Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  ‘Nothing much for non-carnivores, is there?’ he says to Claire, setting aside the menu and summoning the waitress. ‘Robert, would you mind taking charge of the negotiations?’ The situation is explained by Robert; the waitress withdraws to the kitchen and returns a minute later with a proposal.

  ‘So,’ Gideon resumes, with a smack of the thighs that attracts the attention of their neighbours, ‘your day. How was it? What did you do?’

  Claire’s account of her visit to Volterra begins with the incident at lunchtime. After one and a half sentences, Gideon interrupts.

  ‘I know the chap in question,’ he announces and proceeds to describe Claire’s beggar. ‘A wild man,’ says Gideon. ‘Calls himself Diogene – Diogenes. Lives in a hole in the ground. Used to, anyway. Mad as a bag of frogs, but harmless.’

  ‘Harmless now,’ Robert intervenes. ‘As far as we know.’

  ‘He did twenty years for burying a knife in some poor sod’s head,’ Gideon explains.

  ‘Spanner.’

  ‘Spanner, was it? I stand corrected. The recipient of the spanner,’ he informs Claire, ‘was the wife’s boyfriend. The latest of several, yes?’ he enquires of Robert.

  ‘So I believe.’

  ‘Died of his injuries a week later.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  In the course of this exchange Gideon has been the object of repeated glances of distaste from one of the women at the table alongside, as if he’d been describing the murder in all its bloody detail. Her husband too has registered his disapproval, by raising his voice by a decibel or two. In appearance it’s a strikingly homogenous group: all four are thirty-ish, unrelaxed in demeanour, blandly presentable, clad in clothes that are remarkably free of any signs of wear; three of the four are wearing pastel-toned polo shirts that might have been bought from the same shop at the same time; they could have strayed out of an advertisement for a golf complex in the Algarve. Their conversation – in which an irritating episode at the foreign exchange desk of a bank in Siena is a recurring motif – stalls when the food arrives. After a sotto voce conference, one of the husbands – he has a springy little quiff and slot-straight parting, and is wearing a regrettable shirt: khaki, button-collar, short sleeves – is elected to take action. Up goes the right hand; fingers are snapped three times. The waitress comes over. ‘Excuse me Miss, but we have a problem here,’ whines the spokesman. The problem is explicated: each of the company has been brought, as ordered, a portion of home-made cake, but if one looks one will observe that two of the portions are rather less substantial than the other two. It would be appreciated if the anomaly could be corrected.

  The waitress peers down at the plates. ‘I think your assistance may be required,’ says Gideon, and Robert duly asks if he might be of help. The waitress does not immediately answer. She has taken hold of two of the plates and is examining them, perplexed. Robert translates the customer’s complaint, but the waitress has understood perfectly. With a chilly smile for Mr Quiff, and a ‘Certo,’ she bears the two under-filled dishes away.

  The conversation returns to Volterra. Claire remarks that she was intrigued by the stick figure in the Etruscan museum.

  ‘The “Shadow of the Evening”, so-called,’ says Gideon, as if everyone who goes to the Etruscan museum says exactly what she’s just said. ‘The only interesting thing in there. All those bloody urns,’ he moans, grasping his brow. ‘Row after row of the damned things, and every one the same. Tedious buggers. No wonder the Romans wiped them out.’

  ‘Here we go,’ says Robert, filling his glass for him.

  ‘He has a soft spot for the Etruscans,’ Gideon tells Claire. ‘Inexplicable.’

  ‘They are our ancestors,’ says Robert.

  ‘They were here before us, certainly. But that doesn’t in itself make them interesting, or mean that there’s a connection of any significance between us and them. They are the Neanderthals of European civilisation. They lead nowhere. They are lost to us. Why don’t you try telling us what the “Shadow of the Evening” is about?’

  ‘I don’t know what it’s about.’

