A Glancing Light (A Chris Norgren Mystery) (6 page)

He let go a deep sigh. "
0 tempera!
" he said "
0 mores!
" Understandably, he did better with Cicero than with Shakespeare.

Chapter 4

With Luca's Ciceronian world-weariness the evening's energy seemed to fizzle out. Conversation tapered off at the other tables as well, and people began coming up to wish me good night, to thank Di Vecchio for the dinner, and to pay their respects to Luca, who accepted them in kingly fashion.

Among them was Ugo Scoccimarro, one of the three contributors—along with the Pinacoteca and Clara Gozzi—to Northerners in Italy. He was also the owner of the Boursse I was hoping to get for Seattle.
 
I was surprised to see him there at all. The thickset, balding Scoccimarro, a native Sicilian, had complicated things for me by moving from nearby Milan, where he'd lived for three years, back to Sicily several months before; I was planning to fly down there to settle things with him before I left Italy. But as it turned out, he was in Milan on business, and when word had gotten to him about the reception, he had taken the two-hour train trip to Bologna.

Scoccimarro was an extraordinary being in the world of art collectors; a peasant in the literal sense of the word. Like his father and grandfather, he had provided meager and toilsome sustenance for his family by making olive oil, growing almonds, and keeping a few sheep for the production of romano cheese, which he made himself twice a year. Then providence had smiled. The Aga Khan had decided to put up a condominium development on the Strait of Messina, and Ugo Scoccimarro's rocky eleven acres on the coast near Scaletta Zanclea just happened to be the perfect spot for it. Smooth-talking representatives in suits and ties had appeared at Scoccimarro's decrepit stone farmhouse one day in 1967 to ask him what he wanted for the land. The flabbergasted, twenty-three-year-old Ugo got up his nerve and stammered out a demand for fifty times what he thought it was worth, then almost fainted when it was accepted on the spot; no arguments, no bargaining

He had slapped his forehead and grinned when he told me the story. "I could have asked for ten times more. " But it had been enough to start him on a remarkable career.

Ugo had turned out to be a shrewd businessman, putting his money first into country land, then into commercial developments in Catania, and finally into the production of an aperitif called Jazz!. This was one of those awful medicinal concoctions the Italians seem actually to enjoy. Made from olives and almonds, and based on a family recipe, it was an immediate success. Reluctantly, Ugo had moved to Milan to build his new factory; it was the only place he could find the technical skills he needed.

Some years ago he had gone to an auction and bought himself a ready-made art collection of twenty-five paintings, mostly of the Utrecht School, a group of seventeenth-century Dutch artists who had come to Rome as students and been heavily influenced by Caravaggio. Ugo had bought them as an investment, he said, but although they had quadrupled in value in nine years, he had never tried to sell one, as far as I knew, although he'd bought a few more. The truth of the matter, I thought, was that Ugo Scoccimarro, former tiller of the soil, was thrilled at being a gentleman art connoisseur, and saw little need to make any changes. The day I had asked him if he would lend some of his pictures to the exhibition, he had swelled before my eyes and practically floated away like a helium-filled balloon.

The reason I hadn't seen him during the reception, he explained now, was that he had just arrived. His train had been delayed for two hours before it ever got out of Milan. Knowing he was going to be late, he had eaten en route in the dining car. He was lucky to have made it at all.

The others clucked at his misfortune; he had missed a fine dinner. But I thought I knew better. Ugo Scoccimarro, like many a self-made man before him, was of several minds about his social position. On the one hand, he was pugnaciously proud of his peasant background. On the other, he was often desperately insecure. I knew him, for example, to be uneasy about his table manners. He was happiest with a napkin tied around his neck, a tumbler of wine at his elbow, and a plate of pasta in front of him (which he preferred to eat with the help of a spoon), and he went to considerable lengths to avoid dining among the gentry. I didn't doubt that his missing dinner was premeditated.

He grinned warmly at me, his brown teeth as square and sturdy as the painted ones on a German nutcracker. "Ah, Cristoforo, I'm glad to see you." He spoke Italian with a broad Sicilian accent that I had seen lesser men sneer at behind their hands. "My train doesn't leave until after midnight. Let's go and drink a brandy somewhere."

