by David Hewson
Nic looked at Bea and Sara. They had no answers. “I give up,” he told his father.
Marco raised his glass to the dog. Baffled, Pepe placed his paws on the old man’s knees and was rewarded with a slice of dried beef. “To him, of course. We bought this dog three months after your mother died, when he was eight weeks old. By my reckoning, that makes him ten today and I shall brook no arguments. Least of all from him.”
“The dog!” Sara repeated.
“And the wisdom of dogs,” Marco added. “Which surpasses our own, if only we knew it.”
Bea cast a doubtful eye over the creature staring lovingly up into Marco’s face. “Now, that requires an explanation.”
“Think of us. Consumed by worry about events beyond our control. Forever watching the clock and wondering what tomorrow brings. What concerns a dog? The present, only. Will he be loved? Will he be fed? He has no concept of tomorrow, no idea that any of this comes to an end. All he cares about is the here and now and he cares about that passionately, more passionately than any of us could imagine.”
“That’s a kind of wisdom?” Sara wondered.
“Absolutely,” Marco insisted. “Not our kind, but one that serves a dog very well. There’s a lesson for us too. You don’t remember, Nic? That little scene after we got him?”
Nic refilled the glasses with the hard cold wine. Marco was now drinking a little too. “Don’t embarrass me with childhood stories, please. That’s the cruelest trick a parent can play.”
“Not this one. It’s informative. A man should always be ready to be informed.”
Nic sighed. “And it’s about?”
“Life and death,” Marco replied, amused. “What else is there?”
43
It was impossible to move for bodies. Every tourist in the city seemed to have migrated to the Piazza Navona. Rossi scanned the ocean of blank faces, grateful that Valena had been smart enough to dash straight into the embassy building and not linger to sign autographs or attract the attention of the paparazzi. The small-time crooks were out in force, attracted by the prospect of stray handbags and easy pickings among the crowds. In a single sweep of the square, Rossi recognized a couple. He’d seen two uniformed cops on duty—no more. It was a disgrace. The hucksters were working the hordes of visitors with the usual set of scams: cards and cheap gifts, invitations to “nightclubs” and simple, sly theft.
“I like it here,” Cattaneo said. “This is what living in Rome’s all about.”
The big man scowled at him. “It’s a dump. It’s Disneyland.”
It wasn’t really. Rossi knew enough history for that. In daylight, when it was half empty, the place was beautiful. It still followed the oval outline of the old Roman stadium that preceded it. He could just about imagine chariots racing around its perimeter. There was the big fountain of the four rivers by Bernini, who seemed to have built half of Rome. No, the piazza didn’t bug him. He could almost like it. The people were the problem. They were just too loose, too relaxed, to help him keep his mind on the job when he was this tired. If Gino Fosse wanted to attack the jerk from the TV—if he felt like just walking up to Valena on the steps of the embassy as he left and pumping a gun in his face—there was no way two cops could stop him. The one consolation, Rossi thought, was that this wasn’t the man’s style. It was too plain, too prosaic. Every time he killed someone Fosse made a statement about himself, one that said: See me? I’m different, I’m smart, and I can send you to hell in ways you never even dreamed of.
“Will you look at that?” Cattaneo gasped in delight.
The fake-statue artists were out in droves. Rossi could see at least eight of them, each covered in makeup, perched on an upturned crate with a few simple props, trying to get a little cash out of the tourists. It was honest, he guessed. The first time he’d seen the trick, years before, it was quite amusing. Then they appeared everywhere and soon ran out of subject matter. At that moment there were two Statues of Liberty, one Mona Lisa, one strange, fluorescent alien and any number of classical Roman figures in togas, a couple with scrolls in their hands, all standing stock still in the square, trying not to blink. The nearest, who was no more than three yards away, had painted himself a powdery white, splashed the same stuff on what looked like a grubby bedsheet, thrown the cloth around his shoulders and was now pretending to be Julius Caesar or somebody. No, Rossi thought, that was wrong. He had a full head of hair and a young, half-handsome face. Caesar had to be bald. He needed a laurel wreath. This was just a chancer trying to make some quick money. Maybe he was supposed to be Brutus, though his hair seemed a little long for that. There was one other point Rossi had got wrong too, he suddenly realized. It was about more than just standing there not moving a muscle for minutes on end. At some point you had to drop your pretense. You had to let the people in the crowd know it was part of the game—by winking or even touching them—because that was the trigger that made them reach into their pockets. If you never moved an inch they’d just walk on. This was meant to be entertainment after all.
