A Darkness Descending Read online

  Chapter Three

  ‘YOU’VE HEARD OF HIM, right? Have you even seen the papers this morning?’

  Giuli was waiting for him in the office, even twitchier than usual as Sandro came past her into the sunlit room. A tiny cup of takeaway espresso sat on his desk, kept warm by a twist of paper napkin over the top, two newspapers folded beside it. His priorities set at caffeine rather than news, Sandro dropped the briefcase down heavily in his seat and downed the coffee in one, standing beside his desk.

  ‘Not enough, this morning,’ he said. ‘Shall we go out for another?’

  Giuli gave him one of her looks.

  There was something about her this morning: he’d got used to the new, put-together Giuli, he realized, lipstick, clothes neat if not always conventional, groomed. This morning she was wearing scuffed boots and hadn’t brushed her hair.

  Hold on, he thought. It’s Tuesday: she’s not even supposed to be here.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at the Women’s Centre?’ he asked.

  ‘Rosselli,’ she repeated impatiently. ‘I was at that meeting last night. You’ve heard of him, right?’ When Sandro just watched her, trying to make his brain shift a gear, she said impatiently, ‘I’ll go out and get you another, if necessary, but I don’t think this is something we can talk about in a bar. Not in San Frediano, at any rate. This is his turf.’ She took a breath. ‘I said I wasn’t well,’ she said. ‘I’m going in after lunch.’

  Sandro frowned. She took the Women’s Centre very seriously, as a rule: it had been her lifeline when she’d come out of prison.

  But he said nothing. ‘Rosselli,’ he repeated, instead. Yes, he knew him. ‘He’s your guy. Your leader. The – what’s it? – Frazione Verde.’

  Heard of him? Yes, Sandro had heard of him. On every street corner in the Oltrarno, it seemed, the little designs had appeared, spray-painted through a stencil, rather neat and clever: Frazione = Azione, in fluorescent green. They were creeping north of the river too. One had even appeared mysteriously on the corner of their building in Santa Croce, riding the tidemark of street dirt that rose higher every summer. Under it the impassioned scrawl, in sprayed black: Niccolò Rosselli è nostro Gandhi.

  ‘Niccolò Rosselli is our Gandhi.’ What man would want that? Look how it ended. And what was this about the papers?

  He studied Giuli’s face, feeling the beginnings of a headache, then following her gaze down he broke off, the front page of the newspaper getting his attention at last. Giuli unfolded the newspaper in front of him with exaggerated care.

  There was an inset photograph of an unshaven man in thick glasses, handsome once perhaps, now too gaunt and intense for good looks, staring fiercely from the page. And the bigger photograph was a fuzzy night shot of an ambulance parked on the Via Sant’Agostino outside an old church, something being loaded into the back and a blur of faces staring from the pavement, the ubiquitous elderly woman rubbernecking as she walked her dog.

  ‘ROSSELLI COLLAPSES AT RALLY’ was the headline.

  ‘He’s in hospital?’ Sandro frowned down at the bleak photograph. The ambulance on the pavement, the curious bystanders. ‘Is he all right?’

  At the innocuous question, gently put, Giuli sat down quite suddenly at his desk, her spiky, determined little face collapsing into anxiety. She tugged the briefcase out from under her and shoved it on to the desk. Sandro pulled up the chair reserved for clients, although Giuli seemed not to notice the reversal in their roles, she was so distracted.

  ‘They let him go,’ she said, twisting her fingers together on the desktop. ‘No one thinks he’s all right.’

  ‘Giuli,’ said Sandro gently, prising her hands apart and holding them. ‘What is this political thing of yours? You were never into politics. What is this man to you?’

  She looked up and he could see she was all prepared to go into battle, eyes burning, but then it seemed to dawn on her that she was talking to him, to Sandro Cellini, the closest thing to a father and protector she had ever had, and the blaze went out of her. ‘Is it – Enzo?’ He tried to sound reasonable, friendly. ‘Has he got you into this?’

  ‘No,’ she began indignantly, pushing his hands away and shoving herself back in the seat. ‘No! Do you think I haven’t got a mind of my own?’

