Black Mountain

by Venero Armanno

  Sometimes I’d watch Celeste carefully, looking for signs, but what signs could there be? I tried to remember everything that Domenico had told me.

  Yes, Celeste said, she’d always been lucky, could barely remember more than two or three occasions of illness.

  What was her background, what was her story? We spoke about it even though words between us remained mostly unnecessary.

  Celeste only vaguely remembered parents, or the possibility of parents. At some indefinite age she was thrown into a family of drunkards in Montparnasse. Sexual abuse was a daily occurrence and she escaped to the street. Disease, bad pregnancies and winters took the girls she only knew by sight. Replacements would arrive to keep street corners and alleys well serviced. What saved her from this life was an older gentleman, a widower named Auger who took her home and kept her like a daughter – and a wife. His affection continued into her late teens, when she decided she didn’t need a lover and a mentor and could strike out on her own. She wanted to work in the maisons closes. It was her choice.

  Other girls had unwanted babies, abortions, miscarriages. Had she?

  Not once. In fact, Celeste had decided long ago that there must be something wrong with her insides.

  No words, but her face told me that she needed to know if her inability to bear children made me love her less.

  I loved her more.

  So were these the reasons our bond had come so fast and hard? Had we recognised one another without knowing it? Whatever the answer was, Domenico was a part of myself I’d lost, and now fortune had brought me Celeste Auger.

  She still couldn’t be moved, and lack of funds meant I had to take a box-shaped, windowless room in a fleapit hotel. The man who’d done this to us was Jean-Claude Batiste, proprietor of The Gilded Cage, part-owner of three more brothels, and personal friends with the type of powerful men who preferred to keep his friendship rather than see justice done. One day on my way to the hospital there was a blank space before my eyes and then I realised I was in a store looking at rags and tins of gasoline and tied packets of twigs and bundles of hardwood.

  I slouched out and was by Celeste in her hard cot in minutes. We needed to get out of the hospital, move from Paris, start somewhere new. Time was confounding me and sometimes I felt I was being turned inside out. I remembered the dream I’d had when I’d taken Thunder up into the cold mountains, of the thing inside me boiling up with a rage that didn’t want to be kept down. Celeste would look up at me with her grey eyes and her hair in tufts on her blistered skull: Where are you, Cesare? What are you doing?

  Not me. It’s the other.

  I slept in my dismal room with him looking over me; often I’d close my eyes and dream by Celeste’s cot; days and nights melted together and I was no longer sure if I was myself or the faceless thing walking in my shadow.

  Then my eyes opened and Bruno Pasqua stepped forward from out of a corridor where he’d been speaking to one of Celeste’s regular doctors. Without a word he put train tickets into my hands and leaned over the bed and kissed and touched Celeste’s cheek. His hard palm hovered over her scalp, but didn’t touch the ragged hair or ruined skin. His tenderness seemed to swell in a wave through him and I saw his face melt and his eyes glitter. In her dream Celeste murmured something. He turned to me.

  ‘Half of me wants to let his friends finish you off. The other half, to inform the police.’

  He took a folded daily from his overcoat and threw it at me. Amid world events was a photograph of The Gilded Cage’s blackened remains. The proprietor Batiste’s body had been found in the rubble with a butcher’s knife in its neck.

  ‘The lies. Stealing my Celeste. And to put your name on a dead man’s work.’ Bruno Pasqua nodded at me. ‘I kept going to Signora Rosa until she let me see the room where you used to write. I perused your papers. I looked through the manuscripts by this gentleman Domenico Amati, rewritten by you. I’d been trying to find you to let you know the news. Il Dio has been awarded the best newcomer’s award in the Alighieri Prize. In quick succession it was also recognised for best Italian fiction of the year. Two prestigious awards, and look at you. Who will go to collect these honours with his head held high, you with your artifice or me with my contempt for everything you stand for?’

  He didn’t like to look at me. He could only take in Celeste.

  ‘What stops me from ruining you is her. She possesses more integrity than you’ll ever understand. The young woman loves you, that much is clear. I won’t break her heart for the sake of my own gratification. I’ll keep your dirty secrets. But that means my obligation to you, Cesare Montenero, is through – and your books will turn to dust. To my last breath, I’ll ensure they never see the light of day again.’

  Celeste was returning, eyes fluttering.

  I thrust the newspaper back at the man.

  ‘Why show me this?’

  Bruno Pasqua frowned for a moment. His eyes flicked to my hands. I followed his gaze. I smelled them. A last trace of gasoline.

  Not me. It was that other self, the one holding all the rage, the one that —

  And I saw the creature by the shadow of a wall as Bruno Pasqua bent and kissed Celeste one more time, before she was completely awake. Then Pasqua dusted his coat and the ashes of my books and life fell away from him.

  Someone did attend the awards ceremonies, and proudly at that. Two small plaques now stood on Signora Rosa’s mantelpiece. Two modest cheques were deposited into my bank account. I had this money wired to the chief accountant of Bruno Pasqua’s firm, a small restitution.

