by Alex Barr
At first nothing seemed real. But as the consequences piled up my perceptions sharpened. You said, ‘The thing about the Path, David: the higher one gets, the harder the fall. I’m sending you on a course for beginners.’ And you asked me for this report.
How One Thing Becomes Another
A train from Florence rumbles through the night heading for Paris. Dr Tanner watches the world slide by and thinks of his daughter. Will she like the Tuscan doll he bought? Is she too old for dolls at eleven? Seven years divorced, he’s unsure about many things. But he is sure about the Italian Renaissance.
Right now he’s reading about Orsanmichele, the church in Florence converted from a grain market. The book is in Italian.
“So you read Italian. Wish I did.”
It’s the woman opposite. Rounded features, clear eyes, a slight lift to her upper lip like Della Robbia’s Madonna of the Innocents. But warm flesh, not cold terracotta, with lines of amusement around her mouth.
“Ah, you speak English.”
She smiles. “I think we all do in this compartment. My husband does, after a fashion. And the gentleman beside you, judging from his newspaper.”
That gentleman lowers his paper – one Tanner disapproves of – and grins. “All bloody Brits, eh? What a coincidence.”
She shrugs. “I suppose we all booked on the same website.”
Silence falls. No-one seems able to further the conversation. Tanner hands the book to the woman.
“Have a look.”
“Thank you.”
She turns the pages carefully, studying the photographs. The husband leans over, his weight on her shoulder.
“Buildings,” he says.
She moves away from him. He struggles to stay upright against the swaying of the train. His cream-colored jacket is unbuttoned, revealing a purple T-shirt with the slogan Don’t ask me to sing. He refills his plastic beaker with Barolo and drinks. His long nose and hollow cheeks remind Dr Tanner of Cosimo de’ Medici.
“What do you do?” the woman asks.
Tanner wishes he did famine relief or mountaineering, something everyone could admire. He sighs. “I lecture in art history, specialising in the Renaissance.”
“That must be fascinating.”
“Yes, but there are occupational hazards.”
“Good heavens. What?”
“It can make you very dry.”
Cosimo’s lookalike perks up and offers him the Barolo.
“Thank you,” says Dr Tanner, “but it wouldn’t agree with me.”
“It agrees fine with me.”
He laughs, spills wine on the seat, and wipes it with his sleeve.
The woman goes back to studying the book. Dr Tanner is struck by her interest. A refreshing change from vague or embittered colleagues. And students who mostly lack the spark of curiosity. It would be so rewarding to teach her Italian.
“What do you do?” he asks.
“Bugger all,” her husband growls.
“I do plenty,” his wife says. “For example, I organise fund-raising for—”
Her husband hiccups, spills more wine, and swears.
Another silence.
The man with the newspaper, fiftyish with a toothbrush moustache, wearing a loose green cardigan over a yellow open-necked shirt, leans towards Dr Tanner.
“I do Italian. Buona sera. Dolce vita. Pizza margherita.”
When no-one responds he says to the woman, “Come on then, love, tell us about the book.”
She indicates that the answer should come from Tanner.
He sighs again. “Orsanmichele was once a grain market. The upper floor was the granary. You can still see the ducts the grain came down.”
“When did it become a church?” the woman asks.
“Around 1380.”
“Why?”
“It seems there was a miracle.”
The woman’s husband belches.
The train sways on, the noise of wheels a reminder of the hard rails beneath. The swaying tips the husband against his wife, who pushes him upright. He opens his eyes with a start and gets to his feet, clutching the luggage rack.
“Going for a pee.”
He slides open the compartment door and goes out. Tanner suppresses the thought, Good Riddance.
The man beside him asks, “What do you know about the Great Apennine Tunnel?”
Tanner says guardedly, “Nothing.”
“One of the railway wonders of the world, on the line between Florence and Bolog-ner.”
Tanner cringes at his pronunciation.
“Built under Mussolini,” the man goes on. “The line from Rome to Milan used to wiggle over the mountains. The new route transformed the journey.”
He sits back as if to say, ‘So there.’
Silence again.
The woman returns Tanner’s book with a smile.
