I have to go. I got to my feet. Finally I have surprised him. The words stop in his mouth. I have unsettled him. He used the word serene. Serene in myself. And it’s true Andreotti is entirely serene, I thought. Obscenely serene. Madly serene. Villa Serena. This is a man whose lies to himself are entirely convincing, whose schizophrenia is perfectly stable, manageable, even useful, his master card in fact, no, his genius even. What is the point of talking to such a man? The serene are madder than those who torment themselves, I thought. There is no point in talking to a man whose sense of his own destiny is still serenely rock-solid, unthreatened, fixed as a tombstone, unmoving despite all evidence to the contrary. Vanoli never budged in his analysis. The viral origin. Perhaps rightly. Perhaps because still surrounded by his faithful servants, I wonder, his devoted servants who will write the most flattering words on his grave, kneel beside flattering scrolls of stone. Perhaps these other men are serene, Andreotti, Vanoli, because unchallenged by a disturbing presence like my wife, my Mara, a disturbing, provocative challenging presence, a woman who never never lets you settle. Mara never let you settle, it occurs to me, never let you sit back. She gave you Italy. Gave you your mind. Nobody has ever heard anything of Andreotti’s wife. Never a whisper of scandal. Whereas life with Mara is exhausting. She gave you everything. Andreotti is surrounded, I am aware, getting suddenly to my feet, by servants who insist on the version that gives his life sense, gives their life sense, allows them to live in his shadow. Safe from the blaze of light I found in the cemetery. Andreotti has surrounded himself by a chorus of consent. Does his wife call him presidente? He orchestrates then accepts a chorus of acclaim. What is the point of talking to such a man? A man who is entirely obscenely admirably serene, despite a thousand terrible charges against him. I must see my wife. Why has she come? I must talk to Mara. One knows exactly what such a man will say. Any contentious question will prompt a chorus of self-acclaim. How foolish and presumptuous of me. But everything is predictable when seen with hindsight. There is no point in talking to people who don’t doubt themselves, I thought, who have so easily and outrageously convinced themselves of their destiny. By getting up I had surprised him at last. Without planning to, or meaning it, I had finally shocked him. You shocked him. I must go, I said. I have to talk to my wife. For a second, perplexity animated the mask. The words stopped in his mouth. Has my wife begun to doubt herself? For a moment Italy’s ex-prime-minister is groping, confused. I must go, I said. I have no further time for this conversation, Mr Andreotti. I have more important business to attend to. In the corridor the secretary told me: Your wife has left, Mr Burton, and she handed me a piece of paper.

  X

  HER FACE IS equal to the light. She shines at the sun. Her dazzled dazzling eyes. Mara, demon tempter of the Buddha. For one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second her eyes opened wide to challenge the sky. We laughed. Though that Mara was a man, a male demon. Whenever the gods saw a man was over-reaching himself, I told her – but that was years before – they sent a woman to distract him. The gleaming teeth, the wide and delicate mouth. To break the rhythm of his thought, I explained. You said that years and years before, at an embassy in Rome. The tall white neck. Or they sent another man to seduce the woman he loved. To distract him in jealousy. You said that when we met. In stumbling Italian. It was an embassy reception. She was dazzling in pink. To prevent Awakening, you expounded. What a serious young man! Your Italian was terrible then. I’m afraid you’re going to be a serious distraction, the young man told the woman in pink. She wore bright-pink lipstick. The gods are terribly hard on ambition, you laughed in the small hours, first of many. The hair, if you look closely, is an explosion of dark ringlets, thick enough to arrest any comb – my impossible hair, she boasted – thick enough to arrest any caressing hand, any vocation for disentanglement. To push a hand into your hair, I whispered once – my crazy curls, she sighed – is to plunge it into happiness itself. Happiness, you murmured – but this was so long ago – your face buried in her hair as you spoke. Years later – fifteen, eighteen? – the smile is knowing, dazzling, triumphant. Over light and enlightenment. Made up. Behind is the Amalfi coast, a sun-drenched Naples. It was the boat from Capri. I focused the lens. On the contrary, she protested, Mara was the Baltic goddess of fertility. She cocked her head. Prize not punishment. We laughed. It was the French embassy, I recall. We didn’t appreciate such things were not incompatible: punishments, prizes. Eighteen years later, I clicked the shutter. There is a terrible simultaneity to our marriage. The one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second froze to a still, and through more years to come, still gazing, as I am gazing now, at that beautiful photograph, the best I ever took, at the face that will tilt and dazzle from the granite of her family tomb, a face you never got beyond I feel, never got beneath at all – though perhaps it is wrong to assume one can ever get beneath a face – through the years to come it would occur to me that the only relationship between the eye before the lens and the eye behind was the desire of the one to be recorded in the other, the desire of the other to possess the one. Two visions twined. The Nikon mediated an ancient haunting, our long protracted distraction. It’s not true we were always unhappy, she wrote on that piece of paper. It’s not true, Chris. Andreotti’s secretary had read it of course. In English she wrote: I love you.

