I was trembling all over, but not with cold. Not to go back to Mimmo’s house, where she was waiting. Not to tell her that I had saved her, that she was safe. Not to hold her again, or even see her. To do that would be to implicate her, though. I had to disappear from her life as abruptly as Stufa had disappeared from mine. I had to leave her with the beginning of a story, but no middle, and no end. He left in the afternoon, she would say. It was snowing. He did not return.
I rode back through the village. On the main street, at the top of the slope, two boys were building a snowman.
‘He could use a nose,’ I said, ‘don’t you think?’
I threw them a carrot from my bag.
In the future, if someone came to Torremagna, asking questions, the boys would remember me. Their version of events would be sketchy, incomplete – filled with enough unlikeliness to be believable. Yes, we saw him. He gave us a nose – for our snowman. They would grin at each other. He was riding one horse, leading another. Black and white, I think. No, no rider. With those words, the trail would go cold.
If someone came.
Because if Stufa had been telling the truth – if he had really acted on his own – no one in Florence would have the slightest idea where he had gone.
I headed east along a white dirt road. Over a range of wooded hills and down into the nearby market town. Then north, up a wide, bleak plain. The Val di Chiana. I had lived my life on the run – it was a habit, a necessity – but no journey had ever been more difficult. I tried not to think about Faustina – I tried not to think at all – but she appeared anyway. She stood at the edge of the village in the dress that reminded me of olive leaves, the skin smudged beneath her eyes, her forefinger touching her lower lip.
Where is he? she said.
I don’t know.
But that’s his horse …
He must have had some kind of accident.
I began to laugh. I shook with laughter.
Some kind of accident, I said again, when I had myself under control.
She told me that when Stufa knocked on Mimmo’s door the whole place seemed to shake. She was already concealed inside the bed by then. Even so, she hardly dared to breathe. Mimmo let Stufa in. She imagined Stufa filled the room. As a horse would have done. Or a giant.
You’ve hidden the whore, haven’t you? Stufa said.
Mimmo said he didn’t know any whores.
Stufa hit him. Your childhood friend, he said with a sneer. Your sweetheart. You’re trying to help her.
Help her? Mimmo’s voice lifted in indignation. Why would I help her? She nearly killed me. Look at my leg!
He related the events of fifteen years before. Stufa became impatient.
Why are you telling me all this?
She used to take me there, Mimmo said. It was her favourite place. He paused, and the silence seemed to gather itself. It’s a place she’s always returning to – in her mind, at least. A place of penance and contrition.
You think that’s where she is?
I never told her that I loved her. I wanted her to guess. Mimmo’s voice choked. Don’t hurt her. Please.
Stufa strode towards the door. Get out of my way.
He fell for it, I said.
Faustina nodded.
I rode on, towards Arezzo.
Would Mimmo really have used Stufa’s appearance to let Faustina know how he felt about her? It would certainly have had the desired effect on Stufa. How would Faustina have reacted, though? Did I want Mimmo to take care of her, look after her? Had I had that in mind the whole time, without ever quite admitting it to myself? After all, she could hardly return to Florence, not while Bassetti was alive. Or was I secretly – selfishly – hoping that some long-buried anger and resentment would surface, and that their friendship would founder?
She kept appearing as I travelled north. Her face would have a startled look. Too little sleep. Too much left unsaid. She would walk into my arms, or she would fling herself at me and almost knock me off my feet – and her only a slip of a thing! I would hold her so tightly that it felt as if our two bodies might be merging into one. Perhaps what I wanted was to crush the breath out of her. Then she wouldn’t have a life without me. Then I wouldn’t be missing anything. But in the end I always let go of her and fitted my boot into the bright hoop of the stirrup, for it was always, in the end, a leave-taking, a goodbye. Only when I had vaulted into the saddle did I look at her below me, her dress creased by the force of that last embrace.
You’ll forget me, I said. I know you will.
She ran a hand across her cropped dark hair. You’re stealing all my lines. Why can’t you think of anything original?
I wanted to smile, but couldn’t. My mouth wouldn’t make the right shape.
You’ve found someone else, she said.
Don’t be ridiculous.
She turned away, her shoulders shaking.
There’s no one else, I said. How could there be?
When I reached out and touched her cheek, I found that it was wet.
I’ll never leave you, I said.
I nodded off, and when I woke, or seemed to wake, I was back in the ghost house, standing at an upstairs window. Snow on the ground, a waning moon. Trees all askew, like the rigging on a wreck.
Then I was outside. The air so cold and clean it made my lungs feel new. I could see the lines on my hand. Heart line deep. Life line ending in a row of Xs, as if my last days were a wound that needed stitches. I walked to the well and peered over. Stufa was at the bottom, looking up at me. He stretched out his arms, like a child wanting to be picked up and held.
I woke. I slept.
My hands froze around the reins.
She walked in front of me, her hair falling to the small of her back, as though years had passed. ‘We belong together,’ I whispered. ‘It looks right.’
Tears itched my cheeks.
It was morning. The snow at the edge of the road had a crust to it, a lustre, like the glaze on a cake. She turned to face me. Her eyes were so clear that they looked straight through me. Her lips were soft and dark as the skin on a ripe fig.
She stood below me. Say what you said before.
What did I say?
That thing about me spoiling women for you.
I smiled. It’s true.
Say it.
Before I met you, I used to look at other women. But you’re so beautiful, you ruined them for me. There’s no point looking any more. I’ll never see a woman who comes close.
Yes, she murmured. Yes, that’s it.