“Interesting how one thing becomes another. Wish I’d seen those grain ducts.”
“You must go back sometime.”
She nods, then dozes. He tries to picture where she and her husband live. Maybe some grand Edwardian house in Sussex overlooking the sea. He imagines being a party guest there. He’d encourage the husband to sing … then laugh.
A frown puckers the woman’s smooth forehead, as if some dream troubles her. She’s wearing a knee-length dress in some soft material, simple but elegant. From the Via Tornabuoni? Or the Via del Corso? That was where he bought the doll, in desperation. Would chocolates have been better? Whichever he chose his ex-wife would comment on, not unkindly but nevertheless demeaning.
His daughter comes at weekends, often with a crowd of friends. Their conversation seems to be in code. But he feeds them all enthusiastically, to show how much he cares.
He too dozes. When he opens his eyes he senses a change. The train has stopped. When time passes and it fails to move the woman becomes restless and wakes.
“Any idea where we are?” she asks.
“Near Genoa, I imagine.”
“Oh, isn’t Genoa famous for pirates?”
“Aha, me hearties! Stand by to repel boarders,” says the railway buff.
More silence.
Suddenly the compartment door slides open, but instead of the woman’s husband it’s a tall man in a leather jacket. His bulk seems to fill the space. He has Italian features but is holding a British passport.
To the woman he says, “Excuse I interrupt. Signora Price?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Excuse I must tell to you about your husband. He fall. From the train.”
The pink roses in the woman’s cheeks turn white in an instant.
“Oh God. Where is he?”
She makes to get up. The plainclothes policeman gestures to stay put.
“Please, signora. We tell to you when you should descend.”
He goes out. The woman’s eyes search the luggage racks, the curtains, the empty windows, as if for clues, then rest on Tanner’s face.
“How could he fall? He only went to the toilet.”
“Perhaps he mistook the train door for the toilet door. They are close.”
“Oh God. Is he dead?”
Tanner’s neighbour says, “We were doing eighty at least, love. He’ll be scobbled.”
A long silence. Tanner misses the reassuring noise of wheels, and feels ill at ease. The policeman was a disturbing presence, with his beard shadow and the smell of Paco Rabanne or whatever. And his bulk, like the detective-sergeant who stood over him in a guarded bedroom, at that student party where something had been stolen and drugs sold.
Dr Tanner remembers that long-ago conversation:
“Empty your pockets.”
Fluff, a chocolate wrapper, condoms.
“On the pull, were we? Not much luck, eh, son? I see they’re unopened. You’ll have to pull yourself.”
The detective laughed. Tanner tried to imagine himself as a waxwork melting onto the carpet. The interview wasn’t over. The man was enjoying himself.
“Ribbed for extra satisfaction, eh? But is three enough for one night?”
And more of the same. The worst thing was the hatred welling up in him like bile.
The compartment suddenly seems confined. Darkness presses against the window. The wood veneer on the partition reminds him of the furniture of a boring aunt and uncle. The notices about not smoking or leaning out strip the language of Dante bare of charm. He looks at the woman and tries to think of something useful or soothing. But how does one soothe a woman about to identify the abraded corpse of her husband?
He makes eye contact with her with a rueful grimace. She makes a rueful grimace back. Tanner’s neighbour looks from one to the other as if curious what either will do or say, and now and then sighs sympathetically.
The compartment door slides open again and a short stout Italian in a leather jacket comes in.
“Signora Price?”
Another policeman. Naturally there are two, posted on the train for just this kind of occasion.
“Shall I bring my luggage?”
“Excuse? I not good English.”
Dr Tanner says, “Volete che la signora porti fuori i suoi bagagli?”
“Ah, si, si.”
The stout policeman beams. He explains in Italian that the lady should indeed bring her luggage and descend because the train must move on. Tanner translates this for the widow. She stands with a hunted look and goes to pull down two suitcases from the rack. He gets up to help, but the handles are the kind that tuck in flush with the body, and he can’t get a grip. His hand and the woman’s touch.
“It’s okay,” she says, “I’ll do it.”
He sits down again. The suitcases land with a thump in front of him.
