Restoration Read online

  Restoration

  OLAF OLAFSSON

  Dedication

  Many thanks to Victoria Cribb for her invaluable assistance

  when writing this book

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Historical Note

  I

  II

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Olaf Olafsson

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  At the beginning of 1943, Mussolini lost his hold on Africa. The Allies had taken Tunis, and the Eighth Army, consisting mainly of British troops, reached Libya and headed for Tripoli. In July they used it as a springboard to invade Sicily and proceeded to work their way up the peninsula, while the Germans, coming to the aid of Mussolini and the Fascists, took control of the northern part of Italy, from Rome to the Alps. The Allies pushed north, and the Germans and the Fascists defended their territory. Partisans in support of the Allies sprang up in the Fascist-controlled areas, and the result was a bloody civil war. The partisans were made up of many disparate groups—republicans, communists, monarchists—who sometimes fought among themselves. Other groups who had little interest in politics but were all the more eager to feather their own nests robbed and plundered, following whoever offered the best prospects at the time.

  Even in remote areas such as Val d’Orcia in the far south of Tuscany there was no peace. Bands of partisans fled the villages and cities to hide in the countryside. Thousands of soldiers were also on the move, fugitives from the prison camps of the Axis powers—British, Americans, French, Yugoslavs, and Poles. Some of them threw in their lot with the partisans, others attempted to rejoin their units in the south. They sought food, shelter, and medical attention wherever they could find it. The Germans showed no mercy to those who supported either the Allies or the partisans.

  This story takes place at San Martino, a farm in Val d’Orcia, in the summer of 1944.

  I

  . . . SHE SITS ON A LOW CHAIR, HER JEWELRY—PEARL necklace, bracelet, and hairpin—laid aside. There is a shaft of light high up on the wall behind her and the brightness calls an answering gleam from her wet hair and delicate shoulders. She is wearing a white shift, and her skin is pale. Her lips are slightly parted, as if she has paused on the point of speaking. She is looking away, one cheek mostly invisible, the other in blue half-shadow. Her hands lie in her lap. Her expression is unfathomable . . .

  The picture (oil on canvas, 97.8 x 132.7 cm) is not documented but was probably painted while Caravaggio was living with the Colonna family after fleeing Rome following the death of Ranuccio Tommassoni on May 29, 1606. Although related to his picture of Mary Magdalene, this is a more mature work. The same model, the prostitute Anna Bianchini, may have sat for both, but this is not certain . . .

  On behalf of the National Gallery, it is a pleasure and an honor to invite you and a guest to the unveiling of this rare work of art on June 7 at 4 p.m. in the Central Hall. Light refreshments will be served.

  From an invitation to the National Gallery

  London, May 1997

  LETTING GO OF THE BOY’S HAND, SHE RUNS INTO THE dim shed to fetch the binoculars. The sun is at its zenith and the air is sultry and still. When it last rained, a month ago, at night, she woke up, climbed out of bed, and opened the window to feel the drops on her arms. But now the leaves of the olive tree are parched and rustle in the light wind. Otherwise all is quiet for the first time in days: no troop movements on the road down in the valley, no gunfire on the mountainsides. She knows it won’t last. The birds are silent in the heat but the cicadas are singing. She hears someone calling her name from the main villa but instead of answering, she raises the binoculars and scans the lower part of the turnoff.

  The large farm stands on a hillside, with a view of the wide valley. Behind the villa is the central farm, the fattoria, which includes the dairy, workshops, laundry, the olive press, and the clinic, and next to it is a small chapel, hidden from the road by a grove of cypress trees. She was coming from the chapel when she decided to survey the roads; the boy had wanted to pray.

  She can see no one. The sweat trickles into her eyes; she wipes it from her forehead and tells the boy to stay in the shade. He had just turned four when he arrived at the farm over a month ago with a group of refugee children from Turin. She immediately learned their names; it is her way, although on this occasion it seemed more of an effort than usual.

  The boy whimpers. She hushes him gently.

  “Marchesa Orsini,” he says, “I’m hungry.”

  Perhaps she was mistaken, but she thought she saw movement at the bottom of the turnoff, a momentary flash of metal or glass. Now she can see nothing, neither man nor beast. Last week a horse came up this way to the houses, its saddle askew, a riding boot caught in one of the stirrups, and congealed blood staining its flanks. The farmhands washed and fed the animal, then presented it to the partisans.

  She catches sight of the young woman when she stands up. She has been sitting behind a rock at the side of the road, but now rises slowly, brushing the dust from her skirt. She’s overdressed in the heat and her movements are slow and feeble. She is holding a suitcase and looks first up the slope toward the buildings, then back over her shoulder. She seems lost.

  Marchesa Alice Orsini keeps the binoculars focused on the young woman’s first steps up the slope. She notices that she is limping but doesn’t realize how weak she is until she collapses. Instead of lying down, however, she tries at first to hold herself up, propping both hands on the ground, before eventually giving up.

  Alice takes the boy by the hand and hurries over to the villa. He does his best to keep up so that she won’t have to drag him along. She starts calling the farmhands before she reaches the house—“Giorgio, Fosco, Melchiorre!”—but they don’t hear and she hastens inside, releasing the boy’s hand as they enter the cool hall. He watches her dash down the broad passage, past the dining room and the library, until she disappears into the kitchen at the rear.

