Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  After two or three twists of the street, she emerges by another gate, on the square that has the memorial with the full-breasted angel on top of it. When she frames it in the viewfinder it looks good, the bright bronze against the clear blue sky. She takes half a dozen shots and deletes four of them. That done, she glances to her right, where an old man in a denim shirt, arms crossed, scowls at the monument, at her, and at the monument again, as if at a loss to understand why anyone would point a camera at it. He shrugs; the scowl softens into an expression of barely interested bafflement, which promptly melts away. He says something to her; to judge by the tone of it, it’s a piece of information. All she can do is smile, which brings the scowl back. He points at the inscription on the base of the monument and says something else, before going on his way, limping slightly, not waiting for a response.

  3.5

  Castelluccio’s war memorial stands on the edge of Piazza della Libertà, by the town’s southern gate. Fronted by an area of grass, the monument comprises a limestone block, set against a curving brick wall; the block measures 2.5 metres by 2.5 metres by 1.5 metres, with the names of the dead listed on the front face, a high relief of crossed flags on one of the two smaller faces, and a relief of a laurel wreath on the other. The names are carved in Roman-style lettering on a slab of Carrara marble which is attached to the block by four bronze rivets. The inscription is as follows:

  RIDORDA I SVOI FIGLI MORTI PER LA PATRIA 1915–18

  TENENTE: PERELLO GIOVANNI

  CAP MAGG: BASTIANELLI UGO

  CAPORALE: MANNI EVARISTO

  SOLD: BALDINI VINCENZO

  BEVACQUA RINALDO

  D’ALESSANDRO MICHELE

  FACCHINI GIOVANNI

  GIZZI PASQUALE

  JOVENE TOMMASO

  MARTINI PAOLO

  PACETTI ENNIO

  RICCIUTO VALERIO

  SILVESTRINI AMATO

  TASSINO UMBERTO

  The monument is surmounted by a winged female figure in bronze, representing the Spirit of the Italian Nation. She was created by the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Vela (1880–1953), and is one of six identical statues cast by Vela and his assistants in the early 1930s. Brandishing a spear in her left hand and a tricolore in her right, she bears an often-noted resemblance to the central figure in Eugène Delacroix’s La Liberté guidant le peuple.

  Vela’s winged woman was acquired by Castelluccio after the rejection of the work submitted in 1930 by Achille de Marinis, the artist who had been originally commissioned to design the memorial. Achille de Marinis was triply qualified for the task: he was a local man, having been born in the nearby village of San Dalmazio in 1896; he was a talented sculptor, who had studied with no less a master than Ettore Ferrari; and he had fought in the war. He was wounded on September 9th, 1917, on the slopes of San Gabriele, during the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo, within an hour of the death of Ennio Pacetti, with whom he was acquainted, and who died but a hundred metres from the spot where de Marinis was shot. Umberto Tassino died on the same mountain, at 2pm the following day.

  As first conceived by de Marinis, the limestone block was to support a life-sized figure of a soldier, lying on his back, with a coat covering much of his body. He was perhaps dead, perhaps alive but exhausted, and his eyes were to be open to the heavens. The face was to be expressive of ‘nobility and suffering’, said the sculptor, but the commissioning committee, upon being shown the plaster maquette in the studio that de Marinis occupied in Via Santa Maria, saw too much suffering and too little nobility. In the words of one committee member, it was deemed inappropriate that the town should commemorate its fallen warriors with an image of ‘a cadaver on a slab’. Three months later, de Marinis presented a second version, representing a soldier seated against a shattered tree trunk, clutching his rifle across his chest, gazing into the distance with a look of, to quote the artist, ‘indomitable resolution in the face of great hardships’. Again the committee was not satisfied. ‘The man appears dazed,’ was one complaint. ‘Why is he sitting?’ was another, and: ‘We wish to mark a victory, not a defeat.’ Costanza Pacetti, the young widow of Ennio, protested that the seated soldier was an ‘unpatriotic’ concept. De Marinis was given one last opportunity: the soldier must stand, he was told, and he must be heroic. He duly gave the committee a standing figure, a man who ‘has endured all, and will not be beaten.’ Costanza Pacetti was no more impressed by the risen soldier than she had been by his seated predecessor. ‘He seems to be starving, and he has the face of a lunatic,’ she remarked to a local journalist. Others thought that the soldier looked like a man in shock, or a deserter facing a firing squad.

