by David Hewson
She walked briskly to her car, shaking her head. Sara watched her go. An intense person, she thought. But Bea needed the Costa family as much as they needed her.
The dog looked at her, barked once, then turned into the house. Sara followed him inside and walked straight to Marco Costa in his wheelchair, taking his hand, smiling, full of bright small talk Nic had never expected. While he took her bags upstairs, Marco guided her around the ground floor, the dog following on faithfully behind. His son then did the same for the rest of the sprawling house. She was staying in Giulia’s room on the second floor, one of six, at the far end from his own. It was private, with its own bath, and, like the house itself, secure. There was only the single barn door into the farm. Marco had insisted on the authentic, bucolic design, for all its inconveniences. When the tour was over she followed Nic downstairs looking more content than at any time since they had first met. This was, he realized from what she had told him about herself, something foreign to her: a home.
Marco Costa dressed for dinner: a white shirt, impeccably pressed by Bea, black trousers, and a silk neck scarf which hid the scar of an operation. The old man had combed his thinning hair carefully. The harsh spotlights in the farmhouse kitchen made his face seem cruelly cadaverous. Nic Costa had grown up seeing his father’s round, caring, persistent features at every turn of his life. Now, under the punishment of the disease, the generous skin sagged, as if something were sapping the vitality that lay beneath the surface. But this was an entirely physical ailment. His father’s personality, so warm when he wished it to be, and his quick intelligence were undiminished.
The three of them sat around the table eating pasta and salad and Nic was astonished to find that he was the one feeling uncomfortable. Sara and his father seemed to have come to accept each other, as if they’d recognized some mutual trait.
“You’ve a beautiful house,” she said.
“We built it,” Marco boasted. “Most of it, anyway. All with local stone. There’s masonry here that Seneca might have touched. Forget all the nonsense the press wrote about Red Marco and his country palace. When I bought this plot no one wanted to live here and it cost me next to nothing. What you see is what we created, through our own labor, with no help from anyone.”
“Oh yes,” Nic agreed. “No arguing there. I spent five years sleeping in a bedroom without heating, next to a bathroom with no running water. We were given a fine proletariat upbringing.”
“Quite right too,” his father declared.
“Except,” Nic objected, “I seem to recall you grew up in a nice, comfortable apartment . . .”
“Which is why I knew what was best for my own offspring. Look at this place, Nic. I can look at some of the brickwork and recall your mother laying in the mortar. I can touch something you plastered, and pretty well too, when you were thirteen. You could have become a builder. Instead it’s his sister who’s the artisan,” he told Sara. “I’ll show you her paintings later. She gets that from her mother. Whatever he has comes from me, I guess.”
Sara raised her glass to them. “I don’t think either of you have much to complain about.”
“No,” Marco replied, looking at his son with an unconcealed measure of pride. “I don’t believe we have.
“Drink,” the old man added mournfully, watching the red wine in her glass. “Lost pleasures.” He looked at her frankly. “My son tells me you never had a home like this. That your parents died when you were young.”
She shrugged. It occurred to Nic that she was never unwilling to talk about herself. What was missing, all too often, were the details, which had to be prised from her carefully, one at a time. “I don’t recall ever living at home with them. I was at a convent school in Paris. There was an accident.”
“I can’t imagine what that would be like,” Marco said.
“The nuns were kind to me. I never lacked anything. Money least of all.”
“Money and happiness,” the old man declared, “exist apart from each other. When I was in politics I met some of the richest and most miserable men in Italy. Five minutes’ walk from that door I could take you to people who are dirt poor and who wouldn’t exchange their lives with anyone’s.”
“Money with happiness,” Nic said. “I think that’s the goal.”
“Really?” His father looked disappointed. “Why? Money’s something you can strive for, something you can make yourself. Happiness, in my experience, only comes from others, when they decide to give it to you. You can’t force people to do that, not even with money, though there’s plenty out there who seem to think otherwise. It has to be earned and that’s what makes it worthwhile.”
Sara finished her wine. Nic refilled the glass. She was dressed down tonight: a blue shirt with an exotic pattern, dark trousers. She looked young, naÏve almost. She was relaxed too; the hard mask she wore so much of the time was gone. He wondered again about her life; why no man had come to fill it properly, and, against his own instincts, he could not help but wonder what was needed for that role. There would be preconditions. Honesty lay at the base of any relationship. He felt that strongly, so strongly it had ruined several of the liaisons he had enjoyed in the past. To love someone demanded more than physical attraction. There had to be some pact of alliance against the cold, inexplicable vagaries of the world. Without those, any affair was, it seemed to him, doomed to be a brief, shallow ghost of passion, something Sara Farnese seemed to know well.
“Is that what a family’s for?” she asked. “To give you that love?”
“Ideally,” Marco agreed. “I hope we did that. Not perfectly perhaps, but then, families aren’t about perfection. They’re about trying.” He looked at Nic. “Any complaints?”
“You made me read Marx when I was ten.”
“And the Bible would have been worse?”
Nic thought about this. “Probably not. I was ten. I wouldn’t have taken much notice of either.”
