The American Read Free

of Cicero, or Virgil, the Sabines or the magic of Sirmio? Nothing. History was for them half-registered fragments about geese saving a city or Caligula eating his unborn child. History was an old man mumbling in his cups. They had no time for history when a clipped coin was worth less by the week, their taxes rose by the month, the price of their flour rocketed and hot weather frayed their tempers.’
    ‘Men like to be remembered—’ Father Benedetto begins.
    ‘So legend might build them into someone grander,’ I interrupt.
    ‘Do you not want to make your mark, my son?’
    He calls me that when he wants to annoy me. I am not his son, nor a child of his church. Not any longer.
    ‘Perhaps,’ I admit, smiling. ‘But whatever I do shall be irrefutable. Not open to misinterpretation.’
    His glass is empty and he reaches for the bottle.
    ‘So you live for the future?’
    ‘Yes.’ I am emphatic. ‘I live for the future.’
    ‘And what is the future but history yet to arrive?’
    His eyebrows rise questioningly and he gives my glass a wink.
    ‘No, no more. Thank you. I must be going. It is late and I have some preliminary sketches to complete.’
    ‘Art?’ Father Benedetto exclaims. ‘That is irrefutable. Your signature on a unique painting.’
    ‘One can put one’s signature on more than paper,’ I reply. ‘One can write in the sky.’
    He laughs and I bid him farewell.
    ‘You should come to Mass,’ he says, quietly.
    ‘God is history. I have no use for him.’ This, I realize, may hurt the priest, so I add, ‘If he exists I am sure he has no use for me.’
    ‘There you are wrong. Our Lord has a use for everyone.’
    Father Benedetto does not know me, though he thinks he does. If he did know me, he would most certainly readjust his judgement. But then, just maybe – it would be a supreme irony worthy of God – he is correct.
    ‘ Signor Farfalla! Signore! La posta! ’
    Signora Prasca calls every morning from the fountain in the courtyard below. It is her ritual. It is a sign of being old, maintaining a routine. My routine, however, is temporary. I do not yet have the luxury afforded those of my age of being able to set my life to a series of conformities.
    ‘Thank you!’
    Every weekday, when there is mail for me, is identical. She calls in Italian, I reply in English, she invariably responding, ‘ Sulla balaustrata! La posta! Sulla balaustrata, signore! ’
    When I come down a storey to lean over the edge of the third-floor balcony, and peer down into the gloom of the courtyard into which the sun only strikes for an hour and half in the middle of the day in the middle of the year, I can see the letters balancing on the stone pillar at the foot of the banisters. She always stacks them with the largest letter on the bottom of the pile, the smallest on top. As the smallest is usually a postcard or a letter in a small envelope, it is inevitably the brightest, glimmering in the half-light like a coin or a religious medal cast optimistically down a well.
    Signor Farfalla, she calls me. So do the others in the neighbourhood. Luigi who owns the bar in the Piazza di S Teresa. Alfonso in the garage. Clara the pretty one and Dindina the plain one. Galeazzo the bookshop owner. Father Benedetto. They do not know my real name, so they call me Mr Butterfly. I like it.
    To the confusion of Signora Prasca, letters come addressed to me either as Mr A. Clarke, Mr A.E. Clarke or Mr E. Clark. These are all aliases. Some even come addressed to M Leclerc, others to Mr Giddings. She does not question this and her gossip causes no conjecture. No suspicion is aroused, for this is Italy and people mind their own business, accustomed to the Byzantine intrigues of men who live alone.
    I send most of the mail: if I am away, I post an empty envelope or two to myself, or write out a postcard, disguising my hand, purporting to be from a relative. I have a fictitious favourite niece who addresses me as Uncle and signs herself Pet. I