re checking the area for suspicious activity. I’ll keep you informed.’

  Francesca had already opened the door and turned on the switch in the hall. As he drew close, the light on inside the house and the girl’s smile warmed his heart.

  ‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘I’ll get that ice for you.’

  10

  FRANCESCA TOOK SOME ice cubes from the freezer and put them in a plastic bag, which she wrapped in a towel and handed to Fabrizio. He placed it on his forehead where it hurt and she started on dinner.

  Francesca lived in a converted farmhouse and the big kitchen preserved all its old-fashioned charm. The stove was built into the masonry and a hearth stood at the centre of the main wall, with copper pots and pans hanging on either side of the chimney breast, as bright and shiny as if they had just been polished. The table in the middle of the room was very old and designed for a big traditional family. Francesca set it for two, placing a couple of mats, plates and cutlery at one end. The wind was picking up outside and they soon heard the tapping of rain on the porch roof and on the windowpanes.

  ‘We needed this water,’ said Francesca as she stirred the tomato sauce. ‘My grapevines were dying of thirst.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a vineyard,’ said Fabrizio.

  ‘It’s my father’s actually, but I’m an only child and he’s quite elderly. He’s been retired for years and lives with my mother in Siena. I try to take care of this place as best I can, but I don’t have much time, as you know.’

  Fabrizio watched her lift the pot’s lid to check the boil and measure out the spaghetti.

  ‘How hungry are you?’ she asked, turning.

  ‘Very,’ said Fabrizio. ‘All I had for lunch was a little prosciutto with some vegetables.’

  ‘How’s your head?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘Good. Watch the pot while I go and change out of these dusty clothes. There’s wine in the fridge. Help yourself, and pour a glass for me too.’

  She disappeared down the hall and he could hear the sound of a door opening and closing and then the shower running. Fabrizio surprised himself by imagining her nude under the pounding water and he smiled: maybe there would be something between them after all. Or maybe there already was and he hadn’t noticed. He could still taste her lips, smell the light, clean, girlish fragrance that had remained with him after their embrace in the dark. He thought of how lovely it would be to become intimate with her, in that country house that smelt of lavender, in a bed decorated with painted flowers and mother-of-pearl where her parents and grandparents had slept before her. And how lovely to wake up beside her on a sunny morning and breathe in the aroma of freshly made coffee.

  He suddenly said to himself, ‘Francesca, my love,’ just to see what it would sound like when the day came for him to pronounce those words. It sounded good. He longed for the kind of simple feeling that would fill his soul, drive out the terror coiled just below the surface of his emotions, ready to spring and unleash such a crazy, irrational reaction in him.

  The water was boiling. He set the bag of ice on the table and dropped the pasta in the pot just as Francesca reappeared at the door. Her hair was damp and combed straight back and she’d put on a light dress that fitted her nicely without clinging and showed her legs a little above the knee. He wanted to pay her a compliment, but he couldn’t think of anything that sounded right and so he changed the topic rather than saying something stupid.

  ‘What was so important that it had you driving around at night searching for me?’ he asked.

  Francesca drained the pasta and was enveloped in a cloud of steam for an instant. She tossed the spaghetti with the tomato sauce, added a few basil leaves and transferred it to their plates. She put a piece of Pecorino and
a grater on the table and sat down facing Fabrizio.

  ‘I managed to get into the director’s archives,’ she said, grating a little cheese on Fabrizio’s pasta and then on her own, ‘and I found out where the inscription that Balestra is studying comes from. A place called La Casaccia, the property of a certain Pietro Montanari.’

  Fabrizio, who had been about to bring the first forkful of spaghetti to his mouth, stopped in mid-air.

  ‘Does that name mean something to you?’ Francesca asked.

