by Jane Langton
But the sharp branches that thrust themselves across her way were head-high now, entwined with briers and small saplings that tore at her arms and caught in her hair. Good God, where was the path?
In the distance she could hear the sound of a car roaring up the hill, but it was too far away. She was nowhere near the road. She must have taken a wrong turn. She was going away from the highway, not toward it.
Then off to one side all three of Graziella’s pursuers shouted and cheered at once.
Poor Graziella! She was back in custody. There were cheerful yodellings and unhappy squealings as the poor doomed pig was dragged back up the hill. Then Julia heard another voice, a single sharp commanding voice calling down the hill, “Dov’ é la signorma?”
Signor Roberto had come back. He was asking for her. Julia stopped short and listened to the guilty silence. She crouched lower. She was standing in a swampy clump of reeds, her shoes in muddy water. Bending her knees, she sank down until she was huddled near the ground, her loose hair falling all around her.
At the top of the hill they were spreading out again, looking for her. They were no longer shouting, but she could hear the heavy tread of their feet, the snapping of twigs, the whispering of underbrush as their heavy trousers thrust it aside.
Before long Roberto found her. He touched her gently, and knelt beside her. Lifting her hair, he kissed the tears, on her cheek and took her in his arms. Julia pressed her face against his coat and sobbed, “Don’t let them kill Graziella.”
“No, no,” he murmured brokenly, “Never, never.”
Carlo and Pancrazio came running up, then stopped and grinned at each other, and went away again.
CHAPTER 49
Forward! henceforth there’s but one will for two. …
Inferno II, 139.
It was the Easter weekend, a three-day holiday.
“I’ll be back on Tuesday,” said Lucretia, picking up her suitcase. “I’m off to Siena.”
“Siena?” said Homer Kelly. “Why Siena?”
“Well, it’s going to be so crowded in Florence this year, and I’ve always wanted to see what Easter is like in the Cathedral of Siena. Have you been there?” And then Lucretia launched into a description of the Piccolomini Library, which was part of the cathedral, with paintings depicting the life of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, poet, playwright, Bishop of Siena and finally—
“Okay, okay,” laughed Homer. “Have a good time.”
Dorothy Orme and Joan Jakes were leaving too, taking off for Rome.
“But what for?” said Tom. “You can see the pope right here in Florence. Why go to Rome?”
“Oh, we just want to see what it’s like,” said Dorothy, “to be in Saint Peter’s Square when he appears on the balcony and blesses the crowd.”
“The balcony of the Apostolic Palace,” said Joan learnedly.
Tom was going away too, spending the weekend wherever the hell he pleased, he said. On Good Friday he set off down the driveway with his backpack, heading for parts unknown.
Zee would have been left alone in the villa if Homer hadn’t taken pity on him and moved back in. They had no plans for the holiday except to go right on grinding up and down Via Faentina together.
On Holy Saturday they headed for the last two towns on the bus line.
So far their explorations north of the city had been futile. They had heard no whisper of Julia. They had seen no sign of the electrician’s little three-wheeled truck.
The town of Caldine seemed equally bare. They asked their questions in the pharmacy, the fabric shop, the dry cleaner, the grocery and the store that sold plucked chickens, and received only blank looks and shakes of the head. “We might as well go home,” said Homer, who was starving.
“Right,” said Zee gloomily. Then he cursed politely in English. “Damn, I should have cashed a check last week. Now all the banks are closed until Tuesday.”
“How about the post office?” said Homer, pointing across the street. “If you buy a few stamps, they might cash a check.”
It was nearly noon. The post office clerk was preparing to leave. But when two interesting-looking strangers came in the door, he grinned at them, showing a mouthful of brilliant false teeth, and went back behind the counter.
He was a cheerful old man with tufts of grey hair standing up around his bald head. At once he poured out a stream of talk, beginning with the weather. It was warm for early April, didn’t they agree? How thick the crowds would be tomorrow in Florence! He for one intended to stay strictly at home. Oh, yes, it was true, the price of mailing letters today was orribile, was it not? Had they seen the magnificent new stamps in honor of the second year of the anti-drug crusade? No? Then, ecco, here they were! But, alas, he could not sell them until the official date of issue.