Rossi stared at Brutus. This moron didn’t get it. He really didn’t move. The whole act was just plain shoddy, unconvincing. He’d be hustling for a metro ticket before long, hoping to turn his gauche inexperience into sympathy.
Cattaneo tapped his arm. “Now, that Mona Lisa. She’s a looker. She’ll get all the money.”
Rossi watched the figure in the black dress standing just a few yards along from Brutus with her head in a gold-painted frame. “It’s a man,” Rossi said. “I arrested him for picking someone’s pocket once.”
“You’re kidding me?” Cattaneo gasped. “You mean he’s a queer?”
“No,” Rossi replied, exasperated. “Don’t be so damned literal. This is what he does. It doesn’t make him queer.”
People always got that wrong, he thought. Appearances were deceptive. Sometimes they were meant to be that way. The idea nagged at him but he felt too tired to examine it any further.
He looked at his watch. “Where the hell is the creep? An hour, he said. It’s been at least . . .”
Rossi couldn’t remember when Valena had walked up the marble steps of the embassy into the reception. It just seemed a long time ago.
“It’s been fifty-eight minutes,” Cattaneo said. “He’s not due yet.”
Rossi swore under his breath, hating the precise little bastard by his side. Then he looked at the door. Valena’s fat frame was waddling through it, brushing aside anyone who stood in his way.
“Looks like his timing’s as bad as mine,” the big man said. “Tut, tut. He could have spent a hundred and twenty more seconds inside with the glitzy people.”
“Yeah,” Cattaneo agreed docilely, and then found himself staring at Rossi’s broad back as the older man walked over to greet Valena.
He stood on the steps, looking nervous. He had food stains down the front of his white shirt. He smelled of drink, champagne probably, Rossi guessed.
“What kind of protection is this?” Valena demanded. “You’re supposed to be looking after me every second I’m outside.”
“Apologies,” Rossi replied, noting that Cattaneo had caught up with him now. “We didn’t want to cramp your style.”
“Idiots!” Valena bellowed. His eyes looked a little too wild. Rossi wondered if there was only alcohol rolling around inside the man’s fat frame. Maybe he’d added a little white powder in there too to help things along.
“Your car awaits, sir,” Rossi said with a wave. The two policemen watched him roll along ahead, then Rossi cursed himself, caught up with the man and walked by his right, as he was supposed to. His head wasn’t working properly tonight. It was just plain exhaustion. They picked up the pace toward the far side of the piazza where Rossi had left the car. Then Cattaneo put a hand on Valena’s arm. The TV man stopped, his head revolving right and left. Really out of it, Rossi saw. There surely was something floating around his fat-clogged veins.
“Do the honors,” Cattaneo barked.
> “What?” Rossi thought he would hit the man one day. He was just too infuriating.
“Look. He’s good. Give him something, for Christ’s sake. Here . . .”
Cattaneo threw some coins. The living statue, the one who looked like Brutus but with hair that was too long, smiled and caught them in a cheap black hat. He was holding it, fingers over the rim which was held tight in his very large thumb, panning for money.
“For the love of God,” Rossi declared, and yet found himself reaching in his pocket for money, wondering about these instant reactions and why you never questioned them.
Brutus was still on his crate. He was smiling like a loon. He was terrible, Rossi recalled. It was a crime to give him money.
