The Museum of Things Left Behind

by Seni Glaister

  Dancing began a little later, under the cautiously watchful eyes of Dario and his uniformed guests at the adjacent bar. Some of the officers leaned forward, their eyes on the young couples and their feet gently tapping to the tunes. The thought of dancing, of joining in, was tantalizing, but that would not be appropriate, they knew. But more than that, this was a party to which they were not invited. The young men and women of Vallerosa were laughing, singing, dancing together, and there was no uniformed presence either insisting that they join in or insisting that they stop. This was a rare example of unscheduled merrymaking and, as alien as it felt, not one of the officers doubted its importance.

  Not least Mosconi, who looked across and marvelled, watching the delight on Lizzie’s face and recognizing in that smile the feeling of success. A happy tourist. A happy royal tourist. His heart raced as he began to dwell on the personal ramifications of this triumph. He knew it was a lot to ask, but he hoped from the bottom of his heart that the music would carry to Sergio and that he would be moved enough to look out upon the scene beneath him.

  Sergio was indeed watching. He had edged cautiously onto the balcony and sat on the floor, hugging his knees. He peered between the balustrades trying to make out the individuals, but the men and women were simply silhouettes against the light of the adjacent bars. Each swaying, sashaying shadow mocked him as it moved.

  The whispering had started. The laughter had pre-empted it, laughter that echoed across the piazza, rippling in and out of the porticos and ricocheting from fascia to fascia to double in size and quadruple in exaggerated hilarity by the time it reached Sergio’s ears. Increasingly the president left his curtains closed during day and night to eliminate any chance of seeing something unsavoury below him, but when he dared to peer from behind the safety of the curtain, once the sun had set, he could make out flickering candlelight in the bars in the far corner. Candlelight! There had never been candlelight before – in fact, the bars would traditionally have shut their doors before additional light became necessary. People would have drifted home to their families, to make polite, un-mutinous conversation with each other, of the crops reaped, not to sow the seeds of the malcontent. Candles spelled trouble. For what other purpose would his voters require candles, other than to pore over the blueprints of revolution? You didn’t need candlelight to talk, to drink, to smoke. But most certainly you needed it to plot.

  And, following fast behind the laughter there was the whispering.

  CHAPTER 39

  In Which a Walk Is Planned

  The dancers continued to waltz in the flickering candlelight, and other musicians joined Pavel as the music picked up its pace. Lizzie, so set against joining in, had suddenly found herself pulled to her feet by Elio and swept along with the many other couples. Eventually she had fallen into a chair exhausted, having been passed from one partner to another, finally submitting to the music and allowing her body to eschew the forced moves of dancing at home, replacing them with the graceful turning that the music insisted upon.

  Pavel’s cousin Maria had struck up a conversation with her, a faltering, anxious conversation that warmed once they had found some common ground. As they laughed at Pavel’s Vallerosan male pride, the young clockmaker sensed ridicule and came to join them, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead and collapsing into a chair next to them. ‘What’s the joke?’ he asked, searching both women’s faces.

  ‘You!’ they chorused, and burst into a renewed duet of mirth, but Lizzie reassured him with a squeeze of his hand before his prickly temperament undid the convivial atmosphere.

  ‘There’s no joke, really. Maria and I have arranged to go for a walk in the morning. The destination is all very clandestine, but I’m looking forward to it.’

  Pavel gave his cousin a sideways glance. ‘A walk, Maria? I trust your secret destination is not going to betray anything too sensitive?’

  Maria shrugged and turned away.

  Pavel turned with a small frown to Lizzie. ‘Lizzie, you must understand that not many people get to drink in both bars. We have issues here that are not always for the ears of government officials, and we must respect that you are a guest of our president. As such, perhaps your first duty is to them.’

  Lizzie now reached for Maria’s and Pavel’s hands. ‘I don’t know where my duty lies. With them? With you? Can’t my duty be to Vallerosa? In which case it should serve the interest of both groups. Or am I being naïve?’

  Pavel took a swig of his beer. ‘It is in our blood to distrust the government. That is our role in life, and if you take it away from us, you take away the structure on which our country operates very successfully. Our leaders aren’t bad men, they’re not even particularly self-serving, but they are neither intellectuals nor visionaries and, as such, I don’t see how they can make a proper contribution to our society. They are just administrators. Nothing more, nothing less. But not everything here is perfect, and when there is a serious threat to our society, we must take the matter into our own hands. If you see something, anything, that is perhaps not directly the wish of the government, you must understand that it might well reflect the greater wish of the people.’

  Lizzie considered this for a moment, unsure where the conversation might lead. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re referring to, but I come with an open mind and would do nothing to undermine the friendship you have already shown me. You must trust me, if you can.’

  ‘I trust you but, more importantly, Maria trusts you. Here, the women know about these things and we men must bow to their superior judgement.’ He bowed his head to Maria.

  Maria threw Lizzie a smile and reached out a hand to squeeze Lizzie’s. ‘So, Lizzie, we meet for a walk tomorrow morning, and you bring nothing but your open mind.’

  Lizzie agreed and the three stepped out for a final turn of the makeshift dance floor before the fiddlers retired to bed.

