The Painted Altar

Chapter Eighteen

Plot reminder: After her conversation with Francesco Brancaleone, Mary believed that the remains were those of her father's best wartime friend, Ettore Lo Bianco. It was a theory soon however shot out of the water when, back in Punto San Giacomo, a Google search of the name reveals that Lo Bianco is still alive. A former art restorer, he lives in the northern Italian city of Verona. The mystery thickens further when, over the phone, Lo Bianco refuses to be engaged in conversation of his wartime experiences and abruptly hangs up.

~~~~~

Lucio and I would indeed dine out together that night - a pleasant seafood place on the promenade - but it was far from the relaxed smalltalky goodbye I had envisaged when suggesting the idea. Instead, our conversation was a frowned, perplexed affair, our words as we munched on our marinated octopus and deep-fried squid delivered in the hushed urgency of plotting conspirators. Neither of us, I don't believe, were fully able to grasp the implications of Lo Bianco's refusal to broach the subject of his wartime experiences - a refusal rendered ever blunter by the second quickly hung up call a minute after the first - but at the same time it was clear that something wasn't quite right, that lurking beneath the mystery of the unearthed remains of camp 106a was something even darker and more sinister than could have originally been hypothesised. Some elusive slithering beast of thing.

"We have no other choice," concluded Lucio, refilling my wine glass. "We have to go up there to Verona, confront him face to face."

Thus the story continued. Not only at an investigative level but also our story, Lucio's and mine. His choice of pronoun had been without premeditation, as natural as his smile. 'We' not 'you'. A grammatical confirmation of whatever manner of strange, thrown-together union we'd become.

*

The following morning, Friday, was a frenetic bustle of phone calls, hastily packed cases, the filling up of petrol tanks. After checking out of my B & B, I got in the hire car and - with my right foot a little heavier on the accelerator than I felt entirely comfortable with - followed Lucio to Brindisi airport. Once the vehicle had been returned to Avis, I then lowered myself onto the passenger seat of his Panda. Even by Lucio's somewhat optimistic estimates, we faced a nine-hour drive north. A pair of single rooms had been booked in a hotel a short stroll from Verona's central square, Piazza Bra. Two nights, which was one more than was entirely necessary perhaps, but it would have been cruel - at least this was what I told myself - to have expected Lucio to make such a long and solitary return journey the very next day. I'd meanwhile changed my original travel bookings and was now scheduled to board a Stanstead-bound flight from Verona airport on Sunday morning. As for Dante, he would be well-looked after by one of Lucio's cousins and her family. It was strange, but I had a feeling I was actually going to miss his tongue-flapping canine exuberence.

We could have caught an internal flight perhaps, if not from Brindisi then a little further up the coast in Bari, but I think both of us were enjoying the bizarre road movie our acquaintanceship had become. There's something about travelling long distances overland, something in the slow-shift changes of the landscape, the tilting angle of light, which lends substance to all those passing miles. Whilst a flight is little more than a departure point and a destination with an iffy rom-com film and mini bottle of Chianti sandwiched inbetween, an overland haul is on some level a flag-planting expedition, a gently rolling quixotic escapade.

Before setting off that morning, Lucio had dumped a pile of CDs onto the backseat, the journey thus soundtracked by an eclectic mix of jazz, folk, classical and blues. His literary tastes, my gentle probings would reveal, were equally as varied: Manzoni, of course, but also Steinbeck, Swift, DeLillo, Camillieri. He explained to me the differences between the north and south of his country - those socio-economic of nature, cultural, culinary, the different types of wines. This latter, yes - most especially he talked about wines, embarked on a long discourse about the innate superiority of southern grapes over northern ones, how in his opinion a good wine should be strong, corpulent, fruity; about how you should be able to taste those long unbroken months of Mediterranean sun on your tongue. After books and dogs, wine was, it appeared, his greatest passion in life.