by Martin Booth
I always think it so ironic it was the Vatican which made so much use of toxins and venoms.
The first Pope to be murdered, John VIII, was done away with poison in the year 882: his followers did it but they were apprentices at the game and eventually had to club him to death. In this way, they were not true poisoners for they had an active, if reluctant, hand in the matter.
A decade later, Formosus was poisoned; then, in the worst act of brutality ever committed by a killer, his successor Stephen VII had the body exhumed, excommunicated, mangled and dragged through the streets of Rome before being tipped into the Tiber like a sack of household waste, a bucket of night soil. Draw your own conclusions: poisoners are driven by hatred, assassins by justice and a cause, by the tide of history.
It did not end there. John X was poisoned by his mistress’s daughter: similarly disposed of were John XIV, Benedict VI, Clement II and Silvester II. Benedict XI ate figs in sugar, save the sugar was adulterated with powdered glass. Paul II ate dosed watermelons. Alexander VI drank wine laced with white arsenic which was intended for his enemy. How sweet is right! His flesh turned black, his tongue darkened like Satan’s and swelled to fill his mouth. Gas frothed from every orifice and, it is said, they had to jump on his belly to compress him into his sarcophagus.
Such disgusting exhibitions those must have been. All committed by hatred and avarice. No true assassin would behave so. Death of this variety displays the nadir of human capability. This is not my business.
In preparation for my excursion into the mountains, I packed myself a picnic: a bottle of Frascati, chilled in the refrigerator and packed with ice inside a polystyrene cool box such as vintners use to mail their wares; a loaf of coarse bread; 50 gms of pecorino; 100 gms of prosciutto; a small jar of black olives; two oranges and a Thermos of black, sweet coffee. All these are stuffed into a large rucksack with my pocket binoculars, drawing pad and crayons and a magnifying glass. A second rucksack carries the rest of my equipment.
Signora Prasca asked me, as I left, if I was going to paint more butterflies: I replied I was not. This was an expedition to the high mountains to draw the flowers upon which the butterflies feed. A gallery in Luxembourg, I informed her, had requested a series of butterflies on blooms. The insects themselves I knew. The blossoms I did not.
‘Sta’ attento!’ were her last words, called as I closed the courtyard door.
I have every intention, my dear Signora Prasca, of taking care in every waking moment. Great care. I have always done so. It is why I am still here.
She envisages me crawling along the rims of precipices, leaning over precariously to focus my glass upon some obscure weed clinging to the rock, or jumping from boulder to boulder, chamois-like, at the foot of what in winter is a glacier of white death, the conception of the avalanches one sometimes hears rumbling in the February night. If this were winter, she would be afraid of my getting lost in the snowfields to be killed and eaten by wolves or the packs of feral dogs which prey upon loose horses and the wandering shepherds’ flocks.
The road climbs the escarpment of the valley cutting through steep, narrow gorges and meandering across near vertical hillsides. It passes meagre settlements, the houses stunted by the enormity of the mountains, the churches falling into a slow and senatorial decline for lack of congregations. Up here there are few trees: a few stunted walnuts and, in sheltered spots, copses of oak and sweet chestnut.
After half an hour’s continuous ascent, the Citroën—like il camoscio, the chamois, its namesake—gains the summit of the pass where the road levels onto the Piano di Campo Staffi. This plateau is a rich place of alfalfa, wheat and barley fields. Buffalo graze here and provide the town’s daily fresh supply of mozzarella, driven down the mountain road in a fleet of rattling vans and pick-up trucks, some sufficiently antiquated to have seen service in the Mussolini era.
A few kilometres from the pass is the village of Terranera, Black Earth. I decide to stop here, at the bar, and take a coffee. It is not a sunny day, and I am high in the mountains, yet it is still hot and I need the refreshment.
‘Sì?’
The woman behind the counter is young, perhaps twenty years of age. She has full lips and large breasts. Her eyes are dark, sullen with the boredom of village life. The fleeting thought occurs to me that it will not be long before she joins Maria’s ranks at the end of the Via Lampedusa.
