The Art of Waiting (8 page)

‘Our agreement is terminated with immediate effect,' Fausto declared to Luca. ‘My lawyer has prepared the necessary documentation. Please sign here. You have seven days in which to wind up
your affairs. I will be maintaining the lease in my name, and shall henceforth manage this business in the manner in which I see fit.'

Luca observed him from a perspective somewhere between pity and contempt, but leaning towards the latter sentiment.

‘I'll do no such thing. You know as well as I do that the lease is in both our names, and that one cannot strike the other off without the agreement of both parties.'

Fausto released a spluttering noise.

‘That was the deal,' continued Luca. ‘And that's why I've been doing all the work all these years. I'm not your employee, I'm your partner. And you also know that the contract between us states that I manage the business without interference, as long as we're making a profit. Now, if you'll excuse me, I still have work to do.'

Luca stood up and disappeared through the door that led into the kitchen, where Maria raised her eyes to the ceiling and shook her head.

‘Stupid bastard,' said Luca, as the front door slammed shut.

He made himself an espresso, sweet and strong, and went outside. He sat at one of the pair of small wooden tables he kept outside on either side of the door. His customers rarely used them, preferring to be in the thick of the fug and gossip indoors, but Luca liked to sit outside, especially on warm evenings when the jasmine was in bloom, and watch the light fragmenting in the canal, the waves lapping at the quayside at his feet.

On summer evenings, when the door to the restaurant was cast wide open, a breeze would sometimes blow in off the lagoon, displacing the stagnant odours that seeped out of the canal. It would reach inside the dark interior, stir up the sawdust, and play idly with the lace curtains that hung across the windows. The curtains were from the island of Burano, an hour or so by boat across to the northern end of the lagoon. It was there, at the turn of the century, in a powder-blue house towards the southern tip of the island, behind the main square, that Luca was born. On childhood winter days he had accompanied his father on walks past the brightly coloured houses of fishermen and along the windblown shore. They
would stop and sit, looking back down the lagoon in the direction of the island on which the city of Venice had emerged from the water and the mud.

‘One day I'm going to live there, Dad,' Luca would say. ‘I'm going to have my own restaurant, near San Marco, and you'll catch fish from the lagoon and bring them and we'll cook them and sell them to the tourists, and you'll eat for free whenever you want. And on special days you'll bring me the ducks that you shoot over there in the marshes, but the ducks will be just for us, not the tourists. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Dad?'

The man looked at his son and smiled. ‘Yes, Luca, I'd like that very much.'

Some forty years later, Luca's father would look out, rheumy-eyed, across the lagoon towards Murano and Venice, observe flights of ducks coming over from the south, think of Luca lying in his grave on San Michele, and wonder what had really become of his grandson, Aldo, during the war. And he would occasionally, despite the weight of his years, drag his old boat down to the water, coax the outboard into some form of life, and lose himself among the reeds.

Wild pig

Venice, autumn 1941

Dawn was creeping over the rooftops as Aldo Gardini stumbled down the stairs bleary-eyed, still dressing himself. He could hear his dad outside, cursing as he scattered a jumble of gear about on the quay, flinging in the rods and the baskets and the pans and then laying down with great care a pair of rifles wrapped in oilskin in the well of the boat. Aldo pulled on his coat, poked his head around the living-room door to whisper a good-morning to his slumbering gran, then took the last of the bags and jumped aboard just as Luca was firing up the engine. They set off up the canal, the dog an animated yapping figurehead on the bow, stopping off after a few minutes to collect Massimo and his father Paolo from their home on the other side of Cannaregio. Of course Paolo and Massimo both ate at the same kitchen table, three times a day, and the shape of each body matched the other, reflecting the volume of their intake and the joy and duration of their mealtimes. Paolo's voice boomed up out of the depths of him, bursting into song at the slightest provocation, and he started into one now as Aldo poled the boat away from the quay, and soon the dog was howling again as Paolo and Luca and each of their sons sang their way across the lagoon towards Mestre. Aldo sat at the front with his back turned to the wind and winked at Luca as Paolo bawled out the lyrics of a tale of tragic lovers, his hair thick with the salt that blew in off the sea, his face now red in the morning chill. They reached Mestre and walked the short distance to the bus station. Paolo bought the tickets and handed them round. They dumped themselves down on the bench at the back and the bus rolled out of town and onto the broad Veneto plain.