  While the committee was discussing what should now be done, the chairman came to hear that a cast of Vela’s Spirit, which had been acclaimed in the towns in which it had already been unveiled, could be obtained at a reasonable price. Achille de Marinis withdrew to Rome, where rumours regarding his political sympathies soon began to spread: he was said to be a communist. His critics felt vindicated when, a year after the debacle of Castelluccio, de Marinis left Italy for London. He became an art teacher in Nottingham, where he died in 1972. For most of his life he had continued to work, on a modest scale; small figures and portraits of his wife and daughter, mostly in clay, comprised the bulk of his output. He achieved something of a reputation as a designer of sports trophies, and was given one substantial public commission: a statue of St Michael, ten feet high, which was affixed to the entrance wall of a shopping precinct in the West Midlands from 1964 until the redevelopment of the site in 1995.

  3.6

  At ten minutes past ten Robert is at his workbench, constructing a frame, when his phone rings: it’s Eliana Tranfaglia, from the Palazzo Comunale. There has been, she tells him, an incident: one of the pictures has been ruined – well, not ruined entirely, but damaged, defaced. ‘Can you come, right away?’ she asks; she sounds like a woman informing her brother that a parent is near death.

  Robert passes the news on to Gideon. He wipes the excess paint from his brushes, puts them in their rightful places, washes his hands, unhurriedly dries them, while scrutinising the painting he has been forced to abandon. ‘Let’s go,’ he says, like a sheriff prepared for a showdown.

  Eliana Tranfaglia is awaiting them at the top of the stairs, hands clasped. Never the jolliest of women, today she has a face of fierce severity; her outfit – dark grey skirt, crisp white blouse, burgundy ceramic brooch worn on the left breast like a decoration for her years of service to the community – could not be more appropriate to the occasion. She escorts them swiftly to the site of the outrage: a corner of the room, in the angle of two of the display panels. The picture in question is a study, in oil on canvas, of a young woman seated on a wooden stool, naked in a vertical shaft of sunlight, with a glass pitcher of water at her feet; the word MERDA has been written with a marker pen in block capitals that run from edge to edge, obliterating the torso.

  ‘When did this happen?’ Robert asks.

  It must have been yesterday afternoon, late yesterday afternoon, she tells him, because it was noticed this morning, when the hall was unlocked, or very shortly afterwards. They had a visitor almost as soon as the doors were opened, and he drew their attention to it.

  Gideon has a word with Robert, to ascertain that he has understood what Signora Tranfaglia has said, before suggesting to her that this man was likely to have been the culprit.

  ‘It was a Dutch man. A tourist. He did not do it, I know that for sure,’ she answers. ‘He was very shocked.’ She goes on to tell Robert that the criminal act must have been perpetrated at the end of the day, because otherwise a visitor would have seen the damage and reported it.

  Above the display panels, bolted into the wall, a CCTV camera is aimed in their direction. Gideon’s gaze, which for a few seconds has been scanning the room, as if in search of someone who might address this situation with greater adequacy than Signora Tranfaglia, latches onto the camera. He jabs a forefinger at it, directing
Signora Tranfaglia’s attention to this crucial instrument, which appears to have slipped her mind. She looks at the camera, then at Gideon; from her eyes he knows what she’s about to say. She says it, at some length.

  ‘It doesn’t work. Right?’ Gideon mutters to Robert.

  ‘In a nutshell.’

  Gideon rolls his eyes – it’s his ‘God, what a country’ expression. The cameras and alarms were installed by a firm owned by Alberto Granchello; Alberto Granchello’s brother, Stefano, is an accountant in the town hall; these two facts are not unrelated.

  The camera is being repaired, Signora Tranfaglia informs them. She does a face of weary resignation, and performs a gesture – arms outspread, as if to present to him a thing of shoddy construction – that is intended to elicit sympathy for her unending struggle with the incompetent. No sympathy is forthcoming. Gideon stares at her, and does not release her from his attention until her expression has modulated into something that suggests acceptance of at least a morsel of responsibility.

