Innocence. Julian Barnes

metallic note, repeated again and again, fainter and fainter. The dog, crouching, followed the sound with sharp attention, hoping that the sound might become a shot. And yet when I was a boy and lived here I was impatient for every morning, the Count thought. And Chiara was always clamouring to come out here, ever since she could totter about after Cesare.

      When they got back to the house the shutters had been drawn back in the spacious lavatory which had offered its row of green marble basins and urinals to shooting parties in the days of Umberto I. The shutters were drawn, too, in the dining-room. From daily habit Bernadino had grouped the oil, the salt, the pepper and the bread round the master’s place, so that he could help himself at top speed and get back to work, while the Count’s chair was drawn up in front of a barren expanse of table. When they sat down Cesare, without embarrassment, began to redistribute everything, while Bernadino, apparently propelled out of the kitchen, brought in the dish of pasta, its sauce freckled and dappled golden from the oven. The heat and fragrance seemed out of place in the astonishing cold of the room. Cesare began to break off pieces of bread and throw them into his mouth with unerring aim, then drank a little Valsassina. The wine, in the Florentine way, was not poured out for guests, who were expected to help themselves. The Count, whose digestion was not always reliable, pecked and sipped. How large my nephew’s nose is! he thought. How large his hands! From this angle he reminds me of someone quite outside the family, I think perhaps Cesare Pavese, with those brilliant eyes, not grey, not green exactly. The large nose makes him look kindly, and I know that he is kindly, but he doesn’t get any easier to talk to. In the Inferno the only ones condemned to silence are those who have betrayed their masters, Brutus and Judas in particular. Dante must have thought of them, before their punishment, as chatterers, or even as serious conversationalists, always first with the news. But, in Cesare’s case, what if he were condemned to talk!

      He pulled himself up. No one knew better than himself what difficulties Cesare must have, face to face with the bank, the Consorzio, the tenants and the stony and chalky ground, whose blood was a wine which was not permitted to be labelled classico. If his nephew were to be asked, either by divine or human authority — either on Judgement Day or by the redistribution committee of the local Communist party — whether he had made good use of his time, the answer, if Cesare could bring himself to make one, must surely be yes.

      The old woman appeared, and remarking that the fire should have been lit long ago put a shovelful of hot charcoal under the dry lavender and olive roots on the hearth. The warmth of the blaze spread courageously a little way into the room and the Count lost the connection of his thoughts, found himself repeating aloud, for no apparent reason, ‘If we could buy children with silver and gold, without women’s company! But it cannot be.’ At the same time the dog, who had been huddled underneath the table, sensed that the next course was coming and sprang convulsively to its feet. This jerked him back to attention.

      ‘The point is that Chiara wants a country wedding, here at Valsassina. I came here, I’m afraid, principally to talk about money. We could have done that on the telephone, in fact money is the only thing one can talk about successfully on the telephone, but then . . . in any case, the expenses of the whole thing would of course be mine. The details, I suppose, aren’t for you and me, but there are some caterers that Maddalena favours because she says they make pastries for the Vatican, such folly, we know that the Pacelli pope is looked after by German nuns who would never allow him to eat pastry from Florence.’ To his annoyance Bernadino, platter in hand, bent over him at this point.

      ‘Your Excellency could not find a better place to receive your guests than Valsassina. But you will explain to them when they come that I am of better family than I seem. All the land which you have been walking round this morning, if justice were done, would belong to me.’

      Cesare paid no attention whatever to this interruption. He laid down his knife and fork, but this was because he wanted to know something.

      ‘What was it you said just now about women?’

      The Count repeated the line from Euripides.

      ‘I don’t read much,’ said Cesare.

      ‘I expect you don’t have time.’

      ‘I shouldn’t read if I did have time.’

      Cesare used very few gestures, but one, not to be forgotten by anyone who ever knew him, was to spread both hands flat in front of him, as he was doing now. You got the impression that he had never sat at a table without enough room for him to do this. The hands weighed down firmly, as a press is screwed down, wood against wood.

      ‘Tell me, where did she meet this man?’

      ‘Salvatore? At a concert, it seems.’

      ‘And he’s a professional man.’

      ‘A doctor is no more professional than a farmer,’ said the Count. ‘One must never under-rate what a man’s profession means to him.’ He still counted himself as an Army man, and hoped that his nephew might remember this, but Cesare was evidently under strain, perhaps from the necessity of saying so much at one time.

      ‘He’s a neurologist, he’s a consultant at the S. Agostino. He’s very clever, no doubt about that.’

      ‘All young doctors are supposed to be clever. How old is he?’

      ‘Rather older than Chiara, I suppose in his late twenties.’

      ‘You mean he’s thirty.’

      ‘Well.’

      ‘Why is she marrying him?’

      ‘She could only have one reason. You know your cousin. She is in love. Please don’t think that I claim to be an authority on the subject, however.’

      ‘If she wants the wedding here,’ said Cesare, ‘why didn’t she ask me herself?’

      ‘I’m sure that she will, but just at the moment you must forgive her, she hardly knows what she’s doing. I would be the first to admit that it’s a regrettable state of affairs.’

      ‘There’s always time to telephone. There’s always time even to write a letter. My father sent my mother a letter from the defence of the Carso. If someone doesn’t write it means simply this, that there’s something else more important to them, even if it’s only the pleasure of doing nothing.’

      ‘You mustn’t take it in that way, Cesare. It’s not an important matter.’

      ‘You’re right, of course it isn’t.’ As they walked out to the courtyard together Cesare said: ‘I take it that the marriage won’t make any difference to Chiara’s interest here, I mean her part-share?’

      In the end, his uncle thought, he doesn’t care for anything but Valsassina.

5

      Giancarlo returned to Florence not quite sure whether anything had been decided or not. He had known his nephew, of course, since birth, and was fond of him, but knowledge is not the same thing as understanding. However, a few days later Bernadino brought a message to the apartment in Piazza Limbo. ‘Let Chiara’s wedding be at Valsassina. But no caterers, and not the Harringtons.’ This last reference Giancarlo did not quite understand.

6

      Chiara Ridolfi was a beauty, but not thought beautiful in Florence. Her American mother’s family had once been Scottish, her looks were northern, her delicate high colouring was suited not to a fierce climate but to the mild damp and mist of the north. Only the lids of her blue eyes were Florentine, round and languid, like those of Pontormo’s angels at Carmignano, the children of a long summer. Her half eager, half diffident approach to whatever came along hadn’t the ruthlessness of the ancient money-making city which in its former days had questioned the bills of the world’s greatest artists. For example, she was an alert and reckless driver, but suffered from attacks of conscience,