Death in the Tuscan Hills

by Marco Vichi

  He stopped calling the dog and headed back home with a lump in his throat, thinking of the premonition he’d had upon waking that morning. Wasn’t that another sign that fate existed? The Book had already been written, and every now and then someone happened to catch a glimpse of one of the pages beforehand.

  As he drew near to his house he heard the phone ringing and broke into a run. He unlocked the door and rushed to answer.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me … Are you all right?’

  ‘Hi, Adele …’

  ‘You’re out of breath …’

  ‘Sorry … I was outside and ran to get the phone.’

  He could hear a little girl chattering in the background.

  ‘I wanted to tell you something …’

  ‘Okay …’

  ‘I’ve thought a lot about this … It’s better if we don’t see each other any more …’ she whispered, her voice cracking.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re in love with that other woman … And sooner or later … You know how these things go …’

  ‘Adele …’

  ‘I have no desire to compete with a twenty-five-year-old …’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t want to suffer any more … I just can’t do it … I need to be alone …’

  ‘Don’t leave me …’

  ‘Please … Please … Don’t come looking for me any more …’

  She burst into tears, stifling her sobs, and hung up before Bordelli could find anything to say.

  So another had left, just like the white bear. He put the phone down and stood there staring into space. Now it was clear that his premonition had been right on the money, more than ever …

  He’d managed to react not too badly, not to insist on seeing her again, and to respect her wishes, he would never call on her again. This, at least, he could be proud of. If, on the other hand, she herself one day …

  He mustn’t let the ways of the world get him down, not at his age. He took a deep breath and began making lunch, though he wasn’t very hungry. He felt dazed, but didn’t want to think. It was better to put off all speculation for the moment. Every so often his eyes fell on Blisk’s bowl, and he decided he would leave it where it was.

  He ate his pasta without bothering to turn on the telly, washing it down with half a flask of wine. After the coffee, he went and sat down in front of the cold fireplace, book in hand. He didn’t have the strength to make a fire. He tried to read but was unable. Dropping the book into his lap, he started staring at the ceiling rafters. The silence penetrated all the way into his bones. Had he been wrong to be frank with Adele? In spite of everything, he was convinced it was the right thing to do …

  His gaze fell on the dog’s bowl again, and he couldn’t help but remember Adele’s last words: Please … Don’t come looking for me any more … And he immediately remembered Eleonora’s last words: Leave me alone, I’m fine … The meaning was essentially the same …

  He wished he could cry, but couldn’t. He hadn’t wept even when his mother died while listening to her son whispering some lines of D’Annunzio:

  Hear it? The rain falls

  on the lonely

  greenery,

  a persistent hiss

  in air varying

  through fronds thick and thin.

  Listen. The falling

  tears elicit

  the cicadas’ call …

  On Saturday and Sunday the weather was gorgeous and sun-drenched. Bordelli spent them hiking in the woods above Cintoia, between hunters’ gunshots and fleeing quarry, expecting to see a large mass of white fur appear at any moment through the brush. It was a childish hope, like wishing he would find Adele waiting for him at the house when he returned.

  By now he was used to seeing Blisk scampering through the trees like a wolf in search of prey, and travelling the trails without him was a sad affair. But the mysterious dog had taught him something that should already have been obvious to him at his age: that life was governed by illusion. That was what groped its way towards the future. You thought what you had today you’d still have tomorrow, even though no deity had promised you this. Equally true was that it was hard to live without illusions; you could only hope to be conscious of them and to gain some advantage from that awareness. To enjoy your dreams and be ready for disappointment, that was the way to do it …

  He spent the rest of the week in similarly hermit-like fashion. Solitary walks, vegetable garden, books and fireplace. The cold weather had pretty much ended, but the habit of lighting a fire died hard.

  Every so often the phone would ring, and he would run to answer. He succeeded in not giving in to Rosa’s insistent invitations, resisting her childish desires … He really didn’t feel like going into the city and seeing all those people.

  At one point he had a chat with Piras that was full of insinuations as to Beccaroni’s suicide, and to dodge the elephant in the room he made sure to remind him of his upcoming birthday dinner and asked him not to bring any presents. Come hell or high water, he really wanted to pull off that dinner party.

  Even Diotivede called once, caustic as usual, to announce the great event for the second of April, rigorously without presents.

  Botta had already known for a while about the birthday party and would certainly not forget. He was probably very curious to see whether his gospel could convert an inspector into a cook.

  Friday evening after supper Bordelli rang Dante and invited him to the birthday party. Dante was pleased to accept and asked him whether he felt like a grappa at that moment. Bordelli hadn’t seen a living soul for days, and going to Mezzomonte certainly wasn’t the same as diving head first into the crowds of Florence …

  He got in his car and fifteen minutes later was reclining in an armchair in the penumbra of Dante’s laboratory, with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The church-like light of the candelabra was intimate and relaxing. It felt like a faraway world in which pain and sorrow were only memories.

