The Faces of Angels (29 page)

A stage has been set up on the terrace in front of the church. The plain creamy façade is washed with red, and then blue and green and red again. In front of the giant doors, the band looks tiny. There are a lot of them, two sax players, a drummer, a violinist and several others. They look like brightly dressed puppets in a shadow play. Against Santo Spirito, even their huge amplifiers are dwarfed.

More fairy lights than usual lace through the trees, and people are everywhere. Most are dressed up. Skirts and dresses and embroidered blue jeans revolve around us. Some of the younger men are wearing jester's hats or striped crocheted caps, and a few people are in costumes or wearing masks. A witch runs by in a tall peaked hat, while at the bar that has been set up beside the fountain Galileo raises a glass of beer.

We push our way towards our bar and get almost next to them before we see Henry and Kirk and the Japanese girls waving to us. They have staked out a large round table in the corner of the enclosure, right beside a low plastic hedge that borders a wooden dance floor. A selection of carafes and bottles and plates of snacks surround a burning candle lantern.

‘Isn't this great? Ayako came early and bagged a table!' Kirk announces as we sit down. Ayako beams in delight when he smiles at her.

If Billy ever really suspected Kirk of kidnapping Elvis, she seems to have forgotten about it. He pours her a glass of white wine, and she kisses him as if he's delivered up nectar of the gods instead of tepid Pinot Grigio. Whether this is for Ayako's benefit or his, I'm not sure. Henry leans over and drops a plaited rope of ribbons around my neck.

‘Some guy was selling these for the homeless,' he says, and I notice that everybody is wearing one, even Kirk. ‘It suits you.' Henry smiles at me and winks.

In the next hour the darkness, which had not been much more than twilight when we arrived, deepens. The lights in the trees glitter like electric snow. The band takes a break, and a new one comes on. They start to play Chubby Checker, and Henry grabs my hand.

‘Come on, Mary,' he says. ‘You may not believe this, but I won first place at my High School prom for the twist.'

Actually, I do believe it. There's something unexpectedly graceful about Henry. In the Boboli Gardens I saw him jump into the air to pick a leaf he wanted to admire, and the effect was surprising, like watching a Newfoundland or a St Bernard transformed as they suddenly find their element and bound through snow.

I, on the other hand, am a lousy dancer. And I am about to say so, to fink out and turn him down, when I hear the Japanese girls giggling. They don't think Henry is anywhere near as cool as Kirk, and now their cheeks are flushed with too much wine and with the idea that someone as big and ungainly as Henry should even think of dancing. My hand tightens around his, and I get to my feet. If I could give them the finger and climb out over the plastic hedge at the same time without falling down, I would.

‘Let's Twist Again' bleats across the piazza, as Henry and I join a herd of gyrating, wiggling twisters. The best are middle-aged couples. So far, they've been standing reasonably sedately around the outside bar, or sitting at the restaurant tables picking at antipasto and smiling at the wildness of youth on display, but now they take to the floor with a vengeance. Beside us a woman in Ferragamo shoes and what looks a lot like a Chanel skirt, and her husband, who must be sixty-five if he's a day, put Henry and me to shame.

In my case, that's not saying much—I look like a scarecrow caught in high wind—but Henry's hot. His hips swivel. His knees dip. A blissful smile comes over his face, and his glasses slip cock-eyed on his nose. He catches me watching him and laughs.

When the song finally finishes and I glance back at the table, I see that Kirk's gone and Billy and Ayako are leaning across his empty chair, talking head to head. Blonde and dark, they seem suddenly as Naomi and Ruth. Bonded for life. Ayako's hands move as she speaks, and the other girls nod in agreement with whatever it is she's saying.

Henry says something that I only half catch and steps away into the line by the fountain bar to buy us a glass of wine, which is fine by me, because I don't really want to go back to the table. I don't know what Billy's up to but, just looking at her, I'm pretty sure it's something. I look around for a space to sit down on the edge of the fountain, and I've just found one, on the far side of two old ladies who are eating
gelato
, when the lights on the front of the church shift, and I see Pierangelo.

