Adam Foulds - In the Wolf's Mouth

‘And what about Cassini? Did he seem plausible?’

‘He too was … circumspect at first. He’s quite a big man, around the shoulders, but he looked small. He looked like he’s not used to speaking to strangers. And his dialect is so thick I had to have bits translated. What he did say was pretty extraordinary. He said that Albanese had threatened his daughter, that he tried to burn down his olive trees and had killed his dog. Cut its throat and left it on his doorstep. Grotesque, isn’t it? Can you imagine the savagery, to slit the throat of an innocent dog like that?’

‘I’m sure the dog’s the least of it.’

Will looked up. ‘Not for the dog. And it’s indicative. The things Cassini was saying. I think the man’s paranoid. He was talking about a big conspiracy of criminals growing now in Sicily. And all this while we were eating this delicious dessert with flowers in it, actual fragrant flowers. I was eating flowers that had been collected from this enormous garden with paths and statuary.’

‘Can we confront Albanese at this point?’

‘I’m not sure what to do. I mean, if it’s true, then this is very big news. The whole reconstruction effort, all of AMGOT, if it’s being used … I mean the implication was very much that he’s not the only one.’

‘Hang on. If it was Albanese’s property before the Fascists — which it was, wasn’t it? — then hasn’t he got a point? A valid claim?’

‘I suppose it depends how he came by it but it is ambiguous.’

‘Didn’t he lease it from the Prince if it belongs to him? How do you get a lease against the owner’s will?’

‘How do you? Threats? Vandalism? We need to corroborate this stuff. I think I need to take action of some kind. Perhaps pre-emptively arrest Albanese and get some answers out of him.’

‘Really? You should contact Messina, no?’

‘That’s a very feeble attitude.’

‘No it isn’t. That would be procedure, wouldn’t it?’

‘It might be but …’

‘So you should. You don’t want them coming back at you, or the Americans.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

Samuels was so infuriating. Compact and logical, in his pragmatism (a man who liked electrical machines), he presented hard impervious surfaces. Will wanted to kick him and break him open. And just as Will was starting to think he wasn’t so bad.

‘You don’t know the first of it, Samuels. You don’t know how volatile and just barmy this place is. The weirdest thing Cassini said this evening was that there was a witch Albanese and his associates consulted and that she’d know everything.’

‘A witch?’

‘Precisely. Mad, isn’t it? Should I try interrogating a witch?’

‘If you’re happy to take the risk of being turned into a frog.’

‘I know. A witch! Where are we? They go to her for cures as well, apparently. I mean, everybody does. Perhaps I will try and track her down. Bound to be a diverting afternoon.’

‘Meanwhile, in the real world, Messina.’

‘But this is the real world. Frightened princes, criminal conspiracies, people slitting the throats of dogs, witches.’

‘It’s not my real world.’

‘It is for now. We have to make sense of it.’

‘We have to control it.’

‘Precisely.’

To Angilù, his own family was so beautiful and strange. You live as a shepherd and you might as well be living on the surface of the moon. You sing songs, you make fires and keep yourself warm, but you’re always alone. You live in the distance. You know that you are a fly on a wall, a tiny figure moving up the hillside surrounded by the coloured points of your animals, flowing and halting. You know that their bells can be heard from far away. To the person in town they’d be quieter than stones clicking underfoot or the noise of a grasshopper. There’s so much space you can’t come back from it, even after years, years of people.

Sometimes from across the table Angilù felt himself looking at his wife and daughters as if he were looking at Sant’Attilio from the hills. Staring at them now he felt that there was nothing he could do, that the empty air around their heads would be there after his death, offering no protection. There had to be something he could do.

He looked and couldn’t think of anything. He wanted to escape. He had the urge to get up into the hills, to be in that place again. Maybe it would help.

There was a mule on the estate, a good one, four years old, that Angilù decided he would take.

The mule was a good mule, strong and intelligent. He sat on it with his shotgun on his shoulder and started uphill, the reins pulling at his hands, the sun strong on his arms and shoulders, heating the air caught inside his hat.

In front of him the ground flinched now and again with jumping crickets. Around him they made their dense, wiry sound, the sound of heat and stones and dry plants.

He crossed into an area where the battle had been. This was new to him. The familiar land was altered, ulcerated with small craters. Something had happened here that didn’t care about the land. It had been used. The atmosphere was strange. There was a large burned-out gun still standing. It looked like a humiliated and foolish creature, its long nose blackened by flames. Angilù wondered at it. A place of fury, where men had run for their lives. A tinkling below him: the mule had dislodged rifle bullet casings and they rolled along the ground. Glinting gold pellets. As he moved, the light caught others and he saw them scattered around.

Angilù didn’t know where he was going particularly. Up was his only thought as he followed a route he remembered, a path that was like travelling into his memories. Going hard uphill, the mule snorted and snaked its neck. Angilù saw a tuft of a particular kind of plant growing along a crack in a rock and stopped the animal. Swinging one foot over its skull he got down to strip a few leaves from the fibrous stalks and chew. Sharp lemon and a young green astringency, slightly dusty. It was just as he remembered. A flavour in the hills. Something waiting to happen inside him or whoever passed. Angilù felt sweat as a coolness trickling in his beard. He ran a hand around his chin, flapped the hot air into his face with his hat and then, groaning, remounted.

Riding on he saw that someone had been along there not too long before. Outside a little rock-shelf cave someone had left two snares for foxes. Nothing in them, they lay ready. A fox could be eaten if you really had to and killing them meant that it was more likely you would get to the rabbits or partridges before they did. He hadn’t been up here for so long but it was all coming back to him. It returned him to an old unhappiness that was soothing in its simplicity.

He remembered that around the next height he would be able to look down at Sant’Attilio. And there it was. He dismounted by some low, woody bushes that would keep the mule there browsing. Angilù walked towards the view, his back hurting a little from the ride. Sitting down on the ground, he stared at the huddle of terracotta roofs, the stripe of road, the church tower, the little streets that seemed turned away from the main road for privacy, the houses whisperingly close to each other. Always interesting: to look down at Sant’Attilio and work out what was where, who was here and there. This distracted Angilù for a moment and he felt calm until his fears returned. They swarmed around him, getting closer, tighter.

The Englishman seemed like he would be no help. Angilù hadn’t trusted the look on his face while he listened to him. And what had he said in reaction? The Princess had translated for Angilù. ‘It sounds like you’re in a bit of trouble.’ Something like that. A bit. He had no understanding at all.