Adam Foulds - In the Wolf's Mouth

Mattia tore at the dry bread with the teeth in the side of his mouth. Albanese leaned back in his chair, his lips pushed forward, his eyes half closed, somnolent and regal. Mattia asked, ‘What’s America like?’ Across the kitchen he could see his mother’s rounded back tense with attention, listening. Albanese brought his hand to his chin. He thought of the wintry docks and huge iron ships, running men, signals and operations, morphine arriving in olive oil barrels marked with a particular number. That particular line of business had been blessed. The city just wanted more and more and he was the obscure channel by which it flowed into dirty tenements, to clubs and high-class parties. Meanwhile, he himself was clean, a working man. He thought of himself in a thick coat and tweed cap, his breath steaming. He thought of thick meat sandwiches arriving in greasy paper. Around the work there was a dark penumbra of bosses and friends, number running, whores and horses, the nights, the necessary killings. And outside all of it was Cathy, her white skin and myriad freckles, her rosy nipples, humming as she brushed her hair.

‘America was good,’ he said, ‘very good business. We learned a lot. Maybe I’ll take you there one day. It’s rich, America. You can do well. And I tell you there’s better Sicilian food in New York than there is in Sicily. They have better meat there and good tomatoes from California. Olive oil you have to import. That was one thing I did. I was an importer. I’ll be doing that here too.’

Will was pleased to get out onto his motorcycle. The morning with the medical officers had made him gloomy. There was something claustrophobic and hopeless about hearing about the diseases of poverty that they were seeing. It brought into focus what Will had only sensed, made it real and enclosing. Nutritional deficiencies, parasites, diseases and deformities going untreated. At least this part of the island wasn’t malarial, nor were there the poisonings that happened round the sulphur mines. Ripping into the wind, downhill, released Will from this encounter. Probably it had not put him in the right frame of mind to meet a prince. Will was no socialist but the decaying feudalism of this part of the world was distasteful. Surely life could be better organised than princes and peasants? For all their rhetoric of machines and progress, the Fascists seemed to have left Sicily unchanged in this respect.

With the war pounding its way up into Italy, the liberation of mainland Europe underway, Will had started to think of what he might do when it was all over and, somewhat to his surprise, his thoughts had been turning to politics. With his experience, the diplomatic service would obviously have been the ideal fit but he strongly suspected that brown eyes and a middling stature would count against him there as much as in the army. The foreign service required a particular bearing born of a particular parentage, particular schools. Politics, though, was distinctly possible. He relished the slightly sordid associations of the word. He liked the verb form, also: politicking. Complexity, machination, agility, persuasion.

Finding the Prince’s house did nothing to diminish Will’s sense of the injustices of the place. The house was huge and, as the Prince soon explained, it was inhabited only by himself and his daughter. The other people Will could see were servants and estate workers. The house, then, with its many rooms, its decorated ceilings, ancient portraits and skulking dogs, was a vast store of empty privilege. The thought of a daughter, a single daughter, was intriguing. Will didn’t meet her until later. First, he met the Prince.

Prince Adriano was relatively tall for a Sicilian and he spoke with a kind of delighted gaiety that Will had noticed in some educated foreigners when they were addressing Englishmen. They thrilled to converse with a representative of the Empire, Dickens, Pall Mall gentlemen’s clubs and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Part of the pleasure seemed to lie in their acting English also, adapting their mannerisms, being clipped and reserved, and dissembling their enjoyment of the whole thing. The pleasure appeared in compacted smiles; it shone in their eyes.

The Prince was affable, meeting Will in a large vestibule. Behind him a large staircase climbed towards the light of a window. ‘I’m very pleased we got the English,’ he said. ‘This is the last outpost, no? Everything west is American.’

‘Even here too in some ways.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘We work very closely with our allies and with our allies’ allies.’

The Prince led Will into a large room where the light from the windows was doubled in an ornate, gold-framed mirror and a table and chairs were set on a rug in the middle of the tiled floor as though floating on a raft.

A servant bustled in with a tray. ‘In your honour,’ the Prince announced, ‘I thought we’d have tea. Thank you, Graziana.’

The servant, a typical peasant woman, short with thick, strong arms, seemed alarmed at hearing her name among the English words. She set down the tray and hurried out.

‘I shall be mother,’ the Prince said, quietly smiling. He poured two cups of what turned out to be flavoured yellow water and dropped half-moons of lemon into them with silver tongs. Will thought he would have preferred Italian coffee.

The Prince sat back, nursing his cup and saucer at his chest. ‘Well, let me tell you a little bit about this place,’ he began. ‘It has been in my family for a long time, since the Normans, although the building is newer than that, as you can tell. Mostly the princes have not been very interested in the estate, finding life to be more gay in Palermo or various other watering holes on the Continent. But I have always been interested in the land, the farming, and I’ve lived here for a long time. That is why I think the British will be far more sympathetic for us here. You understand the land very well, I think. Your relation with it is as long as ours. In America it all belonged to Red Indians until the day before yesterday and all they do is farm beef on those monstrous ranches or tend their crops, I am told, by aeroplane.’

Will obligingly smiled.

‘Are you from the country?’ the Prince asked. ‘Or are you more of a man about town, Piccadilly and so forth?’

‘No, I’m from the countryside. Very green and pleasant land where I’m from. I’m from the Midlands, Shakespeare’s country.’

‘Oh, wonderful. And do you farm?’

‘Not really. My father was a schoolmaster.’

‘I see. Very good.’

Will saw the wave of the Prince’s interest break. The older man relaxed back in his chair. Will felt rejected. He pursued. ‘We used to hunt.’

‘Oh, very good. I’ve never been much of a huntsman myself. This isn’t really the country for it.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Possibly. Now then, what is it I can do for you?’

Will sipped his sour tea. ‘I wanted to introduce myself and to meet you. You are plainly a significant personage in this area. And as you’ve been here, as you’ve said, for so long, you must be well acquainted with pretty much everyone. The process of identifying Fascists is rather tricky for us, trickier for us than it might be for you.’

‘Yes. Well. That’s a very complicated matter in some ways. Everyone had to deal with them. Sicily was Fascist.’

‘But not everybody had to become one.’

The Prince gazed past Will’s head, considering that formulation. ‘Yes and no,’ he said eventually. ‘They were dangerous people, also they did bring some good changes.’ He laughed. ‘One of them wanted to marry my daughter. Can you imagine? That would have been going a bit far.’

‘So, your daughter remains unmarried?’