But at the end of the evening he had returned, and in a subtly different manner requested Claudia’s company for the last dance, a slow waltz. She had been wearing a silk shawl, but the hall was so hot and stuffy now that she removed it, making the full effect of her very low-cut dress visible for the first time.
As soon as the music started, she became aware that something was wrong. Earlier, Leonardo had been an exemplary partner, moving gracefully, always dead on the beat, never leading aggressively nor hanging behind. Now he seemed to have turned slightly spastic. His body was bent at an odd angle, and his movements seemed gauche and inhibited. He might almost have been Gaetano, on the few occasions when she had managed to tempt him on to the dance floor.
When she tightened her arm on her partner’s back, pulling him towards her, trying to straighten him up, the reason for his awkwardness became apparent: a massive erection that even his military-issue underpants were barely able to restrain. Their eyes met and locked. Das Blick, her mother had told her once. That was where love began. All it took was that unfakeable, petrifying look, and you were lost.
Nevertheless, as yet nothing had in fact been lost. They remained the only people present who were aware of what had happened. At the conclusion of the dance, Leonardo, now making no attempt to conceal his predicament from her, had very correctly returned her to her husband’s side without a word spoken, bidden them both goodnight and left with his fellow officers. Then, ten days later, he had appeared uninvited at the villa, supposedly to return some books. Nothing illicit had occurred at that meeting either. Gaetano had been abroad, but the servants were very much in evidence and Claudia was expecting a woman friend for dinner that evening.
So how had the affair itself begun? Another meeting at the villa had been arranged, that much was certain. And it must have been done in person, face to face, before Leonardo caught the train back to Verona that first time. There were no mobile phones in those days. All calls to the barracks went through the switchboard, and as desperate as she had been, Claudia would never have risked putting anything in writing. The most insistent of the versions that presented themselves to her now had it that she had invited him — on the front step of the villa, completely out of the blue, dismayed by the imminent prospect of his physical absence — to return the following Wednesday. She might have told him that she was having some friends over for the day, an interesting and influential couple who might well prove helpful to his career. She had certainly known that her husband would be attending a two- day meeting at the Defence Ministry in Rome to report on the NATO conference.
She had given the servants those two days off, explaining that in her husband’s absence she would be returning to Verona. There was still the risk of snooping neighbours, of chance encounters in the village, even of Gaetano’s unannounced return due to illness or a cancellation. In short, she had gone slightly mad, deranged not so much by the sexual prospects in store, although that was a powerful drug, as by an irresistible sensation that the contingent chaos of everyday life was finally cohering into a meaningful narrative that she had to follow, no matter where it might lead.
Yes, but how had it all begun?
However the invitation had been phrased, Leonardo had come, and to the tradesmen’s entrance at the side of the villa, which Claudia had left open. She explained this by saying that it was the servants’ day off and that she would be entertaining her guests by the pool in the garden and might not hear the doorbell. In reality it had been to minimize the possibility of his being seen by prying eyes.
She had been swimming topless in the pool when he arrived, and for a moment she thought she had been too brazen and ruined everything. Confused by her nudity and the absence of any other people, Leonardo looked as though he was about to bolt at any moment. When she picked up the towel she had left at the edge of the pool, wrapped it around her torso and climbed out, he had accepted with a brief nod her story about how the other couple had cancelled at the last moment for family reasons. She had calmed him down by putting her top back on and then producing a man’s swimsuit from the wicker chest where the towels were kept and insisting that he go into the house and put it on. She kept a variety of spare suits for visitors, she said, in case they had neglected to bring their own. In reality, the suit was Gaetano’s.
Leonardo had obeyed her instructions, like the polite young man he was. When he emerged from the villa, Claudia had to fight very hard against her instinct to stare shamelessly at the swimsuit, so very much more interesting did it appear than when worn by her husband. They both went into the water and swam energetically for some time, pretending to each other and to themselves that this was the point of the exercise. Then they emerged, rubbed themselves roughly dry, and lay down side by side on the large beach towels spread out in the sun.
After a while, Claudia had sat up and started applying Ambre Solaire to all the bits of her that she could reach, chattering on the whole time about the extreme sensitivity of her skin and the potentially disastrous effects of the August sun. She had then turned over and asked Leonardo to spread some of the fragrant bronze oil on her back, please. Oh, and just undo the strap of my top, would you, so as not to leave a white strip on the tan. She might even have told him to rub her harder to make sure that the oil penetrated the skin deeply, or some such nonsense. It had been like revisiting her adolescence, but with all the knowledge and authority of her current position. Which she had used quite mercilessly. She wouldn’t have put anything past her.
He’d complied with her instructions without a word, but stopped when he came to her buttocks, but she’d asked him to keep going, yes, and her thighs as well please, all the way up to the costume, because the skin was so sensitive there and even a minor burn could be agonizingly painful. He knelt close above her to do this work, straddling one of her legs with his, and from time to time their bodies had touched.