‘Un caffè lungo.’
I do not want the strong stuff. She turns to pour the coffee into a small, thick cup which rattles on the saucer. I spoon sugar into it from a bowl by the till.
‘Fare caldo,’ I say as I pay her.
She nods dismissively.
There is an ice cream counter at the back of the bar. I drain my coffee and look at it. One of the delights of Italy is the ice cream.
‘E un gelato, per favore.’
She moves lazily to the counter and walks behind it, lifting the Perspex cover.
‘Abbiamo cioccolata, caffè, fragola, limone, pistacchio . . .’
‘Limone e cioccolata.’
She scoops the ice cream into a cone and I pay. The tariff is chalked on a child’s blackboard suspended from hooks in the ceiling by orange plastic baling string.
Standing in the doorway licking the ice cream, the lemon acidic and the chocolate cloying, I survey the fields through the buildings. The earth is truly black where the plough has turned it. Some people call this the Plain of the Fields of the Inquisition. The black earth is, it is suggested, the result of melted human flesh. Burn a body slowly and it chars then melts like rubber. I have seen it.
On the road once more, I drive for ten minutes then take a track off to the left. I halt the Citroën a hundred metres along it and get out, leaving the driver’s door open. Standing by the car, I piss into the bushes. I do not need to relieve myself for the coffee has not run through me yet. I am not so old. I am just checking that no one has seen the car turn off. There is not a soul in sight, not so far as I can see over the black earth and waving brown grass.
The track has not been used by a vehicle for a long while. I halt again, once I am into the trees, and study the blades of grass growing from the hump in the centre of the track: there is no oil, no sludge of a car belly upon it. There are sheep droppings here and there but even they are old. The cow dung is desiccated into patches of insect-masticated dust.
Setting the tripmeter to zero, I drive on, the Citroën bouncing on its soft springs like a toy boat in a rough pond. I do not halt again until I have counted off ten kilometres. For the penultimate three or four, the track has been just an elongated clearing through woodland, dropping some two hundred metres in altitude. The Citroën makes tracks in the grass, which is still green here under the trees, but it will spring back in a few hours and cover my presence.
Eventually, passing a ruined shepherd’s hut, turning a corner by a pile of boulders and descending a slope through the last of the woods, I arrive at what I had expected to find, an alpine meadow about a kilometre long and four hundred metres wide at the centre. At the far end is a small lake, the banks overrun with reeds. To the right is a heavily wooded ridge behind which tower steep grey cliffs, perhaps 700 metres high. To the left is another ridge upon which stands the ruined pagliara which I had also anticipated.
Paglia: straw. Many of the mountain villages have a pagliara, a second settlement still higher up the mountains to which the inhabitants used to migrate for the summer grazing. Today, these places are abandoned, the footpaths overgrown, the buildings roofless, the windows bereft of shutters and the chimneys of smoke. Occasionally, cross-country skiers may come upon these places but they seldom stop.
Locking my knapsacks in the car trunk, I walk across the meadows and make my way up to the ruined hamlet. The sun comes out but this is of no consequence now. No one can see the flash of a windscreen here.
The grass is long, the trees offer deep shade. Everywhere there is a profusion of wild meadow flowers. I have never seen anywhere so b
eautiful, so utterly uncorrupted: delicate yellows and mauves, brash whites, harsh and brilliant crimsons, exquisite blues. The field is as if an artistic god has spattered it with colour, shaken his dripping brush over the lush emerald of the valley. The ground is firm but there is water here and everything thrives. The air is humming with insects, bees fumble the long-stemmed mountain clover. Small butterflies of species I do not recognise dart up as my feet disturb them.
My ankle boots affording protection against vipers, I start to scramble up towards the houses. I cannot set about my business until I am certain no one comes here. Possibly, there is another, easier way to this valley from the south west and the houses are frequented by lovers seeking a remote, romantic spot.
Quickly, I pass from one ruin to the next. No signs of recent disturbance. No soot marks upon the stones, no campfire circles, no discarded tins and bottles, no condoms hanging in the bushes. From beside the end building, I survey the valley with the binoculars. There are no signs of recent human activity.