  Fabrizio put the fork in his mouth and relished the flavour of the fresh tomato and cheese. ‘Delicious,’ he said. And then, right away, ‘No, nothing at all. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. You seemed surprised. Anyway, this Pietro Montanari has served time for petty theft and it was he who reported finding the inscription. The NAS has never made this public and Balestra has never announced the find, because he’s convinced there’s a fragment missing, the seventh piece, and that by keeping this quiet, it might turn up. Although nothing has come to light yet.’

  ‘Right. Balestra spoke to me about it that day I saw him in his office, remember?’

  ‘You bet. That day you told me to stay the hell away from you.’

  ‘People say things they don’t mean.’

  ‘That’s good to know. So, then, Balestra will also have told you that although they’ve explored the area nothing has emerged. No trace of a historical context, much less the missing piece.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what he said.’

  ‘And that he’s going mad because he can’t find this final fragment.’

  ‘I imagine he is. I’d feel the same way in his shoes.’

  ‘Good. So . . . I think I have a present for you.’

  ‘Don’t tell me . . .’

  Francesca pulled a little box out of her briefcase and handed it to him.

  ‘This is the original text of the inscription.’

  ‘Francesca, I . . . How can I . . . How did you do this? Did you get into the file?’

  ‘Not in a million years. The protection is uncrackable.’

  ‘I don’t get it . . . How did you manage?’

  Francesca’s hands disappeared back into her briefcase and came up with an object not much bigger than a cigarette packet.

  ‘See this? It’s a digital video camera that I can operate using a remote control. Whenever Balestra goes into his office and locks himself in, saying he doesn’t want to be disturbed, it means he’s working on his inscription. I switch on the camera that I hid on a shelf of his library. It focuses on the computer screen exactly. And so I’ve filmed the whole text. What I’ve given you is a video tape, not a disk.’

  ‘You’re a genius,’ marvelled Fabrizio. ‘I would never have thought of this . . . Did you manage to . . .’

  ‘Read it? No, I can’t make head or tail of it. His transcription is still very fragmentary and very rough. There’s no way I can understand it. You’ll have to transcribe it yourself. Do you have a video recorder?’

  ‘Sure. I brought a VCR with me so I’d be able to watch films, but who’s had time?’

  Francesca put the bowls in the sink and opened the fridge. ‘All I have in here are a couple of mozzarellas and two tomatoes.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ said Fabrizio.

  ‘What were you doing out at that place?’ asked Francesca as she put the food on the table and took a packet of crackers from the cupboard.

  Fabrizio didn’t answer at first.

  ‘If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to,’ she said in a tone that meant exactly the opposite.

  ‘At this point there’s no sense keeping secrets. I met that woman.’

  ‘The one who’s been making the mysterious calls?’

  ‘The same. Someone left a sealed envelope for me at the museum. There was an address inside. I had no doubt it was her and I was right.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Disturbing.’

  ‘Exactly what I thought you’d say,’ said Francesca with a touch of sarcasm.

  ‘Well, I don’t know how to define her. She may be crazy, or a visionary, what do I know? But she insisted. She told me I had to give up my research and leave before . . .’

  Francesca seemed not to notice that he hadn’t finished the sentence.

  Fabrizio continued: ‘Before something happens to me.’

  ‘What do you think she was talking about?’

  ‘I didn’t ask her and I didn’t even feel like asking her, but I’m sure you can guess what I thought and what I’m still thinking now.’

  ‘The animal.’

  ‘Exactly. What else?’

  ‘So what’s the connection between a woman who works behind the bar of a third-class establishment and that horrible murderous creature?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if there is a connection. Maybe she just wanted me to think that there was. I can’t tell you why. Anyway, I was very deeply disturbed and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. When I got up to leave, she said goodbye as if she were talking to a dead man. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Well sure, I think so. But I wouldn’t fret over it. I’m certain she’s just some kind of a loser who’s trying to work out her frustrations by acting like a sorceress or a clairvoyant or something. You’d be surprised how many of them there are out there.’

  She got up and put the plates in the sink.

  ‘Shall we make coffee?’ asked Fabrizio, getting up to help.

