Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  She swims for a few minutes, slowly, barely ruffling the pool. She swims towards the glow of Siena and back towards the light-sprinkled hills. Floating in the cool water, her skin to the warm dark sky, she watches a ribbon of cloud becoming longer, thinner, and breaking apart. Again she thinks of Gideon, of his forcefulness, of his consistency, of his lack of doubt. He is always who he is, and she is not sure if she envies him. Gideon will be this Gideon until the day he dies.

  A shape cuts across the moon at speed and disappears against the sky. She waits, vigilant, then it passes over the pool, like a scrap of black paper in a gale: a bat. It swoops back down, closer, bouncing an inch above the surface of the water, and zigzags up, across the moonlit cloud. It’s a pipistrelle, she can tell by its flight: fluttery, like a butterfly, unlike the flight of a noctule bat, as Robert explained. Again and again the pipistrelle skims the water; then there are two, three. She gets out of the water and sits on the edge of the pool, watching the bats as they scribble on the air, taking insects. She is watching when she hears someone walking towards the gate of the villa: a heavy tread, a male tread, on gravel. She pulls the towel towards her, but the person passes and carries on down the lane.

  11.12

  The common pipistrelle is a species of the Pipistrellus genus, in the subfamily Vespertilioninae of the family Vespertilionidae (commonly known as vesper bats), and was given its binomial, Pipistrellus pipistrellus, in 1774 by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber (1739–1810), in his Die Säugethiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen. The name is derived from the Italian pipistrello, meaning ‘bat’, which in turn is derived from the Latin vespertilio (from vesper, meaning ‘evening’), via the Old Italian vipistrello.

  The common pipistrelle is found across most of the European continent, as well as North Africa and southwestern Asia, and it is the smallest European bat, with a body length of 3.3–4.8cm, a wingspan of 19–25 cm and an average weight of 4–8g. The maximum lifespan is about 15 years. It is common in woodland and agricultural areas, but is also found in shrubland, semi-desert and urban settings. Summer nursery colonies, which generally occupy buildings and trees, usually comprise 25–50 individuals, but colonies of 200 have been observed. The pipistrelle hibernates in winter, sometimes in caves or cracks in addition to the summer sites, and it often hibernates alone or in small groups, although huge populations – up to 100,000, by some estimates – have been recorded in caves in central Europe. The diet of the common pipistrelle consists primarily of diptera, such as mosquitoes, gnats, midges; a single bat may forage as far as 5km from its roost, consuming as many as 3,000 insects in one night. Most common pipistrelles are not migratory, though movements in excess of 1,000km do occur.

  In 1999 the soprano pipistrelle was officially differentiated from the common pipistrelle, on the basis of the frequency of its echolocating calls: the frequency of the call of the common pipistrelle is 45kHz, whereas the soprano pipistrelle’s is 55kHz. Differences in appearance, habitat and diet were subsequently observed. The bats at the pool outside Castelluccio, on this particular evening, are common pipistrelles; their roost is in the ruined roof of San Lorenzo.

  12

  12.1

  TRIM RUNS AWAY across Piazza del Mercato, to be petted by Luisa Fava, who is sitting on the bench by the loggia, scanning a magazine. Seeing Gideon, she puts a hand to her mouth in alarm. She wants to know what has happened to his eye, now no longer masked by make-up. Gideon sits beside her and tells her a tale about the altercation; he permits her to put a fingertip to the edge of the bruise.

  ‘You must report it,’ she says, and he tells her that he will.

  She asks if his niece enjoyed the festival.

  ‘Very much,’ he answers.

  ‘A nice woman,’ Luisa comments; Gideon agrees.

  They pass a minute looking at some pictures in the magazine, of a TV presenter and a football player on a yacht. Then Luisa says: ‘Time to open up.’

  ‘I’ll take a turn along the Corso with you,’ says Gideon, and he walks with her to the shop.

  ‘You are in a very good mood today,’ she remarks.

  ‘I am,’ he says, and he gives her a kiss on the hand before leaving.

