Rabbits was his first thought. The island was clearly overrun by them. But did rabbits peel their own carrots? Avignon had no idea. Paris-born and -bred, he had never set foot in the countryside. The work had been carried out with a knife, however, which meant this had to be a very resourceful rabbit. Now, there were books about certain primates being able to manipulate tools. . . .
“Don’t turn around.”
But Avignon did, and what he saw wasn’t an orangutan. It was Pippo Troisi.
The man stood in the shadow cast by the vaults, holding a knife in one hand and a carrot in the other. He was a short, plump fellow with a beard of a few days’ growth: a sort of island tramp with a torn hat on his head.
“Clear off! You’re trespassing!”
“I’m looking for some people who used to live here,” said Avignon.
The man shook his head. They were each speaking in their own language, and neither could understand the other. Avignon uttered one of the rare words he had learned in Italian in order to ask where the monks were. “Monaci?”
“They’re not here. Haven’t been for a long time.”
Avignon put down the piece of carrot peel. He had understood.
“Monks . . . where . . . are?”
He thought that by mixing up the word order, he would be easier to understand.
“Leave. Before I can say Arkudah.”
“You . . . monk?”
Avignon wanted to get closer, but the other man took a step backward and brandished his carrot. This movement brought his face into the light.
“I told you to leave,” repeated Pippo.
“What about Zefiro?”
“Who are you?”
“Me . . . friend . . . Zefiro.”
“I don’t know that name.”
With the tip of his carrot, Pippo Troisi signaled to the stranger to make for the door, adding, “Go away. Don’t tell anyone you saw me.”
Avignon headed off, still inspecting the overgrown garden, before turning to face Pippo. With his trousers cut off at the knees and his threadbare shirt, this man resembled a hefty Robinson Crusoe who’d probably never known the time when Zefiro and his men lived here. A rabbit came right up to Pippo. He kicked it back into the bush.
“I’m off,” said Avignon, raising both hands as if in surrender.
Pippo Troisi followed him for a few hundred meters. Avignon had turned around several times to contemplate the ruins. At one point, retracing his steps, he had asked, “What about Vango? You . . . Vango . . . know?”
But Pippo Troisi just stared at him stupefied, and he had given up.
When they reached the side of the island from where the tiny fishing boat was visible, Pippo sat down on a rock. Cross-legged like a Huron chief, he watched Avignon’s descent.
The stones slid and rolled beneath Avignon’s feet. From time to time he glanced back up at the man, who never took his eyes off him. The lieutenant was suffering far more than he let on. He had staked everything on this voyage.
Still a good distance above sea level, he made his way down in less than an hour. The fishermen were sleeping under the sail, which they had rigged up like a tent canvas. Avignon had to shake them in order to rouse them.
Pippo Troisi watched the boat heading off along the coast.
He waited a little longer before going on his way. First, he walked for five minutes toward what remained of the invisible monastery, then he took a barely trodden path that climbed the side of the hill. Feeling very out of breath at the top, he checked that the white sail was still heading off into the distance, berated a few rabbits in his way, and scrambled over a maze of rocks. He pushed a pile of branches to one side to reveal a circular opening that had been dug into the ground. Pippo dived headfirst into the tunnel and immediately got stuck, which was what happened every time. Due to his hips not being the slimmest part of his anatomy, his legs were left flailing on the outside. He tried to haul himself inside with his arms.
When he had finally squeezed through, he exploded into a tunnel that descended almost vertically and hurtled all the way to the bottom, where he was scooped up by two men. Two huge candles overflowing with molten wax illuminated a black stone crypt.
“They’ve gone,” announced Pippo, standing up.
Brother Marco, the cook who had been left in charge following Zefiro’s disappearance, turned toward the thirty monks from the invisible monastery.
“I don’t know who he was,” added Pippo Troisi. “But he was looking for Zefiro and Vango.”
If you remove the queen from a bees’ nest, you’re left with a drone colony that goes into decline. The hive loses its get-up-and-go and returns to its wild state.
Since Zefiro’s disappearance, the monks had lost their get-up-and-go. They lived in fear. They had abandoned their monastery, allowing nature gently to erase all traces of them, and had taken refuge in this underground tunnel. Pippo’s job was to play the role of a crazy Robinson Crusoe if a stray visitor appeared.
They called their new shelter “the citadel of women,” after the women who used to hide there in ancient times, when pirates pillaged the islands. The men would stay on the shore, defending their houses. Beneath the dark lava vaults, thirty monks in homespun cowls had now replaced those women.
At night, they couldn’t help thinking about the mothers, young women, and children who had waited in the darkness, just as they did, singing perhaps and afraid, just as they were, of the murderous hordes rising up. For as long as they didn’t know what had happened to Zefiro, the monks were frightened of invaders.
During the day, however, they ventured out into the open. They had given up growing any produce and had emptied the hives, moving the swarms of bees into holes in the cliffs. Pippo Troisi’s worst day came when he had to open up the rabbit enclosure. He watched their cheeky behinds disappearing off into the thickets. He despised those animals with a vengeance, and they in turn worshipped him more than ever for liberating them.