The big man pulled out a few coins and dropped them in the hat. It was odd. The statue wouldn’t stop smiling, as if this weren’t about money at all.
“Enough,” Rossi said, looking around for the uniformed men, discovering that once again they were never there when you needed them. “You don’t get a cent more. Beat it now before I start to get mad.”
Brutus bowed his head, still smiling. Luca Rossi suddenly felt his spine go cold. There was something familiar about the face. He knew it somehow, not well, but enough to make him think it deserved attention.
44
As I said,” Marco continued, “we bought the dog in sad circumstances. I don’t even recall what gave us the idea. We scarcely even spoke about it.”
Nic shuffled on his seat, feeling uncomfortable. These were memories he didn’t want revived. The past was difficult, painful. From time to time it pricked his mind unbidden, it pointed the way to the future. Sara watched him, saw how he felt. Her fingers briefly touched the back of his hand.
“And there I was one day. Talking to this man with a dog for sale, spouting nonsense, not knowing what questions to ask, whether this was a good idea at all. He was an old farmer with a little smallholding down the road there, a surly bastard who looked at me as if I were an idiot. Which I was, in his eyes. All he kept repeating was ‘It’s a dog.’ As if that said everything.”
He shuffled in his wheelchair, thinking of what should come next. “I brought him home in my jacket. He peed and crapped in it on the way. The first night he cried, constantly, and none of us slept.”
“That I do remember,” Nic interjected.
“And the second night he cried a little less. By the third he was sleeping, in the kitchen there, starting to make it his home. There was just Nic and Giulia with me then, you understand. Young Marco was at college already. We were three damaged, angry people, full of hurt about what the world had done to us. Full of some stupid, blind fury over a loss that made no sense. And here was a dog, demanding we keep him alive, that we love him, give him so much attention, night and day. And what did you do, Nic?”
“I gave him it,” he answered. “So did Giulia. So did you, less than the rest of us if you want to know, though it was still you he always saw as the boss. Some things never change.”
Marco shook his head. “It was just age. He loved you then. If he had the brains to remember, the strength to play those games all over again, he’d love you in the same way now.”
The old man was right there. Nic had spent hour after hour with the dog, on walks through summer fields full of flowers and the humming of bees. In these lovely, lonely places he would talk to the animal as if it were a human being. They were inseparable. Then he’d grown older, and so had the dog. Time had worked its cruel trick once more.
“One day,” Marco said, “I came home. It was just before Nic left school for college and that worried him, I think. But there was something else too. You remember, Nic?”
He did and he wished he could stop the old man saying it.
“I remember. Is this really . . .”
“Nic was almost as upset as the day his mother had died and it was over this. He’d come to think about the dog, an animal which has a natural lifespan of—what?—ten, twelve, perhaps thirteen years? He’d come to realize that one day, a day not that far distant, Pepe would be gone. Not in a human lifetime, but in a canine one, which seems so short to us. And he thought what? Come, Sara. You’re the psychic, you tell us.”
She looked at Nic, wondering if it would embarrass him. It was so obvious. It was understandable too. “He thought it was pointless. Owning the dog. Growing to love him. Growing to adore having him around. Knowing all along that one day he would die, and so soon.”
Marco watched her closely. “And is he right?” he asked her.
“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong for a question like that,” she replied cautiously. “I can see his point. I can appreciate why one would think that way.”
“There, Bea! Behold the young. What have we done to bring them up like this?”
The older woman stared at them, amazed. “And you both think this? Sara? Nic? I’m no dog lover. Even that damned animal can see that. But you must take what joy you find while it’s there. Not go worrying about a tomorrow that might never come.”
“And that,” Marco pronounced, banging his glass on the table, “is the wisdom of dogs.”
“Which is ignorance!” Sara declared. “Surely you can see that? A dog has no comprehension of time. Of seasons. As far as it is concerned, life is like a light switch, either on or off.”
“And isn’t it?” Marco demanded teasingly.