  Talking to her through Robert, Gideon wants to know who was on duty at the end of the afternoon, and how they could not have observed what was going on. ‘It was done at the end of the day,’ he continues, before Robert has finished translating. ‘There can’t have been many people in here. Talk to the person who was at the desk. Let’s get some descriptions.’

  Signora Tranfaglia replies that she has already spoken to the girl who was on duty in the afternoon, and she saw only three people, and these were people that she knew, local people, who could not have done it.

  At this point Gideon’s temper begins to unravel. ‘Well, the bloody picture didn’t write MERDA across itself, did it?’ he shouts. Then, in Italian, to Signora Tranfaglia: ‘One of those three people did it.’

  She hesitates, and glances out of the window, before replying: ‘There is another possibility.’

  ‘You’re going to tell me it was the invisible man?’ says Gideon, and then, understanding what she means, he puts a hand over his eyes. ‘Oh God, don’t tell me,’ he moans. ‘The girl left the room. That’s it, isn’t it? I entrust them with fifty pictures, and they can’t even be bothered to look after them.’

  For five minutes, Signora Tranfaglia confirms, there was nobody at the desk. ‘Five minutes at most,’ she tells Gideon.

  ‘Oh well, that’s all right then,’ he yells. ‘Five minutes. What could possibly go wrong in five minutes? Nothing. Five minutes don’t matter. A part-time guard can do the job just fine. Forgive me for having made a fuss. I understand now.’

  She tells Robert that he need not translate. With frigid dignity, she informs Mr Westfall that the girl was required to attend to something urgently, and that she left the desk right at the end of the day, when it was entirely reasonable to expect that there would be no more visitors, because if there are only five minutes left before the exhibition closes, nobody will arrive. ‘You cannot see an exhibition in five minutes,’ she says.

  Gideon listens to this reply; a stony composure takes possession of his face. In a grinding monotone he answers, in English: ‘No. You cannot see an exhibition in five minutes. You’re right, Signora Tranfaglia. Some bastard can march in here, past your untenanted desk, and scrawl all over one of my pictures in five minutes, but you cannot see an exhibition in five minutes. You are quite correct.’

  Robert tells Signora Tranfaglia that Mr Westfall is very angry. Signora Tranfaglia says that she understands. After a few moments of silent fuming, during which he has glared at Signora Tranfaglia, then at the defaced painting, then again at Signora Tranfaglia, Gideon, switching to Italian, says: ‘There was nobody here for five minutes, at the very end of the day. Yes?’

  ‘Five minutes, that is correct,’ she answers.

  ‘And in that time, somebody came in here.’

  ‘That is the only explanation, yes.’

  ‘In that case,’ he says to Robert, ‘could you point out to Signora Tranfaglia that there are cameras at the entrance to the building and on the staircase, and that it should therefore be quite straightforward to get a shot of whoever entered the hall at the end of the afternoon. Unless none of the cameras in this building are working. And as soon as I have uttered these words, of course, I have a feeling of great foreboding. But be a good chap and put it to her anyway, would you?’

  Robert conveys Gideon’s suggestion to Signora Tranfaglia. At some length, with eloquent non-verbal expressions of exasperation and excuse, she explains the situation. ‘The cameras aren’t working,’ Robert confirms.

  ‘No,’ murmurs Gideon, ‘of course they’re not. Why ever should they be? It’s only the town sodding hall, after all. The cameras are for decoration.’ The look he is directing at the area of wall in front of him suggests that he is seeing there a person who will receive a fist in the face if he or she utters one word more.

  ‘It is a computer problem,’ Signora Tranfaglia tells Robert again, the implication being that he will understand what such a problem might entail, whereas the artist cannot.

  Gideon repeats her words, exaggerating the helplessness.

  ‘Nothing is to be gained by this discourtesy,’ says Signora Tranfaglia to Robert.

  ‘She understands why you’re angry,’ says Robert.

  ‘Bravo,’ says Gideon, and he claps his hands three times, lethargically. ‘This is unbelievable’ he mumbles to no one. ‘Absolutely unbelievable.’ He goes over to the window, and looks out at the war memorial; Carlo is down there. He turns and regards the form of Signora Tranfaglia, as if she’s not the curator of his exhibition but an item of furniture that doesn’t belong here. ‘OK,’ he decides, addressing Robert, ‘could you tell her that things have to change, as of today. There must be someone at the desk, all the time, and someone sitting there,’ – he points to the opposite corner – ‘so they can keep an eye on everything.’