‘I tell you, Aldo, this weekend we're going to shoot the biggest boar you've ever seen,' Luca was saying as the bus pulled itself along the road. ‘An extra special fat one for your first hunting trip!'

‘That's right,' said Paolo. ‘The biggest fucking beast in the whole damned forest. And then we'll roast it right there round a fire and . . .'

‘. . . and eat the whole damned thing, no doubt!' shouted Luca. ‘All in one sitting!'

Aldo smiled at Massimo and his friend smiled back guiltily.

‘Well, maybe just a small morsel,' Massimo said quietly and patted his stomach. Aldo laughed and then looked past his friend through the window. It was a clear October day and beyond the plain Aldo could see the ground edging up at first, then the peaks lifting up behind. In the foot-hills, beside the fledgling River Piave, Luca rapped his knuckles on the hard wooden bench and the driver pulled over at the usual signal. The men and their boys tumbled along the aisle with their armfuls of gear and then out by the side of the road. They followed the path up a steep wooded slope, sunshine dappling the ground, and Paolo started to sing again as they walked. They reached the shelter where they would spend the night high up on the hillside, a rudimentary stone structure, windowless and with a heavy wooden door, a refuge for hunters or walkers or anyone lost in the mountains close to dark when the wolves were about. They unpacked the cooking pots, laid their blankets on the bare wooden bunks, and brewed a coffee.

‘What's first, then?' asked Paolo. ‘Trout or boar? Fish or flesh?'

‘Trout,' said Luca. ‘The boar will be tucked right away among the brambles until dusk.'

‘True. Let's go up to the stream, pull out some trout for lunch, then go after the boar in the evening.'

By mid-afternoon they were tramping their way back down the slope towards the hut, several brown trout slipping around in a basket slung from Aldo's shoulder, sluggish autumn flies trying to work their way between the wicker strands. They spent the rest of the afternoon smoking the fish over a fire in the clearing by the hut, all the while filling then draining metal mugs of red wine that had come
from the barrels at Casa Luca. Aldo knew the procedure well. He had heard Luca tell him all about it so many times over the years: how he would fill the bottles at the bar the night before and carry them home from Dorsoduro, through San Marco and around the long bend in the Canale Grande towards the family home in Cannaregio. He knew his father would almost certainly have made a detour to sit on the northern quays and looked across the waves towards the small island of San Michele, where the dead of Venice rested in the shadows of the long brick perimeter wall and the cypress trees stood solemn and black against the evening sky. Aldo could just imagine him now, sitting there in the twilight by the lapping lagoon, plucking out the cork with his teeth, lifting the bottle's weight to his lips, savouring the wine as it filled him with the life of the Veneto plain. Across the lagoon the wine had travelled in barrels made from the wood of Dolomite trees, in boats fashioned in the heart of Venice by the hands of mountain people, boats that carried the lifeblood of the city across the brackish lagoon, across the silting wilderness of water, weed, and mud. Luca, his son knew, would have watched the lagoon as the wine filled his mouth, an innate seam of melancholy binding him to his fragile city, narrowing the distinction between him, the water, the mud and the air to a casual difference in the arrangement of atoms.