Assured I am sharing this place only with the insects, birds and wild boar—for there are trotter prints in a muddy rill leading to the lake—I return to the Citroën and drive down into the valley, swaying over stones hidden in the grass. I turn the car to face the way I have come and park it under the shade of a squat but ample walnut, laden with half-formed nuts, close to where I left the trees. I remove the knapsacks.
It takes approximately one hundred and fifty seconds to assemble the bastardised Socimi. I rest it on the driver’s seat and unroll the length of flannel in which I have forty rounds. I press ten into the magazine, slotting it into the base of the hand grip. I snuggle the butt into my shoulder, putting my eye to the rubber cup on the telescopic sight. Carefully, I survey the pond.
My hand is not as steady as it was. I am getting older. My muscles are too used to moving or, if they are immobile, to relaxing. To be still and tensed is no longer a skill over which I have complete mastery.
Being sure I am in the shade of the walnut, I rest the gun on the car roof and aim at a clump of reeds on the far side of the pond. Very gently, I hold my breath and squeeze the trigger as if it was one of Clara’s insignificant but supple breasts.
There is a brief put-put-put sound. Through the sight I watch the water churn at four o’clock to the reed clump and perhaps four metres off.
From the knapsack I take a watch-maker’s steel-handled screwdriver and adjust the sight. I load another ten rounds into the magazine. Put-put-put! The reeds are clipped, the bullets slapping into the bank behind. I can see the mud spurt tinily. I adjust again and reload. Put-put-put! The reed clump is shot to shit. Feathers drift upon the breeze. There must have been a water-bird’s nest there, deserted now for it is late in the summer and the breeding season is over, the chicks on the wing.
Satisfied, I dismantle the Socimi, returning it to the knapsack which I lock in the boot. There are a few modifications to be made yet, a few refinements to be considered. The sound suppressor must be made a little more efficient and the connector filed down further. The trigger still takes a little too much pressure. Yet, overall, I am smugly pleased with myself.
I spread a blanket upon the grass, lay out my picnic, open the Frascati and eat and drink. The meal over, I collect up the spent cartridge cases, put them in my pocket, walk down into the meadow and sketch and colour over two dozen different flowers. Signora Prasca will need to see the evidence of my excursion.
By the lake, I idly toss the used shell casings, one by one, into the lake. As the last hits the surface, a big fish rises to its brassy gleam.
Clara has given me a gift. It is nothing grand, a tie-pin made of base metal coated with fake gold. It is about four centimetres long with a spring-loaded clip on the back bearing little serrated teeth. In the centre of the gold-coloured bar is an enamel coat of arms. It is that of the town and contains features of the Visconti crest within it. The Viscontis, according to a printed slip in the presentation box, poorly printed in English, French, German and Italian, once held the town and most of the surrounding countryside. This makes it an appropriate present for me, although Clara cannot know this: the Viscontis were pastmasters of the arts of assassination, grand viziers of the game of killing. Indeed, for them, it was a way of life. Or death.
The manner of her giving me this memento was, to say the least, surreptitious although whether from shyness or the fear of a taunting from Dindina I cannot tell. She slipped it into the pocket of my jacket either when it lay over the back of the chair in our room in the Via Lampedusa or when we were in the pizzeria. I did not find it until after Dindina had left us, giving me her customary public peck on the cheek.
‘Look in your pocket,’ Clara instructed me.
I felt for the inner pocket of my jacket. This was a natural action for me. I never put anything in the outer for fear of pickpockets. Clara laughed scornfully.
‘Not inside. In your pocket.’
I tapped my jacket and felt the box.
‘What is this?’
I was genuinely surprised. I would never, under normal circumstances, have left myself so open. It is nothing to slip three ounces of Semtex and one of those minuscule detonators into a coat. I have known two people go to their maker in such a fashion: it is another of the skills accredited to the Bulgarians. Or was it Romanians? Maybe Albanians. All the Balkan-ians are alike when it comes down to it, devious bastards with an instinctive deceitfulness borne of centuries of invasion, inbreeding and survival subterfuge.