The monks lived like Stone Age hunter-gatherers. They had switched civilizations. At dawn, they set off to gather rotting fruit and vegetables from the former kitchen gardens, collect prickly pears, hunt the rabbits with bows and arrows, and fish for what they could. They left no trace of having passed by, covering over with earth any fires they had lit. In the evenings, Brother Marco was suspended from ropes to harvest his honey from the cliffs. He gave one spoonful to each monk, as a remedy.
The fruit trees provided for them when they were in season. But come winter, the survival of these thirty monks on the rock proved tricky. The sea was too rough for fishing. They caught birds with traps set on the rocks. Twice a week, a small team of pilferers took to the sea at nightfall and set off for the other islands, to raid the barns and henhouses. The next day, breathing in the smells of sizzling bacon and maize bread in the embers, they confessed in turn to one of their fellow monks, who, with his napkin already tied around his neck, forgave all their pillaging with the sign of the cross.
A few islands away, in his house in Pollara, Vango was staring at two objects on the table: a flask and a book. He had lit a fire in the fireplace and closed a few shutters.
Having just washed his face in a bucket of water, he was drying himself off using a towel embroidered with rosebushes. It was dark. For two days, he had scoured the house of his childhood and its surroundings for any clues left by Mademoiselle or her captors. He had found nothing apart from a book he didn’t recognize under the sink and a metal bottle floating in the well.
The flask was empty and had a stopper held in place by a metal lever. It might have been tossed there by a passing hunter who had come to sit by the edge of the well. There was nothing distinctive about its shape; it contained no cry for help rolled up like parchment with a secret address. And its insides smelled of nothing except old metal.
But there was a bear engraved on the neck, which was why Vango had put it down on the table. The animal seemed exotic. He stared for a long time at the snarling bear,
which was standing on its hind legs.
The other object, the book, was a Russian dictionary. Vango realized that just because the book was there, this didn’t necessarily mean anything. He had never seen it in the house before, but Mademoiselle had lived here for three years without Vango. She could speak Russian, and might easily have obtained it for herself.
There was little chance that one of the thugs would have arrived wielding his dictionary like a handgun, only to toss it under the sink in his hasty departure as he carried off Mademoiselle. This book wasn’t a clue to anything at all, but Vango held it, opened it, and went into a long meditation.
He pictured himself with Mademoiselle, washed up on Scario beach, two castaways. He suddenly realized that what had survived of their past, the only things that hadn’t disappeared into the sea, were languages and songs, recipes and gestures. He had inherited words and flavors from Mademoiselle. But it had never occurred to him to find out any more about his inheritance.
Why did he understand the words in this Russian dictionary? Why did Mademoiselle cook that particular soup better than anyone else? Why had he always fallen asleep to the sound of Greek lullabies? Where did those thorny roses come from that she had embroidered on the towels but that didn’t grow on this island? They all came from the past, clamoring the secrets of his life, but he had never heard them before. Each moment of his childhood was a small parcel wrapped in a layer of tissue paper: it had never been opened.
And the treasure? He had one third of it: the share belonging to Mazzetta and his donkey. Like a pirate, Vango had hidden it on his island in a cave that no one else would find. The remaining two thirds had disappeared with Cafarello.
Vango picked up the dictionary and the book and made his way over to the window.
Suddenly, diving headfirst to the ground, he rolled into a ball by the fireplace. This took less than three seconds.
He put the two objects down next to him and waited for his heart to stop racing. Scanning the room, he sat up slightly before moving toward another window, still crouching low. He peered through one of the gaps in the shutter, then bent down again.
Vango crawled toward the door. This time, he didn’t even need to take a peek. A crackling noise could be heard in the undergrowth from that side too. The house was surrounded. He had seen at least five shadows, and there were likely to be two more at the back.
No doubt about it. They were on his trail again. He turned the key in the lock.
Vango took the bucket of water he had used to wash his face, emptying its contents onto the remaining embers, which barely sighed as they were extinguished. The room was plunged into darkness. Vango heard the door handle squeaking. He had locked the door just in time.
Someone was walking on the roof. Vango knew that he hadn’t taken any precautions on reaching the island. He hadn’t been able to resist playing with the children, who had carried him in triumph: and all because of the tribulations of a chick! He had calculated that by arriving into the small port of Rinella, he wouldn’t be spotted. He could have made immediately for the wild coast, staying close to the sea. But he had clowned about first, to win the smiles of three little girls, in memory of Laura Viaggi and her sisters.
How was he going to escape now? He knew this whitewashed cube like the back of his hand. There was no way out. All the windows were being watched. The chimney flue was barely wide enough to squeeze an arm up it. There was no cellar or attic or hidden nook. All he could do was fight back.
A few paces from him, he saw a wooden lever smash through the first shutter. A small pool of starlight spilled through the glass, which immediately shattered. Then a hand burst through the hole and turned the handle. Vango had swiftly crouched beneath the window, where he remained hidden in the gloom.