  CHAPTER 40

  In Which Lizzie Begins to Understand

  Lizzie and Maria met, as planned, under the clock tower at dawn. Both women felt nervous and Lizzie felt duplicitous, for which a lifetime of good manners and clear-cut moral guidance from her father, a nanny and a number of first-class teachers had ill-prepared her. That she might be drawn into something that would compromise the trust that Rossini, Posti, Angelo and Sergio had already placed in her made her regret the readiness with which she had agreed to the expedition. Her anxiety was amplified by Maria’s furtive glances and her insistence that they talk in whispers and walk in the shadows.

  In the cool of the morning shade they wound their way down the hill. They used the free bridge to cross the Florin, then began their slow ascent up the steep hill of the south side. Lizzie recognized much of the journey, but this time, rather than taking the circuitous route down the far bank of the river and up to the Museum of Things Left Behind, they cut straight up the south side of the gully, rapidly leaving the awakening town below them.

  Eventually they reached a small opening leading into a pretty piazza featuring a crumbling old fountain, beautifully laced with brickwork. Here they stopped to catch their breath and to look back at the path they had taken. Now they were a little higher than the Piazza Rosa on the opposite face, approximately at the same height as the top of the clock tower. Lizzie imagined the bells ringing out to grace the whole valley, excited that somewhere in this complex town men were overcoming their pride to restore the sound. But right now it wasn’t bells that enchanted her ears but, rather, the sweet song of the birds that darted to and from the fountain, bathing in the shallow pool and lining up on the branches of an acacia tree to sing about it.

  ‘Come on. Let’s keep going before it gets too hot,’ instructed Maria. She led the way up some steps, through an arch and into yet another dark alley, climbing ever higher.

  After another fifteen minutes, the houses began to thin, the spaces between them became more generous and a morning breeze fanned Lizzie’s face, bringing with it a whole host of strange yet utterly familiar
fragrances that she had not encountered before in Vallerosa.

  As she quickened her pace, suddenly attracted by the quality of light at the end of the alley, Maria put out a hand to stop her.

  ‘Lizzie, what you see here is a secret. It is not something known to our government or to many men.’ Here Maria reconsidered. ‘That is to say, it is a Vallerosan type of secret. Plenty of men probably know it in their hearts but none wants to acknowledge it, for fear of what it might mean to them. I need to trust completely that what you see will remain between us. Can I?’

  ‘Of course,’ whispered Lizzie, swallowing hard, suddenly a little afraid as she had absolutely no idea what she was agreeing to.

  As they stepped towards the opening, the narrow view gave way to a sight that took Lizzie’s breath away. Until that moment she had been so totally unprepared that she took a few moments to focus on the spectacle that unfolded in front of her – she had to lean against the wall to steady herself while she took it all in.

  ‘My God. It’s absolutely beautiful!’ she breathed.

  For as far as the eye could see, the mesa on that side of the valley was a hive of activity. Some areas appeared to be divided into small allotments, women busy tilling the soil, weeding, planting and watering. Other sections appeared to support larger areas of crops. There was an enormous patch of maize, swaying in the breeze, and beyond that trees were planted in regimented rows, suggesting orchards. Goats grazed among the ordered planting, apparently untethered, and a pile of shining milk cans lay glinting in the sunshine, waiting to be filled that evening. Everywhere Lizzie looked, women worked, and between them the air was filled not only with chat and laughter but the flitting of butterflies and the humming of insect life.

  ‘Almonds and walnuts mainly over there, and fruit in that direction – apricots, peaches, plums.’ Maria waved her hand towards the orchards. ‘Here, on the lower levels, are people’s private gardens where they tend vegetables, salad leaves, tomatoes. Anything that needs to be planted to scale for fertilization, such as sweetcorn, is planted in the larger plots and maintained collectively.’

  All the femininity that was so lacking in the city centre was here, brimming with life in the fecund soil. The air was dripping with fertility.

  ‘I don’t understand why something so positive and natural has to be illicit. Am I missing something?’

  ‘Come,’ said Maria. She led Lizzie by the hand to the first of the fruit trees and reached up to feel the ripeness of the apples. Two that were ready for eating fell away in her hand and she motioned to Lizzie to sit with her in the shade. She crunched into her apple, noisily and happily, and Lizzie followed suit. It was a while before Maria spoke, and when she did she searched carefully for her words.

  ‘A long time ago, more than ten years, I suppose, the previous president, Sergio Senior, hired an American consultant. Have you seen him around?’

  ‘I have. I arrived in Vallerosa with his colleague Paul. I’m afraid when I did get to meet Mr Whylie, we didn’t exactly hit it off.’

  ‘Well, he comes from a very different world. But Sergio Senior seemed to place great trust in him to turn what we have here into a commodity. It was the tea that caught his eye, and he focused his attention on that. His problem appeared to be that we didn’t have enough to make it worth his while selling it to another country so he made a plan to expand our capacity. Don’t misunderstand me, we’re very proud of our tea in Vallerosa. It is almost a national symbol and it is certainly the crop to which we attach the most importance. It also has special properties.’