  There was a moment of newspaper and journal interest, but Bruno Pasqua wrote a heartfelt statement to explain that the esteemed young writer Cesare Montenero had returned to the mezzogiorno of his youth, due to sadly failing health. The worst was to be expected. Soon the matter was forgotten; the world had more important affairs at hand. The two awards created a spike of interest in bookstores and soon Bruno Pasqua’s warehouse was finally cleared of titles by Cesare Montenero. These never appeared again; this man who I’d betrayed on every possible level kept his promise.

  We passed through Catania. Rosa showed me a clipping of one of the award dinners. She was holding up the plaque for the camera.

  ‘But they made a mistake, Cesare, look, they wrote that I’m your mother.’

  ‘It wasn’t a mistake,’ I told her, and we finally held one another hard and found it difficult to let go.

  Before Celeste and I left the city, Rosa asked where we’d go and what we’d do. I didn’t have an answer. Celeste had recovered and her hair was growing back, but we had no money or prospects. Current events proved that the world itself seemed intent on destroying everyone’s future.

  ‘Then it’s time I told you. Domenico mightn’t have left a will, but he was no fool. When he sold the Amati property he created a bequest and made me the trustee. The government might have seized his country house and his financial accounts but this account has always been in your name, overseen by me. Investments have been favourable. His wish was that when the time was right I should hand it over. He wanted you to live first, to make your way. He wanted you to see what sort of a man you could be. I think now you know.’

  I knew, all right.

  I knew the man I was, and of course still am. One’s sins and wickedness don’t fade with time.

  Signora Rosa passed me a fortune.

  The Amati family sustaining Celeste and me into the future. I couldn’t tell if this was an irony that ought to be repugnant or simply the most cynical turn possible. Then I remembered it, a moment just before Domenico died: There’s a lot of money, just waiting . . .

  I covered my face and cried. Celeste held me.

  Around us the world had moved from a sort of crazed optimism into encroaching despair. Governments fell and economies crashed. Enmities between nations grew into flas
hpoints and, by the time German troops marched into Paris and the new premier Reynaud was entreating all free men to come to the aid of France, we were gone.

  We travelled far from Europe. We were in Cuba, then Mexico. We were as lost as everyone else, but my Celeste found our way.

  Black Book (ii)

  I watched my wife walk in her bare feet across the deep lawn as the sun finally began to sink into the orange horizon. She never overdressed for any occasion, but at every occasion she drew the eye. This evening she was in a new white silk dress, low-necked but not tawdry, sleeveless but not without elegance. It was her own party and she could be barefoot if she wanted to, even if this was scandalous to some of the region’s older matriarchs. The younger ones, the wives in their twenties and thirties, even some in their late teens, implored their husbands with their usually complaisant eyes, wanting for once to rebel, and those who were allowed to shed their shoes as well, walking or dancing lightly over our lawns as if they’d been freed to expose the happiest part of their hearts.

  These were our friends, or should I say they were Celeste’s friends. In all the years nothing had changed and I suffered people and groups badly. If anything I was growing more into my old brother of the soul Don Domenico Amati than some genial middle-aged gentleman farmer. At least I’d learned the art of pretence. I endured these occasions and sometimes even created these occasions – such as the present party – not for my own benefit but for Celeste’s. And these events always delighted her. The difference between us wasn’t so much of literal age but that she seemed so unaffected by the passage of entire decades.

  Though we were celebrating her fortieth birthday Celeste could pass for ten years less. In her soul and with her smile, she made even the youngest farmers’ wives seem positively ancient. Which, given their arduous lives and the number of children they bred and continued to breed, they already were. For ourselves, Domenico’s words from so long ago proved true: we couldn’t have offspring.

  The country breeze was scented by pots and beds of wild herbs, by our great jacarandas, by hibiscus and silky oak trees and the flowering boabs. I took a fresh glass of champagne from a passing tray and the local state member was telling me and a group of not-so-interested husbands about his plans for a new bill to provide our region with covered roads. These roads would surely cause an influx of families and new businesses – boom days were ahead.

  I listened without listening. Streams of multicoloured lights were strung among the trees, and the house was lit from within so that it resembled some kind of seductive pleasure palace. Swing music was being made by a twelve-piece orchestra on a specially constructed dais and Celeste danced over the deep green with an oafish farmer with a great belly. His suit had been purchased for him before the war and looked it. Celeste’s hair swung. She managed to make the man seem just that little bit elegant of foot.

  There was applause and some laughter as they finished. Ben Packard made a bow with his hand over his belly as if to keep it in. Everyone watched Celeste, a radiant star in this milieu of big-hearted, broad-backed, craggy-faced country folk.

  Two of the six pillars of the land in this group glanced at me. One touched my elbow and said it was always such a pleasure to see how happy my wife was. I never had any doubts about the genuine quality of the warmth with which our neighbours and my fellow farmers treated me. They were country folk, and the men probably didn’t feel any different to me when it came to social situations. They certainly looked uncomfortable in their church clothes and spit-polished shoes, their hair slicked back with oil. I’m sure they would rather have been riding a tractor or hoeing a field. Parties and gatherings and local hall dances were all well and good, and so were friendly one-set Sunday afternoon tennis matches, but these diversions served the interests of women and small children – not of men with the weight and worries of the world on their shoulders.

