Rancid Pansies

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it. As one familiar with your house as well as someone who esteems you greatly, I naturally have only the well-being of your affairs at heart. So I need not allude to other concerned parties such as the carabinieri, the Forestale, and the Comune itself.’

  ‘You may set your mind at rest, dottore. La signora Marta has already apprised me of them.’

  ‘Ah, you have seen her?’

  ‘In England. And only last week.’

  ‘What an estimable person! I believe she is destined to be a great artist.’

  ‘So does she.’ Estimable, my foot. Not long ago, Benedetti was spreading the implausible canard that Marta was either a call girl or a madam, a calumny for which he was later obliged to apologise. There is craftiness in the wind here but I can’t yet make out its direction.

  ‘Because you and I are such old friends’ – Benedetti’s eyes guilelessly take in the flyblown ceiling overhead that still bears signs of the exuberance surrounding Italy’s last World Cup win – ‘I will tell you something you will not have heard me say once I’ve said it. It is that gossip in our small world suggests la signora Marta has already made enquiries about the status of your remaining land at Le Roccie.’

  ‘Ahh.’ Not to me, she hasn’t. Devious bitch. Wants to expand her little empire, I suppose.

  ‘Yes indeed. I expect you are wondering about property values and so on.’

  ‘Suppose I were. What would you say my remaining land is currently worth? In round figures?’

  ‘In round figures? Precisely zero, I’m afraid. The roundest figure of all.’ Benedetti darts me an intense glance as if daring me to protest that only a few years ago he had promised me its value could only ever go up in leaps and bounds. ‘How could it be otherwise, signore? You would never get planning permission to rebuild a house up there even if you wanted to. And if by some miracle you did, no one would insure it for you.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Definitely not. As terreno it is valueless. It is not agricultural land, nor is it proper forest. At best it is merely sottobosco. And blighted sottobosco at that.’

  It’s dreadfully upsetting to hear my treasured patch of Eden so described. ‘You mean I might as well give it to Marta?’ I exclaim bitterly.

  ‘Ah, but would the signora want it? Don’t forget that from the moment of the earthquake, the value of her own house halved.’

  ‘Really?’ I perk up a bit.

  ‘Of course. Who else would want to live there when one day a slightly bigger tremor might drop her house into the gulf as well? I fully understand your predicament, maestro, and I am overwhelmed by sympathy. Both you and la signora are artists. You must have silence and solitude. However, I promise you need not search out wildernesses above the snow line in order to find an ideal house for yourself in this area.’

  Good God, I do believe he’s going to try and sell me another house! The nerve of the man! One really has to admire his chutzpah. ‘No doubt you have somewhere in mind?’

  Again Benedetti scans the ceiling. Some of the adhering flecks may be the dried toppings of ice creams that were hurled heavenwards at the moment of Italy’s winning goal: peppermint and chocolate sprinkles and the like. For the first time I notice that the little round grey marks are actually dimples in the plaster, no doubt impacts from the metal-topped corks of shaken spumante bottles. ‘But when I say your property is valueless,’ he says as though I hadn’t asked the question, ‘that is true only in terms of the terreno.’

  ‘Oh? So what else is there? Don’t tell me the landslip has exposed an Etruscan hypogeum full of treasures? Or an unexpected vein of gold, perhaps?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. No, I am still thinking of your Princess Diana.’

  And suddenly I get it. Of course. How dumb I’ve been! So fixated have I become on the demise of my beautiful home that I have been blind to alternative possibilities. Seeing my expression Benedetti nods, the lights gleaming in his jet black thatch where only a few months ago they would have glistened pinkly on his scalp. Does he take it off at night and put it on a stand? I wonder. Or does Mrs Weasel like to run her fingers through it when hormonally urged? And why does this make me feel marginally more softly disposed towards him?

  ‘You see?’ he says with a smile. ‘But it will need quite careful management. How much need I tell you, maestro, of all people: a local resident of such exquisite knowledge and perceptiveness? It has long been a cause for regret that our little town, though richly historic, lacks the somewhat obvious attractions that cause tourists to flock to our neighbours. Viareggio is an important town with excellent beaches and a major yacht-building industry. Lido di Camaiore and Forte dei Marmi have even more perfect beaches. Pietrasanta has its grand piazza and an international community of sculptors taking advantage of the proximity of the marble quarries of Carrara, where the immortal Michelangelo himself chose his stone. But we, tucked away as we are among the splendours of the Apuan Alps, need to work a little harder to entice visitors. All these things we can acknowledge without for a moment undervaluing our beloved town.’