  ‘Quite. We don’t know. We look at a Roman sculpture and we know what we’re looking at. We look at a Greek sculpture: we know what we’re looking at. We look at your Etruscan stick-boy, and we don’t have a clue. It looks modern, so we have a response, but the modernity is an illusion. We don’t understand it.’

  ‘And so it’s fascinating,’ responds Robert.

  ‘I remain unfascinated,’ Gideon asserts. ‘The thing is a curiosity, that’s all. But better than all those bloody urns, I grant you that much.’

  ‘Some of them are beautiful. And the jewellery—’

  ‘Sod the bloody jewellery. Who cares about earrings and bangles? Name me a great Etruscan artist. Name me a great Etruscan poet. An architect. A dramatist. Go on.’

  ‘None that have survived.’

  ‘Or been remembered. What does that tell you, if not a single name has been remembered?’

  ‘It tells me the Romans did a thorough job.’

  ‘Arse,’ laughs Gideon. ‘The Etruscans had it coming to them. The Volterra museum is as good as they get, and it’s deadly. Am I not right?’ he asks Claire.

  ‘You have to go to Rome,’ Robert tells Claire. ‘The Vatican and the Villa Giulia. You haven’t been there, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you can’t begin to understand the Etruscans until—’

  ‘Life is too short, Roberto. The Etruscans are dismal bastards,’ states Gideon, at which point the wife of Mr Quiff leans over and, wincing as if pained by intolerable noise, asks if he would mind keeping his voice down. Gideon blinks at her, as though her form had materialised out of nothing. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he asks.

  ‘Would you mind keeping your voice down,’ she repeats. ‘You are talking very loudly and we are trying to have a conversation.’

  ‘As are we,’ says Gideon.

  ‘We are in a public place,’ she says.

  ‘Thank you for reminding me,’ he replies, baring his teeth in a vulpine smile. He turns back to Robert. ‘You were about to bore us, I believe?’

  And Robert is permitted to make his case: that our idea of the Etruscans has been skewed by the depredations of the Romans. When the Romans razed the Etruscan city of Volsinii, for example, two thousand bronze sculptures were melted down, and you only have to go to the archaeological museum in Florence to see how wonderful Etruscan bronzes could be. Funerary urns, being of no value as raw material, were simply discarded, and they now comprise the bulk of what has been recovered, which is why we tend to think of the Etruscans as a gloomy and death-obsessed people, et cetera, et cetera. He is talking about D.H. Lawrence’s Etruscan Places – ‘pure fiction and utterly daft’, Gideon interjects – when the bill is delivered to the quartet’s table.

  Pinned to the tabletop by a forefinger, the document is examined and found to be flawed. Again the hand goes up.

  ‘What is it now, for Christ’s sake?’ sighs Gideon.

  ‘Did you say something?’ the noise-sensitive woman enquires.

  ‘Is there a problem with your bill?’ asks Gideon. He is ignored; the waitress arrives.

  There is indeed a problem: they have been charged much more for their bottle of wine than they should have been. A wine list is produced by the waitress; Mr Quiff indicates what he ordered, a bottle of Rosso di Montalcino; the waitress indicates what he actually ordered, a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino, three times more expensive. The waitress lifts the empty bottle from the table, shows him the name on the label, then the name on the wine list.

  ‘We wanted this one,’ states the customer, tapping the list so assertively he almost knocks it from her hand. ‘This is what we ordered.’

  ‘No, you order this,’ the waitress tells him, dangling the bottle.

  ‘You made a mistake.’

  ‘You said Montalcino. I asked Brunello. You said yes.’

  ‘We wanted the othe
r one. Why did you assume that we wanted this one? There was no reason to do that.’

  Robert, called upon to translate, translates the waitress’s reply: ‘Americans always want Brunello rather than Rosso because it is the most expensive wine on the list.’

  ‘Please tell her that we are not paying for a wine we did not order.’

  The waitress repeats that she brought them what they asked for.

  The customer repeats that she did not bring them what they wanted.