“So there. Where’s the harm? But don’t think families are some kind of magic formula for happiness. They can cure you, they can kill you too when they go wrong.” The old man saw her reaction and grimaced. “Sorry—I was being stupid.”
“Why?” Nic asked. “It’s true. You should see some of the families I meet.”
“But the alternative,” she said, “is to walk down the middle. You know the highs. You know the lows. I don’t really. It’s like being . . . incomplete somehow. You’re lucky. Both of you.”
The two men glanced uneasily at each other. Theirs had not been the most comfortable of relationships at times and each bore an equal weight of guilt and resentment for some of the arguments that had occurred in the past. In the present circumstances, however, these seemed petty matters. There was a reckoning coming, and certain things needed to be said.
“You’re right, we’re lucky,” Marco Costa said, watching her wineglass enviously. “I’m a stubborn old man who always thought he knew what was best for the world. I don’t imagine that made me an easy person at times.”
“You can say that again,” Nic agreed. “But that was never the problem. It was the fact that we always lived in your shadow. We were always the offspring of Red Marco, the man in the papers, the one who made the headlines. We were never individuals in our own right. We were parts of you. I know that wasn’t your intention, but it’s what happened and it was hard, hard to have parents we loved so much we couldn’t quite separate their identity from our own.”
The old man laughed. “Now I understand! I bring you three up as good revolutionaries. And what do you become? A cop, an American lawyer and an artist, and you do this in order to say, ‘We are ourselves.’ Good for you, son. More power to your elbow.”
Nic smiled. It was, he thought, the first time he had ever heard his father approve explicitly of his career.
Marco glanced at Sara. “Rebellion’s good for the soul. You grew up in a convent. I imagine that drives it out of you?”
“Why?” she answered sharply.
; “Because belief comes first. You do believe, don’t you?”
“I suppose so. I pray sometimes and it makes me feel better, though I’m not so sure I think there’s a God. If there were, he would surely do something about the state of the world. That old excuse about free will isn’t good enough. Still, as a way of explaining why we live, why we do what we do, the Church has a point. And it has very beautiful stories too. I always thought that as a child when they were read to me in the convent. Beauty counts. I don’t know anything better.”
Marco stared out of the window, into the darkness, thinking. “I suppose I’m meant to argue politics are better. Communism or social democracy. But I don’t think I have the energy anymore.”
Nic felt a dark thought rising at the back of his mind. “You’re kidding me?”
“No. Oh, it’s not the sickness, Nic. It’s just being realistic. What matters, I think, is that you believe in something, and something too that’s not too comfortable, something that keeps you awake at night from time to time. If that’s religion, so be it. I never took you into that chapel down the road, but you know the story surely? That it was where Peter stopped while fleeing Rome, and Christ appeared to him. ’Domine Quo Vadis?’ he asked. Lord, where are you going? And what did Jesus say? ‘To Rome to be crucified again.’ It’s just a story, of course. That doesn’t make it any the less powerful. The Church then wasn’t what it is now. Peter would be horrified if he saw what’s been built in his name in the Vatican. Those people were revolutionaries. They were trying to change the entire Roman state, and the world after that. They weren’t persecuted for no reason. Their beliefs were dangerous, treasonable. What the story of Quo Vadis is about is not giving up, not turning around when you’re in trouble. Remembering that people have made sacrifices to get you where you are. Sometimes the biggest sacrifice of all.”
He closed his eyes briefly. Nic wondered if he was in pain. “I haven’t told you this before,” Marco said. “But that was why I bought this plot of land. Because it was so close to that chapel. I thought it would serve as a reminder in the hard times, and it did. You know something else? If I’d been alive then, I would have joined them. I would have been a Christian too. Maybe things will change sometime and people like me will take to it again. I don’t know, but I do know we all need some kind of faith.”
“What’s yours now?” Sara asked carefully. “The same you always believed?”
“That’s a dead faith,” Marco answered. “It killed itself before any of us ever had the chance to understand if it would work. My faith rests in my children.” He looked at his son. “This one in particular. One day Nic will find his calling. Perhaps in the police, where he’ll cast out all those crooked bastards who give this country a bad name. Perhaps elsewhere. I don’t know, but I have faith it will happen even if he doesn’t believe it himself.”
There was a knock on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Nic said. “There’ve been too many confessions for me tonight.”
They watched him go to the front of the house, take his police pistol out of the shoulder holster that lay on his carefully folded jacket, and gingerly open the door latch. There was an exchange of low, male voices.
Returning, he said, “Someone needs to see me. Outside. He doesn’t want to come into the house. There’s a guard by the door. Keep it locked. I’ll let myself in. You don’t have to wait up.”
Marco Costa nodded at the dog. “Don’t worry. We’ve got protection.”
Sara laughed. Nic looked at the two of them and the animal, its graying head cocked to one side, peering up at him. He tried to understand why they should be so comfortable in each other’s company and failed. Then he mumbled an excuse, picked up a flashlight and was gone.
“Did I make him feel awkward?” the old man asked, feeding the rest of his plate to the dog.
“A little, I think,” Sara replied. “There’s a conversation he needs to have with you. He can’t do it with me around.”
