A Prince Without a Kingdom (5 page)

Three men had just appeared behind them. The biggest held a Colt in his left hand.

“Don’t move!”

The inspector didn’t waver for a second. He gripped Vango even more tightly and leaped with him into thin air.

The three gangsters saw them roll and disappear behind a mound of earth.

Bob Almond fired seven shots from his Colt blindly into the bushes, shouting “Crapola!” several times as a point of principle. Then he trod on a railway worker’s helmet emblazoned with blue stars.

A few carriages away, Dorgeles was still shouting himself hoarse.

“Where’s the inspector? WHERE IS THE INSPECTOR?”

He stopped. A weak voice was answering him. Dorgeles looked down.

“Here I am. . . . I’m the inspector!”

Down on the ground, the man in his underwear held out his hand. He was writhing like a worm on the corridor floor.

Vango opened his eyes. He was lying in the middle of flowering strawberry plants. His roll down from the high tracks had left a large rectangle of flattened vegetation. He must have blacked out for several minutes. The sun was beating down hard.

He heard a man behind him.

“I’d do well to smash your face in, little one.”

The little one turned his head.

There, with barely a crease in his tight inspector’s uniform, sat the dark and handsome Padre Zefiro. He was perched on an upturned bucket and tucking into a tomato that was still green. Next to him, on the ground, lay a small bundle.

“Because of you, I missed my chance!”

He spat out the tomato skin.

“Seventeen years spent following him! A lifetime!”

Zefiro had never sounded so frosty.

“A whole life! And the lives of dozens of others, over there, in the invisible monastery, all in mortal danger because of you. Bravo, little one.”

Vango didn’t move or say a word. He was frightened of making things worse, of turning other people into victims simply by saying the wrong thing. Of starting a tidal wave by raising his little finger.

“Did I ask you to meddle in my affairs?” asked Zefiro. “He was finally in my grasp!”

“Who?” asked Vango weakly.

“Voloy Viktor.”

Vango felt desolate.

“I . . . I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t have meddled in my affairs either.”

“They’re the ones who were going to meddle with you, Vango. They’re after you as well! They want to pin you to their wall.”

“Me?”

As usual, Vango could no longer tell whether he was the victim or the guilty party.

They sat there together, listening to the silence.

“Padre . . .”

Zefiro didn’t answer.

“Padre . . . you saved my life.”

“And I’m already sorry I did. It was a foolish act of compassion.”

Vango hung his head. The padre was watching him out of the corner of his eye.

“They want you because of me,” admitted Zefiro, after letting a few seconds go by. “Because they saw you with me in Paris. So it’s my fault too.”

Vango stood up. His body had been given a drubbing by the tumble he had just taken.

“Was the man in the first-class lavatory another of Voloy Viktor’s dirty tricks?” he asked.

“No. I needed a disguise to get to Viktor. You do whatever it takes.” Zefiro shrugged. “But I’d forgotten to pick up the ticket puncher. I was heading back to find it when I saw you.”

“Padre . . . did you batter the ticket inspector?”

“He was corrupt. Viktor had bribed him. I’m not looking for excuses. I take full responsibility for everything I’ve done. I tried to booby-trap two of Viktor’s homes last month. And this morning I fitted a time bomb inside his car. . . .”

Vango thought back to the explosion and the black cloud when the train had pulled out of the station.

“As long as Viktor is alive,” Zefiro explained, “my fellow monks are in danger on their island. He will track down our monastery to the bitter end.”

The padre held a grasshopper between his fingers as he acknowledged his friend’s confusion.

“You’re not sure if you still recognize me, Vango. But there is only one Padre Zefiro. The same man who built the Monastery of Arkudah with his bare hands, who sings God’s glory before a tomato plant, who raises a clutch of monks in the middle of the sea, and who is determined to track down Voloy Viktor. They’re all the same man, Vango. And I’m doing this in order to remain that man.”

He contemplated the grasshopper in the palm of his hand.

“And now,” he said, “I’m faced with the same question that’s been there since day one. What am I going to do with you?”

Vango closed his eyes. He was thinking of the hanging monastery at the top of the island.

“Back there, they’re all wondering what you’re up to. They think you’ve gone mad.”

Zefiro let the grasshopper escape before picking up his bundle and standing up.

“I have to destroy Viktor before I can return home.”

It was Vango’s turn to stand up.

“Where are we going?”

Padre Zefiro was already striding ahead. Then they both stopped and looked down at Vango’s bare feet.

“Is there a problem?”

“They stole my shoes.”

“Stole?”

“Yes, while I was asleep.”

“You can’t trust anyone these days.”

Zefiro started walking again, past the vegetable gardens with their flowers.

“You’re in luck!” he called out. And, from some way ahead, he tossed his bag to Vango.

“What’s this?”

Vango opened the small bundle. There, wrapped in some clothes, was a pair of shoes. Vango couldn’t wait to put them on.

“Thank you, Padre!”

“I hope they fit.”

“I mean, what kind of person goes around stealing shoes?” muttered Vango to himself.

“Possibly someone who wanted to shake you off their trail,” answered Zefiro under his breath. “Someone who didn’t want you demolishing everything they’ve achieved.”

Vango stopped in his tracks. He looked up and then down again, to examine the shoes properly, before staring at Zefiro in the midst of the cosmos flowers. Yes, the shoes fitted Vango. They fitted him like a glove, because they were
his
shoes.

Zefiro was laughing.

“Padre . . .” whispered Vango.

He couldn’t quite believe it. Saboteur, terrorist, attacker of railway workers, shoe thief: it was a lot for one man of the cloth.