  And this was how I was different to my neighbours. I had no concerns over money. I’d purchased extremely well almost twenty years back, and my holding of nine hundred acres was more profitable and productive than ever. The workers here received the best conditions in the region and I was very much like the Don Domenico of old, barely interested in the running of my land as long as I had good people to do it for me.

  My fellow farmers, the heads of the largest families, weren’t so lucky. Many of them had established or extended their acquisitions with too much credit and so were mortgaged to the hilt. It was hard to be so conspicuously privileged around these good folk, but the Montenero couple didn’t wear their wealth or keep high profiles. Celeste with her friendship and willingness to always lend a hand tended to keep, I thought, any simmering envy at bay.

  Tonight we had lights and burning torches set up in the gardens at the front and to the side of the house so that the party could continue through the night. The musicians and their leader – Jimmy Raven and His Fabulous Twelve Piece Orchestra – were booked till one a.m. They stayed making music until just after three. Some of our neighbours took things too far and we found them snoring under trees or on the verandah. Celeste circulated; then she found me and swayed with me to some playful Frank Sinatra tune. Dew had settled over the grass. Still no one wanted to leave. She nuzzled my ear lobe, and when she said, in Italian, ‘Who would have thought it, Cesare?’ I knew what she meant.

  Such happiness between two people like us, such good times.

  Yet when she fainted in my arms I immediately heard Domenico’s voice again, and one more time he was telling me about the problems with the new people, why the program had failed: There has been a predisposition towards cancers, though there have been other unexpected problems too.

  We learned it was in her pancreas. A week later we were informed that the disease had advanced through multiple organs.

  Celeste spoke with a smile, ‘I’ve worn out everything worthwhile, haven’t I?’

  Alone with me, her doctor said, ‘She must have been in awful pain for a long time. How did she cope? Why wasn’t your wife hospitalised?’

  Domenico had hung on, Doctor Kristof Vliegan had endured his illness for years, but even I could see that Celeste was disappearing fast. I made furious calls all over the world, desperate for the first time to find the men who’d created our lives. It had never crossed my mind to do this before, to make contact with those who’d set us on this path and who’d then abandoned us to what we were. Someone would have to know how and where my wife could be restored to health. If she’d been stronger, if there’d been the hope that she wouldn’t expire while I was away, I would have been on flights to research facilities in Europe, China, the Soviet Union.

  But I couldn’t even find them, identify them. What chance was there? I had the names of a few men long deceased: Vliegan, Bortolotti, even the Amatis – all gone. I didn’t have a clue who or what I needed to be looking for.

  Things turned worse and Celeste had to stay in the hospital. When I wasn’t there I was in my home refusing to sleep, trying to find answers. Some solution, anything.

  How? How?

  Twenty telephone calls and four nights to find out that Signora Rosa was still alive. That in itself didn’t give me much hope, but I immediately rang the nursing home outside Florence that I’d tracked her down to. A staff member told me she was sitting up, her wheelchair facing a picture window.

  ‘She’s of very advanced years, sir, and feeling each of them.’

  The line was clear enough to offer silence. Then her voice came, scratchy as a well-loved 78 RPM record.

  ‘They say it’s Cesare? No! Is it?’

  An ancient woman’s deafness wouldn’t allow her to hear me. We couldn’t speak properly. We needed an intermediary, a nurse who faithfully related information in both directions.

  ‘Sir? She’s crying. But it seems with happiness.’

  ‘Let her know I’m happy too, to speak with her.’

 
‘Sir? She’s asking about someone named Celeste.’

  And so I explained.

  There was the silent air of eternity.

  ‘Sir? I have to put down the telephone. She wants me to get something for you.’

  The receiver was placed on some hard surface but I heard it being fumbled up. I imagined old Rosa taking it, pressing it to her ear and mouth.

  ‘Cesare,’ I heard her say, though she heard nothing in return. ‘Nothing can help you or Celeste, but there’s been contact, the thing’s not dead, someone came to see me so you make what you can of it.’

  ‘Are you still there, sir? I think it must be a telephone number. I’m not sure which country the prefix signifies. Or the city code. But are you ready?’

  I wrote it down carefully.

  ‘Tell Rosa that Cesare – tell Rosa that her son Cesare thanks her for every bit of life inside him. Tell it to her exactly as I said it. “Her son Cesare. Every bit of life inside him.”’

  I heard the nurse pass the message on. Spoken loudly and beautifully in formal Italian. There was no return message though I heard a muffled weeping.

  Then I hung up and dialled the number.

  The woman who answered the call didn’t announce the name of a business or company or family or person. There was simply a disconnected sort of ‘Yes?’ in English.

  So I spoke English as well.

  ‘Signora Rosa Bortolotti, who used to live in Catania, Sicilia, gave me this number to call. My name is Cesare Montenero and I’m a friend of Domenico Amati and the Amati family. I want to speak with someone please.’

  ‘Repeat the names, thank you.’

  I did.

  ‘Which doctor would you like to speak with?’

  ‘I don’t know. What is this place, is it a hospital?’

  ‘You don’t have a specialist’s name?’