  This episode will be repeated two hundred and forty-four days later. Gideon and Luisa will chat by the loggia for a while, then Luisa will look at her watch and say: ‘Time to open up.’ And Gideon will escort her, because he has to call on Fausto Nerini. He will not reach Luisa’s shop: outside the Palazzo Campani he will collapse. In the ambulance, as the paramedics work on him, he will speak these words: ‘Nobody knows what has really been at the centre of my life.’ His eyes will then close and he will smile. ‘What do you mean, Gideon? What do you mean?’ she will ask him, over and over again, but she will not receive an answer.

  In accordance with his will, Gideon is to be cremated. Claire will be there for the service, as will Luisa Fava and Carlo Pacetti. Each will be bequeathed a painting; Robert will receive five; the rest of the estate is to be auctioned, with the proceeds going into a fund to support young artists ‘working in the classical tradition’.

  12.2

  The Loggia del Mercato was built between 1420 and 1422 at the behest of Domenico Vielmi, to replace the wooden shelter that had previously occupied this corner of the square. Designed by an unknown architect, it is a rectangular brick structure, roofed with terracotta tiles, with a façade of three pointed arches, each of which extends from the pavement to within a metre of the eaves. The thick, ten-sided columns that separate the arches have acanthus-leaf capitals of Istrian stone; a stone relief of Domenico Vielmi’s insignia – a ship with a star above its central mast – is set into each of the columns; the relief of the Madonna and Child, above the middle arch, is probably by the same unknown hand.

  The loggia was severely damaged in 1840, when part of the building that adjoined the rear wall collapsed; two of the arches were subsequently filled in with brick, and new tie-beams were inserted between the back wall and the façade. After that, the loggia was used intermittently by the town authorities as a storage space. Demolition was regularly proposed, as was restoration, but the loggia was always deemed too precious to be destroyed, and too expensive to repair. Money from central government finally allowed restoration to proceed in the late 1980s, when the façade was reopened and the internal frescoes restored; further restoration of the fresco depicting the dreams of Ablavius and the emperor Constantine was undertaken in 2010.

  The frescoes on the rear wall of the loggia were painted by Giovanni di Paolo d’Agnolo and his workshop in the 1450s; they depict Saint Nicholas (patron saint of apothecaries, bakers, bankers, brewers, butchers, candle makers, chandlers, clerks, coopers, drapers, embalmers, grocers, haberdashers, millers, pawnbrokers, shipwrights, shoemakers, shopkeepers, tanners, vintners and various other classes of merchant) and scenes from his life. In the centre of the wall, a faded image of Saint Nicholas shows him as a bishop, with his crozier in one hand and three purses in the other. The purses are an allusion to the story of the impoverished man whose three daughters were able to marry thanks to the charity of the saint, who secretly, under cover of darkness, threw three purses of gold coins through the window of their father’s house. This episode is depicted to the right of the central portrait of Saint Nicholas, but only the scene showing the man’s discovery of the purses is now clearly legible. To the left, the best preserved frescoes show Saint Nicholas appearing in a dream to the emperor Constantine and, simultaneously, to the sleeping prefect Ablavius, instructing them both to release three innocent men who had been condemned to death.

  Underneath the figure of Saint Nicholas, a small fountain is set into the wall, with a large marble bowl in the shape of a scallop shell. The marble panel below the bowl shows another of the saint’s miracles: the resurrection of three small boys who had been slaughtered by a butcher, whose intention had been to sell their flesh as ham. Local folklore has it that the face of the butcher is disfigured because
the people of Castelluccio, having named the figure of the butcher Muzio, after Muzio Bonvalori, used to beat it with sticks.