And then when Zee finished writing his check and handed it across the counter, the clerk went into a paroxysm of rapture.
He beamed at Zee with all his teeth. “Ah, but you are the professor, Professor Giovanni Zibo, of the family of the handsome gentleman who was here the other day!”
“What?” said Zee.
The clerk was afire to tell his story—what an opportunity for the display of human emotion! He dallied with Zee. “Ah, but I cannot tell you. The discretion of the postal service, vero?”
Homer caught enough of this to recognize the clerk at once as a busybody like himself, a brother in meddlesome impertinence. He smiled at him engagingly and worked out a question in Italian. “But perhaps there are two Professors Zibo?”
“Another Professor Giovanni Zibo? No, no!” The clerk winked at Zee. “You have had some disagreement with your brother-in-law, some argument concerning your sister perhaps?”
Zee shook his head, bewildered. “I have no sister, no brother-in-law either.”
To the romantic fancy of the clerk this could have only one meaning. “Aha, then it is as I suspected. He said you were his brother-in-law. Perhaps instead you are a rival in love.” This time the clerk winked at Homer. “No wonder the gentleman wanted his letter back. And I gave it to him. I unlocked the box and gave it back to him, in order to prevent a lover’s quarrel, a confrontation, perhaps an act of violence.”
Zee stared blankly at the clerk. Homer had understood most of this frolicsome play of the clerk’s imagination, and now he leaned across the counter and formulated another question. “Do you mean that someone mailed a letter and then took it back, a letter to Professor Giovanni Zibo?”
“Yes, yes.” The clerk was delighted to be taken seriously. “It was addressed to a villa in Bellosguardo.”
Zee gasped. “Bellosguardo? But that’s right. That’s where I live, it’s where I teach. But the letter, it wasn’t mailed? This man, he took it back?”
“Yes, yes, he was so insistent. He had mailed it in haste. He regretted the harsh words he had written in the full spate of his wrath.”
Homer’s Italian vocabulary included some of the little clerk’s words, and his galloping intuition supplied the rest. “Who was he,” he said quickly, “this man who wrote the letter?”
“I have not seen him since. But he was unforgettable.” The clerk gazed ecstatically at the ceiling. “A god, he was like a god. Or a fallen angel walking upon the earth. He was handsome like a film star, a superstar, a prince of men!” The clerk made a gesture to indicate a splendid head of hair. “His hair so thick, his beard so noble, his nose so magnificent, and, ah, his marvelous eyes, his splendid bearing!” The little clerk strutted proudly, his chest thrust out. Surely he was driving daggers into the breast of this rival for a woman’s love.
“Can you describe the letter?” said Zee. “Was there a return address?”
The clerk closed his eyes and shook his head. “No return address. But the hand, ah, it was delicate as a woman’s.” He smiled seraphically. “I myself have dabbled in the study of handwriting. I couldn’t help noticing that the As were neatly closed, and the Os as well. A rapid stroke, upright and precise. Soft and graceful, b
ut displaying a keen sense of purpose.” He leaned forward and looked at them significantly. “The handsome signore did not write it, you can be sure of that. It was the letter of a woman, his wife perhaps, written to her lover. He burned with jealousy, he was on fire to read his wife’s passionate words addressed to another man.”
“That’s you,” snickered Homer to Zee in English.
“But Homer,” said Zee eagerly, “Julia’s handwriting was like that, it was just like that. You know, strong but sort of delicate at the same time.”
“Mary writes that way too. Lots of women write that way. Maybe it was somebody else who wrote to you. Do you know anyone around here who might have written you a letter?”
“Not a soul.” Zee gripped Homer’s arm. “It was Julia, I tell you. She tried to write to me, but her letter was intercepted.” Zee thanked the clerk and hurried to the door, ready to ransack shops, houses, churches and outlying villages. Homer too said Arrivederla, and followed him out.
