North from Rome (26 page)

Behind him, Joe called to him softly, and he climbed back into the car. The other was already leaving.

Their car started forward. “The Lancia is keeping to the road,” Joe told him. “That is one fear you can drop out of the window, my friend.”

Lammiter tried to smile. Joe was doing his best to give him some encouragement. And it was true: the car that had reported to Joe made Lammiter feel better. The numbness was leaving
his mind. They were not alone, two men on an endless road stretching over limitless fields.

“Next stop,” Joe said, “we’ll get some gas. And coffee. And more information, too. And then, the hills. And after that, Montesecco. Right?”

“Right.”

“Now I tell you the story of my life,” Joe said.

The dawn arrived as they turned off the Via Flaminia and branched to, their left. For some time they had been travelling among spreading hills and deep woods. Now the road ran along the side of a valley so broad that it seemed more like an immense plain rimmed by steep small hills, each complete in itself, sharp-pointed, almost symmetrical, drawn by an artist with an exact eye and a sure hand. Behind the hills were more hills, their peaks peering over each other’s shoulder. And every hill had its neat terraces of carefully spaced olive trees; its crest was sometimes forested, sometimes crowned by a walled miniature of a town. Down in the valley, a vast patch-work quilt of cultivated fields and trees was flung over the land, the neat squares stitched together by a very small river curving its way slowly back to Rome.

“The Tiber,” Joe said, and rubbed his right shoulder and neck. They were the first words he had spoken in the last hour. Since their last stop in fact.

That had been at a small house, solid and square, with a large number painted on its dark-red walls, standing quite alone at the side of the road. It was the house of a road repair superintendent, numbered according to the section of the highway for which he was responsible. In the small garage built into the house, Joe had found some more gasoline, not that he needed it, but it was wise to keep the tank as full as possible. And there had been some more information, too. Pirotta’s car, with Rosana presumably, had passed just before midnight, driven at a reasonable speed. The Lancia had passed two hours later; its speed had been furious.

“Crazy,” the superintendent had said sadly, thinking of possible accidents to his fine road. He was a middle-aged man, thin and wiry, intelligent as good workmen are who take a pride in their jobs. At the moment, he was tired with his vigil, but he gave them a cup of coffee and a sandwich of sliced sausage slapped on a torn hunk of hard-crusted bread, and as he moved quietly around his little kitchen next to the garage—“The wife and kids are asleep upstairs”—he talked in a hoarse whisper with Joe, and threw Lammiter a friendly nod and a gap-toothed smile every now and again, as if to make him feel he was in this conversation, too. Then, with last instructions about heavy repairs on a bad hairpin bend of the road (a mile farther on, hard frosts last winter, the worst winter within living memory), they left the man telephoning his news of Joe’s arrival back to headquarters.

That stop had only taken nine minutes—Joe and Lammiter were still finishing their sandwiches as the Fiat started from behind the shelter of the house and turned on to the road again. But instead of being reassured, Joe was worried. “Rosana can’t
be alone in Pirotta’s car,” he said. “She would have checked in at that house if she had been alone.” He didn’t have to add his biggest fear: that Rosana might no longer be in the car; her body, stripped of identification, might have been thrown into a ditch. But five minutes later he said, “They’ll keep her as long as she can be useful to them.” Then he lapsed into silence and concentrated on the road, for there were more trucks now to be passed, enormous and thundering. The road repair superintendent would be stifling a yawn to curse their weight, as he slipped off his half-buttoned trousers and unlaced boots and climbed into bed with his wife and children.

Bill Lammiter kept himself awake, but he had not offered to drive. A strange road, climbing between broad-shouldered hills and woods, in the half-light between night and day, was better left to Joe’s memory. Even when they came into the Umbrian plain, and the day was born, Lammiter did not suggest he would take the wheel. For now there were other hazards: cumbersome, slow-moving farm carts, pulled by pairs of gentle white oxen with formidable horns and amiable eyes.

“And here is the way to Montesecco,” Joe said, swerving past a team of oxen, cutting ahead of them before they started blocking up the narrow dusty road, which climbed up its own neat hill. The white oxen looked after them reprovingly; their driver yelled what he thought of cars and dust. “Yes, yes,” said Joe, almost to himself, “I agree. But it would take you half an hour to reach the town. We’ll do it in three minutes.”