  Dante sat opposite him, puffing on his cigar. Plumes of dense smoke rose up to the ceiling. After a few minutes of this, Bordelli broke the silence.

  ‘Why is the world so ugly?’ he asked, smiling at the triteness of his question. But he knew that a phrase like that would trigger Dante’s reasoning processes …

  ‘If the world wasn’t ugly, Jesus Christ would not have had any success,’ said Dante in one of his typical syntheses, before he burst out laughing.

  ‘I’ll have to think about that …’

  ‘We could also justifiably add that if the world were all peaches and cream, there would be no art. Every work of art is a little like Jesus Christ … It tries to create a bridge between what is and what should be … It is an attempt to put things in their proper places … The link between Good and Evil …’

  ‘I get it but I don’t get it …’

  ‘Try to imagine a world with no Leonardo, no Schubert, no Van Gogh … no Homer … no Leopardi … no Shakespeare … no Aeschylus … no Dostoyevsky … no Pontormo … no Bach … I could go on all night.’

  ‘It would be hard.’

  ‘They are all the other face of horror … All war, all abuse of power, all injustice, all horror drives the soul of certain men to create immortal works … Without them really even knowing it. They are simply tools, instruments of history, who by mysterious means have the power to steal fragments of truth from the world beyond the heavens, where the Universals reside.’

  ‘I must admit I’d never thought of that before.’

  ‘The world must be seen as a whole … It is like a great anthill teeming with activity aimed at survival, in equipoise between life and death. Without horror, there would be no art, but if there were no art, life would be hell. It’s nature herself that finds the remedies – or, perhaps more accurately, tries to patch things up. And yet Good never gets discouraged and keeps opposing Evil. It’s possible the Manichaeans were right; they saw the
eternal struggle between Good and Evil, between light and darkness, in every aspect of existence.’

  Dante got up to refill the glasses and remained standing in front of Bordelli, a cloud of smoke enveloping his head. His eyes sparkled with goodness and intelligence, like the eyes of certain dogs. He smiled and continued expounding upon his vision of things, as though thinking aloud.

  ‘If we take all of humanity as a single organism, we can see its illnesses as well as the cures that keep it alive. Individuals are of no importance in all this, and yet each person nevertheless pursues his or her minuscule desires, which in comparison to the Universal Project are less than fly-shit in the wind … All the same, I must admit that for the moment just what the Universal Project is, exactly, eludes me. But I have no right to complain: no single individual can grasp Being in its totality. We have our own little universe to administer, and we can’t do otherwise.’

  ‘Well, after that speech I feel like a real nothing, but it’s sort of nice,’ said Bordelli.

  He felt better now. He wished he never had to leave that great room in candlelit shadow, where one discussed profound things without resolution. He didn’t want to think about going back to a house without Adele, without Eleonora, without Blisk …

  ‘Did you know you have a beautiful voice, Bordelli?’ asked Dante, sitting back down.

  ‘This is a night full of revelations …’

  ‘The voice is supremely important. Try looking at someone and imagining what kind of person he is, without ever having heard his voice. As soon as you hear him speak, nine times out of ten you’ll change your opinion.’

  ‘You’re right; that’s happened to me before,’ said Bordelli, pleasantly surprised.

  ‘Whereas your voice corresponds perfectly with what your appearance expresses.’

  ‘Should I be happy about that?’

  ‘I’ll leave you to decide,’ Dante said with a smile, downing his glass in a single gulp.

  The moment he awoke he went down into the kitchen and opened the front door, but there was no white bear lying on the threshing floor. Blisk really had left, and Adele, too, had run very far away, both on the same morning … A day he should mark on the calendar. It didn’t seem possible he would never see them again.

  The previous night, when he got home he cast a glance, as usual, up at the castle’s dark silhouette against the sky. He might never see the contessa again, either, and the tower window would remain dark for eternity.

  He made coffee and sat down at the table with paper and pen, but it wasn’t to write a letter to a woman. Ignoring his melancholy, he compiled a careful list of things to buy the following day, in accordance with the gospel according to Botta. It was the first time he’d ever organised a dinner that he would cook entirely himself, and he wanted to be equal to the task.

  He quickly shaved, got dressed, and went into town. The church square was filled with the livestock market, and he had to park in Piazza Nova. He amused himself as always, queueing up with the old peasant women and hearing their discussions of things about town. At the La Romana store he bought a white tablecloth and a kitchen scale, the old-fashioned kind, with two dishes and weights.

  When he got home he arranged his purchases in the fridge. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock, so he had a long, lonely day ahead of him. He went and carefully watered the garden, observing his creatures’ progress. The chilli peppers by now seemed to be growing before his very eyes, and the leaves of the tomato plants gave off a pleasant scent. The sage and rosemary had visibly straightened themselves up … to say nothing of the artichokes. He finished watering, got back in his car, and descended at a leisurely pace towards Florence.