  Soon the three farmhands set off down the road with horse and cart. Following through the binoculars, she watches them halt beside the young woman and lift her onto the cart, placing her suitcase beside her. They make slow progress on their return journey since the slope is steep and the road full of potholes. Dust rises from the horse’s hooves as it scrabbles to find its footing, and the men strain to ease the cart forward until the horse manages to get a purchase once more.

  The young woman doesn’t move. She lies with eyes closed, the dust from the road settling on her sunburnt face. Her mouth is half open, her lips dry. She does not resist when the cart lurches forward; it’s as if every muscle in her body is asleep. She did not speak when the men reached her.

  They take her into the clinic. She has a deep wound just above her right ankle and both shins are scratched and swollen. The men do not leave, merely retreat a few steps and watch while the nurse removes the dirty dressing and washes the wound. The young woman’s mouth twitches and sweat breaks out on her forehead but she does not open her eyes.

  There are two other patients in the clinic, both men. The Englishman is asleep, but the Italian is awake and rises up in bed to get a better view.

  “Who’s that?” he asks.

  The nurse doesn’t answer. When he repeats the question, one of the farmhands tells him to be quiet. He does as he’s told, lies down again, and resumes staring at the cracks in the ceiling over his bed.

  The young woman’s wound, stitched by an amateur hand, has turned septic. After a moment’s indecision, the nurse makes up her mind to remove the woman’s
dirty clothes and wash her before continuing. Looking up, she says to the farmhands, “You’ll have to leave,” adding, “except you, Melchiorre.”

  He’s the youngest, not yet twenty. His comrades tease him, saying that he has the eyes of a girl. They are large, round, and bright blue. They say he has the hands of a girl too.

  As they leave, the nurse draws a screen around the young woman’s bed. Melchiorre helps the nurse remove her clothes and wash the slender body with a damp cloth that he rinses in the white sink by the door. The nurse wrings out the cloth over the sunburnt arms, face, and neck, letting the water cool the young woman’s skin. Elsewhere her skin is so pale that it seems almost translucent. Melchiorre gazes at the slender veins branching like meltwater beneath the snow on the mountainside in spring, all the while averting his eyes from her genitals. She reminds him of a statue.

  Once the nurse has washed her and cleaned her wound, she covers her with a thin sheet. The wound will need restitching but she decides to wait until the young woman has rested. She is feverish and needs sleep.

  The nurse goes to the door, opens it, and waits. Melchiorre is still standing by the bed, gazing at the young woman. When the nurse coughs, he hastily crosses himself and follows her out.

  They walk side by side across the small courtyard enclosed by the back of the main villa, the clinic, and the little chapel. Their footsteps echo in the quietness and their shadows lean together. From an upstairs window in the villa, Alice watches them enter through the back door, then turns back to the young woman’s suitcase on the table. She has unpacked and repacked it, removing clothes to be washed and replacing a dog-eared book on art conservation and a copy of the Bible next to a pair of shoes and a bar of soap. There were no identity papers in the case but in a side compartment she found a letter in a language she didn’t understand. It appeared to be a letter of reference written on the stationery of an academy in Copenhagen, signed by a K. Jensen and concerning one Kristín Jónsdóttir. It was worn and torn along the fold, and after examining it for a while, she replaced it carefully in the side compartment.

  She closes the case. A clock in the hall strikes two. If the roads remain open, the priest should arrive by three.

  EVERYONE HAS GONE TO BED EXCEPT FOR ALICE AND the priest. They sit at an old wooden table in the kitchen with a candle burning between them. The candlelight illuminates their hands but does not extend much farther, fading out on their arms until the glow on their faces is almost imperceptible.

  “It was a beautiful service,” she says.

  “Thank you.”

  “Some of them deserved it,” she adds.

  He smiles.

  “I merely perform the rites,” he says. “God judges.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “There are some things I’d rather not know.”

  “There was nothing else they could do,” she says. “He put them all in danger.”

  Silence.

  “He wasn’t going to sell the Germans information only about the British soldiers we’ve been sheltering but also about the partisans. His comrades. About the farmers who’ve taken them in. About us. We couldn’t take that risk. What would become of the children?”

  He nods, opening and closing his fist, as if trying to grasp the light. His movements are slow, his fingers twisted with arthritis.

  “They had no choice,” she says quietly. “Yet I feel so awful.”

  “Then I suppose you want to confess,” he says.

  She nods. They stand up, he first, then she. There is a piece of cheese left on a plate on the table, and his eyes stray toward it. She notices.

  “Won’t you finish it?” she asks.

  “No,” he says. “No. I’ve eaten too much and now I won’t sleep.”

  He had barely touched his food. A few olives, a thin sliver of ham, a tiny helping of vegetables. That was all. He had eaten slowly, drunk only half a glass of wine, surreptitiously pouring the rest back into the carafe. When offered more food, he declined and passed the bowl or dish to his fellow diners, the nurse and the carpenter.