As the last of the light turned the horizon a cool blue, Luca would have walked the rest of the way home to see if Aldo had made it back after his adventures of the previous day. Luca still did not know where his son had got to all night, and Aldo could sense both irritation and pride in his father's response. Everyone had to grow up, and Luca must have known that Aldo had gained new insight the previous evening even if he did not know quite what form it had taken or in whose company it had been acquired. But no harm had been done – Aldo had worried his mother half to death but had been back at work at the boatyard early enough in the morning not to put at risk his apprenticeship, and at lunchtime had gone round the corner to Casa Luca, taken his mother's scolding with good humour, and then sat at a table with a plate of meatballs in front of him and a faraway look in his eyes.

Luca was looking at Aldo again now as his son sat by the campfire in the fading afternoon light, pulling pink flesh from a trout. Aldo's hands bore a pattern of fresh scars, the legacy of cutting and shaping wood with unfamiliar instruments down at the boatyard in recent months. Luca looked at his own hands, large and heavy, scarred by the sawing action of fishing nets on cold days years before, in a time before he had met Fausto Pozzi and all the things that followed in his wake.

‘We should get going,' said Luca, draining the last of his wine. ‘It'll be pitch black in a couple of hours. We want to get at those boar while we can still see them, don't we, son?'

Aldo brushed remnants of trout from his lips and nodded. Luca disappeared into the hut with Paolo to get the guns. They showed Aldo and Massimo how to use them, how to flick the safety catches off and on, how to grip the gun and feel the butt tight against your shoulder as you aimed the thing. Then they set off. The forest was beginning to twitch around them as they walked and a squirrel bounced along a branch overhead, silhouetted against what was left of the day. Then Aldo heard the sound of something approaching from further down the hill.

‘Well, look who it is,' whispered Luca as Fausto Pozzi appeared among the trees.

For a moment it looked as though he would not notice the group. Then the dog growled and Fausto stopped and turned.

‘Hey, fancy bumping into you lot up here!' he called out as Luca uttered a sudden and violent profanity. ‘A little bird told me you'd be here, Luca, so I thought I'd pop along and see if I could shoot myself a boar or two. You don't mind, do you?'

Luca spat at the ground and swore again.

‘Anyway, shouldn't you be at the bar, Luca? It's Saturday night. We must make a profit, you know.'

‘Come on, let's go,' said Luca to the others, but Fausto set off after them anyway, his ursine gait exaggerated by the setting. They left him behind as they quickened their pace, but Aldo could hear his footsteps padding some distance behind, dogged in his
pursuit. Then his footsteps faded, and Aldo turned and Fausto was gone.

‘Right, then,' said Luca. ‘We should split into twos. Too many together and the boar will scarper.'

‘You and me, then?' said Paolo.

‘What, and the boys together?'

Paolo nodded.

‘Well, I guess . . .' said Luca. ‘Are you up to it, lads?'

‘Course we are,' said Massimo. ‘Aren't we, Aldo?'

‘Of course.'

‘Well, all right, I suppose it'll be good for you,' said Luca. ‘Character-building, out and about in the dark without your old man.'

‘Sure,' said Aldo, and off they set in their different directions.

Aldo and Massimo headed down into a glade, then into the trees on the other side. Aldo could hear their fathers' progress through the trees maybe a hundred yards away. It was hard to tell distances at night, especially when you were unaccustomed to the tricks the night could play on you. Massimo's stomach suddenly rumbled, long and loud in the quiet dusk.

‘Fucking hell. Can't you shut that thing up? You made me bloody jump.'

‘Sorry, Aldo.' Massimo let out a noisy belch.

‘Jesus Christ, there'll be no animals left in the forest if you carry on like that.'

They carried on down the path, Massimo a few paces behind, panting like a beast. God, Aldo thought, we've got no chance this evening. Then Massimo tripped and fell and dead branches strewn about by summer storms cracked noisily under his weight.

‘For fuck's sake!' said Aldo, out loud now, all hope of furtive stalking now gone.

But then a snort and a scuffle, and shapes moving between the trees in front of them, a line of black shadows. A mother and her young.

‘Quick,' said Massimo. ‘Let's shoot the fuckers.'