  12.3

  Taking her leave of Castelluccio, she strolls along the Corso, past the theatre and Palazzo Campani, across Piazza Maggiore, past Santa Maria dei Carmini, Sant’Agostino, the museum, the Porta di San Zeno, Porta di Volterra, the Redentore, the loggia. Because she has time, she sits for a while on a bench in the gardens; the morning is balmy, the little park is lovely, but she is not entirely in it; she is both here and in London already. Opera music starts playing somewhere nearby, and the effect of the music is to make the scene a little more unreal; it’s as if a soundtrack has been applied to it. She hears the music, she feels the warmth of the sun, she hears the jostling of the leaves, yet she feels like an actor playing the part of herself on holiday.

  She moves on, to San Lorenzo, the war memorial, the old candle factory. Skim-reading the town, she returns to the Corso, where she exchanges a ‘Buongiorno’ with Cecilia Stornello, by whom she’ll be remembered next year as Gideon’s niece and the lady who was stung by the bees, which will become a small swarm in the course of the intervening months. At the Teatro Gaetano she turns into Via del Teatro, and here she finds a cranny that she’s somehow missed: an alley that’s narrower than a car, which she’s walked past on other days and taken to be a cul de sac. It turns out not to be a cul de sac – it makes a jack-knife turn and opens into a courtyard that’s bounded on one side by a high blank wall, which she assumes to be a wall of the theatre. It’s a surprise to find, in a town so small, a pocket that she’s overlooked, but it’s not what you’d call a photogenic spot: some new window-shutters, some geraniums in flowerpots, a square of blue sky to top it off. Turning to leave, she notices a small plaque above a door:

  QUI IL X MARZO DEL MDCXXXVI

  SI ESTINGVEVA

  Giovan Antonio Ridolfi

  The name has a weak aura of familiarity, but she’s not inclined, this morning, to test her memory on it.

  Back on the Corso again, she hesitates, unsure what else to do with the time that remains, and Gideon goes lumbering past with Trim, heading towards Piazza del Mercato. He’s smiling and is talking to himself, it appears, and he stirs his stick in the air as if to dislodge a piece of litter from the end of it, where there is no piece of litter. He passes within five yards, but doesn’t notice her. The shirt is untucked at the back and the hat is awry; he looks quite bonkers. Keeping her distance, she follows him onto the piazza; the stick keeps flicking out; the head is bobbing as though in agreement with an invisible companion; the dog glances up repeatedly, perhaps wondering if the mutterings are intended for him.

  At the loggia Gideon stops; he peers into it, noticing something unusual, it seems. He smiles; the dog sits down at his feet; the smile becomes a laugh, and the laugh gathers momentum, as though at the approach of a punchline; his head jerks back, almost dislodging the hat; a hand goes down to Trim’s head, and together they head home. The laughter was so hearty and so strange that she wonders if he had in fact known she was watching; when she looks into the loggia this idea becomes difficult to dismiss, because there’s nothing in the loggia that isn’t always there, and nothing that’s remotely funny. Then her gaze travels up, to her favourite piece of art in Castelluccio: the small Madonna and Child in the centre. She’s no expert, but she can see that as a sculpture it’s unremarkable, yet the way the hand is pressed to the infant’s chest, to stop him toppling off her lap – it makes her eyes begin to smart, even now, though she’s looked at it a dozen times.

  12.4

  It is evident, the moment Robert arrives in the studio, that something has happened. A large sheet of paper is pinned to the wall, and Gideon – charcoal stick in hand – is prancing as he works at it: he swipes a fat black line from top to bottom, steps back to inspect it, steps forward, strokes another line across the first, steps back. He snarls at what he has done, as if confronting an intruder and demanding that he explain himself. With his free hand he grips his brow, putting a smear of charcoal onto his forehead. He prances forward again, adding some diagonals to a corner.

  Unobtrusively, Robert moves towards his room, from where he can see what is being drawn: a bird’s-eye view of a square, with a church in the centre and streets slanting away to the side of it. He opens the door, goes in, closes the door silently.

  Ten minutes later: ‘Good morning,’ Gideon booms.

  Robert emerges; Gideon, his face streaked with black dust, has taken down the sheet and is pinning a new one in its place. ‘We have lift-off,’ he says.

  ‘So I see,’ answers Robert.