Once it was over, he lay down beside her again. They didn’t speak — the heat permitted that — but she knew that he was looking at her and lifted herself up on her elbows to reach for her cigarettes, her breasts just clearing the reclining bikini top so that her nipples showed a few centimetres from his fingers. But still he made no move.
When he finally announced, in his oh-so-well-brought-up voice, that he really should be getting back, thank you so much for inviting me, it’s been a great pleasure, she thought that she’d lost. And if she lost that day, she would have lost everything. Her pride would not have permitted her to make a similar demonstration again without an appropriate response from him.
Then she’d had her great insight, her stroke of genius.
‘Very well,’ she’d said, getting to her feet, ‘but before you go you must come and look at the little house down at the bottom of the garden. My parents had it built for me when I turned seven and I’ve kept everything just the way it was. It’s a quite extraordinary place, like something in a fairy tale. In fact I think it must be unique. You feel as though you’ve left the real world behind from the moment you cross the threshold.’
He had of course agreed, like the polite young man he was, and pronounced himself duly impressed with the exterior, which she told him had been faced by real craftsmen, the kind you couldn’t find any longer, using the best stone from the quarries at San Giorgio di Valpolicella. They went inside, giggling and joking about the diminutive size of the entrance, and Claudia closed the door.
Straightening up instinctively, Leonardo had knocked his head on the ceiling, sprinkling her with plaster which he apologetically brushed off. But the movements of his fingers continued long after the last traces of white dust had vanished, becoming slower and slower even as his breathing became ever more rapid. Their eyes met, exactly as they had that first time. Only now they could do something about it. Claudia placed one hand on his back, just where it had been during the waltz, and pulled him urgently towards her, her other hand at the nape of his neck, dragging his open mouth down on hers. And then…
That was
how she remembered it, most of the time at least. But she also knew that memories change a little each time you revisit them, and she had revisited these memories just about every day and night of her life since Leonardo died. By now she had no clear idea how much was original and how much a replica, more strongly engineered in order to support the weight of the significance the whole event now had for her. Perhaps the literal truth had been erased by the version that had now supplanted it. Perhaps it had been too humdrum and confused, a documentary patched together from faded photographs and old newsreels where everyone walks too fast, rather than a Hollywood movie with glamorous stars, perfectly realized production values and a sense of knowing exactly where it is going.
She rose from the bed, brushing off her clothes. The playhouse was filthy, but she couldn’t bring herself to clean anything here. The only real evidence was the fading prints they had taken later with the new instant camera that Polaroid had brought out at about that time. She eyed the drawer in the chest beside the bed where she kept The Book, but left it closed. The last time she had looked at the photographs she had been sickened. She looked puffy and unhappy, Leonardo gawky and awkward, and everything was so matter of fact. No, there was nothing to be gained from that. The material had to be lovingly preserved but it didn’t need to be viewed, any more than one would wish to view the remains of some dear departed beneath his immaculately tended grave.
This was the house of memory, the house of remembrance, sealed off from the ravages of time. Gaetano had set foot in it just once, immediately after Claudia had inherited the villa on her mother’s death, only to declare that it should be demolished and replaced by a vegetable garden. But Claudia, as custodian, had prevailed, pointing out that the expense of demolishing such a substantial structure would be far more than the resulting plot was worth, and also discreetly suggesting that their children could play there just as she once had. She had wanted that, she had wanted them. She had not known that there would be no children with Gaetano, that his sperm was no good.
Gaetano had never raised the matter again, and Claudia had curated the little house with loving care for over a quarter of a century, even renouncing a sizeable sum of money to retain it when she had sold the rest of the property to the development company that had demolished the villa to build that block of condominiums. It had often occurred to her that she must have been mad so to do, so pointless could it seem on her bad days, but now she was vindicated. It all made sense!
She had of course never thought that Leonardo would ever die, let alone before her. And even if he had, his parents would have been given the body, had there been one. But according to Danilo that beloved body had miraculously resurfaced somewhere, somehow, in conditions of the greatest secrecy. Perhaps Leonardo’s parents did not know. As far as they were concerned, their son had died in that plane crash. For that matter, they might well be dead themselves by now. The outcome was clear: the body must be brought back here. This was where it belonged, not in some alien cemetery.
She poured herself one more glass of Cinzano Rosso before replacing the bottle. But what about the Ferrero family? The parents might be dead, but hadn’t he had siblings? Two sisters, she seemed to recall. And even if they made no legal claim to the remains, how could she possibly do so? It would mean disclosing everything, and that might well prove fatal. The law didn’t care about love, but it cared very much about murder. It would be sheer insanity for her to take any kind of initiative in the matter.