I was ready for bed, not brandy, but what could I do? Ugo had made a four-hour round-trip just to see me. Besides, after an evening of Di Vecchio's acerbic opinions and the disembodied locutions of Doctor Luca, his robust, down-to-earth conversation would be a relief.

"Fine," I said. I gestured toward the upstairs bar, where some of the others were already heading. "Why don't—"

"No, no." He squeezed my arm and drew me aside. "Somewhere away from all the
gran signori
."

Max overheard. "I hope that doesn't exclude me," he said in Italian.

Ugo clapped him on the back. "No, no, certainly not. Would I accuse you of being a gentleman?" He bellowed with laughter and I realized he too had tossed down a few glasses. "Come on," he said, "I know a place on Via d'Azeglio. Just the three of us. Old friends."

We spent almost an hour in the Bar Nepentha, where the woman at the piano serenaded us with "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," a Scott Joplin medley, and similar old Italian favorites. Most of what we talked about I don't recall (I'd had quite a bit myself by then), but I remember how happy Ugo was, telling us about the modern house he'd bought in Sicily on the slopes of Aci Castello, overlooking the Ionian Sea, a few miles from Catania. He was immensely relieved to have left Milan's genteel, cosmopolitan atmosphere, where he'd lived restlessly for seven years, a fish out of water.

"Ah, it's so beautiful there," he told us rapturously.
Bellissimo
,
meraviglioso
. "The air is clean, the people are real, a word means what it means. A man knows where he stands." He patted the back of my hand. "You have to come down and see. My pictures are in a wonderful room, all natural light from the north. You too, Massimiliano. Hey, why don't you open up a shop in Catania? Wide streets down there, not these little alleys. And no Communists around to look at you funny because you make a few lire."

Max laughed. "I know; just the Mafia. No, I'm glad for you, Ugo, but I like it right here."

He more than liked it. He had fallen in love with northern Italy on his first visit, and for fifteen years had dreamed and planned until he could move there. Now, as far as I knew, he never planned to leave, an Italianophile to the core. He had married a petite, black-haired woman from Faenza, but she had died of cancer about two years before. Max had been stunned with grief. I realized suddenly that this was the first time since then that he'd seemed anything like the old, jolly Max. "Come for a visit, then," Ugo persisted. "Next weekend! The two of you. You'll stay with me."

"Well, I can," I said. "I was going to come and see you anyway. We have to work out the final arrangements on the pictures you're lending. And I want to take another good look at that Boursse. You're still willing to let it go for sixty thousand dollars?"

Max almost choked on his grappa. "Ugo, you don't mean you're selling your Boursse for sixty thousand? I'll give you—"

Ugo chortled. "Always the businessman. No, Massimiliano, this is a special favor to Cristoforo.
For you
. ." He rolled up his eyes, pretending to calculate. "Maybe three hundred thousand?" He leaned back in his chair, shaking with laughter.

"Thanks a bunch," Max said in English, but he was smiling, too. Max had a big gap between his upper front teeth. When he grinned, which was often, he looked like a mustached, middle-aged Alfred E. Neuman, the
What, me worry?
kid on the cover of
Mad
magazine.

"You'll really come?" Ugo said to me. He looked delighted.

"Of course. I've already checked the schedule to Catania. There's an Alisarda flight that leaves at noon on Saturday and arrives about two. How would that be? Could you have someone meet me at the airport?"

Ugo beamed. "Sure, sure. Wait till you see my—my—" He was jiggling with excitement. "I have a surprise for you. Don't I, Massimiliano?"

"Surprise?" Max said, frowning. "Oh, Jesus, you don't mean—"

"Sh, sh!" Ugo's thick forefinger wagged in front of his lips. "Don't tell him."

"Ugo," Max said, with a sort of pained kindness, "I'm telling you. That picture isn't good enough—"

"Don't tell him!" Ugo was bouncing up and down. "It's a surprise!"

"But I already told you," Max said patiently. "Amedeo already told you—"

"I believe you, all right? But if Cristoforo's coming to Sicily, then I say what does it hurt if he looks at it? Let him make his own decision."

Max shrugged and raised his eyes to the ceiling.

Ugo looked at me suspiciously. "Hey, do you know what we're talking about?"

"Not a clue," I said honestly.