  The boss is now on his way to the table, but before he can reach the location of the disagreement – to which everyone in the restaurant is now attending – the wife of Mr Quiff hisses a remark to her husband that includes the phrase ‘these people’, and at this provocation Gideon at last erupts. ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ he bellows, seizing the bottle as if he intends to use it as a truncheon. Instead he displays the label to each of the four in turn, with a finger underlining the name of the wine. ‘You can read, can’t you? Brunello – that’s what it says. It’s not in Cyrillic, for fuck’s sake. Why would the girl have brought it if you didn’t ask for it? She showed you the bottle and you drank it. You showed them the bottle, yes?’ he asks the waitress.

  Robert obtains confirmation that the bottle was shown and approved.

  ‘OK. It was shown to you. It’s been staring you in the face for the past hour, and you’ve drunk every drop. So pay up.’

  Mr Quiff presses his lips together as if trying to crush the blood out of them. The recipient of inexcusable effrontery, he inhales deeply. ‘She made a mistake,’ he states. ‘But if the proprietor agrees to divide the difference between the price of this wine and the price of the wine we ordered, I would be happy with that.’

  The proprietor, examining the bill while listening to Robert’s translation of the proposal, is prevented from responding by another explosion from Gideon. ‘This is beyond belief,’ he trumpets. ‘You people are quibbling over a few bloody euros. How much do you earn? All of you, together. How much?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ shrieks Mrs Quiff. ‘Who do you think—’

  ‘You’re lawyers, aren’t you? You look like lawyers.’

  ‘Look, sir, I don’t know what—’ begins the other man, hitherto silent.

  ‘And how much do you think these people earn in a year?’ Gideon demands, putting a hand on the waitress’s shoulder. ‘Shall we ask them? My bet is it’s about the same as you pay your cleaners or dog-walkers or whatever menials you employ to make your lives more easeful. And you’re quibbling over a few euros. Unbelievable. You should be ashamed of yourselves.’

  Mr Quiff’s jaw is trembling, and his wife is staring as if Gideon has directed a mighty belch in her husband’s direction. The other man, addressing Robert, says in a slow and even voice that is intended to convey the impression that it is only by the greatest effort that physical retribution is being withheld: ‘You’d better take your father outside.’

  ‘Oh lordie,’ shrieks Gideon, covering his mouth with effeminate hands, ‘the alpha mannequin is getting tough.’ He stuffs some notes into Robert’s hand and moves towards the door, muttering loudly. ‘What a bunch of arseholes.’ At the door he turns. ‘Good people,’ he proclaims, ‘these indigent travellers have inadvertently consumed a bottle of wine that turns out to be rather more costly than their meagre resources will allow. If you wouldn’t all mind contributing a euro or two to this worthy cause, their gratitude will be immeasurable.’

  6.11

  ‘Well, that was quite something,’ Claire remarks, as soon as they are out on the piazza. ‘How much of that was for show, would you say?’

  ‘About ten percent,’ says Robert.

  ‘I’d have thought more.’

  ‘He blows up occasionally. Two or three times a year on average. We haven’t had an eruption since January, so we’re overdue.’

  ‘And what brought on the last one? Something more important than the price of a bottle of wine, I hope.’

  ‘A buyer came to pick up a picture he’d seen on the website, then tried to haggle. Gideon went ballistic. I had to patch things up.’

  ‘Is that part of the job?’

  ‘From time to time,’ he says. ‘But it’s rarely a major crisis. People expect their artists to be temperamental.’

  ‘And Gideon is happy to oblige?’

  ‘He has a temper. But he keeps it under control most of the time.’

  ‘I know about the temper,’ says Claire. ‘From what I’ve heard, he never used to make much of an effort to control it.’

  ‘We must assume, then, that he’s a changed man.’

  ‘One possibility,’ she agrees.

  They have reached the Corso. ‘You going back to the hotel?’ he asks.