Marco Costa’s shoulders rose. A dry laugh emerged from his throat. “Sara. Without you around we would never have spoken like that at all. That was the frankest talk we’ve had in years. You were the catalyst. We’re both grateful.”
She was flattered by his compliment. “I did nothing, but if that nothing helped, I’m glad.”
He nodded at the bottle. “Now I’ll have some wine.”
She snatched it away from his grasping hand. “No.”
“Whose house is this, girl? For pity’s sake. You can’t refuse a dying man a glass.”
“Convince your son of that, not me.” She started to clear the table of the plates, the glasses and the wine. “If Nic doesn’t want you drinking, he’s got a reason.”
“I suppose a cigarette’s out of the question then? It’s medicinal.”
“Medicinal cigarettes?”
“These are. All the way from Morocco. Or Afghanistan, if you prefer.”
She tut-tutted and loaded the dishwasher. “Are you serious? Your son’s a policeman.”
“It eases the pain. Really it does.”
“No!”
“Jesus,” Marco Costa moaned. “Relax. There are no medicinal cigarettes. You know you’re the first woman he’s brought here that I can’t wind around my little finger. What irony.”
Sara returned with a bottle of mineral water and poured some for both of them. “I don’t believe I quite fit that picture. I’m not here under the same circumstance as the others, am I?”
“So, there’s something wrong with my son, is there? Not intellectual enough for the likes of you? You should hear him talk about painting. About Caravaggio. That’s one legacy I left him. My son knows a rebel when he sees one, and he knows a hell of a lot about him.” The old man’s face had hardened in mock anger.
“I’m not rising to the bait, Marco.”
“Ah. You’re thinking he looks down on you because of all this publicity.”
She sighed. “And why shouldn’t he? I thought I led a normal life. Now I’m painted like some . . . creature.”
“Pah! The press. If you listen to what they say you’ll go crazy. You know what you are. He knows too.”
“Quite. And it still shocks him. I see it on his face from time to time. Perhaps he’s right.” She toyed with her glass. “I like being on my own. I don’t feel the need to be close to anyone. I can take men, I can leave them. It doesn’t bother me.”
“Oh, please,” Marco groaned. “The young. They think they invented everything. My dear, I grew up in the sixties. Can you begin to imagine what our lives were like then? What you think of as promiscuity? Nic’s mother and I, we went through that in the first five years of our marriage. Talk to Bea about it if you like. She was there. I’m amazed the kids don’t remember some of the things that went on.”
“Perhaps they do and they’re scared to show it.”
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged.
“Bea still loves you nevertheless. You do realize this?”
His face contorted in astonishment. “What? You can see this? You, who has never met either of us until today? And saw her for what, just a few minutes?”
“Yes, I could see it. Bea loves you and regrets it was just a fleeting thing. And there you have the proof. The legacy of your infidelity. And that’s nothing?”
“Defeated by your own argument,” he declared. “I said Bea was there. I never said we were lovers. By the time Bea’s feelings for me became apparent—men are deeply stupid on these matters, as you doubtless appreciate—Nic’s mother and I had realized that way of life was a waste. We were married, we were lovers but we were friends, allies too. All the others were a distraction for us. We became monogamous because we wanted to, not through a need for propriety. Who’s to say the same won’t happen for you?”
“It won’t.” She said it with some certainty.
“If it does, it’s in the future and none of us can see there, Sara. Not even a clever university professor. Mind you, I meant what I said about Nic
. He has something in him if only he’d let it out. He has that anger, the same anger I felt, even if he keeps it well hidden.”
“He’s afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing you.”
“All men fear their father’s death. It’s the moment you see your own mortality face-to-face. You witness a part of yourself dying with them.”
She went back to the counter and poured a glass of wine for herself, then one very small one for him.
“There’s more to it than that, Marco.”
“Again? You know this?” he asked, a little angry. “You, the convent girl who never had a family?”
“I can see what he feels. Nic’s transparent in some ways. There’s some part of him that’s wounded already, in preparation, waiting for the real hurt.”
He grasped the glass of wine, took a tiny sip, then pushed it away. “Then it’s time he grew up. We try to be their rock, you know, but even the rock goes in the end. You have to find your own.”
She listened. There were voices a long way off. One was Nic’s. He sounded angry.
“You know what I thought he would be?” Marco Costa asked. “What I really feared him becoming when he grew up?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“A priest. It used to keep me awake at night. Not that he ever expressed any interest. There was just something in his manner. I was a politician. I tried to change big things, not help little people, individuals. You can’t do both. And frankly I was no good at it—helping others. Nic has that gift. When he talks to you he sees you, no one else. He looks right into you, hears things you daren’t even say to yourself. And here’s another thing. You have that too. So I guess it’s not a question of upbringing. Maybe you’re both psychic. I don’t know.”
Sara understood immediately what he meant. Nic seemed to possess the same internal emotional bruises; it was what had drawn her to him from the first.
“You’re not drinking your wine,” she told Marco.
His old eyes sparkled and she saw a glimpse of a different Marco Costa then, a younger man, who was surely handsome in his prime, with a sharp, mischievous sense of humor. “I didn’t want the wine. I just wanted to see you pour it.”