  After a rapid scrutiny of the blank paper, Gideon, arm extended like a fencer, advances on it and scores a dozen small loops in a line across the centre, close together.

  When he retreats, Robert takes the opportunity: ‘Lunch at 12.30,’ he reminds him.

  ‘Yes,’ says Gideon, with a frown that imposes silence.

  At 12.20, having remained in his room in the interim, Robert comes out. Now another sketch is on the wall: a cluster of cloaked figures in the midst of the whiteness, faces raised, perhaps screaming. Six or seven sheets are on the floor. Gideon, arms crossed, glances at him.

  ‘Time to go,’ says Robert.

  Gideon directs a look of discontent at the wall. ‘I’ll join you,’ he mutters.

  ‘We’ll need to be on the road by two, so—’

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘She’ll—’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ states Gideon, in a monotone. ‘I cannot stop at this precise moment.’

  ‘OK. But—’

  ‘Enough, Roberto,’ he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, then he rips the sheet off the wall.

  12.5

  Gideon comes into view, as if being chased through mud, shirt untucked, belly on the bounce. At the door he pauses to gather some air; in he comes, with an exhausted wave of greeting for Giosuè. ‘Have you ordered?’ he asks, swiping the perspiration off his face with three quick passes of the hand. He’s breathing like a man just saved from drowning, and Claire can see the pulse in his neck.

  Robert, regarding Gideon coolly, waits for the gasping to subside. ‘Yes, we’ve ordered,’ he says. ‘Of course we’ve ordered. We’ve been here for forty minutes.’

  Gideon glances at his watch and does a wince of embarrassment, before turning to call for a coffee and a glass of water. ‘Sorry,’ he says to Claire. ‘I lost track. I was in the middle of something.’

  ‘On a roll,’ says Claire.

  ‘I think so,’ Gideon agrees.

  ‘Robert told me.’

  ‘Bad timing,’ says Gideon, with a helpless shrug. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Claire; Gideon appears to hear only sympathy, and gives her a grateful smile. ‘Don’t feel you have to stay,’ she says.

  ‘I won’t linger,’ he accedes. ‘A quick coffee, then I’ll get back.’

  ‘Mustn’t lose momentum,’ says Claire.

  ‘Precisely.’

  Robert has said nothing; now, seeing Carlo Pacetti – hands thrust into pockets; face a parody of disgruntlement – making his way along the Corso, he mutters: ‘There goes your mate. On the lookout for communists.’

  The laugh that Gideon releases has no mirth in it; it is intended, it appears, to placate Robert. ‘He’s not that bad,’ he says.

  ‘He’d be dangerous, given the opportunity,’ answers Robert, tracking Carlo Pacetti till he’s out of sight.

  Gideon only smiles, at Claire, as if to apologise for Robert’s hostility. The coffee is delivered, followed by two plates of tortellini.

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘inspiration has struck.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Gideon replies. ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Anything you can tell us?’

  Gideon squints into his cup, as if seeing there, in miniature, the emerging image of his painting. ‘Something to do with the festival,’ he murmurs. ‘The parade, spectators. There’ll be a part for h
im in it,’ he says, pointing to the picture above her head.

  She swivels to look at it; Robert eats.

  ‘Tommaso Galli,’ says Gideon, ‘the real—’

  ‘—patron saint of Castelluccio,’ Robert butts in, completing the sentence as you’d complete a cliché.

  ‘Exactly,’ says Gideon, failing to prevent a momentary appearance of annoyance. He proceeds to give her a few facts about the real patron saint of Castelluccio, and makes reference to a famously beautiful actress called Lydia Borelli, whose style was imitated by young women all over Italy.

  ‘Lyda,’ Robert interrupts. ‘Lyda Borelli, not Lydia Borelli.’

  ‘I defer,’ says Gideon, giving Claire another quick smile of apology. ‘I shall hand you over to my trusted assistant,’ he says. ‘Duty calls.’ He stands up, and bows to Claire. ‘Before you go, come upstairs. I’d like five minutes.’