New York

They headed for the big city, with Zefiro limping and Vango climbing along low walls. There was plenty to catch up on, and a lot to say to each other. They looked like two wandering pilgrims as they raised the dust on the road, eating the first fruits from gardens along the way and resting in trees.

Time sped by. The houses became packed more tightly together. The buildings grew taller as they sprouted more stories. The patches of green were harder to find. The factories gave off a throbbing noise. The cars forced the pedestrians to walk in ditches. In the distance was a blue line of skyscrapers.

Vango confided freely in the padre. He explained why he had come to America: to find the man who had murdered his parents, back there, in his islands. Giovanni Cafarello. The same man who had stolen more than his share of the mysterious treasure by killing one of his fellow pirates: Bartolomeo Viaggi.

It was the first time Zefiro had heard this tale of pirates, murder, and treasure. The kind of story one tells children. He made Vango repeat the criminal’s name: Cafarello. When Vango said it, a steel blade seemed to appear on his tongue.

“I’ll find him,” Vango declared, “and he’ll tell me everything.”

Zefiro understood his friend. Vango wasn’t after gold or precious stones, or even the sweet taste of revenge. The only jewel he really wanted was the one that Giovanni Cafarello possessed: the secret of the boat, of the man and the woman he had sent down to the bottom of the sea. Cafarello would know who Vango’s parents were, and from what star this child had fallen before being washed up on the black pebbles of Sicily.

Deep down, this was the only treasure that Vango was after: the secret of his life.

They stopped, from time to time, to shake the cherry trees. They filled their pockets while Vango told Zefiro about his last visit to the invisible monastery, about how disoriented the monks had been, and of their fear of losing their abbot forever.

“Brother Marco doesn’t know if he’s strong enough to replace you.”

Zefiro seemed to be listening absentmindedly, but in fact he was constantly praying not to collapse. The invisible monastery was his life’s work, and he had fought hard for it. Yet now here he was: a bandit, an irresponsible father, a warrior.

Sometimes he would duck behind a hedge, as if looking for wild berries, but once out of Vango’s sight he would double up in pain and grief. He had abandoned his flock. Then he would start repeating the simplest words over and over again, prayers from his childhood, until he was able to appear again farther up the road, his face betraying nothing.

Later on, along the way, Vango described what it was like being an outlaw.

They never left him alone. Never. Night and day, they were there, everywhere.

“Will they stop one day, Padre?”

They had even tried to trample on his memories, by attacking the house where he had grown up, his island, descending on it like a squally wind and carrying off his nurse, sweet Mademoiselle. Where was she now? Where were her hands working their magic with flames and wooden spoons? Vango had never stopped asking this question, despite being on the run, despite all the people after him in London. Yes, even in the streets of London, he told Zefiro, even in the forests of the Highlands, he could hear the dogs behind him.

“Dogs, that’s right; I swear I heard them barking.”

“Be careful,” Zefiro warned him. “Your fear is preventing you from thinking straight.”

Vango came to an abrupt halt.

“You think you’re being followed —” Zefiro went on.

“What?” demanded Vango, grabbing hold of the padre’s coat and shaking the black fabric in his fist. “You as well? Are you calling me mad?”

They were by a brick wall, set back from the road. Vango’s eyes blazed as Zefiro deftly caught him by the jaw and pinned him against a telegraph pole. Then the padre raised him slowly off the ground so that Vango was on tiptoes, about to lose his footing, and in danger of being hanged.

“Calm down, little one,” whispered Zefiro, suddenly letting go of his prey.

Vango collapsed on the pavement. Zefiro rubbed his shoulder a little, as if bitten by a midge.

“I said that your fear was preventing you from thinking straight. Now, are you going to listen to me?”

Vango sniffed and agreed to do as he was told.

Stroking his mustache, Zefiro took a step backward.

“Who says they’re the same people following you around our islands, in London, and in the forests of Scotland? I’ve already explained to you that Voloy Viktor’s men are now among those hunting you down. And the French police are after you as well. You’re convinced that there’s some dark force, one single enemy: in which case, why not head like a lemming for the cliff edge? But, if you stop and think about it, you might be able to do something.”

Zefiro bent down and held out his hand to help Vango get up again. The young man allowed himself to be hauled up.

“Anyway, what about her? Why don’t you tell me about
her
instead?”

Vango was startled.

Her?

He froze. He had never even mentioned her name. How did Zefiro know about her? He felt as if his secret were spreading all around him. He held his breath so as not to let it out.

“We’re nearly there,” said Zefiro.

He smiled to himself and let Vango catch up with him on the road.

He had asked the question on the off chance, without being sure. But his curiosity rarely let him down. There was always something to reel in when he cast out this particular hook.
What about her?
Even the most virtuous of his monks turned pale at the question. And Zefiro always felt moved by eyes suddenly turning misty, like marsh water, as a result of the line he had cast.

Her.
For each of them, and even for Zefiro, those three letters represented someone specific, occasionally very far away, a dream, a shadow, or a regret.

Apart from the rustle of their clothes, the two men were silent until they reached the city center.

That same evening, two tramps set up camp above Manhattan, in the scaffolding of a tower. The low-lying clouds sometimes descended to their level. A grid of planks surrounded the unfinished skyscraper. Construction had been abandoned following an accident involving one of the workers. Zefiro took advantage of the building lying empty.

It was here that they made their nest, three hundred meters above Fifth Avenue. It began to rain. Vango lit a fire in a cast-iron tank from the work site, but Zefiro remained outside in the wet May air, standing on the end of a girder, watching the city.

“There he is,” he declared.

“Where?”

Zefiro pointed to the top of another tower opposite. The Empire State Building was gleaming beneath the floodlights, but most of its windows remained dark. Just one row of picture windows was lit up.