A shadowy figure stepped through the window. Noiselessly, Vango grabbed hold of it and pinned it to the ground. He struck the man on the back of the head, and his victim promptly fainted. When a second shadow chanced its luck, Vango put it out of action in the same manner. All that was audible from the outside was the rustling of clothes. A minute went by. Vango could hear the sound of muffled voices on the other side of the house. Despite the cold, he was drenched in sweat, and the sensation of those two bodies pressed against his legs made him feel panicky. His eight years as a fugitive had sharpened his survival instinct: he feared what his own hands were capable of doing.
The third man got away from him, and they rolled together toward the fireplace. Vango had gagged the man’s mouth with his hand, but his opponent was putting up a real fight. On feeling the Russian dictionary against his shoulder, Vango grabbed hold of it and, with one heavy blow, knocked out the enemy. The man slid to the ground. Vango also picked up the metal flask and crawled back under the window, armed with these two weapons.
A voice was mumbling at his feet. One of the men was coming around, but he was talking gibberish. Vango was about to acquaint him with the heavy dictionary when he recognized what the man was saying.
It wasn’t Russian, but ancient Greek: the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint John. “In the beginning was the Word . . .”
Vango put the dictionary down.
“Brother John?”
“Vango?” gasped the man, wincing in pain. “Is that you?”
When another voice called through the window, Brother John replied, “I’m here. It’s Vango!”
A fourth man hopped over the windowsill.
“Vango? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question!”
“We’re hungry over there.”
“Hungry?”
“Pippo Troisi told us this house had been lying empty for ages. We’re on the hunt for anything to eat. Where are the others?”
“Over there.”
“And what about Brother Pierre?”
“I think he took a knock to the head. I’m sorry.”
“Who did that to him?”
Vango shrugged. The monk understood.
A final shadow appeared. There were five of them. Five monks turned gentleman-burglars, with sacks over their shoulders, clad in the color of the night.
“Fill the bucket in the well,” ordered Brother John. “I’m going to try reviving the others. We’ve got to carry them as far as the boat.”
“I’ll lend a hand,” offered Vango. “I want to talk with Brother Marco.”
“Have you got anything to eat?”
“Eggs.”
“How many?”
“Two dozen.”
“Pippo will be waiting for us down on the beach.”
Pippo wasn’t on the beach. He had sailed around the cliffs to the port of Malfa, in order to tie the boat to a mooring buoy. Next, he had slipped into the sea and swum over to the dock. Now he was sitting with his back against the hut belonging to the lady of the port, Pina Troisi, and he was listening.
Pippo Troisi did this every time he ferried the pilfering monks. On Christmas Eve he had dared to get close for the first time, and he had heard his wife talking to somebody: Doctor Basilio. She was telling him about what it was like to wait, to be patient. She had talked about the boat that would bring Pippo back to her one day. Basilio got her to recite the boat timetables, together with the ports of departure, and Pippo would listen in, feeling confused.
Whenever he came by in the evening, he nearly always heard the doctor’s voice. Pina and Basilio had become firm friends, and the doctor was always ready to listen to Pippo’s wife. He was interested in understanding her world and what had brought her to this point. And he in turn would talk about his patients.
She would prepare a light supper for him, its aromas assailing Pippo Troisi’s nostrils. Tonight he recognized the smell of the pasta-style dish she was making from zucchinis. Pippo was salivating. All he could hear was the flame inside the spirit lamp, behind the thin wooden wall, like the sound of a sheet being unfurled.
“I’m just back from Lipari,” Basilio declared.
“I saw you arriving this morning, on the nine twenty-seven.”
“There’s an old man over there who lives under house arrest. He’s spent seven years in the former penal colony. He’s about to die.”
“Are you looking after him?”
“Yes. He’s a Communist from Venice. Signor Mussolini doesn’t like him, so he put him there, seven years ago.”
“I’ve never met a Communist,” Pina admitted. “What are they like?”
On the other side of the partition, the question made Pippo smile.
“He’s not even really a Communist anymore. He spent four years in Moscow, and that changed him. But he kept pretending he was one, just to annoy the authorities.”
He wiped his mouth.
“If your Pippo comes back one day, he’ll be different too. He’ll have changed a great deal.”
“So will I,” mused Pina. “Which is just as well.”
Pippo Troisi strained to hear.
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“Yes, I’m afraid. Which is just as well.”
And then she added quickly, as an afterthought, “What about you, weren’t you afraid at first, with her?”
The two friends sometimes talked about the woman Basilio could never stop thinking about. Mademoiselle.
“I barely shook her hand, you know.”
“How long has it been?” she asked.
“I’m not counting. What about you?”
He knew how much Pina loved numbers. “If I don’t count the days,” she would say, “then what’s the point of one day more?”
“Well?” Basilio asked again.
“He left one hundred and twenty-two months, two weeks, and three days ago.”
Pippo Troisi headed off, feeling emotional, as he did every time he dropped by. He ran down to the sea and swam out to his boat, nearly capsizing it as he climbed on board. He was sopping wet as he began to row beneath the stars. He was thinking about Pina.
“You know that letter I told you about — the letter she sent me?” Basilio had said, in Pina Troisi’s tiny hut.
A Prince Without a Kingdom Page 17