  ‘I will see what is possible,’ says Signora Tranfaglia, in English.

  ‘No,’ says Gideon, to Robert. ‘It will be done or I will remove my works from this exhibition.’ He walks out.

  Signora Tranfaglia remains with Robert while he removes the picture from the panel. She is sorry, so sorry, she tells him. But it could have happened anyway, even if six people had been on guard. If somebody wants to do something like this, you cannot stop them.

  ‘But you can deter them,’ says Robert, ‘Or you can catch them.’

  ‘Yes, that is true,’ she admits. ‘He is so rude, though,’ she says, and she starts to whimper.

  Robert tilts the picture in the light to inspect the surface of it. ‘I can repair it,’ he tells her. Her gratitude is profuse, like that of a mother who has just been told that the surgeon can save her child’s life.

  3.7

  Gideon Westfall is ‘technically as accomplished a painter as any currently at work in Britain’; his Self-Portrait with Skull, for example, might bear comparison, ‘as a demonstration of painterly expertise, with the work of Zurbarán’ [The Sunday Telegraph, January 24th, 1988]. But it has been remarked that his paintings are the products of a mind that has been ‘disabled by nostalgia’ [Artworld, June 1991]; some regard his portraits as ‘ingratiating’ and ‘superficial’ [The Guardian, March 9th, 1990]; the adjective ‘sedulous’ has been applied to his work [The Daily Telegraph, January 4th, 1984]. He has been called ‘an embalmer of the visual’ [Panopticon, May 1990]. Westfall’s integrity, however, has not been questioned. ‘If only it were possible to believe’, wrote James Hannaher [Ark, December 1987], ‘that this stuff about truth and beauty is a pose, [that] the anachronism is a pretence … But there is no irony here.’

  3.8

  Gideon is waiting for her on the steps. He smiles, doffs his hat, makes a gift-offering gesture with both hands, and says: ‘I thought lunch at the Corso might be an idea. Something light. A roll, a coffee, a cake. What do you think?’

  It takes her a moment to understand why Gideon, the creature of habit who eats the same lunch every day, is making this proposal: if they are
in a public place, with people sitting close, he’ll be safe from further interrogation. ‘Fine with me,’ she says, as she has to.

  ‘Glorious day,’ he observes, flourishing a hand upwards.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she agrees. In a few minutes they will be at the café, so she asks straight away: ‘Did you look at the photos?’

  ‘I did,’ he answers. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’ he asks, quite sunnily.

  ‘Did they make you reconsider?’

  ‘No, I can’t say that they did,’ he says. ‘But it was interesting. I’d forgotten them.’ He does not look at her; it’s as if they were hikers, forging a path through undergrowth, with no time or energy to waste on chit-chat.

  ‘And perhaps forgotten what they show?’

  ‘Claire,’ he says, ‘I think we covered this topic yesterday.’

  ‘We broached it, yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I don’t have anything more to say on the subject. You appear to think that I’m hiding something. You think I’m hiding something and that I’m the villain of the piece.’

  ‘No. But—’

  He stops. ‘Listen,’ he says, quietly. ‘My brother and I were incompatible. This, believe it or not, is a fairly common phenomenon. There is no story here,’ he tells her, with calm condescension. ‘Cain and Abel are at one end of the spectrum, the Horatii are at the other. David and Gideon Westfall are around midway, a little nearer the Cain and Abel end, some way short of everyday humdrum brotherly affection. That’s how it was. I was often unpleasant to him, he was often unpleasant to me; for most of the time we lived in a state of reciprocal indifference.’ And now he smiles, satisfied at having concluded the matter with eloquence. ‘Shall we?’ he suggests, bowing slightly and waving a hand in the direction of the Caffè del Corso.

  Outside the café only one of the tables is unoccupied, and it’s next to a group of noisy Englishwomen, two of whom are flirting ponderously with the scarlet-waistcoated waiter. But it’s a hot day, and the tables are in a shady angle, and there’s more to see on the street than inside, says Gideon, so they sit down. The waiter, his arm released by the most excitable of the gang, turns and sees Gideon, whose hand he shakes with vigour. He is introduced to Claire, and waits like a servant of the maestro to take their order.