Dressed in jeans and sweater, he's threading his way through the crowd towards me. His eyes meet mine, then someone speaks to him and he stops and rests his hand on their shoulder. He smiles and nods, laughs, then mouths ‘
ciao
,' and something inside my stomach twists. I feel as if I'm sixteen again and the boy I have a crush on is coming to ask me to dance.

The music is slow this time, and familiar. It's the Stones' ‘Till the Next Goodbye.' Pierangelo stops in front of me and holds out his arms. ‘Most beautiful woman on the piazza,' he says. ‘The paper's gone to bed. And I'm all yours.'

This is the first time I've actually seen him since Graziella told me about his mother, and now that I've had time to get used to the idea I lean back in his arms, look into his face and imagine I see, not the elegant man I know, but someone else: a little boy abandoned, a child growing up, struggling to be an adult and find his place in the world, loved by an aunt and uncle, but knowing that his own mother couldn't be bothered to raise him. How much hurt does that still cause, I wonder. How much sadness?

I reach up and run my fingers down the smooth line of his cheek and across the full-flush curve of his lips. ‘I love you,' I whisper, and Pierangelo smiles at me with his lazy-cat eyes, pulls me close and kisses the top of my head. He smells of citrus and something else, the Colonna de Russe he buys at the
farmacia
. The cashmere of his sweater is a deep liquid blue, and soft.

‘I love you too,
piccola
. More than anything.'

He says the words with his mouth close to my ear and I feel his body moving, his breath on my skin, and right now I don't think I'll ever care about anything else again.

The music shifts and quickens and Piero and I dance the next dance too. At some point, we spin around and I glimpse Henry through the crowd. Standing by the fountain, holding a glass, he looks like a big shaggy dog somebody has yelled at, and I feel bad. I should go to him, I think, say something. Really, I should explain. But then Henry's lost in a whirl of lights. Colours swing past us, and I get a dizzying glimpse of the table and see the white moon faces of Kirk and Billy and the Japanese girls staring, which makes me laugh. I'm half tempted to wave, as if I'm flying by on a ferris wheel or a merry-go-round, and they're stuck, grounded in their clutter of bottles and empty glasses.

Eventually the music stops and Pierangelo and I find a place to sit on the steps of the church. There are people above us and below us. I'm at eye level with heads and legs, knees and rear ends. Voices rise in a wave. There's some French, some English and something that sounds like Dutch, all of it a counterpoint to the rippling chatter of Italian.

‘So,' he says, ‘did you miss me?'

‘No!' I laugh. ‘What do you think?'

Pierangelo grins and shrugs. ‘With you women, you never know.'

The lights play across his face, bathing it in red and then blue so his high cheekbones and the sharp angle of his nose stand out. Before, I might have taken this more as the joke it's intended to be, but now, knowing what Graziella told me, I don't.

‘You do too,' I say. ‘With me. That's why I came back.'

Piero ruffles my hair. ‘
Cara
. I was teasing you. And,' he adds, ‘now the article is put to bed and I'm all yours.'

‘Until next week.'

He shrugs. ‘It's Easter, we're not so busy.'

‘Are you happy with it?'

It's not meant to be a complicated question, but Pierangelo's face sobers. He shakes his head. ‘Yes,' he says. ‘Sure. No. I don't know. I told you, I admire D'Erreti more than I'd like. I guess.'

Pierangelo thinks for a minute, his eyes fixed on the throng of people below us, but not seeing them. I've seen him do this before, vanish while he is right in front of me, travel deep into his personal landscape where I can't follow. Finally he says, as much to himself as to me, ‘The problem is, maybe I don't know how to talk about the church any more.'

He runs his thumb across the back of my hand. ‘If you don't mention things,' he says, ‘you soft-soap. If you hit too hard, it's nothing but an endless diatribe. For some of us, I think, writing about the church in this country is like writing about a parent who you love, but who's gone crazy. Turned senile and mean.' Pierangelo smiles, but the smile is sad. Looking at him, it occurs to me that he's exhausted, and I feel like a heel for even suggesting he come here.