  ‘That’s the last thing I think, cara.’ He could see her frown at the endearment: he never called her by anything but her name. And saw her decide not to feel patronized. She was growing up, his Giuli. She let out a breath and her narrow frame collapsed a little more in the chair.

  ‘I just don’t understand this – this Frazione Verde thing.’ He could hear the unease in his own voice. ‘And I don’t like to see you like this. All fired up, all emotional – I don’t know. I like – an even keel. The middle of the road, a quiet life. What do they stand for, after all? Your party.’

  Giuli was staring at him. She knew what he was saying, all right. ‘I’m clean, Sandro,’ she said distinctly. ‘I’m not in it for the rush. I love my place, the city, Santo Spirito, the people. And it’s all going to ratshit, isn’t it? This government … I want to – do something for other people, to be part of something. You ask what the Frazione stands for?’

  Sandro lifted his head, listening.

  ‘Change,’ Giuli said defiantly. ‘Concentrating on the local, and working up. Just – change. It feels good, yeah. But it’s the right kind of good.’

  Sandro shoved the briefcase with the insurance claim away from him across the scuffed leather of the desktop. Reluctantly he leaned over and turned the computer on under Giuli’s gaze, her arms folded as she waited.

  ‘What are you, my conscience?’ he said irritably. ‘Bad enough with Luisa at home. I’ve got work to do, you know,’ nodding towards the briefcase. ‘I’ll manage better without you looking over my shoulder.’

  ‘I’m nobody’s conscience,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I’m just worried about him. Nobody’s telling us anything.’

  Sandro leaned back in the chair and examined her fierce, frowning face. ‘Who is there to ask?’ he said.

  The frown relaxed, just marginally. ‘That’s the trouble, really,’ said Giuli. “The Frazione – well, it’s grown, kind of, organically.’ Sandro winced at the word: even Giuli seemed embarrassed saying it. What did it mean?

  ‘Because of that, there aren’t any – any structures,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘Power structures, hierarchy. It’s all very – democratic. The office is a little box room behind the hall, with a couple of computers. We all turn up to the meetings, everyone who wants to can have their say, and Rosselli – well, he kind of listens, then sort of puts our thoughts into order. Reinterprets them.’

  ‘So what’s the – um – manifesto?’

  Giuli shifted, uncertain. ‘It’s to do with local people, and resistance to city hall decisions that affect lives. To do with asking questions.’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘Rubbish collection,’ she said, ‘education, local health provision, the clinic. Money pulled for a new nursery and put into roadbuilding for some retail park instead. You’ve heard of the development on the edge of Scandicci? Business interests are being set over people’s interests.’

  Sandro looked at her mildly. ‘Isn’t there an argument about economics in there too? Jobs being provided – for local people? Aren’t you being a bit simplistic?’ He was unprepared for the answering flash in her eyes.

  ‘This country,’ she said. ‘You know as well as I do, those jobs will go to someone’s cousin, someone’s nephew. We might pick up the drudge work. But our community will be changed, invaded. Houses and gardens will go.’

  Sandro blinked at her certainty. ‘Maybe you should stand yourself,’ he said. ‘You’re good at this.’ But he felt unaccountably anxious for her: it wasn’t that simple, in the end. She went on staring at him.

  ‘So who’s in charge?’ He pulled the computer back towards him, and typed the words ‘Frazione Verde’ into the search engine.

  ‘
There’s Rosselli.’ She chewed her lip. ‘There’s a lawyer, too. Was at college with him, I think, his name’s Bastone.’ She hesitated. ‘He was on the stage with him last night, he – well, I don’t know if he knew what was coming, but before Roselli went down, his friend put out his hand, like, to keep him steady or something.’

  She took a breath: Sandro scrutinized her, holding his peace.

  ‘So he’s literally the right-hand man. Otherwise, it’s all very – makeshift still. There’s Rosselli’s wife, of course. She used to be the kind of secretary, taking the minutes, administration, only she’s taken a step back since – are you listening?’

  A gaudy page had come up, bright green and ill-designed. Giuli leaned down, beaming. ‘That’s Enzo,’ she said. Sandro frowned: he could only see the same shot of Rosselli that the newspaper had used. ‘I mean, Enzo designed their webpage,’ she said shyly. ‘Democratic, you see.’