  When he got to Viale Michelangelo he parked at the bottom of the stairs to his favourite church, the basilica of San Miniato, the headless saint who, after being decapitated by the Romans, picked up his head and climbed up that very hill.

  He went into the cemetery of the Porte Sante, the Holy Gates, for a short stroll. It had been a long time since he’d last entered. He’d always enjoyed walking among the graves, amid the silent, sleeping multitude.

  Through sublime sacrifices to God and Family …

  He devoted his good and humble life …

  She offered her life to God and Family with humility and abnegation …

  He passed away to the peace of Christ …

  A loving husband and father … Prudent and hard-working …

  He looked at the photos of the deceased enclosed in their oval frames, scanned their poetic epitaphs, read the dates and calculated how long they’d lived, and sometimes tried to imagine their lives, their homes, the moment of their death …

  Remembered by his colleagues for his brilliant studies …

  Eternal peace to his inviolate soul …

  Great esteem and endless love were his lot …

  An angelic vision of uncorrupted purity and resigned sorrow …

  Gentle and pious … She devoted her life unselfishly to her family …

  He remembered an old story, one he’d looked into some ten years earlier, a mystery that had started right there, as he was walking in this same cemetery. He’d discovered that the grave of a certain Antonio Samsa was identical to one in the Jewish cemetery of Via di Caciolle, with even the same birthdate. How was it possible to die twice? He’d taken it upon himself to get to the bottom of the mystery and uncovered a sordid tale of betrayal and money at the time of the Nazi occupation. No matter where you scratched, you found only filth. Who knew how many other similar stories were buried under the dust of the past? Sometimes things came together to bring the truth to light, as happened for Antonio Samsa. Was it all only a matter of chance? Or was fate itself the Great Architect?

  Torn from his parents’ loving arms …

  A charitable minister … Precious font of domestic virtues …

  Hard-working, honest citizen … Master of his art …

  She shunned the worldly vanities, and in heaven helps her loved ones …

  Taken up too young by cruel death into the light of the angels …

  Still strolling through the chapels and family vaults, he started thinking seriously of the sort of inscription he would want on his own gravestone, but he couldn’t decide. A touching statement? Something solemn? How about a poem? Or a tercet from the Inferno? Or something light or silly …

  At last a little silence …

  From now on, no more clichés …

  I’ve finally gone on a diet …

  The silliest thing was worrying about matters that would no longer concern him after his death … But maybe they would concern him, more than he could ever imagine … A person’s life did not end with his death, but left behind a trail of slime, as snails did.

  He went out of the cemetery, but felt like seeing the church again rather than going back to his car. When he came to the front of the building, he looked up at the marble geometries of the ancient façade, which loomed over all of Florence with graceful power. Atop the central gable, where most churches customarily had a cross, stood a golden eagle with a roll of fabric in its talons, symbol of the Arte della Lana, the wool guild that had paid for the construction almost a thousand years earlier … Money was more powerful than religion …

  Crossing the portal was like leaving the world behind. Faith, imagination, lightness and magnificence combined harmoniously in the rhythm of the columns, the great mosaic of Christ Pantocrator, the decorated truss beams, and again in the perfect geometry of the polychrome marble.

  The church was empty. He had it all to himself. He started walking about, studying every detail, accompanied only by the shuffling of his feet. Climbing the staircase that led to the choir, he slipped into the sacristy to see the trecento frescoes of the life of St Benedict. The images succinctly presented the main episodes of the saint’s life, as in a film, in a way that the illiterates of the time could fully grasp …

  Suddenly a door opened and a tall, elegant friar came out. Bordelli had the impre
ssion he’d met him before, but, try as he might, he couldn’t remember. The friar stopped in front of him and smiled.

  ‘Welcome back.’

  ‘Good morning, Father … I’m sorry, but I can’t remember in what circumstances we met … My memory doesn’t go back much farther than last Wednesday …’

  ‘I’m Father Lenti. Ten years ago you brought me a suitcase full of dollars.’

  ‘Ah, yes, now I remember …’

  The whole strange affair of the dollars he’d donated to the monastery of San Miniato came back to him. He’d turned the money over to this particular friar.

  ‘I promise you they were well spent,’ said Father Lenti.

  ‘That’s not why I’m here …’

  ‘I should hope not …’

  ‘I’ve always liked this church.’

  ‘Even the faithless like it,’ said the friar, pointing two dark, penetrating eyes at him.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Would you like to confess?’

  ‘I’d like to ask you a question, if you have a minute to spare.’

  ‘I hope I can answer it.’

  ‘It’s just something I’m curious about.’

  ‘Go right ahead.’

  ‘Well … If someone took justice into his own hands and killed some murderers, and then came and confessed to you … How would you respond?’

  ‘The only justice is God’s Justice, which man cannot replace.’

  ‘Of course … But imagine that it’s 1944, and you see a Nazi about to slaughter a group of children … You have a machine gun in your hand and you can prevent a massacre … What would you do?’