  A voice calls mother. This is the house of ghosts. We had left the children with their grandmother. Actually, our only attempt at a holiday, I remember recounting to Vanoli, since Marco was born. I remember this now. Our only attempt to get away on our own, to turn a dangerous tide. We did know a dangerous tide was running. We left the kids with their grandmother in Rome, a woman I never got on with, a secretive old woman who in many ways, I felt – I was at the height of my career now – still resented our marriage, still resented the English who had killed her husband. Over Malta. I resented Sunday lunches invariably in her company. At the height of a career that still seemed strange to me. His body was never recovered. Marco called while we were making love. It is called the house of ghosts because for generations every single De Amicis died there. Without exception. Her father broke the tradition. The English broke the De Amicis family tradition. In the sky over Malta. It’s a joke, ciccio, she coaxed. We were making love. It never occurred to her not to pick up the phone. No one’s ever really seen a ghost, she reassured him. We were already entwined, entangled. There are no ghosts, she told our little boy over the phone. My hand was in her hair as she spoke. Her explosive hair. Certainly she never saw her father’s. He too was called Marco. Her family had been dying in that house since the early seventeenth century. All of them. He was afraid of sleeping on his own, the boy said. In a room where people died. He called again. He’s ten now, I objected. Why wouldn’t she take the damn phone off the hook? For Christ’s sake! There’s his grandmother, his sister. We would never make love if she kept answering the phone. He can sleep with them, I said. I refused to put the suitcase in the car. Take the phone off the hook, I insisted. She phoned the station. You didn’t hear him wailing, she said. He should never have had our hotel number, I told her, who gave him our number? What for? You don’t give ten-year-olds your hotel phone number when you go away for a weekend. Mamma, calls the voice through the empty rooms, up the broken staircase. Mamma! The candlelight flickers on the photos, the family photos on the old credenza. He broke the staircase with a sledgehammer. It is typical of your wife, I tell myself, that she should make this sentimental gesture, this quasi-religious gesture of turning our old family photos into icons. She had locked herself in the bathroom. She fled when he rubbed mud in her hair. And now she lights candles before our photos. Am I gratified or appalled? Did she say a prayer before them? To bring me back? To bring him back? So much of what your wife does both gratifies you and appals you, I reflect. How can that be? The photo-faces are ghostly in the candlelight, in the house of ghosts. A moth flutters the dust, the shadows. Yet that was always the way. I was always gratified and appalled by her flamboyancy, her vanity, by the way she always sets out to move heaven and earth. Mamma, the voice calls. It’s a child’s voice, a boy’s, carrying over stone floors. Other worlds are credible in candlelight, I reflect, but not under the brilliant sun that shone when Mara smiled that smile on the boat from Capri. One hears voices in candlelight. Not under the sun that sealed his grave. It is Marco’s first night in his grave. Then you see things clearly. His body laid out under the great granite stone, his arms at his side. All’ apparir del vero – Leopardi was the last poet we read together – una tomba. My eye moves across the credenza from her face to his. A young man in a sweatshirt. Eyes flicker. Perhaps a moth. In his grave. The chaos principle applies in candlelight, I reflect. I reassure myself. For at least fifteen minutes I have been staring at these photos. Perhaps longer. You can never predict how the shadows will shift in candlelight, especially when there are moths about. When the flame shifts, his features seem to move, the eyes seem to flicker. My son’s eyes, Marco’s lips. In his expensive coffin, beneath the granite. All’apparir del vero – at the dawning of the truth: a grave. Youthful promise unfulfilled. The voice is definitely coming from the stairs. Leopardi’s theme. Youthful energy tossed away. Definitely calling me to the broken stairs. The stairs to our room. People believe things in candlelight, I reflect. I’m haunted by voices. My son’s. That’s why they use candles in the camera ardente. Eros and Night were the daughters of Chaos. If I remember rightly. Isn’t this the first sign of schizophrenia? Eros and Night. The two great unpredictables. She liked to make love by candlelight. At night, or with the shutters closed. She said sex was more liquid in candlelight. She had even brought some with her for the hotel room. They flickered on the furniture. Things will never be the same again, I shouted, if you insist on going back. She had snapped a switch. I was blinded. The candle-spell was broken. Her spell. The same as what, she sneered. These were the metalled ways of our arguments. Neither of us was surprised. I’m not driving you back, I said. Forget it. When the light snaps on, the candle loses all its power, I reflect, loses all its enchantment. We came here to be away from them, not to go running back, I said. The moths seem smaller. You always want to possess me entirely, she complained, you give me no space. I could turn the light on here too, here in