“You’ll need help, love,” says Tanner’s neighbour. “Our friend here will get off with you. Interpolate for you.”
The widow glances briefly at her rescuer-elect, then away, her eyes losing focus. Through Tanner’s mind impressions flit too quickly to deal with. Why ‘our friend’? None of them even know one another’s names. And the fellow made it sound like ‘R. Friend’ as if that was his name. And how irritating, ‘interpolate’ instead of ‘interpret’. And it’s late. Instead of dozing the night away in his seat he’d spend it on a hard chair in some echoing tiled police post, and he needs sleep because when he returns he needs to give his full attention to the contentious, if not libellous, email from Professor Kastner about the authenticity of the newly discovered Giotto drawings.
He pictures the husband’s body, scraped bloodily raw, the Cosimo de’ Medici profile flayed to the skull, the brain pan empty, and how he’d thought Good Riddance when the man lurched out to pee. How he’d ignored him, giving his wife all the attention, so the man felt unwanted and left the compartment. The police would pick up on that, his complicity in sending the husband to his death, because that was their job. The way they looked at you, you felt you must have done something wrong or would have a hell of a job to convince them that you hadn’t.
The railway buff is looking at him, probably to say more about tunnels. A sudden longing seizes him. He should be living in the open air, in the mountains, with the plains far below. He imagines Kastner lost in a ravine, calling for help. Tanner would have his daughter with him. She’d help to throw Kastner a rope, because she’s quite mature, and the doll is a bad idea but the sooner he gets back to Britain and arranges to see her the sooner he can put that embarrassment behind him. Then back to his books and lecture notes …
His neighbour is standing now and for some reason taking his own suitcase down from the rack.
“I’ll get off with you, love,” he says to the widow. “I do Italian.”
But this is wrong. Tanner blinks. There’s something in the situation he isn’t quite getting hold of. He blinks and blinks, and suddenly the compartment is empty, the door still wide, and he rushes into the corridor and catches up with the woman, but the railway buff is already halfway down the carriage with the stout policeman, carrying his own case and one of the widow’s, and it’s too late to call them back.
He must have blurted out something because the widow turns to look at him.
“The book,” he says. “Orsanmichele. Have it. Please.”
“I think you need it more than I do.”
She turns and moves along the corridor, obeying the laws of perspective.
After an interval the train moves on.
My Life with Eva
Lying here in our acres of scented summer grass, looking up at a million stars, I think how one wrong move in the past could have forfeited all this. As if I lost my way and turned north into frozen wastes instead of south into lush pasture. The stars are so clear because the nearest street light is a mile off, and the house (which in any case is unlit) is fifty paces away beyond the stream. There’s only one glow, a gentle yellow almost lost in the warm night, where the roof light of Eva’s studio confirms her presence. A radiance too muted to dilute the black of the heavens, as Eva herself never dilutes my dreams.
Faint sounds emerge from a background of silence. One is the stream whose music hovers around a few notes in a teasing indefinable rhythm. Another is the rustle of small birds in the hedgerow whose black outline cuts the sky when I tilt my head back. Which shows that although the zenith has drunk every ounce of light (apart from the stars themselves), the horizon is lighter, the deep purple of Eva’s best silk dress. Further off is the scratching of some restless ewe cropping grass, not content to kneel like the rest of our flock. And further still, from the next smallholding, the faint anxious bark of our neighbours’ dog. Ah yes, and there, almost too eerie and sudden to be real, an owl’s cry. For a moment just now I imagined voices, which seems unlikely because Eva never carries the phone to her studio, and is working alone with her favorite samba music, sensual but too soft to carry far.
I deserve to lie here and rest my bones after a day spent cutting and uprooting brambles. My arms ache and in the crook of my elbow I can feel a sticking plaster, over a nasty scratch no doubt. It’s good to think that Eva put it on me, wiping the wound and kissing it, while dressed in her white overalls with their pattern of scorch marks and dabs of tertiary color, which remind me of an old lab coat of my father’s I inherited to paint in. Yes, I’m glad to lie here on this recliner among the tall feathery grasses, away from the blanking glare of streetlights, greeting Orion, the Plough, Cassiopeia, Leo, in their dance around the Pole Star, while the pale amber moon struggles to rise free from the hawthorn branches it’s caught in, and the breeze brings the tobacco scent of hay from our open barn. And I remember lying on a beach in Greece when the dark sky had swallowed the dregs of daylight along the western sea horizon, watching the familiar constellations named by Greeks.