  Sandro had to restrain himself from shaking his head at the limitations of democracy. ‘I didn’t know he was a web designer,’ was all he said, mildly. Knowing quite well that in fact Enzo was a computer engineer and that design, quite clearly, was not his forte.

  ‘No, he’s—’ Giuli’s face dropped a little as she broke off, understanding.

  ‘There’s a number,’ he said, peering down at the page. Giuli shook her head. ‘That’s Rosselli’s home number,’ she said. ‘No one’s answering, or it’s engaged – or off the hook most likely, because people will be calling, won’t they? They must be loving this. Wanting him to fail. Wanting us to fail.’

  ‘Who?’ Sandro asked, impatiently. ‘Who is this they?’ The look she turned on him almost made him smile, it was so full of pity and contempt. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Feeling that they were at an impasse that could only get worse, he looked back at the screen.

  ‘He was going to stand as a deputy, with no – no structures in place? No nothing, leaving aside this college friend, this lawyer? No advisors, no manifesto, no platform?’

  ‘If you can elect a porn star, why not Rosselli?’ said Giuli savagely. ‘Did she have a manifesto?’

  ‘I believe she did,’ said Sandro drily. They were talking about La Cicciolina, elected in the eighties, though plenty of other jokers had been elected since. ‘Hers involved something about cuddles.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s democracy in action.’ Giuli said nothing, her expression darkening.

  Turning to the window, Sandro saw that the air outside was clear and soft and blue. He needed another coffee, and the briefcase on his desk reproached him: real work. ‘Giuli, I don’t know what you want me to do,’ he said.

  She perched like a schoolchild on the edge of the chair, hands white-knuckled as she clasped them together. This really had got to her, and he still didn’t know why. ‘What?’ he said gently. ‘Tell me.’

  She looked up. ‘Them,’ she said mulishly. ‘Whatever you say – they’re out there. He’s a threat to them. Rosselli – Niccolò. He’s got too powerful, his voice has grown too loud.’

  ‘Niccolò,’ repeated Sandro. First-name terms, was it? What was this man to Giuli? She looked into his face, imploringly, and he tried not to think that way. Tried instead to think back to a time when he’d been idealistic, had believed in – something. Had he ever? ‘You think he’s in danger? You think there’s some kind of a conspiracy.’

  He couldn’t keep the dull scepticism out of his voice. It sounded wrong to him: it sounded false and melodramatic; it didn’t sound like Giuli. ‘But you don’t know who’s behind it. Is this you talking, Giuli? Or some kind of mass hysteria?’

  For a long moment they stared at each other and Sandro felt a shiver of foreboding, saw the breach ahead. Had he seen Giuli through so much only for some tinpot little bunch of green zealots to steal her from him?

  And then she spoke. ‘You don’t know what it was like,’ she said, her voice cracking, the fervour gone, and with a relief he dared not show Sandro knew he still had her.

  ‘To see him go down like that.’ Her eyes were wide at the memory. ‘Keel over, like he’d been shot, or poisoned. And I saw it coming, you know? Had like a – a premonition. It seemed like – like all those assassinations: we really thought that’s what it was. It means something, Sandro, I just don’t know what, yet.’ And he could see that she was holding her hands together tight so that he wouldn’t see that she was shaking.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. We’ll see if we can get to the bottom of it, shall we? We’ll see what we can do.’

  And for now the insurance claim and the briefcase and even the second cup of coffee receded beyond hope of return.

  ‘We start with the college friend,’ he said. ‘The lawyer.’

  *

  In the café opposite the post office – where she had just dropped off a parcel – Luisa stood at the red marble bar and hoped it was going to be all right. The kind of involuntary thought she tried, actually, not to have: Luisa preferred to take the position that it would be all right. One doubter and fretter in the family – if you could call it a family – was enough. Slowly she stirred the coffee that sat in front of her on the bar, saw the barman glance over.

  And what exactly did she hope was going to be all right? Well, a number of things, that was the trouble. One problem at a time, then. Fine.

  Sandro would forget that it was her annual check-up next week, she was pretty sure of that.

  It didn’t worry her. It wasn’t the check-up, it hadn’t even been the breast cancer itself, when it came, that frightened her, only what came with it. The look on other people’s faces was what it boiled down to. Even three years later there was still the ghost of that look. Furtive, guilty, evasive.