the house of ghosts. I could kill the candles here too, I tell myself, on the old family credenza. Shrink the moths, the fluttering spirits. But as yet I haven’t done that. His features seem to move when they flicker. Candle-life. You make no allowances, she said, for the fact that I’m a mother. Such was our customary back-and-forth. Neither of us was impressed. You’re so cold and English, she said. She was dressing now. You’re so fake and hysterical, I replied. Our script it seemed. I didn’t need to add Italian. She said: Chris, there’s something wrong, I sense danger, we must go. She blew out the candles. We must go back. It was the same day I took the photo. We had taken the boat to Capri. An enchanted day. Gorgeous light and white spray in her thick hair. The eyes wide open for one-250th of a second. There is a terrible simultaneity about the kaleidoscope of our marriage. He has his grandmother, I shouted, his sister. Let him sleep with them. For Christ’s sake! A wearisome rearrangement of the same elements, round and round. You said yourself there are no ghosts. What can be wrong? I demanded. You spoil the boy. What on earth can happen that requires your presence? What is the point of a babysitter, if you go rushing back because a ten-year-old is afraid of ghosts? Because he gets on the phone and calls his mamma? I have a sixth sense for these things, she insisted. She blew out the candles. There is some kind of danger brewing, she said. It was an expensive hotel I had booked. A suite over the bay. The Bay of Naples. Gorgeous sunsets. There was a terrace bar. It was there, towards midnight, that I met Karen.

  Karen! I phoned from the hospital. How shall I behave? I asked myself, walking up and down the long corridor of the hospital reading and re-reading my wife’s note. Remember the good times, she had written. Remember them, Chris. Franco and Karen are out, a male voice was saying. Messages or facsimiles after the tone. Facsimiles! Just Chris here, I began, saying hello to Karen. I was standing in the hospital corridor. Outside Urologia. For more than an hour I had been walking up and down reading my wife’s note. It isn’t true we were always unhappy, she wrote. Remember the good times. Remember when we met! Your wife is moving heaven and earth to get you back, I thought, walking up and down the corridor of the policlinico. Perhaps you’re right about the grandchildren, she wrote. Even Paola. But it isn’t true we were always unhappy. Your third policlinico in as many days. All equally drab. Or rather, no, she wasn’t moving heaven and earth. She was being delicate, she was making concessions. Perhaps you are right, she had written. I gazed at a fire extinguisher. My wife was writing delicate notes, then making timely exits. It was unheard of. No comment on my betrayals, I noticed. There was a line of phone-booths. No unpleasant enquiries, no snide asides. This is a generous note, I thought. Your wife’s behaviour on this occasion is exemplary, I conceded. She is making concessions. She is not attacking you. I left Piazza Santa Lucina, Andreotti’s reception room, and went straight to the hospital, as ordered by the doctors. Straight to Urologia. I was obeying orders. How swiftly my wife changes, I thought, from the exquisite to the unbearable to the exquisite again. At the shake of a kaleidoscope, ever the same. The doctors had insisted I go to hospital at once. There is a terrible simultaneity, I thought, about the back-and-forth of our marriage. One has to respect the intuitions of trained professionals. Back and forth. Certainly I always respected Vanoli. If we went to England, it was because a trained professional felt our absence would be of benefit to the boy. Not because I wanted to have Mara to myself. Apex and nadir all in a day. Capri and Naples. I’m in Rome, Karen, I explained down the phone to a tape recorder, just for a few . . . Chris! Karen’s voice cut in. It was Karen’s voice after all these years. But why? Why was I phoning Karen? For more than an hour I had walked up and down the corridor at the hospital, and now all of a sudden I was calling Karen. I’ll be at home, my wife had written. Please call. She meant the house of ghosts. A woman twenty years younger than myself. Please come, my wife had written. Instead I had got a girl on the phone. Why? You can come back tomorrow, the Roman urologist said. Tests at eight-thirty a.m. I was disappointed. I paced the corridor. Was it possible I didn’t require hospitalisation? With all I’d been through! If you’ve passed water regularly today, I can see no point in keeping you, he said. A small ratty-looking man. Could I trust him? You’ve moved your bowels, he said. A distinctly southern face. I have no reason to keep you. Chris! Karen cried, I don’t believe it! I couldn’t believe I didn’t need treatment. You have the appropriate drugs now, he said. You’ll be fine. And exactly as her voice cut through the recorded message, I thought: If I could understand why I was phoning Karen now, at this of all moments, of all crises, upon being denied hospitalisation by a ratty-looking southern urologist who had not even examined me, not even heard me out, then I would understand myself. Everything would be clear. Why was I phoning my ex-mistress – the number of beds we have is limited, the doctor insisted – when my wife was moving heaven and earth to get me back, to make one of her extraordinary changes from the unbearable to the