I take his hand, about to suggest that we go home right now, when there's a commotion. The band starts, then stops and Pierangelo gets to his feet and I stand up too, but I can't see anything, so I climb a step behind him.

A column of white figures has appeared out of nowhere. Wearing long robes and something weird on their heads, tall pointed hats, they seem to have materialized in the middle of the piazza. Maybe sixty or more of them walk two by two, in a long white snake cleaving the crowd.

A few seconds ago the people below us had been putting their drinks down, happy, ready to dance again, but now a hush falls over the square.

I stand on my tiptoes, holding on to Pierangelo's shoulders as the column comes level with the fountain, and that's when I realize that the white figures are wearing hoods, not hats. The tall peaked cones rise from their shoulders and cover their heads, leaving nothing but slits for their eyes.

‘Shit,' I whisper to Pierangelo. ‘What are they? Klan?'

He shakes his head. ‘Penitents,' he says. Then he adds, ‘They do this in Spain, during Holy Week, march around the cities, especially Seville. But I've never seen it here before. In the last few years I've heard of it, in the south, but I've never seen it.'

The leader of the column is swinging a censer. Smoke trails out of it in a thin dribble. A Vespa engine coughs to life a few streets away. A dog barks. Colours wash over the white figures, and as they get closer to us I hear something like a swarm of bees, the low, dull, relentless hum of chanting.

They step up and over the dance floor like a column of army ants or sleepwalkers, and the crowd shifts uneasily. Then someone shouts, loud and harsh, and a bottle flies through the air. It explodes on the cobbles, wine splashing up and spattering the long white gowns, staining the material, and dribbling away to pool at the leading penitent's feet.

The censer hovers, losing its rhythm, and the chant falters. Figures in the back jam into others in front and the column stalls, bulges like a train wreck. I feel Pierangelo tense as the crowd shimmies. Blue lights wash the tips of the trees and the fountain, catching the strange coned shape of the leader's head as he swivels, the slits of his mask moving across the banks of faces that surround him. Someone yells. The shout hangs in the air. Then the leader looks down, slowly, lifts his foot and steps forward, his hem dragging in the puddle of wine and shattered glass.

For a second I think they are going to come up the steps, maybe even enter the church, but they don't. Instead, the penitents skirt the bottom of the terrace, throwing strange peaked shadows against the façade of Santo Spirito, and wind away down towards the river into the dark of the city, the smell of incense hanging in the air behind them.

The crowd surges defiantly back towards the fountain bar and the dance floor. The band strikes up again, almost frantic, and as we sink back onto the steps with the other people around us there's a palpable sense of relief, as though something awful has been narrowly avoided. We are still catching our breath when Billy materializes in front of us like a hologram.

‘Now that the KKK's left,' she says, ‘we're about to order food, and we'd be so pleased if you'd join us.' She beams, doing an excellent imitation of Beaver Cleaver's mother.

‘Mary,' she adds, ‘I don't believe you've introduced me to your friend.' Pierangelo stands up. They're almost the same height. ‘Of course,' Billy grips his hand and looks into his eyes. ‘You're the handsome man who brought the roses! And gave Mary this beautiful necklace.' Billy plucks the little nest of gold off my chest and swings it back and forth on its chain as if she's dowsing. ‘I guess I just didn't recognize you, after dark.'

‘I've aged in the last week,' Pierangelo says. ‘Significantly.'

It might sound light-hearted, if you didn't know him, but there's an edge in his voice. He doesn't like her and I wonder why. Billy doesn't catch it. Instead, she laughs, and I gather they've been having a good time back at the table, because I swear I can smell alcohol rising off her, layered over the perfume I recognize as mine.

‘We were thinking of going home,' I say suddenly.

‘Well, you can't leave! You just can't.' Billy grabs Pierangelo's hand. ‘I have money riding on this. A bet. The others think you don't even exist. They think Mary's been making you up!'