On the far side of the little town were only rocky cliff faces pocked with caves and slopes of heather and prickly pear. There were signs for hotels everywhere, places built into the long-abandoned caves where peasants had once lived with their animals, like animals themselves. He found a modest one just above a belvedere with views of the ravine and threw his bag onto the bed, then washed and shaved and drank the mineral water that was on the bedside table.
It was about six o’clock now and the bells were ringing, the echoes thrown back and forth across the ravine, whose far side looked like a place where saints and eremites had once lived.
He was alone in the hotel and the owners seemed indifferent to his existence, a fact that after all was to his advantage. He slipped out unnoticed and walked along the cool expanse of the belvedere. Soon he was climbing steps at its far end and ascending through tunnels and arched passageways toward an unknown destination.
Eventually, he came out into a wide square right on the edge of the precipice, with a church clinging to its far corner and occupying one side of the piazza. It was open and so was a cafe; a Japanese man sat alone at one of the tables smoking a cigarette. Faoud looked around, saw nothing threatening, and walked slowly up to the wall and looked down into the darkening ravine. The noise of birds massed in the twilight was so great that it unnerved him. He wondered if long ago the Muslims had come this far in their conquests of southern Italy and whether it was they who had marked it out as a sanctuary that reminded them of their native lands. The fragrantly dry heat of the late day wafting up from the grass slopes would have pleased them just as it pleased him now.
The bells had fallen silent. He went into the church, where there was a small gathering of old people, and he wandered down the nave feeling things that had never occurred to him before. He had thought to offer something to the souls of the two people he had destroyed, but there was no way to do this within the unfamiliar parameters of Unbelief. Nevertheless, he sat in the pews and formed the internal words of an apology and a penance. God, all-comprehending, would understand his reasons and even the accursed place in which it had to be performed, since there was no choice but to enter into the church of Pietro e Paulo and pray for the Codringtons, who were even more innocent than he was. More innocent, but clearly less favored by God.
His penance inside the church had suddenly lifted a certain weight from his mind and he felt freer to enjoy an hour at the cafe where the Japanese man was sitting. So he stopped suddenly and veered to a free table, catching a waiter’s eye. Almost immediately a girl, an Italian he would have guessed, had noticed him in his new shoes and his odd-fitting ivory pants, and while waiting for him to settle down she lit a cigarette. The Japanese man slowly got up and walked off into the night. He and the Italian were alone.
“Excuse me,” he began in English.
He had guessed correctly. She was Italian, but her English was good. It was always the way these days among reasonably educated people. Her name was Benedetta. She was twenty-two and an art student; her father owned a furniture-restoring factory in Brescia specializing in the eighteenth century.
“I saw you go into the church,” she said. “But you’re not a Christian.”
This was the way that flirtations sometimes began, with subjects one didn’t really want to broach.
“I was a Christian for five minutes in there.”
Smile to her, then; it was not true, but it didn’t matter.
“Five minutes is a long time to be one,” she said.
They talked for an hour. He lied with a considerable fluency and before long he began to think that she was believing him. Soon they were walking together through the silent old town. He said he was driving to Rome the next day, he could give her a ride if she needed one.
“I was thinking of staying here for a while,” she replied. “But maybe I’ll change my mind.”
“Do whatever you want, Miss Benedetta.”
“Allora ci vediamo domani.”
“Means?”
“We’ll see tomorrow.”
She reached out and touched his hand, but he shook his head, immediately understanding the invitation, and said, “I have to sleep tonight. I slept badly last night.”
Then, making up for his prurient refusal, he repeated his previous offer to drive her to Rome the next day if she liked.
With the same coolness with which she had registered the rejection, she affirmed her acceptance of this offer. She then went back to her hostel, while he lay awake in his own unassuming hotel smoking for a long time and thinking things over. This was improvisation from day to day; there was something exhilarating about it. Slowly but surely, it was purifying him. He didn’t need to have a plan or a destination: God had already decided for him.
He didn’t sleep, and so when she showed up at his hotel at seven the next morning he was already awake, perfectly dressed as a more handsome Jimmie and ready to leave. They took coffee together outside, in front of his room, and he saw that she had a small rucksack with her, though nothing else. He gave her the bread basket. Clouds had massed overnight, and now, spitefully, a few drops of rain fell. There were silent flashes of lightning in the far distance, and under the hostile clouds the slopes looked more intensely green and yet ravaged by neglect.
They walked up to the new town with their bags and found the car. It began to rain more consistently as they drove to Potenza, passing the villages perched on their towering hilltops, the campaniles watching over the futile centuries and the invaders that came with them.
By the road, under the shade of spreading trees, African prostitutes sat stoically waiting for clients. On the far side of Potenza town they saw the first signs for Eboli and then Salerno. Before Eboli there was, as he had expected, the first police roadblock. A stab of fear and he slowed, as he had to, and the girl glanced over at him for a moment as if something had suddenly occurred to her. But he was glacial in his calm. The carabinieri here were not stopping the cars, merely looking them over. When they saw the handsome young couple in the Peugeot they waved them past.
Five miles on the sun returned and they ventured down a side road and got out. They stretched their legs and lay for a while in long grass and a multitude of poppies. She seemed a little shaken by the roadblock, but was hesitant to ask him directly if she had cause to be shaken, though she did summon up the nerve to ask him if he was running away from someone.
“What an idea,” he said.
The Africans. They were everywhere now, laboring up the peninsula from the detention centers in Sicily. They had heard all about them in Istanbul. But even with them there was peace in the land of the roumi, when you lay on your back among the poppies staring up at blue space; it was outside of time. There was no gunfire, no chaos, and the quietude of the land was the most striking thing about it, the most salient characteristic of its oddness.