  ‘But.’

  ‘But I have no doubt as to the possibilities opened up by your recent experiences. They could be, shall we say, a way of turning misfortune into fortune? Porto un’ esempio. A little while ago you were perhaps toying with the possibility of buying or even building another house. You might, for example, discover a plot of land that is ideal for your purposes but that turns out to be classified as non-residential or has some other regulatory impediment. So let’s just say I feel sure you would find your path made remarkably smoother provided that … But I hardly need labour the point to a man of your exceptional intelligence.’

  True, my intelligence is rather exceptional, although I think by now anybody who didn’t live in a hollow tree and grunt would have got the idea. It’s not polonium I need fear as the wages of indiscretion so much as penury and homelessness.

  ‘Rompo anch’io il discorso,’ I say, it now being my turn to change the subject. ‘It occurs to me that a little earlier when we were discussing your religious beliefs I may have given offence by implying that my own position is one of intransigent scepticism. No, no’ – I hold up a hand although Benedetti hasn’t moved a muscle – ‘it has been preying on my conscience this last half hour. You must remember that my memory, which you yourself were once generous enough to call “a gem”, was badly affected by my experiences, as my doctors will testify. Yet do you know, in the last few minutes the block caused by the trauma has miraculously begun to lift? I think this superlative coffee may have helped. At last I’m beginning to remember what I told that helicopter pilot about the apparition of the Princess that we all so clearly saw.’

  Now the weasel is nodding. ‘I knew you would,’ he says, exposing his canines in a rapacious smile. Then in a surprising gesture he reaches a manicured paw across the table to me. Recklessly – and is there any other way for a Samper to do something momentous? – I take it. As we leave the bar we step into brilliant sunshine. While we have been murkily plotting inside, the mist has vanished. The familiar towers and fountains and archways glitter in Mediterranean light. Greedily I drink it in. Suffolk is a merciful million miles away. My adoptive home town is laid out before me with the air one of those trays full of objects one has to memorise quickly before a cloth is dropped back over it. My co-conspirator gives a little bow and twinkles away towards his office, sunlight gleaming off his mirror-finish shoes and striking pomaded highlights from his Stygian wig. Whoever would have thought a fastidious artist like Gerald Samper would find himself further thrust into the company of his erstwhile estate agent, a scheming tradesman of high polish and low cunning? My life is at present dogged by menials and functionaries (with a shudder I recall the recent quizzing of police persons) and this must definitely stop. Somehow, I must regain my creative solitude where only the muses are fit company. And I now realise that means right here. It is another of those decisions that take themselves.
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br />   *

  After this encouraging start to the day, the rest of the morning unfolds in layers of bureaucratic monotony. I need hardly say that Benedetti proves to have been perfectly informed about my affairs. There are bills waiting for me at the post office, faithfully promising escalating fines the longer I postpone paying them. The companies behind them are not to know that their final sanction, the threat to cut off their services, merely makes me laugh. And in the offices of Assicurazioni San Bernardino da Siena, the agency that unwisely insured both my house and my car, I encounter the expected thicket of small print and unread clauses designed to let the company slither out of any obligations it once implied it would honour. A horrid glued-on fingernail gleaming with crimson lacquer draws my eyes to the clause, in print a bacterium would need a magnifying glass to read, stating the company’s grudging preparedness to reimburse me the current value of the house as it presently stands.

  ‘Unfortunately, signore, it no longer stands, does it? Regrettably, therefore, it has no current value.’ The creature raps her claws on the policy as though the whole matter were settled. She has a lot to learn about Gerald Samper. A wedge-shaped piece of wood on her desk announces her as Dottoressa Paola Strangolagalli, a name that gives you some idea of her family’s antecedents. They probably had to make their own furniture.