The road twisted among trees up towards the walled town. Beyond the trees, on either side, the terrace of olive groves rose step by step. They seemed dead. The silver-grey leaves were black and hard. Last winter’s frosts must have been bitter.

Joe noticed the look on Lammiter’s face. “Yes,” he said, “it’s tough on the people. This is the way all the hills are this year. But give the olive trees three good years, and they’ll come alive again.”

“Three years. It’s a long time to wait.” Lammiter could see the town more clearly now: a mass of roofs and towers behind an encircling wall.

“People have lived here for nearly three thousand years. That wall was first built by the Etruscans. Then the Romans came and built on top of it. What’s three years to a wall like that?”

The wall, massive and high, of light-coloured stone, rose abruptly before them. But they did not enter its arched gateway. Lammiter had just time to glimpse the hill inside the gate, the narrow cobbled street lined with stone houses, before Joe turned the car into a track running towards a two-storied house with yellow plastered walls and a red-tiled roof. He had not noticed it, coming up the hill. The roadside trees had obscured it. And then, almost immediately, they were in a small farmyard, scattering chickens, avoiding two men and a wooden cart, passing three giant haystacks, and coming to rest around the corner of the far side of the house, under a rough arbour of vine leaves.

“This,” Joe remembered to say as he got out of the car, “is the farm where Alberto buys most of the food for the princess’s house. I used to come here on my free time. Have a look at the view.” Then he left, walking towards the farmer and his son, with arms outstretched and real laughter in his voice.

Well, we’re among friends at least, Lammiter thought. He stood beside the car, trying to get the cramp out of his legs. American cars might be bold and brassy, but they didn’t tie
your muscles in knots like this. For a few minutes, he watched the farmer and his son. Like the other peasants he had seen on the Umbrian roads, they were of good height, straight-backed, decently dressed in a clean rough shirt with sleeves rolled up (and only one button open at the neck, no expanses of manly bosom advertised here), a waistcoat for warmth, work-stained trousers, and heavy boots. Their faces, turned curiously towards him for a brief glance, were tanned and highly coloured. Battered felt hats were tilted over their eyes, more from habit than from sun, for the early morning light was bright but kind, and the cool night air had still no warmth in it.

Lammiter turned up the collar of his thin jacket and closed his lapels. He walked, stiffly, past a wooden yoke and a barrow, over to the haystacks. From there, the land dropped steeply downhill, and he could see all the vast sweep of valley and the neatly outlined hills. By this pale gold light, the trees down on the plain stood sharply etched, each shape clear in its long row. And over all, lay a stillness.

He turned to look at the little town enclosed in its strong wall. Over the blighted olive trees he could see the crest of the curve of wall nearest him—he was too near it to see its whole encircling arm flung round the tightly packed yellowed roofs and ancient stone towers. He heard a dog bark; somewhere a cock crowed; a man was singing an endless song. Even sounds seemed as etched as the rows of trees and the folds of the hills.

The boy moved over to the car, and Lammiter joined him. He was about sixteen, with good bones in his face, blue eyes, light hair. He looked at Lammiter gravely, noting his jacket and trousers, his shoes; then he looked back at the car.

“Molto Bello,”
Lammiter said, pointing to the panorama beyond the haystacks.

The boy took his eyes away from the car. He looked now at the view he lived with. He was quite silent. Then suddenly, he said,
“Bellisimo!”
A smile of happiness, of sheer joy, illuminated his face. Lammiter found he was smiling, too.
“Bellisimo!”
he agreed. The boy looked at him again, but he was no longer a stranger.

“All right,” Joe said, coming back to the car, “we go inside and get us some food and sleep.” He pulled out Lammiter’s case. He gave a wave to the boy, who was already picking up a wooden yoke for the two white oxen his father was leading towards him. “Come on, Bill. We’ve made them late enough.”

Lammiter left the world of golden light and followed Joe’s quick steps.

“Any information?” he asked.

“Pirotta’s car arrived first. Then the Lancia about an hour ago. And don’t start worrying about my car. If anyone asks questions, we are just a couple of guys from Perugia, buying some extra supplies for a restaurant. You know what’s happening in Perugia this week-end? The university begins its annual summer school for foreigners. Sure, for foreigners. It’s packing them in. Name any nationality, and Perugia’s got them. Isn’t that just dandy?”