exquisite? There’s still so much life in us, Chris, she wrote. Temporary occlusion need not have further consequences, he reassured me. Mara has made you impossibly unhappy, I repeated to myself, walking back and forth along the corridor outside the urology ward. As the urologist sees it, I’m not even ill. You must leave her. I felt sure of that. What had my mind been telling me so insistently these last forty-eight hours, if not that? I must leave my wife. It was an imperative. It is finished, dead. Fleetingly, I remembered the Ferrantes, their extraordinary display of conjugal solidarity in grief. That was marriage. It’s finished between us, I decided. How could my wife speak of there being life in our relationship? Just saying hello, I repeated. I heard you’d gone back to London, Karen said. In the background an infant was chattering. Our impossible alliance is over, I told myself. She chuckled. No, a little birdie told me, she explained. Does she keep tabs on me, I wondered? My ex-mistress. Five years of pleasure. She has a fruity voice. Then, amazingly, I was having a cordial conversation. I’m having a polite conversation, I thought. With my ex-mistress. In the background a child was calling Mummy. She was working part-time. I was well, I said. I was having a polite conversation, in English, with the woman who once told me, Our lives are separate now. Still so much life, she wrote. It was when she said that that your heart dried up. No it was when she said that that you realised you would have to face your wife, your life, you realised you would have to breast the flood, this flood. Then you gave yourself up to reading, you spent every spare hour reading. Your son sought you out, but you were reading, preparing your monumental book. He was fifteen now, sixteen, seventeen. You were going deeper. So you told yourself. To hide from your wife, from the eye of the storm. We had long since moved into the house of ghosts. I was never happy there. Why do you give me your affection, Karen asked – she wept – if your life is elsewhere? You know it is. Five years it lasted. We chatted about my move to London. I didn’t tell her I’d left Mara. You are not going to tell Karen that, I suddenly realised. I was saying how pleasant I found London after all these years in Rome. It is none of her business. You won’t discuss it. Though the infant in the background might perfectly well not be hers. She was babysitting perhaps. Or with friends. It might be perfectly possible to renew this old relationship, I thought, with all the pleasure it gave. You never know. Karen is a beautiful woman. She knows how to give pleasure. You never even came close to leaving your wife, she once told me. Without bitterness. Not even close. Just over for an interview with Andreotti, I told her. The old fox! A book I was writing, I said. I always said you should write a book, she laughed. That was a banal and predictable remark, I thought. The woman is banal, I thought, and incredibly pleased with herself for some reason. I could sense it in her voice. You must have been determined indeed to punish your wife if you managed to fall in love with a woman as banal as Karen, I thought. Very beautiful, in a black kind of way, but irretrievably banal. She is flattered by your call, I realised. Predictably enough. You must have been furious indeed. I’d had some health problems, yes, I said. But the doctors tell me it’s just a question of tension. Always the hypochondriac, Chris, she chuckled. Perhaps it’s her Englishness I find banal, I reflected. Essentially, it was an erotic relationship. Her English turn of phrase. A little birdie told me! They’ve given me some pills, I said vaguely. Why had I called? Why had I sought another side-show? First the urologist, now an ex-mistress. My wife’s note was in my hand. Her generous note. Your wife has written you a wonderful note, I told myself. Though hypochondriac was a bit rich, I thought, to a man who’d been through open-heart surgery. An enchanting note. You were always tense as a high wire, Karen laughed. Your ex-mistress seems extremely relaxed to find herself chatting to her ex-lover, I thought. And, in general, extremely pleased with herself. I wasn’t annoyed. To be chattering to the man who once made eager love to her on a terrace in Naples. The night his mother-in-law died. How I adored that exotic black skin, together with the banal, the in-every-way-familiar and reassuring English voice. It was never a challenge. I’ve been quite tense myself, she laughed, since I had Carlo. Apparently the child was called Carlo. Clearly it was hers. This is a ridiculous conversation, I thought, a ridiculous and aimless conversation. We will never make love again. If I was annoyed with anyone it was myself. She is immensely pleased with herself, I thought, because this is her chance to show her ex-lover that she now has a proper man, a proper family. Not just a lover. Carlo, come and say hello to Uncle Chris, she was chuckling. It was fatuous. Come on! Carluccio! Plane and home, I told myself. Ciao, said an infant voice. Then began to whimper. Uncle Chris! Karen was on the line again. You are not going to tell her about your son, I realised. It’s no concern of hers. Fly via Turin, perhaps, to pick up the mobile charger, the suitcase. Back to England. You are not going to tell her about the crisis with your wife. These are things between yourself and Mara, I decided. I said goodbye. Mamma, the voice calls.