I took the box out and looked at it. If Clara had not been my mistress and standing close to me, if she had looked ready to bolt, I should have tossed the box as far as I could and thrown myself down on the cobbles. Or, perhaps, I would have thrown the box at her, at her feet. On reflection, that is probably what I would have done. Survival and retribution are not the property of the Balkan peoples alone.
‘Dono. Regalo. A—a pre-sent. For you.’
She was smiling at me, the light from a street lamp casting pretty shadows across her face and highlighting her cleavage. She was, I could see, also blushing.
‘This is not necessary.’
‘No. Of course. Not necessary. But it is from me. For you. Why do you not open it?’
I lifted the lid of the box which was hinged with a little spring. The historical explanation fluttered to the ground. My heart missed a beat, my every nerve taut. She bent and picked it up.
The tie-pin shone in the lamplight. I moved it to and fro to make it glisten.
‘It is just a small trinket.’
She must have been practising the words for she spoke them perfectly, not dividing the noun into its syllables.
‘This is very sweet of you, Clara,’ I smiled, ‘but you should not spend your money so. You need it.’
‘Yes. But also . . .’
I leaned forward and kissed her just as Dindina had kissed me. Clara put her hand on the nape of my neck and twisted her face into mine, her lips pressing against my own. She held me for a long moment, her lips not moving, not opening to let her tongue push into me.
‘Thank you very much,’ I said as she let me go.
‘For what?’
‘For this tie-pin and such a firm kiss.’
‘These are both because I love you, so much.’
I made no reply. There was nothing I could say. She looked into my eyes for a few seconds and I could tell she was pleading in her soul for me to return her love, to say the emotion was mutual, binding, wonderful. Yet I could not. It would not be fair to her.
She turned, not huffily but a little sadly, and walked away.
‘Clara,’ I called softly after her.
She stopped and looked over her shoulder. I held the box up.
‘I shall treasure this,’ I said, and that much was the truth.
She smiled and answered, ‘I shall see you again. Soon. Tomorrow?’
‘The day after. I must work tomorrow.’
‘Bene! The next day!’ she excla
imed and walked off with a light step.
Clara loves me. This is not a fallacy but a stark truth. She does not love me as Dindina does, for the lust and the experience and the pocket money, but for what I am, or what she thinks I am. And this is where the fallacy begins.
Her love is a complication. I cannot really allow it, cannot risk it. I do not want to bring her misery, nor do I want to deceive myself. Yet I have to admit to myself that I feel for her: if not love, then certainly a fondness. Her cheap tie-pin has increased this sentiment, this dangerous weakness getting into me and worrying me.
I watched her go and made my way home with feelings of anxiety.
Everyone needs a refuge, be it from a spouse or a monotonous job, an objectionable situation or a dangerous enemy. It need not be far off. Indeed, it is often best if it is not. The rabbit, when startled, often stops stock-still before diving for the warren. This can be his error yet it can also save him. A well-placed tussock can be as advantageous as a well-dug tunnel. The hunter expects the rabbit to go subterranean. If he remains on the surface, he may still remain undetected for his continued presence above ground is not anticipated. The Polish have a card game called, I seem to recall, gapin. It means one who looks but does not see. The rabbit is a gapin player par excellence.
In searching for just such a tussock, I yesterday discovered a church not far from the town in which resides one of the most astounding works of art I have ever been privileged to view.
There is no way under the sky to force me to share the knowledge with you. I may be a rabbit after all and hold a good hand. Perhaps I should do as Charaxes jasius does: squat low and close my wings, be a dead leaf, lie low. I should then at least be living up to my name.
The church is no bigger than an eighteenth century English coach-house. It stands next to a barn from which it is detached by a lane scarcely wide enough for my Citroën, definitely too narrow for, say, a carabinieri Alfa Romeo. Even in the Citroën, I had to fold in the side-view mirror to squeeze the vehicle through.