  ‘You plan on staying up late tonight?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so. I’d like to start transcribing that inscription.’

  Fabrizio drank his coffee, then got up to leave. For a moment he hoped Francesca would ask him to stay, but he immediately put the thought out of his head. She was the type of girl who only comes to bed with you if she loves you and thinks you love her. No, only if she’s sure you love her. After which you start with the wedding plans. In a flash of lucidity, that all seemed incredibly premature and his enforced chastity seemed a small price to pay.

  Francesca walked him to the door and threw her arms around his neck. ‘If I were following my instincts I’d ask you to stay,’ she whispered into his ear.

  Fabrizio felt completely different from the way he had a moment before. ‘But you’re not going to follow your instincts, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it’s better we don’t. We’re in the middle of a very difficult situation, and you’re not very clear about things, are you?’

  Fabrizio didn’t answer.

  ‘Do you at least like me a little?’

  Fabrizio would have preferred to be somewhere else and instead he heard the words he’d been rehearsing when she was in the shower slip out: ‘Francesca, my love . . .’ He held her close in the darkness as the rain beat down on the canopy over the front door and an intense odour of moss and wet wood flooded in from the nearby forest. He felt like he’d never want to leave her, that the smell of her hair and the taste of her lips were the only warmth and the only pleasure that life could give him.

  He kissed her and ran off under the rain towards his car.

  IT WAS POURING and every now and then a flash of lightning lit up the countryside like daylight. Further west, towards the sea, lightning bolts were streaking the sky, but the continuous rumble of thunder was muted by the distance. There was practically no one out at this time of night, in such weather, and Fabrizio fingered the tape he had in his pocket, thinking of the message it contained. Words from a long-ago era, words that formed a dreadful message, to judge from the director’s self-imposed isolation and the extreme reaction he’d had that day Fabrizio had told him about the Phersu.

  He turned down the Val d’Era road and had soon arrived at his house on the Semprini farm. The front courtyard and backyard were illuminated by the outdoor lights and the old bricks in the low walls gleamed in the rain. He stayed just long enough to safely deposit the tape Francesca had given him and to take his rifle from the rack, then he got back into the
car and drove off in the opposite direction.

  At that same moment, Lieutenant Reggiani was stretched out in an easy chair in his apartment, watching an Almodovar film on TV and drinking a whisky on the rocks. He was relatively relaxed, given the circumstances, and jumped when the phone on the side table rang.

  It was Sergeant Massaro. ‘He got home ten minutes ago, went inside for a moment and then drove off again.’

  ‘You’re following him, aren’t you?’

  ‘He’s just half a kilometre ahead of me.’

  ‘Well done, Massaro. Don’t lose him. If there’s any reason for alarm, call me and call the squad car.’ He looked at his watch. ‘But where’s he headed at this time of night in this storm?’

  ‘No idea, sir. He’s actually just turned right towards La Casaccia, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘Right. I think I know what he’s thinking, then. Anyway, you stay on him, understand?’

  ‘Roger that, sir,’ said Massaro, switching off the speaker-phone in his Fiat Uno.

  Fabrizio pulled off the side of the road, got out his topographical map, examined it under the dashboard lights and then picked up his binoculars. He pointed them in the direction of the open countryside to his right. La Casaccia, about 300 metres away, was an old country estate connected to the local road by a lane full of potholes that had filled with water during the storm. At the end of this path was a courtyard surrounded by the main house, which was old and dilapidated, another building, where the tenant farmer must have lived, a shed with a collapsing roof and a stable with a hayloft, also in a state of disrepair. The overwhelming impression was of neglect and disuse, and the houses would have appeared uninhabited had it not been for a couple of lit bulbs dangling on the outside walls and for the light filtering out from a window on the ground floor of the tenant’s house. Fabrizio was close enough to see the inside of the room and the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. There was a man of about fifty inside, sitting at a table with a plastic tablecloth, a flask of wine and a half-empty glass in front of him.