  ‘Preposterous,’ I tell her. ‘I can’t be bothered to argue here and now. I shall have my solicitor handle the entire business. This is a perfectly standard Act of God for which I am covered and indemnified. Houses are always falling down, often on their owners’ cars. You agreed to insure mine sight unseen, and that was your own look-out. Do you really think the saint whose name this company has adopted would have tried to wriggle out of such a moral commitment? I notice your letter-head presumptuously includes San Bernardino’s famous IHS plaque, which he devised so that the crowds who heard him preach would venerate the Holy Name of Jesus. Undoubtedly you know that this native of Massa was celebrated all over Italy for restoring stolen or defrauded property? I rest my case.’ It really pays to do your homework. These proliferating Catholic saints often have considerable ironic value. I doubt if I know a single Maria who is a virgin.

  ‘I shall need to confer with our head office.’

  ‘As opposed to your conscience?’ On this tetchy note I leave. But there’s nothing to lose. My solicitor will do the donkey work, after which I shall not again be putting my custom into the hands of Assicurazioni S. Bernardino da Siena, especially not when they wear glued-on talons the colour of fresh blood. I spend the rest of the day visiting old acquaintances, not least of whom being my solicitor. I also hire a car.

  The next morning, having avoided switching on BBCNN, I am drawn irresistibly back to the scene of my tragedy. I drive up through Greppone along the winding mountain road that eventually peters out in a realm of crags and buzzards. Just before it does there is a short track leading slightly downwards to the left. I bump along it. The view of Le Roccie is at once warmly familiar and painfully strange. The immediate trees seem unchanged but the expected roofs beyond them are gone. Someone has closed my barrier with a bright new chain, wound it with police-style dayglo tape and hung a medley of notices on it: Proprietà Privata. Attenti ai Cani. Zona Proibita Senza Esclusione. Via Interdetta, Sia per Veicoli o Pedonali. Pericolo di Morte! In addition, panels of rusty builder’s mesh have been secured across the track. The effect of all this drama is spoiled by a clearly trodden path off to one side that simply avoids the whole caboodle and gives easy access to what is left of my property. With misgivings I note a car cavalierly parked halfway down the track leading to Marta’s house. I prepare to deal mercilessly with intruders.

  Feeling almost like an intruder myself, I pick my way between the trees and in past the barricade. It really is very strange, the huge gulf that now yawns to the left: a pit of sky and blue panorama where until so recently stood my beautifully refurbished garage apartment and my house. Now someone has officiously – and probably officially – erected a lengthy chicken wire fence along the raw edge of the precipice plus further notices: Zona Frana! Si Avvicina a Pericolo di Morte! More skulls and crossbones. On the right, the copse that once acted as a cordon sanitaire between my house and Marta’s now seems much too close, and the fence I put up beyond it as a cordial expression of legal demarcation is a bare twenty paces away. Behind that, Marta’s house glows in the morning light and seems deceptively less like the hovel I know it to be. As the sole surviving residence at Le Roccie it has taken on an impertinent air of being lord of all it surveys. Given its newfound solitude, it even looks faintly desirable. Only I know its fungoid interior will be concealing heaps of unironed laundry and quantities of lethal Voynovian delicacies such as shonka, a sausage that induces paralysis, as well as its owner’s flea market cosmetics with names like Randy Minx. Still, to the unaware passer-by the house would suggest the estate agent’s adjective ‘unspoilt’, which means something marginally better than a ruin. I’m not surprised the lady of the manor has been making discreet enquiries behind my back about the status of my surviving land. I just hope she has discovered that her manor has recently halved in value.

  I am distracted from these tooth-grinding reflections by movement at the edge of the copse roughly where my patio once ended and the washing line began. A strange alien structure has been erected there, around which two figures are moving. They are badly dressed in bulky fleeces and look like the sort of people who haunt shopping centres in Britain muttering ‘Gotny spare change?’ As I approach they seem faintly familiar although I can’t place them. Suddenly the anger I have been suppressing at the way fate has trashed my lovely house and allowed Marta to gaze placidly out over the remains bubbles up. What the hell are these ragamuffins doing on my land, in complete contempt of fences and notices? I hail them in steely Italian from ten paces.

  ‘Good morning. I trust you are aware that you’re trespassing on private property? I need only to whistle for my Dober-mans.’

  The two figures turn with a start. They now look even more familiar.

  ‘Oh, bon jawno,’ says the woman. British and no mistake, even had their clothes and dentistry not given them away. ‘But surely we know you?’ she continues in English. ‘Aren’t you … Good heavens! You’re the owner of the lovely house that fell over the precipice! You used to live here. We met last summer. You’re the one saved by the miracle!’