Left to himself the clerk went to the window to watch Professor Zibo and his tall American friend as they stood on the sidewalk staring uncertainly up and down the street. He was delighted at the dramatic consequences of his tale, most of which he had made up out of whole cloth.
But of course it might be true—the jealous husband, the tormented lovers, why not? Look how seriously they had taken it, the whole story. Ah, he had always prided himself on his understanding of the tortured depths of the human heart!
CHAPTER 50
While one green hope puts forth the feeblest sliver.
Purgatorio III, 135.
They stood on the narrow sidewalk as Bus 12 whizzed by, then slowed down and stopped. Three small boys leaped out, followed by a pair of old men stepping down cautiously. With a tootle-toot the bus started up again, narrowly missing a car hurtling past it the other way.
“It’s going up the hill to the end of the line,” said Homer, consulting the bus schedule. “Querciola, the place is called. Come on, we’ll go there too. You know, Zee,” he confessed as they got back into the Saab, “I only came along on this expedition this morning to be a pal. I thought you’d really gone bananas, but now—”
“Bananas?” Zee swerved the car out onto the road and glanced wildly at Homer.
“American expression. Probably out of fashion. I’m always ten years behind the times. Bonkers, how’s that? No, bonkers is probably old-hat too. Freaked out? Flaky? Grossed out? Anyway, Zee, the point is, I’ve changed my mind. I think you’re getting somewhere. I recognize that little clerk’s description of the man who wanted his letter back. It’s the guy I saw at the villa, looking down at Franco and Isabella from above. Handsome, splendid, magnificent—he was all of those things.”
“He’s got her,” said Zee, accelerating too fast, zooming up the hill. “I know he’s got her.”
At the tiny settlement of Querciola they found Bus 12 parked beside a telephone booth, a dumpster, and a small waiting platform with benches.
Pulling up beside it, they could see the driver lighting a cigarette as he waited for passengers going the other way, heading for the city.
There was a restaurant at Querciola, and a meat market. A housing development burgeoned on the hill above.
“You take the restaurant,” said Homer. “I’ll try the macelleria.”
“Va bene,” said Zee, leaping out of the car.
On this balmy Holy Saturday only a beaded curtain separated the meat market from the out-of-doors. Homer walked in and stood in line behind three women waiting to be served by the white-coated girl behind the counter. Cheeses and sausages hung from the ceiling, and flat round prosciutti. Inside the refrigerated display case fluorescent lamps shone on trays of veal and little carcasses of Easter lamb.
The women looked at him curiously, but when he asked about the elettricista and the bel uomo alto and the bella ragazza named Julia, they shook their heads. One of them said boldly that she didn’t know anything about a girl named Julia, but she had a very tall daughter who needed a husband, and then she poked Homer slyly in the chest. It was a joke. Laughing enthusiastically, he said that to his sorrow he was already married.
By the time it was Homer’s turn, three more women had come up behind him. He bought a length of sausage for two thousand lire, and watched as the girl behind the counter swept a square of oiled paper around it. She was laconic and businesslike. “Nient’ altro?” she said as she handed him the package and the change for his five-thousand-lire note.
She meant, Anything else? “Si, Signorina.” Once again Homer inquired about the beautiful girl and the tall good-looking man who was so dignitoso.
The young woman shook her head, and then Homer asked a third question in his pigeon Italian. “Oh, Signorina, I am looking for an electrician with a little truck, a mobile electrician. Do you know of one in this neighborhood?”
The girl looked at him and opened her mouth, but the woman behind Homer was already pointing at what she wanted in the glass case. “Mi scusi, Signore,” said the girl. “Sono troppo occupata.”
She was too busy. Homer glanced over his shoulder at the new faces in the line. They were all looking at him inquisitively. “Mi displace,” he said apologetically. Defeated, he turned away. But then he had an idea, and he came forward again and spoke up urgently.
