Chapter One: Page 4

Like his library, Chiesa is not what I’m expecting. These plummy civil service jobs go to the well–connected, the troublesome uncles and moneyed friends of those they’ve put in office. There’s nothing of the veteran intriguer about Chiesa, nothing provincial. He’s a youngish man, scarcely older than myself, and he has the look of an ascetic, handsomely turned out but too thin and too still. He smells of unfiltered cigarettes and expensive toiletries. The coat he wears is his, I see, not someone else’s. He’s lost some twenty pounds, I think, and recently; his lapel–less suit is still the height of fashion. He was a slim man even before his weight loss.

And he’s no friend of Agretta’s. There’s a jangling tension between them that’s too visceral for dislike. If they had hackles they’d be standing on end—but instead there’s this hypocrisy from Agretta and Chiesa’s studious calm. I wish now that I hadn’t kept Chiesa waiting, thinking him as contemptible as those others.

“Piacere,” Chiesa says, crushing my fingers.

“Signor Chiesa,” I reply. We clinch like trapeze artists, catch each other in midair.

We see the mayor off. He wants to get away from us but can’t bring himself to leave; he throws out an anchor of conversation and then drags it behind him toward the door, talking, talking. He assures me again of my unconditional welcome, warns Chiesa not to disappoint me. There will be hell to pay, he says, if it gets back to him that the Professoressa isn’t happy! He shows his teeth in a lightless smile; he isn’t kidding. Chiesa walks him down to the library’s enclosed vestibule and gets him through the door, but there in that overheated space the mayor is moved to make a speech. It’s a new day in Valparuta, he tells us feelingly, his hand over his heart. His dream of riprìstino, of civic revival for Valparuta, has become reality. My presence here assures it—soon there will be tourists and scholars, galleries and ristoranti, symposia and festivals throughout the city. Behind him the empty piazza’s blazing desert contradicts every word he says.

Chiesa waits it out patiently, his head bowed and his hands clasped behind his back. In the pouring sunlight his suit is reddish–black, the color of oxblood. We could be standing in a terrarium, the vestibule is so close and still.

Agretta wrings my hand, takes Chiesa’s without enthusiasm.

We watch the mayor speed away across the piazza.

Chiesa sighs, a deep exhalation that ends in a ropy cough. “He kept you deliberately,” he says.

“I permitted it,” I tell him.

He looks at me closely. “Our town is of great interest to you, then,” he says. “We’re very fortunate.”

I press a palm to my forehead. It feels like a heated cobble. “No, you’re not,” I say. “I was busy consulting San Giovanni Battista.”

Chiesa starts visibly, stills himself again. He must be wondering, all at once, if I might be one of them—an Italian, at least—and not the cachet–laden American professoressa they’ve been expecting. But he is a gentleman; he keeps it to himself. “Well,” he says. “The saint was of assistance to you, I hope.”