Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  Half an hour later she is still awake; she lies with her face towards the window, motionless; she’s breathing deeply, but she’s awake.

  At two o’clock Robert gets out of bed. He opens a window. Castelluccio is silent; above the roofs there are hundreds of motes of light, each one an inconceivable and perpetual explosion, at distances that he cannot imagine. Back in the bedroom, he crouches to gaze at Teresa’s face, and again a flash of the horror makes him catch his breath: he sees the bones in which her eyes are nestled, the skull like the fruit of death inside its rind of skin and muscle. He kisses her shoulder, twice, keeping his lips on her skin the second time; she murmurs a syllable, but doesn’t stir.

  4

  4.1

  THIS MORNING’S ROUTE is the one they most often take: south from Castelluccio, climbing to Montieri and over the saddle between the peaks of Le Cornate and Poggio di Montieri, then on to the main road and north through Castelnuovo and Larderello, before turning for San Dalmazio and home. The morning is perfect: a cloudless sky; the air mild and faintly perfumed with the scent of moist soil; tracts of pallid sunlight on the slopes. As they ride past Montingégnoli the first bell of the morning starts to ring across the valley from Radicóndoli. They are always near Montingégnoli when the church bell in Radicóndoli starts to ring, and it is a peculiarly satisfying sound, both for the tone of the clanging in the quietness, and for the fact that the sound always happens at this point, when they are on this portion of the road. For a moment or two, while the bell is ringing, no time has passed since they were last here: this Sunday and the previous Sunday are the same. And there will be other repetitions of pleasure in the course of the morning, episodes that he anticipates barely consciously, as he might anticipate moments in a piece of music or a film that he knows well and invariably enjoys: the clouds of vapour rising through the bushes at Travale; a stand of chestnut trees near Montieri, arrayed like a copse in a picture by Claude Lorrain; the light on the cooling towers at Larderello; the tang of the sulphuric air. From time to time he thinks of Teresa, and repels the notion that they are tiring of each other. For minutes at a stretch his mind is wholly passive. He hears the whirr of chains and cogs; there is a bird – a warbler; there is another bell; a gunshot. They are on the steepest part of the incline, riding into warmer air, and Fausto Nerini passes him, as he always does on this stretch of road, with a slap on the back for the laggards. ‘Forza, ragazzi,’ Fausto urges, and the group closes up behind him.

  As they are going through Castelnuovo, Maurizio Ianni comes alongside, swigging from his water bottle. ‘OK?’ shouts Maurizio. ‘OK,’ he answers; it’s the first thing he’s said for an hour. In a line they swerve onto the San Dalmazio road, where they quickly gather speed; he sways through a curve, cutting close to the verge, then loses his nerve and applies the brakes, just as he passes the white wooden cross beside the road, where the partisans were ambushed. As often happens, a sense of his triviality arises from the sight of the cross: he is ludicrous – they are all ludicrous, this gang of middle-aged men on their expensive bikes, dressed up like professionals. But the embarrassment is gone in seconds, because they are at the long left-hander where the tarmac is new and slick, and bang on cue Maurizio sweeps to the front, to show them he’s feeling as fresh after ninety kilometres as after nine, and to make sure he reaches the Porta di Volterra first, as usual.

  4.2

  On June 1st, 1994, the former Albergo Belvedere, Castelluccio’s only hotel, having been closed for refurbishment since the previous January, was re-opened as the Ottocento, with genuine nineteenth-century furniture in all rooms, sepia photographs of the village circa 1900 in the corridors and dining rooms, and a large photo-portrait of Silvio Ubaldino – once the owner of the Belvedere, and founder of the Caffè del Corso – on display in the reception area, opposite a watercolour of the Torrione at the resort town of San Benedetto del Tronto, the birthplace of the hotel’s new owner, Maurizio Ianni, then aged just thirty-eight.

  As a schoolboy Maurizio had made up his mind that he would become his own boss by the time he was thirty. His father was a waiter at a restaurant in San Benedetto and his mother cleaned hotel rooms; they had no money, and there was only one day in the week when the family had the chance to spend any time together. Maurizio could not and would not live like this, he decided. He left school as soon as he could, and found a job in a club on Viale Trieste; he moved to another club, for more money; every year he moved on to a better club, and before long he was managing one of the best places on the coast, in Grottamare. Like his parents, he was working like a slave, but Maurizio’s slavery was part of a plan, and would come to an end in the near future. And it did come to an end: not yet thirty, he opened a club of his own, Barbarossa, on Viale Trieste, within sight of the spot where his working life had begun, a little over a decade earlier.