She finished her drink and went back outside, locking the door of the miniature house behind her. What a beautiful dream, though, to be able to scatter Leonardo’s ashes amongst these trees! That would close the circle, and ease the pain that had gnawed at her ever since his death. It would be a very private ceremony, just her and her lover, on a day like this at the end of summer, with all nature stooping for renewal beneath the burden of its own weariness.
And Naldino, of course. She’d have to invite him, although with any luck he wouldn’t bother coming all the way up from his foodie cooperative just to show some respect to a father he had never met. Even his mother got little enough these days. Still, if he refused, that was his business. At least she would have given him the opportunity.
It was only once she reached the garden door, having duly followed the long winding circular path through the grounds, that the solution to all her problems struck her. The insight was so overwhelmingly powerful that she gasped very much as she must have done that day thirty years ago when the man in Leonardo finally overcame the boy, and he took her.
Naldino! The authorities might refuse to let her have the body, but they couldn’t refuse him.
X
Zen walked slowly back along the street to the house, a satisfied smile on his lips. The day was cool and grey, with a scent of rain in the offing, but his spirits were not overcast. Among the various things that had become clear since he had moved in with Gemma, on a temporary basis which seemed to have become de facto permanent, was that he was the earlier riser of the two, and she had a sweet tooth and — without being in the least boring or demanding about it — quite liked to be pampered. The result was this expedition, which had become a tradition whenever he was at home.
Zen had discovered, in the course of the sort of casual enquiries and undirected researches that were part of his personality, that the bakery which supplied the most renowned cafe in Lucca was located a relatively short distance from their house. The cafe itself did not open until seven, but the pastries for which it was famous were ready long before that. It had only remained for him to make a private arrangement with the pasticciere, and he was able to combine the healthy and pleasant effects of an early-morning walk through the twisty, awakening back-streets of the town with the pleasure of seeing the delighted smile of a greedy child on Gemma’s face when he awoke her with some sumptuous confection and a freshly- made cup of milky coffee.
Their relationship, which Zen had characteristically assumed was going to be difficult if not doomed from the start, was proving on the contrary to be the easiest and most pleasant that he had ever known. It had a quality of lightness he had never come across before, an almost total absence of stress and effort, of painful compromise and problematic negotiation. It was as if they had both done all that, put in their time and paid their dues, and now wanted simply to relax and enjoy themselves. Not in any grand extravagant style, but in everyday details such as this daily breakfast ritual. Mild satisfaction and a total absence of fuss seemed to be their common, unspoken goal, to which each contributed as if by instinct.
When he entered the apartment this morning, however, he was surprised and slightly irritated to find Gemma in the kitchen, already showered and dressed, making coffee and listening to the news.
‘You’re supposed to be in bed,’ he told her grumpily.
She switched off the radio and kissed him.
‘Not today, darling.’
‘What’s so special about today?’
‘It’s my birthday.’
He set the parcel of pastries down on the counter, feeling obscurely aggrieved.
‘You should have told me. I could have got you a present.’
‘I don’t need anything. But you can take me to lunch, if you want.’
‘There are no decent restaurants here.’
‘Not in the town, no. The locals are too stingy to support anything worthwhile.’
She put on an exaggerated version of the local accent, which Zen could just about recognize but still not replicate. ‘“Why waste a lot of money going out when we can eat perfectly well here at home for a quarter of the price?”’
‘Venetians are the same.’
‘But there’s a good place up in the Serchio valley. At least, I like it. Simple and unpretentious, but the food’s genuine and the place is very pretty. Unfortunately today’s also the day I have to meet a sales rep from Bayer about their line of new products, as well as filing a mound of overdue paperwork with the regional authorities
. That’s why I’m making such an early start. I was going to do it all while you were away, but those people from the gas company came round and just tore the place apart. I couldn’t leave them here unsupervised, of course, but it was impossible to work with them hammering and banging away.’
She poured coffee for them both.
‘There’s a problem with the gas?’ Zen asked.
‘Well, I didn’t have one. But they said they’d had a complaint from someone else in the building, so they sent some workmen around to check that the system was functioning normally.’
‘And?’
‘Well, they installed a new meter and replaced some of the piping. Apparently it’s fine now.’
Zen savoured a few bites of a brioche still meltingly warm from the oven.
‘When was this?’ he asked.
‘While you were in Bolzano.’
He nodded.
‘Dangerous stuff, gas. One takes it for granted, but it’s potentially lethal. We don’t want to be asphyxiated or blown up. Particularly on your birthday.’
Gemma looked at him oddly.
‘You checked their identification, I suppose?’ Zen continued.
‘Whose?’
‘The men who came about the gas. Sometimes petty criminals use a ruse like that to get into someone’s apartment, then tie up the occupant and clean the place out.’
‘Nothing like that happened. They had valid ID, were wear¬ ing uniformed overalls and obviously knew what they were doing.’
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