“No.” She looked at Nic for support.
“I agree,” he said. “Dogs and humans are different.”
“What you mean is,” Bea suggested, “dogs never read Ecclesiastes. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.”
“A time to love,” Marco continued. “And a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. You’re right, Sara. An animal knows nothing of the seasons and that’s what defines him. Are we that different? It was the knowledge of our mortality that informed all those early Christians buried along that old road out there. Today we make death the uninvited guest who sits in the corner, in perpetual darkness. We pretend he doesn’t exist until finally he proves us wrong and then we are shocked—we are offended!—by his presence.”
Nic waved a defensive hand at him. “Point taken. I understand what you mean.”
“Not at all!” Marco insisted. “That was aimed at me more than you, son. I’ve let this damned thing wear me down so much I took the opposite view. I thought there was nothing but death around me. A time to plant, a time to pluck up that which is planted. This is a farm, remember? Until this blasted disease we fed ourselves from those fields. We turned the land, we grew, we harvested. And look at it now. Bare, barren earth. And for what reason? Because I forgot. Because, like a child, I believed I was the world and without me nothing existed. Which is, I think, the greatest sin a man can commit.”
There was silence. The mood of the evening pivoted around Marco’s confession, and each of them knew it could easily disintegrate. Then Sara asked, “What was this like as a farm?”
“Wonderful,” Nic replied, smiling, grateful that she had asked. “We could grow anything then. I remember . . .” His head filled with the recollection of artichoke heads nodding in the breeze, tall rows of tomatoes, verdant clumps of zucchini. “I remember how green it was.”
“Why do you think he eats what he does?” Marco asked. “My son here gave up meat when he was twelve. Said there was no point.”
“There wasn’t. And what we grew was ours. It came from us.”
Marco wheeled himself to the front door. They followed, watching as he unlatched the huge slab of wood, threw it open and turned on the floodlights which illuminated the front of the farm. The cigarettes of the policemen at the gate winked back at them like tiny fireflies. The earth stood arid and solid under the harsh lamps.
“And the best part,” Marco said, “was the unexpected.”
Around now, he said, they would plant the black Tuscan kale, cavolo nero, for the winter. Sara watched the way his
eyes glittered as he spoke about how they were his favorites for the very reason most people would avoid them: their sluggish, steady growth, from seedlings at the waning of summer, through the lean, cold winter months, reviving again, to give nourishment, in the spring. This was a rebirth of a kind, a token that the world began anew each year, whatever happened. A seedling planted in the earth in July knew nothing of the future that would embrace it when the warmth returned the following Easter—that is, if it survived the winter. This was a peasant’s faith, and one that Marco Costa loved, the fundamental belief that the seasons always returned and good husbandry would be repaid. It was inevitable that the chain would be broken. Some years the crop would fail. Some years the gardener would fail to return to tend the land. Nevertheless, it was the act itself which mattered: the planting, the nurturing, the tilling of the soil.
There had been no winter crop that year. Marco’s faith had failed him, crushed by his disease.
“I want to see things growing there again,” the old man said, eyeing the earth. “Tomorrow . . . I’ll fetch for help.”
Sara looked at Bea and the two women exchanged glances. “What’s wrong with us?” Sara wondered. “We can dig. We can plant seeds.”
Marco laughed and waved a dismissive hand at them. “This isn’t work for women.” They screeched at him.
“Peace, peace,” Nic interposed. “They can start in the morning,” he told his father. “Later, when I’ve time, I’ll do my part too. You can just sit and watch and bark orders.”
“It has to be done properly,” Marco insisted.
“It will be,” Nic replied. “I promise.”
The two men looked at one another and fell silent. The storm never broke. Marco had made his point.
The old man sniffed the air. “There’s autumn inside that heat,” he declared. “You can smell September on the way. I love the autumn. The colors. Sitting around the fire, roasting a few chestnuts. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else when the leaves start to fall.”