  He’d worked like a demon for ten years, and had saved much of what he earned, but the Barbarossa was a large and stylish and expensive operation, and there was some gossip about the means by which Maurizio Ianni acquired the capital necessary to set it up. He talked of a backer, a ‘man with vision’, who advanced him a loan at a highly favourable rate, but nobody knew the visionary’s name. This anonymous patron also helped Ianni with the finance for his second club, Barbanera, which opened two years after Barbarossa, ninety kilometres to the north, near Ancona. In 1992, in the course of the trial of a man called Fedele Cisternino on charges of extortion, photographs were shown to the court in which the accused was to be seen drinking with one of his alleged victims, at a party held on the occasion of Mr Cisternino’s fortieth birthday, at the Barbanera; it was also alleged by the prosecutors, and vehemently denied by the defence, that Mr Cisternino was an associate of some extremely unsavoury characters in Bari. Was it entirely coincidental, some asked, that the shady Mr Cisternino should have chosen the Barbanera as the venue for the celebration of this significant date in his life? And was it purely by chance that a club called Blu, located within a few kilometres of Barbanera, suffered a decline in its popularity in the wake of two outbreaks of food poisoning in the space of six months? It was hard not to wonder, especially when it emerged that the former classmate of Maurizio Ianni who became the manager of the Barbarossa in 1992 had been working in the kitchen of the Blu during the period in question.

  Publicity for the Barbarossa and Barbanera boasted that they had the best DJs and the best sound systems south of Rimini, and a lot of people agreed: the Barbarossa was voted the hottest club in the province of Ascoli Piceno three years in a row, and in 1992 it came first in a poll to find the top night-spot in the entire region of Marche. They were ‘cash factories’, to quote Maurizio, and in 1993 he sold them for a ‘magnificent sum’, to a company registered in Bitonto, the so-called ‘City of Olives’, eighteen kilometres west of Bari.

  He had become bored with the club scene, he says, and had long been dreaming of a hotel that he would own, a modest but refined establishment, with a restaurant; one of the things that motivated him, he’ll admit, was a need to redress the hardships that his parents had endured. As with his previous ventures, he did his research thoroughly: he identified a corner of Tuscany that was ripe for the development of its tourist infrastructure, and found within it an investment that was perfect – the Belvedere. It was not too large and not too small; it had history (you must have history) but was in fair condition; it could be acquired cheaply, and refreshed for not too great an outlay.

  So he bought the Belvedere, and invited his brother, Orsino, to come and work for him. His brother, a year younger than Maurizio, was in Milan, still learning to be a chef. Maurizio doesn’t often speak of his brother: they had a big falling-out, many years ago, he’ll tell you, and Orsino is stubborn: he won’t let bygones be bygones, and he won’t admit to himself that he’s never going to be the sort of guy whose food gets reviewed in the best magazines. Orsino works hard, of course, and he’s a good enough cook, but he’s not got that spark, and he doesn’t have what
it takes to be a boss. ‘One day,’ says Maurizio, ‘he’ll see sense and he’ll come to Castelluccio.’ Usually he makes it sound like an act of fraternal charity, but sometimes you sense the pleasure of retribution in his voice. And of course some people, such as Carlo Pacetti, have ideas about the falling-out of the brothers back in San Benedetto del Tronto, ideas which overlap with the gossip about the Barbarossa and the Barbanera. All Maurizio will say is that Orsino was never a clubbing kind of guy; and Maurizio doesn’t blame him for that; Maurizio wasn’t a clubbing kind of guy for long.

  Maurizio Ianni is not to everybody’s taste, even if few are as hostile towards him as Carlo Pacetti, for whom the boss of the Ottocento is a man of no principles other than the love of money, and the embodiment of so much of what is wrong with the country today. You will hear it said that when Maurizio Ianni is talking to you it’s impossible to resist the feeling that he’s trying to work out if this conversation might in some way be of advantage to himself; when Ianni does a favour for someone it’s always with an eye to the reward. He is charming, it must be admitted, but many would agree with Gideon’s jibe, that Ianni ‘vents his charm on you’. Others, though, think that Maurizio Ianni should be the mayor of Castelluccio, because he, more than any other person, is keeping the town alive. And none would accuse Maurizio Ianni of idleness. Almost every hour of the day – Sunday mornings excepted – is devoted to the various Ianni enterprises: the Ottocento hotel, the Cereria apartments, his restaurant in Mensano, and his latest project, the conversion of a farm on the outskirts of Monteguidi into a five-star hotel complex, complete with pool, spa and fitness centre. ‘One day they’ll rename this Ianniland,’ he has told his fellow cyclists, saluting the valley with a raised arm.