  When he was young, he had trained for the priesthood because it was the obvious choice: he had a head for books and liked to sleep late. The job involved sacrifices, there was no denying that, but his housekeeper had turned out to be both pretty and discreet. He had worried more about the gossip of his parishioners than about the opinion of God, in whom he believed only in moderation. His housekeeper was as sincerely attached to him as he was to her: few marriages were as happy.

  Now he sleeps little and has difficulty passing water when he rises at dawn. His housekeeper is dead, and he has failed in his hope of finding God in his old age. In war, God is nowhere to be found.

  They walk across the courtyard, she with a lantern in her hand, he a few steps behind her. The moon casts a dim glow on the rooftops. He opens the door to the chapel and goes to light the candles, but she asks him not to. The lantern will suffice.

  He takes his seat in the confessional, and she kneels on the other side of the grille. He long ago lost his belief in this ritual but listens anyway, telling himself that it is his duty as long as his flock want to talk. If it gives them comfort, isn’t that justification enough?

  “I still put vases of flowers in the drawing rooms and in my bedroom,” she begins, “and waste time every morning deciding what to wear. I search for new lines on my face and ask the mirror if the shadows under my eyes will ever disappear. I’m abstemious, not to save food for others but because I worry about putting on weight. I notice when men look at me. I don’t mind it. I’m vain.”

  She pauses and he waits. Years ago, when she started coming to confession, she wasn’t sure how to conduct herself. He knew she wasn’t a Catholic, although they never discussed the fact. He didn’t care. He liked the sound of her voice. It reminded him of spring.

  “I’m worried about what will become of the garden. I really shouldn’t be thinking about things like that when people are dying all around us. I shouldn’t worry about rosebushes. Or complain if my head aches.”

  She is always slow to come to the point; she has to do it in her own time. He is used to this, and listens, opening and closing his fist in the darkness. She draws a deep breath and continues:

  “They had no choice. He betrayed them all. They found out that he had made a list of names to sell to the Germans. His girlfriend gave him away. Now she’s beside herself with guilt. I tried to console her. I told her there was nothing else she could have done. It didn’t help.

  “She asked me how he died. I lied that I didn’t know. Just before noon yesterday, his comrades asked my permission to bury two of their boys in our cemetery; they’d stepped on land mines outside Chianciano. The Germans are laying them everywhere. I said of course, and asked if they could dig graves at the same time for the British soldiers who died in the clinic last weekend.

  “They came up the road just before noon. Fifteen of them. He was in the midst of the group. They sang as they hacked away at the hard ground with picks and shovels, but I could see that he was scared. I wanted to have a word with their leader but decided against it. Perhaps I should have . . . They sang and the blows of their picks carried all the way to the houses. I waited until they had dug the last grave, the fifth. They leant on their shovels and stopped singing. ‘Larig,’ said Fosco’s nephew, ‘you know what you’ve done.’ He tried to protest but his words trailed off. Then he ran. He knew it was futile, of course; they had only to reach out and grab him. Two of them led him to the grave, and Fosco’s nephew took a gun from his pack and fired a single shot into the back of his head.”

  She falls silent. The lantern is still alight but the flame is burning low. The leader of the partisans had confessed the day Larig was shot, so none of what she says is new to the priest.

  “I knew what was going to happen,” she says. “I knew it when I gave them permission to dig the graves. But I made no attempt to talk them out of it.”

  He has never given he
r absolution, nor has she requested it, and he is relieved not to make the pretense now. But he senses that she is waiting for him to offer some sort of comfort. Unprepared, he clears his throat several times before speaking.

  “I’m old,” he says. “I’m still searching for God. In your shoes I would have got rid of Larig too.” He adds, “God forgive me.”

  They remain sitting in the darkness for a while before making their way out into the dim moonlight. As they cross the courtyard, she stops and looks up at the clinic window. She thought she saw a face there but realizes now that it must have been the moon. Shaking her head, she takes the priest’s arm and walks with him into the house.

  PERHAPS YOU WILL COME BACK. PERHAPS YOU’LL come back with the dawn, stepping out of the morning like a gift I don’t deserve. The tenant farmers will have risen already and welcomed you, showing you what they have done since you left—a new irrigation pipeline or a barn—waiting in suspense for your approval. Because they need it just as much as I do. They’ve given up asking me when you’re coming home; the fattore has forbidden them, so now they ask Pritchett when they think I can’t hear.

  Do you remember the day we first came here? Do you remember when we arrived at the abandoned villa and you pushed open the old front door, ran up the dark staircase and shouted out of the glassless window in the master bedroom, “This is paradise!” Do you remember? And Pritchett called back, “Hell, more like! There’s not a blade of grass on this windblown hill!”

  You laughed at him. You never let anything stop you.

  I assumed you’d taken nothing with you when you left. More than a month had gone by before I discovered that the picture Giovanni painted for you had vanished. Did you go into his room yourself to fetch it from the shelf where you asked him to keep it for you? I picture you opening the door after a little pause, hurrying in and reaching for it, then leaving just as quickly. You avoid looking at the bed. Keep your eyes straight ahead and lowered. After he died you never went into his room. This would have been the only time.