So that’s why poor old Perugia was chosen for Evans’s meeting place, Lammiter thought. He had a feeling that the town could have done without that honour. “Clever,” he said. “Clever little bastards we’re dealing with.” He looked at Joe. “Can you see the princess’s place from here?” he asked.

“Why?” Joe asked, suddenly suspicious.

“You’re dropping back into character,” Lammiter said with a grin. “That’s why.”

“Well, you can’t climb over
that
wall, that’s for sure.”

They entered a dark kitchen, clean but careless, only lighted by a barred window overlying the wide door. There was a bed against one wall, three hard chairs, a table, an old chest of drawers with traces of elaborate painting, a dresser, some paper flowers on one cracked plaster wall under a woman’s faded photograph.

“His wife’s dead?” Lammiter asked, looking around at men’s comfortable disorder. There was soup in a deep pot at the side of the low fire, a jug of Chianti, two earthenware plates, two wooden spoons.

“Four years ago. And three other children, too. Flu epidemic.” Joe rummaged around and found two cups, and as Lammiter served up the, soup, he took out his knife, picked up the loaf, held it against his chest, and cut towards himself into its hard crust. Then he tapped the thick slice of bread on the table and watched the ants fall out. “If I may step out of character again for a moment,” he said with a smile, as he tapped once more to make sure that the ants had gone, “this is symbolic of our kind of work.” He swept the back of his hand over the table and the ants fell to the floor. Then, as he handed the slice of bread to Lammiter, “Okay, bud. Philosophy class is over. Eat. And listen. And don’t start telling me you don’t need any sleep. We all do: Pirotta, his men, you, and me. Only I’m going to scout around for half an hour first; and you’re staying here. Upstairs.” He finished tapping his own slice of bread.

Lammiter ate. The warm soup took the chill out of his blood. And as he had time to think over his initial objections to Joe’s
plan, he saw they were stupid, and he was glad he had kept silent. Joe was right. A foreigner walking in the early morning through the streets of Montesecco would only rouse questions, And questions made talk. And talk carried. But Joe was known here: no one would be surprised to see him; the Lancia had arrived, hadn’t it? Why not its chauffeur, too? Joe must have friends in this town. And Pirotta?

He put that question to Joe after their quick meal was over, and he stood ready to climb the stairs to the room above. “Sure,” Joe said, “he’s popular. Always got a smile and a kind word for everyone.” He looked shrewdly at the American. “He’s an attractive sort of fellow. Sweeps in here in his car, gives a wave of his hand, and everyone feels happy that a man can have some good fortune in this hard world.”

“Even the local Communists feel that way?”

“You noticed the posters plastered on the walls?” Joe asked quickly.

“Couldn’t miss the hammer and sickle.”

“That catches the eye,” Joe agreed. “But the Communists here—” he paused, shrugged his shoulders. “They’re mostly anti-clerical, that’s all.”

“There’s poverty, too.”

“It isn’t always poverty that makes politics. Sometimes its pride. Ever read about Umbria? The Pope’s army besieged this town ninety years ago, and when the troops got inside—well, there was a lot of raping and killing. Same thing happened in Perugia. People round here remember these things. And they remember the days of their greatness, back in the fourteenth century, when each town in these hills had its commune and its captain of the people elected to govern. Then they remember
how that freedom was destroyed—the big families seized it first, then the Church seized it from the big families. A real mess of power politics.”

“But the Church is not a temporal power any more. Those days are over.”

“Do the people in the south of your country forget the war against the north? There are people here, many of them, whose mothers saw the mercenaries break through the cannon holes in the walls of this town and what they did. It is no use pretending that such evil things did not happen. They are important in politics, even ninety years after.”

“So evil lives longer than good... That’s depressing.”

“The good is remembered, too. Garibaldi came and freed them. They remember that day, most of all.” He smiled suddenly. “Don’t worry so much about these posters. There are others on the wall, if you looked closer. This is a free country. A few years ago, we gave away that freedom. Sure Italy may be poor, but she is rich in memories. And they all teach us something.”