The Invitation(54)

I see how he looks at me, and what he thinks I am. I think of Maria. In this moment, there is very little I wouldn’t do for a meal. I have only the haziest idea of things, but can it be so bad, really? It is just a body, after all.

‘I’m not one of them,’ I say. ‘I came to see if I could get any food.’

‘You can have some food if you can pay for it.’

‘Please,’ I say, ‘I’ll work.’

He shakes his head.

I turn from him, half deliberating as I do whether I can reach out and snatch a bread roll, a fistful of something from a plate. I could be eating it before the barman had time to chase me out. And as I cast about myself, deciding upon my target, I realize that I am being watched.

A man in a pale suit. I can feel his gaze as tangibly as if he has brushed my face with the palm of his hand. I wonder if I should be afraid. He is just on my right – I can make out the blurred shape of him at the corner of my eye. I turn. I look. In doing so I make the connection. I have allowed him in.





19


Early morning, and Hal hopes to have the deck to himself. Perhaps he will lie in the newly risen sun for a while, then go for a swim. There is something exhausting about spending every moment in such close proximity to others, especially for one who has spent the last five years living alone. But when he reaches the top of the steps he sees that he is not the first up.

‘Mr Jacobs.’ Truss is sitting at the dining table, Gaspari opposite him, a chessboard between them.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve been meaning to thank you. I realize I didn’t get a chance yesterday.’ There is a strange law of diminishing returns, Hal thinks. The more cordial the man is, the less he likes him. He mistrusts his manner entirely. Because even when Truss smiles – especially when – his eyes remain watchful.

‘For what?’

‘Escorting my wife, yesterday, on the hike.’

‘Oh,’ Hal says. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly …’

‘She can be very determined about things,’ Truss says, ‘but, as I’m sure you have by now seen, she is also quite frail.’

‘She didn’t seem to be having any difficulty to me,’ Hal says. ‘If anything, I had to keep up with her.’

‘Well,’ Truss says, patient, ‘it might not be obvious to a stranger, but she gets very tired.’

There is something distasteful in his speaking of her as though she were an invalid. Hal doesn’t want to hear any more of it. He nods to the chessboard.

‘Who’s winning?’

‘Oh, we’ve only just started.’

‘And yet,’ Gaspari says, ‘I do not – what is it they say – fancy my chances.’

‘It’s a fine set,’ Hal says, looking closer.

Truss smiles again. ‘Thank you. It’s mine – a travelling one.’ He picks up the white queen and passes her over. Hal studies it. A tiny nude, small enough to fit in the centre of the palm.

‘It’s very fine.’

Truss smiles. ‘Evidently we share the same tastes, you and I. I was there, you know, when they killed the elephant. I have a few other pieces made from the same ivory – but she is my favourite.’

Hal hands the piece back to him.

‘I rather like the idea that this little thing, so pale and refined, has come from some great beast – hulking, shitting, crashing through the forest. You should have seen the blood, too, when we slew it. Rivers of it – very dark, almost black.’

‘Yes,’ Hal says. The piece has suddenly become abhorrent to him: an object of barbarism. He looks at Truss, who is studying the piece minutely, as though he has never seen it before. He has time to observe in more detail the sleek head, the hair combed precisely back from the brow. The short, manicured fingernails, the long elegant fingers. Hal cannot imagine him on a game drive, his clothes covered in dust from the road, sweating in the heat. He does not look like he sweats. But then Hal thinks of the ivory: the violence polished into something benign.





20


Genoa


Genoa is a barnacled, salt-sprayed place. A city of astonishing contrasts, of sublime beauty and of profound ugliness. In the harbour handmade sailing boats jostle with beasts of maritime industry, and the sea – the very same sea that laps at the feet of Portofino – carries a surface scum of oil, debris and what on closer inspection might turn out to be fish guts.

The contrasts continue within the city itself. Here is a gorgeous palace, appearing in all its decadent finery: the trompe l’oeil fa?ade, the intricately carved gargoyles and seraphim. They recall Genoa as it was portrayed in the film: the gilded capital of a Renaissance state at the height of its power – a fitting rival to Venice, or Florence. But as soon as one glances down from these wonders, there in the midst of the street is a heap of refuse, the odour ripening in the heat, or a scrofulous cat stretching its thin body across a doorstep.

An excited crowd has gathered around them, hooting and cheering, pushing at one another to get to the front, brandishing autograph books. For Genoa is not like Rome, in which film stars mingle daily with the city’s populace. There is no Via Veneto here, where one may merely go and observe them like animals in a zoo, sitting at coffee tables and looking for all the world almost like ordinary people – only not quite.