The Painted Altar

Chapter Sixteen

Plot reminder: Mary and Lucio have driven to the region of Campagna to visit Francesco Brancaleone, a former prisoner of camp 106a. The three are seated at a table overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. With them is the old man's granddaughter, Cosima.
During the journey across the peninsula, Mary told Lucio her life story.

~~~~~

The nodding of the old man's head was slow at first, then grew ever more effusive. It was as if an image had swept itself through the fog of the decades, was now there before his eyes, as clear and irrefutable as a photograph.

"Irene, si. I remember Irene. Michelangelo's girl. The second prettiest of all the Land Girls." The final two words were delivered in English, his lips curved in wry, nostalgic smile. "The only diamond which shone brighter than Irene was my Rose." He raised his eyes skywards in heartfelt plea, right hand criss-crossing chest in genuflection. "If you're up there listening Mariangela, then per favore, you must forgive me. It was the only time in all our years together that I betrayed you, I swear."

There was a glance then towards his granddaughter - fleeting, embarrassed. In response, Cosima brushed a hand against his. Though hearing one's grandfather admit to some ancient disloyalty towards one's late grandmother was far from an everyday occurrence, she seemed more moved than scandalised, as if viewing her grandfather from some new angle, in a different quality of light. Confronted by their obstinacy and forgetfulness and ever increasing list of ailments, it's easy sometimes to forget that elderly relatives were once young. That at eighteen, twenty, twenty-five, they were every bit as urgent and reckless as oneself.

"You must understand, we were young men, had been away from home for three years." His gaze was mellowed by the irrestible swell of nostalgia. "Blonde hair, big blue eyes. Said she came from Nottingham, like Robin Hood."

"Can you remember her surname?" I pressed hopefully.

He observed the sun-sparkled Tyrrenean beneath us for some moments, as if it might be written in the gentle swelling of the waves. Finally, there was a regretful shake of the head.

"No, no I can't. Too many years have passed." A sudden frown then corrugated brow. "But I don't understand. Why are you asking about Irene? What's she got to do with those bones they found?"

*

I gave him the abridged version, just two chapters - the first and most recent. Skipped over that long, dense middle section I'd earlier that afternoon narrated to Lucio. Pruned down the details to the most factual and case-pertinent, left out the stodge, all that was personal and psycho-analytical. Kept things lean, in short. Pared down. Hemingway rather than Manzoni.

Less is sometimes more, don't they say? The implicit more powerful than the explicit. A narrator's skill is inherent not so much in what he or she chooses to say, but in what he or she chooses not to say.

Thus it was that halfway through my account the old man reached for my hand across the table, enveloped it for several moments in the roughened leatheriness of his own. Cosima meanwhile scraped back chair, wrapped an arm around my shoulder, squeezed tight. Even Dante had curled himself up at my feet as if volunteering himself to the role of personal guard and protector.

Dogs and Italians, I thought - both were unhindered in spontaneous acts of sympathy. Of emotional solidarity.

As touching as Francesco and Cosima's gestures were, this wasn't why Lucio and I had driven all that way however. Answers. As the only person I was ever likely to meet who had been present inside the coiled perimeter ring of barb that long-ago September, I was hoping Francesco Brancaleone might be able to provide me with answers. Flick some kind of match flame into the impenetrable darkness.