A Noble Radiance Read Free

brusqueness of the reply, but when he did, he
stepped on to the ploughed earth and went to stand beside the other doctor.
Neither man said anything for a long time as they stood side by side and
watched the two men in the trench scrape away slowly at the dirt.
    After a few minutes,
one of the men handed Doctor Bortot another bone, which, with a quick glance,
he bent and placed at the end of the other wrist. Two more bones; two more
quick placements.
    'There, on your left,
Pizzetti,' Bortot said, pointing to a tiny white knob that lay exposed on the
far side of the trench. The man he spoke to glanced at it, bent and picked it
from the earth, and handed it up to the doctor. Bortot studied it for a moment,
holding it delicately between his first two fingers, then turned to the German.
'Lateral cuneiform?' he asked.
    Litfin pursed his
lips as he looked at the bone. Even before the German could speak, Bortot
handed it to him. Litfin turned it in his hands for a moment, then glanced down
at the pieces of bone laid out on the plastic at their feet. 'That, or it might
be the intermediate’ he answered, more comfortable with the Latin than the
Italian.
    ‘Yes, yes, it could
be,' Bortot replied. He waved his hand down towards the plastic sheet, and
Litfin stooped to place it at the end of the long bone leading to the foot. He
stood up and both men looked at it. ']a,
Ja’ Litfin muttered;
Bortot nodded.
    And so for the next
hour the two men stood together beside the trench left by the tractor, first
one and then the other taking a bone from the two men who continued to sift the
rich earth through the tilted screen. Occasionally they conferred about a
fragment or sliver, but generally they agreed about the identity of what was
passed up to them by the two diggers.
    The spring sun poured
down on them; off in the distance, a cuckoo began his mating call, repeating it
until the four men were no longer aware of it. As it grew hotter, they began to
peel off their coats and then their jackets, all of which ended up hung on the
lower branches of the trees running along the side of the field to mark the end
of the property.
    To pass the time,
Bortot asked a few questions about the house, and Litfin explained that the
exterior restorations were finished; there remained the interior work, which he
estimated would take much of the summer. When Bortot asked the other doctor why
he spoke Italian so well, Litfin explained that he had been coming to Italy on
vacation for twenty years and, during the last, to prepare himself for the
move, had been taking classes three times a week. The bells from the village
above them rang out twelve times.
    I think that might be
all, Dottore’ one of the men in the trench said and, to emphasize it, struck
his shovel deep into the ground and rested his elbow on it. He took out a pack
of cigarettes and lit one. The other man stopped as well, took out a handkerchief
and wiped his face.
    Bortot looked down at
the patch of excavated earth, now about three metres square, then down at the
bones and shrivelled organs spread out on the plastic sheeting.
    Litfin suddenly
asked, 'Why did you think it’s a young man?'
    Before answering,
Bortot bent down and picked up the skull. 'The teeth,' he said, handing it to
the other man.
    But instead of
looking at the teeth, which were in good condition and with no sign of the
wearing-away of age, Litfin, with a, small grunt of surprise, turned the skull
to expose the back. In the centre,  just above the indentation that would fit
around the still-missing final vertebra, there was a small round hole. He had
seen enough of skulls and of violent death that he was neither shocked nor
disturbed.
    'But why male?' he
asked, handing the skull back to Bortot.
    Before he answered,
Bortot knelt and placed the skull back in its place at the top of the other
bones. 'This: it was near the skull’ he said as he stood, taking something
from his jacket pocket and handing it to Litfin. 'I don't think