The signorina, he explained, smiling all over his face, had given him the wrong amount of change.
The girl behind the counter misunderstood. Her face darkened. He thought he had been cheated! The chattering women fell silent. They stared at Homer avidly, expecting a scene.
He persisted, pleading sweetly, “You gave me too much money, you see, Signorina. Guardi!” And he held out a thousand-lire note.
The alteration was instantaneous. The women laughed with joy. The girl behind the counter beamed, and took the note. “Thank you, Signore. You are very kind.” And then she took pity on him, and did a favor in return. “The electrician parks his little truck in back.” She pointed to the rear of the shop.
“O grazie, Signorina, grazie tante!” Smiling toothily right and left, Homer made his escape, with the enthusiastic admiration of the women of Querciola pulsing at him from all sides.
He found Zee pacing up and down beside the Saab, dispirited. Homer clasped his hands over his head in triumph. “The electrician’s truck, it’s right here behind the meat market.”
And there it was, waiting for them, when they hurried around to the back of the building—a little three-wheeled truck with the words Elettricista Mobile painted across the back in flowing script.
They stood for a moment, gazing at it. Homer repeated aloud a remark of Henry Thoreau’s about the strangeness of finding something you have been looking for all your life—One day you come full upon it, all the family at dinner.
It was a very small truck indeed, with a one-seater cab and a tiny enclosed rear section like a round-topped trunk.
Cautiously they inspected it. The back was locked. So was the cab. They looked in the window and Zee pounced on the fact that the narrow crannies around the driver’s seat were choked with trash. “You see?” he said joyfully. “Every time he opens the door, the stuff must fly out all over the place.”
Back they went to the meat market and stood in line, and then Zee asked the girl in the white butcher’s apron what she could tell them about the driver of the little truck.
At once she shrugged and made a face. She knew only that he had been living nearby. She did not know his name. He had wavy black hair, she said, a little nose, and he was big and strong. She took a swashbuckling posture, and then said, “Uffa,” contemptuously. Homer suspected she had been manhandled once or twice.
“Grazie tante, Signorina,” said Homer again. Zee bowed politely, and they went back to stare at the truck.
“It’s the Easter weekend,” said Zee. “He may not come back for it until Tuesday.”
“But he lives around here somewhere. Now that we know the number on his license plate we can get
his name and address. Is there such a thing as an automobile registry in the city of Florence?”
“Of course there is, but it won’t be open until Tuesday.”
“Rossi will know how to get at it.”
It took Homer two hours of hanging around the pay phone at the bus stop while Zee kept watch on the truck. Munching on the sausage from the meat market, Homer called the Questura and persuaded the woman at the switchboard to give him the home number of Inspector Marco Rossi in Sesto Fiorentino.
To his surprise the inspector seemed glad to speak to him. He had information of his own he wanted to pass along. His voice was melancholy. “It is my blame. I find Matteo Luzzi, I lose him again.” Then Rossi told Homer about the letter he had rescued from the street sweeper in Piazza Beecaria. “I am very afeared. Someone with the name of Roberto will be killed during the fuoci d’artificio—how do you say it? the fireworks, the Explosion of the Cart, the Scoppio del Carro. And other things may happen. I must find Luzzi.”
Homer had to ask him twice for help in getting in touch with the automobile registry. The inspector seemed distracted. He was just going out, he said, to prepare for his role in the Easter vigil at his local church, and he was already late. “The registry will surely be lock up, nobody there.”
“But, Inspector,” pleaded Homer, “it’s important.”
At last Rossi reluctantly agreed to call the director of the registry and persuade him to send an assistant back to the office to look up the name and address of the owner of the vehicle with license plate FIA630021. And then, while Homer leaned against the telephone booth in Querciola, staring at the traffic darting by on Via Faentina, and Zee strolled among the trash cans behind the meat market, Rossi called the registry director at his home in Settignano, and the director called an underling in Pellegrino and ordered him to return to the office in the city.