  When he was in San Benedetto, making his money and a name for himself, he never had time for a serious relationship, and he doesn’t have much time now. There have been some lady friends since he’s been in Castelluccio, but it seems that all of these affairs were short-lived. He is on his own at the moment, and he knows that he may be heading for a lonely old age. But he will have no regrets, he says; at the age of sixty, or earlier, he will sell up and retire to a villa with a view of the sea, in Liguria; he has never had any desire to pass on his business to an heir – that is a feudal way of doing things, he’ll tell you, whereas he is a man of the twenty-first century.

  Maurizio is fond of characterising himself as someone who lives, as he puts it, in ‘the world as it is’. And yet, though it would appear to many that Mr Ianni conducts his life in a manner that accords more closely to the lessons of Il Principe than to the Gospels, he attends Mass regularly, in the church of the Redentore. Every Sunday, just before noon, after his ride, you’ll see him ascending the steps, alone, in Prada suit and silk tie, with the bearing of a businessman on his way into a meeting with a potential partner, expecting success. He is an intelligent man, and is aware that certain of his fellow citizens would accuse him of hypocrisy. The accusation is rebutted with ease: ‘I am a realist,’ says Maurizio. ‘I leave it to the priests to tell me about the world as it should be, and of the life that is to come, or so I hope.’ And should there be a life to come, he is confident that he will be permitted to partake of it: he has done good work, he would suggest; he has ameliorated, albeit in a small way, and for a small space of time, the lives of a considerable number of people. Furthermore, though he would not pretend that his faith has always been steadfast, he has never succumbed to despair, and – as Father Fabris and the orphans of Vietnam could attest – he has been diligent in his observation of the third of the Theological Virtues.

  ‘Your boss and myself, we are alike in many ways,’ he has remarked to Robert on occasion. ‘We both give pleasure to people: his pleasures are expensive but long-lasting, mine are more affordable and more trivial. But we both change the world a little.’ He is joking, but not entirely. And he is exaggerating only a little when he refers to himself as the town’s other artist. After Mass he will take a stroll around the town, slowly, pausing to greet and to survey, like a man who imagines himself a potentate on a tour of his domain. For a moment he will linger, always, outside the Teatro Gaetano. He dreams of owning it, he confesses. He can see the derelict theatre transformed: the auditorium is a dining room, as spectacular as any in Italy; music is played on the stage, to enrich the experience of eating here; backstage are the kitchens; and on the upper floors there are rooms as luxurious as any you can pay for in Florence. But Castelluccio, he fears, is too small for his dream.

  4.3

  Six days out of seven, Gideon has only Trim for company on his morning walk, but Sundays are different: barring severely inclement weather or some other special circumstance, he takes his walk with Carlo Pacetti. They meet outside the Pacetti garage and stroll outside the walls, anticlockwise, invariably, past the Porta di Volterra and the Porta di San Zeno, before entering the town at its western gate, the Porta di Santa Maria. The conversation is sporadic: Gideon is no linguist, and Carlo Pacetti’s English – acquired chiefly through his son, Ennio, who studied the language at school and has always preferred American rock bands to Italian – is only a little less rudimentary. One man speaks a mixture of Italian and cracked English, the other cannot produce more than a couple of sentences of Italian without resorting to English to clarify his obscurities, but they understand each other. They understand each other, as each would tell you, at a level that is deeper than speech. They are true companions in spirit, their alliance being founded upon the respect of master mechanic for master artist, and vice versa. ‘We are men of another age,’ as both have more than once remarked, an age in which artist and artisan were of the same blood.