Who lay beside me then? Ah, it can only have been Eva, my philosophical, pragmatic fellow-backpacker Eva, unfazed even though we’d found no place to stay after taking the last bus to that xenophobic little fishing village where a stranger who spoke bad Greek was thought dangerous or mad. Unless I remember wrong, when the night breeze off the water began to chill us we rose and walked through the night, Eva’s eyes in the moonlight shining with adventure, to the port where we caught the first boat off the island, humming the tune of To karavi fevyi ta misonikhta (I heard it again on YouTube years later) and laughing because it was well past misonikhta, midnight, when the boat left.
Any woman but Eva might have blamed my lack of foresight and sat head in hands moaning for a bed and supper. Who do I have in mind? Deirdre I suppose, dear little Deirdre (I was always fond of her) who would have insisted on the dreary conformity of package tours and hotel chains. Deirdre who if I’d married her would have kept me tied to that industrial town in the North of England. The town we grew up in, safe and sound and close to our parents and siblings, leading today to a rooted and respectable retirement. Instead of which I’m here with Eva near the western sea in this place visitors call remote and we call the hub of the universe. Where we created a ga
rden from bare fields, grew much of our own food until old age crept over us, struggled to stop sheep and goats escaping and streams overflowing, built structures with our bare hands, and when snowed in for weeks relaxed in that hush of whiteness into companionable hibernation by the log-stove. Where we never felt isolated, under skies alive with buzzards, kites, crows, woodpeckers, starlings, sparrows (and in summer the swallows—ah, the swallows!) among fields populated with voles, badgers, foxes, butterflies, dragonflies … and of course our sheep, our goats, our cats, and our Welsh cob.
The bright heads of marigolds, campions, hellebores, scabious, heucheras, and schizostylis nod in the breeze as if to say, ‘Yes, you did it, the two of you’, and yet I sometimes fear the magic of the place, as if one day like Thomas the Rhymer, or that shepherd boy on the Preseli Hills, I might wake with starved lips on a bare hillside having offended my fairy hosts. Or wake to find Eva dead beside me, Eva the star that like a wise man I followed.
But nothing can take away the past, the travels we now rest from. They seemed at the time like adventures, though nowadays on TV smug comedians and presenters seem keen to retrace our steps and smear them with their bloated personalities. A recent series about the Inca Trail in Bolivia brought it back to us—the fireflies, the rope bridges across lush steep-sided valleys, the dark-skinned women with black hair in plaits, and the danger of being murdered by cocaine barons. I thought our wanderings in the less trodden parts of Venice were unusual, finding cheap hidden restaurants frequented by vaporetto drivers where Eva tried out phrases from Grand Opera. But no, my cousin Bill the Vivaldi devotee insists on covering the same ground, enthusing about ‘canals that turn in on themselves endlessly like an Escher print’. Oh well. Our backpacking days are over, but there’s plenty to look back on.
How strange to think that in my youth I was shy of Eva for months on end, overawed by her Cleopatra profile, her long waves of chestnut hair, her majestic proud-bosomed gait, and some perfume I never found the name of trailing her progress like unheard music. Too shy to ask her to dance (ballroom in those far-off days, waltzes and quicksteps, with the odd Veleta or Virginia reel) until one evening in the vestibule of that church hall we collided, drew back and stared at one another, and I, who never blurted, blurted, “I want to dance and dance and dance with you, Eva,” and those grey eyes flashed very wide and her smile was a supernova. Nothing more needed saying, we were already linked at a deeper level, and when I took her in my arms and waltzed her around that formerly featureless but suddenly enchanted hall, nearly fainting with excitement as her thighs brushed mine, the encounter spelt doom for any other girl I had been going out with.