  And now I place them: a couple of prospective buyers whom Benedetti had shamelessly shown over Marta’s house one day during her absence last year. I see them now as I did then, as Baggy and Dumpy. I can’t remember their surnames. Barton? Ringworm? They were sniffing about for out-of-the-way properties, aided by a collection of keys that Benedetti had thoughtfully held on to after his agency had sold the houses.

  ‘Ah yes, I remember now. Mr and Mrs – ?’

  ‘Barrington,’ says Baggy. ‘Chris and Deirdre. Well, this is an honour. You’re a truly celebrated survivor.’

  ‘Gerald Samper,’ I say, not much moderating my steely tone. ‘Survivor or not, miracle or not, this is still my private property, you know. And what in God’s name is that?’

  ‘We mean no harm,’ says Dumpy soothingly. ‘We just came to put fresh flowers on the shrine.’

  It is an affair about shoulder height, cobbled together out of dressed stones – my dressed stones – into a solid plinth with a large recess. Inside the recess are coloured stalagmites of candle wax, sundry burnt matches, a chipped vase, faded bunches of flowers and a photograph of the late Princess of Wales protected by a crinkled sheet of plastic.

  ‘Who built this?’ I demand in a tone that goes with a riding crop being slapped against twill trousers.

  ‘We don’t know,’ says Baggy. ‘I think it sort of grew spontaneously round about Christmastime when all the stories came out. You mean you didn’t know about it?’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve been back since the night of the earthquake,’ I admit, easing my tone somewhat. This i
s a test, Samper. Can you go along with the fiction as rashly agreed yesterday with the crafty Benedetti? Or to put it another way, can you afford not to? I’m beginning to be aware of the sheer horror I’ve let myself in for: the awful strain of maintaining a lie that goes against every principle I hold. Not that I hold many, of course; but feigning a belief in apparitions is right up there with the taboo against humping the help and giving cash to beggars.

  It is a classic dilemma; and like just about every other human dilemma there is a precedent for it in Italian opera. Those of you who sensibly resisted Glyndebourne’s production last season of Handel’s four hundred and fifty-second opera Muzio could have attended the revival in Cremona of Dario Maringiotti’s brilliant Il confessionale. This minor masterpiece, produced in 1887, was banned after its first scandalous night and both librettist and composer were threatened with excommunication unless they recanted and promised never again to stage the work. This was still a big deal in 1887 but in the twenty-first century the Cremonesi had no such hang-ups.

  The story of Il confessionale concerns a young, idealistic priest named Gioachino who is posted to a backward rural parish in Calabria. Shortly after he arrives a young girl, Tiziana, claims to have seen a vision of the Virgin sitting, as virgins will, in one of her father’s olive trees. The priest visits the spot and declares he can sense the lingering presence of this blessed visitation. Both Tiziana and the olive tree become locally famous. But one day she comes to the confessional in a fit of contrition and admits to the priest that she made up the whole story for a bit of celebrity and to attract Valdemaro, one of the few lads in the village without acne, whose romantic interest is apparently fixed elsewhere.

  Gioachino is horrified by this deception but feels he can’t now repudiate his own validation of the olive tree as a sacred site without risking both his and the Church’s credibility, and nor can he explain his change of heart without betraying the secrets of the confessional. So even as Tiziana penitently goes about the village denying her vision, Gioachino continues to encourage the pilgrims with tales of the apparition until he almost comes to believe he saw the vision himself. Yet he knows in his heart it is a lie, even though one whose revenue is swelling his church’s coffers. There are some good subplots of rural cunning, rivalries and superstition. The climax of the story approaches with a terrific aria by Gioachino actually in the confessional with Tiziana. In a fit of remorse the tormented priest is revolted by his deception and condemns Tiziana for her fictitious vision and for impiously using the Virgin herself as a cloak for her own sordid romance. Tiziana then turns the aria into a duet by confessing that she also invented the tale of her affair with Valdemaro: it is the young priest himself whom she loves so passionately, and has done since he first arrived in the village. (It was at this point that the original production began to be booed on the grounds that for an audience to overhear a confession, even a staged one, implied a de facto breach of sacred confidentiality.)