  A minute into the walk, Carlo Pacetti will ask about the work that Gideon has done in the week since last they were together. ‘Anything I can see?’ he will ask. This morning Gideon’s response is: ‘Not yet; soon, I hope.’ Carlo nods, and leaves it at that; one might mistake them for an artist and his agent. At the Porta di Volterra they halt to admire the view; a grass-scented breeze moves over them, and Carlo takes three gluttonous breaths; Gideon, standing at his side, does likewise. Then the cyclists appear, swerving through the gateway, led by Maurizio Ianni. ‘Superman arrives,’ Carlo remarks, taking his friend by the arm as they cross the road. He’s heard that Ianni has had to bring his prices down to fill the hotel; but the credit crunch has been good for Ennio, because people think they can’t afford a new car so they’re keeping the old one going as long as possible. Ennio’s wife – she’s usually ‘Ennio’s wife’, rather than ‘Silvia’ – has just bought a smartphone that doesn’t work properly; this amuses him, as it does Gideon.

  The daughter-in-law and her ludicrous phone are worth a minute or two, then Carlo divulges that he’s heard something else about Ianni: that he had offered Ilaria Senesi a job at the Ottocento a few weeks before she disappeared.

  ‘Seems unlikely,’ says Gideon. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘Customer of Ennio’s,’ answers Carlo.

  ‘News to me. Can’t imagine it.’

  ‘I can,’ says Carlo, grabbing a phantom female bottom with both hands. Carlo has a theory: the girl had got herself pregnant by Ianni and has gone off to get something done about it.

  ‘No,’ says Gideon.

  ‘Not impossible,’ suggests Carlo.

  ‘Totally impossible,’ Gideon tells him.

  His companion shrugs, and they walk towards the Porta di Santa Maria, in silence. Carlo’s face undergoes a few small contractions, as if he’s listening to a more thorough criticism of his theory, and not being convinced by it. As they reach the gate he has to speak: he cannot comprehend why Gideon should feel such an attachment to that worthless girl.

  ‘She was an excellent model,’ Gideon tells him.

  ‘She’s ignorant.’

  ‘She is not ignorant. She might not be a reader—’

  ‘She’s stupid.’

  ‘—but she has a natural intelligence.’

  �
�Intelligence my arse,’ Carlo guffaws.

  ‘A natural intelligence,’ Gideon repeats. He endeavours to draw a comparison between Ilaria and the young, unschooled Pau’ura of Paul Gauguin.

  ‘This is not Tahiti,’ Carlo points out.

  ‘I know. But still—’

  ‘Let’s be honest, maestro. She has a body, and that’s all that needs to be said. Your Pora, or whatever her name is—’

  ‘Pau’ura.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’m sure she had a nice body too. And that’s OK. An artist needs nice bodies. I understand. But let’s not talk about intelligence. Ilaria knows a few things about horses. That’s her limit.’

  ‘No, Carlo. You’re wrong,’ says Gideon. He tells his friend that he accepts that Ilaria might not make a good impression on people who don’t really know her, that she might appear – how can he put it? – somewhat crude, but he had come to know her well, and she had surprised him with some of the things she had said. ‘And she has a good eye,’ he goes on. ‘She has an instinct—’

  Carlo puts a hand on his arm to interrupt him; they have reached the piazza in front of Santa Maria dei Carmini, and people are going into the church. ‘There’s your Luisa,’ he says, seeing Luisa Fava entering the piazza from Corso Diaz. Luisa, seeing Gideon, waves to him, and they go to meet her.

  Falling back a pace or two, to allow Gideon and Luisa to talk freely, Carlo finds himself standing in the way of a man who is taking a picture of Santa Maria dei Carmini; his wife or girlfriend, standing beside him, gives Carlo a little cringe of apology. Certain that they are English – which means, much more likely than not, that they’ll know fewer than twenty words of Italian – Carlo addresses them; to ensure incomprehension, he speaks rapidly. This, he tells them, is the famous church of the Blessed Lady of the Underwear, one of the most remarkable sights in Castelluccio. The woman smiles, but her eyes are panicky. ‘I’m sorry,’ the man says, in Italian, ‘but—’. This would appear to be the extent of his vocabulary. Carlo gives them more information, again in Italian: this magnificent monument was built to celebrate the appearance of Our Lady to an English monk called Simon the Simple, he explains; Our Lady appeared to Simon in a huge red cloud, surrounded by cherubs, and gave him a bra to wear, a special holy bra, which he gratefully accepted and wore for the rest of his life. The woman looks as if she’s been given a lemon and been obliged by courtesy to chew it. ‘Mi scusi,’ she begins, whereupon Carlo, with a gracious smile, raises a hand to exempt her from saying more. He shakes their hands to send them on their way, as Gideon and Luisa part.