  Maria allowed her voice to fall away, leaving this thought trailing through the air as she sat in silence for a moment.

  Lizzie’s eyes widened. ‘Special how? Like magical?’

  Maria giggled, slapping Lizzie’s arm lightly. ‘No, silly, not magical. But it has a very high caffeine content, higher than the tea grown elsewhere, which is why it energizes you when you drink it. This country runs on tea. Honestly, if we stopped drinking it we’d probably all fall into a stupor and never get anything done.’

  Lizzie thought of the effect the tea had on her: since arriving in Vallerosa she had been particularly alert in the mornings. ‘You’re right. It certainly clears your head. And I think I might be a little addicted – it’s the first thing I think of when I wake up.’

  Maria laughed, a mixture of joyful glee and national pride dancing in her eyes. ‘Yes, it has that effect on you, I’m afraid, but everyone here is equally addicted. They say it is why our scholars can read for hours and hours without falling asleep.’

  She was thoughtful for a minute. ‘The American consultant, he became very interested at one point in these specific qualities. There’s a very refreshing drink that Piper makes for people that need a bit of a pick-me-up – a tea tonic. You should try it. It is like drinking all the tea you need for a day in one glass.’

  Lizzie acknowledged that she’d had first-hand experience of its properties. Maria smiled and continued, ‘The American became interested in this and even got the recipe from Piper but nothing ever came of it. I think Piper was very disappointed, but then Piper so frequently is.’ She frowned at the memory but dragged herself back to the present.

  ‘Anyway, I’m wandering off the track a little. The government started to issue quotas that had to be met. We had to produce a certain amount of tea and it was a matter of national pride that we achieved this. At first we complied, taking out many of the orchards on the north mesa to accommodate the new plantations. The first few years provided a very good yield, a happy benefit from the high-density planting the consultant had insisted upon. The closer the plants are, the more effectively they use the sunlight available to them. But such high-density planting can’t easily be picked by hand and this country doesn’t have the infrastructure or equipment to automate any part of the process. It became very apparent within the next couple of harvests that the quality of the tea was not so good.’ The two women watched a butterfly dance lazily past them, following its path until it disappeared into some long grass.

  ‘Did you know tea, on the whole, is naturally sterile? It relies on bees and other insects to pollinate it. We think the lack of variety in the planting quickly made the tea less appetizing to the insects. But it wasn’t just that. The government’s plan was flawed for other reasons.’

  Maria paused. She was taking a terrible risk in talking to a stranger. She watched Lizzie intently. The young woman had her head tipped back against the tree and was looking up at the leaves above her, enjoying the interplay of leaf and light in the completely new environment in which she found herself. ‘Carry on, I’m listening,’ Lizzie urged.

  Maria took a deep breath. ‘If all we grew was tea, what were we going to eat? And while we were waiting for this non-existent customer for our tea to materialize, what on earth were we going to do with the excess?

  ‘It was Ada’s idea, I think. Hers and a number of the other women in the city. Most of them are married to men quite high up in office so they were close to the policies that were being formed. And it was never really a concrete idea, nothing that was ever spoken about as such. It just sort of developed. Up here were the oldest plantations, and they were the first ones to be counted by the American. He came up once, barely made it to the mesa, scribbled down a few numbers and returned quickly to the sanctity of the north side of the river. He and his colleagues have never been back.

  ‘First of all we took out some of the oldest tea bushes and planted instead an orchard – that’s what you see there, the fruit of many years’ labour. And then, as the government insisted on more and more intensive planting on the north side to fill the quota, we simply replaced the missing crops over here.’

  Maria smiled at their own audacity. ‘If anything, we have an improved infrastructure for farming now. It is less haphazard, more collaborative, and prevents us growing an excess of any one crop. But none of this was deliberate. It came about out of necessity. In the final phase, in the greatest i
nsult of all, some families were told they must turn their own private gardens over to tea. Of course it made no sense, either commercially or agriculturally, but nobody wanted to oppose the order. It was made much more palatable because these secret gardens were by then flourishing and productive. We were able to take quick and decisive action by allocating to each affected family a similar-sized allotment here on the south mesa, allowing them to tend their own land without losing out.

  ‘Nothing happens quickly in farming. The more time and effort you invest in the land, the better the results, and we were able to rely on the wisdom of Ada, her sister Evelina and others who knew the cycles, recognized the dangers and were able to respond to the potential threat to our livelihoods. This has been hard work and has taken a huge amount of commitment and personal sacrifice on the part of the women, but we have created something that in the end has become both essential and joyful.

  ‘The advantage, a happy accident, really, is that you get the individuality of gardening coming through, the mix of vegetables and flavours that comes from personal taste rather than the bigger scale of the co-operative.

  ‘Most people take just what they need from their own plots and the rest goes to the market to be distributed through the normal channels. It was never intended to reach such an industrial scale, but it worked. The crops have all thrived up here.’

  Lizzie looked around her, understanding now the enormity of the work the women had undertaken. ‘It’s amazing. It feels like Eden up here!’

  Maria looked at Lizzie’s shining eyes and began to relax about her decision to confide in her. ‘A good comparison, of course, because there is no doubt that this is Eve’s garden.’