"Good!" He thumped his thick fist on the table. "Massimiliano, you come, too! Come with Cristoforo Saturday. I'll show you Sicily. We'll eat, we'll drink! We'll have a wonderful time, just like in the old days."

I wasn't sure of just which old days he was talking about, but at that point it sounded like a great idea to me. Ugo was like a breath of fresh, honest air after the rarefied conversation of art connoisseurs, and Max was good company, too.

"Come on. Max," I said. "Why not?"

He grinned. "Why not?" he echoed to my surprise. "All right, I'll come, I can use a little time off."

"Wonderful, wonderful!" boomed Ugo, and hammered his fist on the table some more.

The waiter thought he was calling for another round and hurried over with three more grappas, which we accepted. Then we proceeded to sink happily into a sentimental swill of good fellowship.

I'm afraid we were a little on the riotous side by the time we started for the train station. I blush to admit it, but I think we were bawling "Santa Lucia" as we crossed the deserted Piazza Maggiore, and I seem to remember a chorus of "0 Sole Mio" in there, too, but I wouldn't swear to it.

"Guess what. I'm changing my name," Max announced somewhere on Via dell'Indipendenza. "I am soon to be signor Massimiliano Caboto."

Ugo frowned tipsily at him. "You were always signor Massimiliano Caboto."

"I mean legally. Max Cabot no longer exists. But
you
," he said, turning that gap-toothed grin on me, "may still call me Max. A special dispensation."

"A papal dispensation," Ugo said, choking with mirth and convulsing the rest of us, which gives you a pretty good idea of the state we were in.

"It's my way of righting an old wrong," Max said. "Did I never tell you that I am a direct descendant of John Cabot, the English explorer who discovered North America?"

"No, you never did," I said.

"Who's John Cabot?" Ugo asked.

"And did you know," Max went on, "that John Cabot, the English explorer who discovered the North American continent, wasn't born in England?"

"No," I said.

"Who's John Cabot?" Ugo asked.

"Well, it's true," Max said. "John Cabot was Italian, not English. Born in Genoa in about 1450, and his real name was Giovanni Caboto. You can look it up."

"Really?' I said.

"Oh," Ugo said. "Giovanni Caboto. Why didn't you say so?"

I don't remember too much more until we had seen a still- chortling Ugo off on the 1:04 and started back toward the center of town. Of the great old cities of Europe, Bologna is probably the most walkable. The pavement on the ancient downtown streets isn't cobblestones, or rough-hewn granite blocks, or even concrete, but a glassy terrazzo tile, easy on the feet and as smooth and level as an ice-skating rink. More than that, most of the sidewalks are arcaded, protected from the elements by the colonnaded porticos that were a standard feature of Bolognese architecture for five hundred years.

A misty rain had been drifting down for an hour and the city was almost deserted. The big Piazza Medaglia d'Oro fronting the railroad station, usually swarming with cars, was so empty we strolled across it without bothering to wait for the green AVANTI sign. Once back on Via dell'Indipendenza, the only sounds we heard were our own heels clicking on the tile and the occasional restrained hum of a small car in no particular hurry.

We walked slowly, shielded from the rain by the porticos, stopping now and then to look absently into a darkened shop window. I had passed from fatigue through hilarity, and was now in a state of mellow calm, content to let the still- exuberant Max carry the conversation. He was giving one of his glories-of-Italy lectures.

"Chris, just think for a moment where a city like Bologna fits in the great scheme of things! Guido Reni, Galvani, Marconi, the Gregorian calendar ... Look at this, look at this!" He gestured vaguely about him. "Some of these buildings date from the 1300s."

"True."

More vague arm movements. "This colonnade we're walking in, this building I can reach out and
touch
—" He demonstrated. "It was standing here when Columbus discovered America. Think about that!"

Well, not quite. The "imprisoned" columns of this particular building's facade, the finicky, corrugated texture of its walls, marked it as late Mannerist, somewhere around 1590. But why argue? It obviously made Max happy to think otherwise. Besides, what was a hundred years in the great scheme of things?

"Chris, I'd never go back to the Land of Round Doorknobs, never. Not to live. I've never regretted moving here, not for a minute."

"Mm." When he got like this, I was never sure which of us he was trying to convince.

"Do you realize it's practically midnight, and we're walking the streets in complete safety? Can you do that in America?"