But as he pulled up his rifle the shapes crashed away into the undergrowth and Aldo sighed as he heard the sound of them receding into the forest.

‘Come on, you fat bastard,' he whispered. ‘Let's get after them.'

And he hared off, Massimo wheezing along after him. Suddenly Aldo stopped, a noise in front of him again, then a shape. Then he heard the voice. Fausto Pozzi.

‘Who's that?' Fausto said.

‘Me.'

‘Aldo?'

‘And Massimo.'

Massimo was standing at Aldo's shoulder now.

‘Why were you two making such a racket?' said Fausto. ‘I could hear you a mile off.'

‘It wasn't us,' said Massimo. ‘It was the boar. Loads of them.'

‘Yes, I heard them too. You'll learn to tell the difference.'

‘They'll be miles away now,' said Aldo.

‘Not necessarily,' said Fausto. ‘Sometimes they go to ground. Especially if they have young ones with them.'

‘Oh they did,' said Massimo. ‘Lots of young ones, little babies. Didn't they, Aldo?'

Aldo nodded.

‘Good,' said Fausto. ‘Let's wait here for a while, then. If they've gone to ground, they're bound to move again before too long.'

‘If Massimo keeps quiet, that is,' said Aldo.

‘Sorry,' said Massimo, and his stomach rumbled again. ‘Must be nerves.'

‘If they move,' said Fausto, ‘then we wait, we listen, we assess their direction. If necessary, we follow, silently. Then we shoot. All right?'

‘Yes,' said Aldo.

‘Sure,' said Massimo. ‘Whatever you say, you're the boss.'

Fausto grunted his approval.

‘Aldo, you have the first shot,' he said. ‘Let's see how good you are, see if you're as good as your dad.'

Then another noise, something in the trees, down in the
direction the wild pigs had gone. Fausto moved off silently and the boys followed. There was a shadow among the trees again, and a shape, maybe more than one, something darker than the night, and Fausto turned momentarily, pausing. Then a crack and a scuff as something heavy pushed its way through the branches, and a heavy breath or a snort, then rustling.

‘Listen, Aldo. Can you hear it?'

There was an excitement in Fausto Pozzi's voice and Aldo felt the excitement welling up in him too. The boar were back! He wanted to cry out, to release the unbearable tension. The noise came again, something indefinable and heavy, moving slowly, too ponderous for a wolf, too substantial to be some kind of wildfowl, almost too big for a boar. It must be a huge one! What a prize for your first night as a hunter. How it would look, its head mounted on an oak board in Casa Luca, for everyone to admire. And how proud Luca would be of his son, first time out, bagging the biggest beast in the forest, just as Luca had said he would, shooting the biggest fucking boar any of them had ever seen. And his mother cooking up the meat, the men at Casa Luca feasting for weeks on it, thinking of Aldo every time they sat down and chewed. Even for Massimo it would be a notable meal! Aldo felt a sudden upwards pressure on the barrel of his gun, Fausto leaning his hand up into it, then leaning in to Aldo's ear and whispering his instructions.

‘I'm just going over there, Aldo, to cover their escape. When I whistle, you shoot, understand?'

‘Yes,' said Aldo, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Fausto moving away, now just a shadow among the trees.

The beast was passing directly in front of him now, deep in the undergrowth, just yards away. Aldo raised his rifle and pressed the stock into his shoulder. He swallowed hard. Then he heard Fausto's whistle. He hesitated for a moment and the whistle came again. His finger tightened and there was the flash and the bang of his gun and an instant later an echo of equal resonance, almost as if someone had let off both barrels at once. Something fell in a great splintering of branches. A dog was barking. A man howled, then began choking
out barely intelligible words. Another man began to shout and swear, his curses deafening.

Fausto Pozzi came and stared at Aldo, his eyes now bright and clear, burning in the night. ‘Oh my God, Aldo. What have you done?'