  ‘I thought I might go clubbing,’ she says. Then: ‘Yes, I’m going back to the hotel.’

  ‘OK if I walk with you? Teresa’s place is over by Sant’Agostino.’

  ‘Sure,’ she says.

  Neither of them speaks for a minute, then Robert says: ‘I knew he was about to blow.’

  ‘Why? Because I’m here?’ she asks.

  ‘No, no,’ he answers. ‘There’s something else going on.’

  ‘Which is? Or are you sworn to secrecy?’

  ‘No. But—’

  ‘You don’t have to tell. But you were the one who raised the subject.’

  So he tells her that Ilaria, the daughter of a couple who run an agriturismo just outside the town, has gone missing, and that she had been working for Gideon. ‘So he’s concerned, obviously.’

  ‘Because he thinks something has happened to her?’

  ‘I think she’s OK. She seems to have just packed her bags and left.’

  ‘But Gideon doesn’t think she’s OK?’

  ‘He’s inclined to take the gloomier view. Nobody has heard a word from her; she can’t be reached on her mobile. Gideon imagines the worst.’

  Claire looks at him, as though peering through misted glass. ‘When you say “working for”, you mean she was his model, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she was modelling for him immediately before she disappeared?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was there an incident?’

  ‘Between her and Gideon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘But there might have been?’

  ‘He would have said.’

  ‘Would he?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  This prompts a wry half-smile. ‘Such trust,’ she comments. ‘Better than most marriages. But he doesn’t tell you everything, does he? I mean, you were in the dark about his brother, weren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think he was keeping me in the dark. He had nothing to say.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘Anyway, is he worried there’s a connection? That she’s run away because of him.’

  ‘Not because of him directly. Perhaps because of the way some people reacted when they found out she’d been working with him. Some of her friends. Her parents.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Late teens.’

  Her mouth makes a silent mewl of distaste. ‘I see,’ she says.

  ‘A perfectly innocent relationship,’ Robert states.

  ‘A perfectly innocent relationship with a naked teenager? Or am I jumping to conclusions? She was a clothes-on model. Is that what you’re going to tell me?’

  ‘I’m not, no. But there was nothing untoward going on.’

  ‘He never laid a hand on her.’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there was nothing untoward about it, does it? Staring at a naked girl isn’t quite the same thing as staring at a bowl of fruit. Or are you saying that in Gideon’s case it is?’

  ‘As near to the same thing as it’s possible to get, I’d say.’

  She cocks her head and squints at him, as if to discern whether or not he genuinely believes this to be the cas
e.

  ‘There was an attachment,’ he admits. ‘She made him work well. But it wasn’t about sex.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘And he wouldn’t have done anything to make her run away. For one thing, that wouldn’t have been in his own best interests,’ he says, and she appears to concede the point. ‘But please,’ he goes on, ‘you mustn’t let Gideon know that I’ve told you. It would embarrass him.’

  ‘Heaven forbid,’ she answers.

  ‘No, really. He wouldn’t want to discuss it.’

  ‘Not a word,’ she promises, with a sardonic tilt of an eyebrow.

  ‘Any plans for your last day?’ he asks.

  ‘Thought I’d do the museum. Only thing left to see.’

  ‘Want to meet for a bite at lunchtime? The Corso,’ he suggests, nodding over her shoulder at the caffè.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Shall I persuade Gideon to come?’

  ‘Up to you,’ she says. Then, looking at the spotlit façade of San Giovanni Battista, she remarks: ‘I do like this square.’ The church and the town hall, she thinks, look best at night; the shadows give the old buildings a special aura.

  And he says: ‘A friend of mine used to say they were like batteries. Batteries of history.’

  Her eyes show that the phrase is a bit too rich for her tastes, but she says: ‘That’s nice.’ They arrange to meet at twelve-thirty, by the loggia. ‘See you then,’ she says, with a final sustained look at San Giovanni Battista.