  If truth be told, Luisa rather hoped Sandro had forgotten about the check-up, because she’d prefer to slip off there on her own without having to look into his anxious face in the waiting room. She remembered last time. His expression when she came out of the cubicle in the backless gown, as if she was already in her shroud: after that she hadn’t let him in for the mammogram for fear he’d faint dead away. It didn’t count as an invasive procedure but it sure enough felt like one, and looked like one, being cranked and squeezed and manhandled into a machine.

  ‘Signora?’ The barman was peering into Luisa’s face with concern: she must have been grimacing. Did he know? She couldn’t remember if he knew about her missing breast, this young man who served her coffee a few times a week. He probably did. Sometimes it seemed to Luisa that everyone in Florence knew, and it irritated her. She raised the coffee hastily to her lips. It had gone quite cold, but it was still good. She gave the barman an imperious look.

  Dairy products were bad for you: so was coffee, so was wine. Luisa had never smoked, although both of her parents had; she must have absorbed more nicotine than a fly-paper as a kid. She had pored over the risk factors and causes, and had emerged none the wiser. It had made Sandro angry to see her frowning, and refusing a glass of wine: ‘What’s the point?’ he’d say. Not like you can go back and change it now. And even if you could, Luisa had concluded after a month or so of useless fretting, perhaps you wouldn’t. Life is for living, for tasting the things you like to taste. And it seemed to Luisa that even if it meant living five, ten years longer, it wouldn’t be worth losing sight of what brought pleasure.

  Outside a beggar stood on the steps of the post office. He swivelled to follow each customer in and out, his cap held before him, and she could see his mouth murmur those few words. Uno spicciolo per mangiare. Quite a respectable-looking beggar: white moustache, dark wool jacket shiny at the elbows, baggy serge trousers. An old-fashioned sort of beggar, deferential and formal. She could see he was quite successful; people responded to tradition. Meanwhile, at the other end of the arcade the Roma women would be working their pitch, long braids swinging, often a baby held across the body carelessly in a sling of flowered fabric. Luisa, who had no children although she had given birth once long ago, to a girl who died two days later, set her
face against these women even if she knew, at bottom, that they – and their babies – probably needed her pity. Needed her loose change more.

  Luisa’s mother had given to beggars, as a protective measure, a superstition. Luisa took out her purse and looked in it, fingered a two-euro coin and put it in the pocket of her jacket. She would not do it out of superstition, though.

  So what else did she hope would be all right, if not the damned check-up? Well, that first, get it out of the way. The bus to Careggi, the stuffy waiting room, the gown and the examination. She could get through that just planning what she would cook for dinner and, at a pinch, what she would wear to work the following day: her own perfectly well-regulated strategies.

  On the small high table beside Luisa was a newspaper. Not thinking, she turned it towards her, stared at the headline without registering what it said.

  That morning she had arrived at the shop half an hour early, as she often did: she had gone into the stock room where there was a small mirror, removed her blouse and her slip and her brassiere, and looked at herself.

  Why she could not do this at home she didn’t know. On one side a round breast, well proportioned, slightly low under the weight of years and gravity but a good shape. On the other side a curved and puckered scar, faded now to silvery-white. It had been first an angry red, purplish, and a rash had come and gone.

  They would ask her again about reconstruction, next week. Luisa didn’t know what she would say: even the question seemed an intrusion too far. She had stood there perhaps two, three minutes, looking at herself. She’d caught her own stern expression as she put the bra back on. Sandro did not discuss it: he gave no sign, in fact, of ever having noticed that her body was any different, although to Luisa it was as different as if she had had her leg removed. They did not mention it. Perhaps they would never have to. She told herself the thought should be reassuring, but somehow it was not.

  Now in front of the window in the Caffè della Posta, Luisa looked away from the newspaper and down at herself. The place was crowded, no one was watching her, but she didn’t much care anyway. The blouse was loose, so you couldn’t tell, unless you were really looking. And who really looked at a woman in her sixties? In a sweater she could tell: the prosthesis sometimes slipped a little. But who looked? Quickly Luisa shifted her gaze aside, back to the newspaper: she unfolded it in a pretence of reading to distract herself.