In Calabria Page 6

  Romano, bringing him the newest package of quite touching gifts from children for the baby unicorn, said, “Alas, my friend, you are news, and there is no getting away from news. It would be like getting away from yourself.”

  “There is nothing in the world that I would like more,” Bianchi sighed, closing his eyes at the sound of motorcycles nearby. The lighter Aprilias and Cagivas appeared to be the vehicles of choice for very young men hunting unicorns across his land. Complaints to Tenente Esposito brought a helpless shrug and a scattering of warning notices tacked to random trees, which were either ignored or vandalized. “Bianchi, half your trespassers are my men. I can warn them, I can discharge them—but if I do that, I won’t have enough police left to patrol a church football match, a village dance. Pazienzia, Bianchi. Ignore them, that’s what I would do—just ignore them. You wouldn’t have any more of that Amarone left?”

  Even old—very old—Aldo Frascati told Bianchi, “They have this thing now, my granddaughter showed me. It is on the computer, you can find anybody anywhere in the world. My granddaughter, she hits this key, that key, and there is my house—my house—right there on the screen. I asked her, can the computer come inside and show me sitting on the gabinetto, and she said no, she doesn’t think so. Not yet.”

  It was just after Bianchi learned about Google Earth that the animal-rights people showed up on his doorstep. They arrived in a large and very vocal group, equipped with signs and bullhorns, through which they informed Bianchi that they had been monitoring his treatment of God’s most beautiful and mystical creatures, and that they had complaints. They also had lawyers, which gave them more headlines than the various groups who regarded the unicorn either as an incarnation of the Virgin, or the first appearance in centuries of the chi-lin, magical and revered. Catholics or Confucians, this latter group came to worship, not to sue, but they kept building shrines all over Bianchi’s farm, for him to destroy and themselves to rebuild. And they were by far the hardest to get rid of.

  Bianchi stopped answering the telephone, even for the chance of a call from Giovanna. The interview requests continued unabated, but he turned even more monosyllabic than before, and the newsmen quickly became as bored as he had foretold, and began interviewing one another, and the unicorn hunters, and any neighbors they could find, no matter how distant. For most of them—even the veterans, who generally regarded the whole affair as a local publicity fraud—it was the biggest story of their careers, and they were not about to let it get away.

  On Fridays, when Giovanna appeared in the blue van, the reporters would swoop down on her in a pure feeding frenzy, hoping frantically that she might turn out to be other than a mere postmistress—Bianchi’s lover, surely, or perhaps some young virgin come to capture the unicorn in the traditional manner. For her own amusement, at such moments, she tended to speak incomprehensibly in a loose, thick mountain-Swiss accent, appearing plainly incapable even of spelling the name of the creature everyone was asking her about. Bianchi was terse with her then, not wanting to give anyone any further reason to press her for information. She would hand him his mail, then wink at him, and be gone again in a matter of minutes. But the one wink usually made the chaos that had come upon him very nearly bearable.

  But there was no retreating to the poems, as he had done in other bad times; they withheld themselves, as everything in his life seemed to be doing at present. Cherubino, plainly pining after La Signora, began to look his age; and Garibaldi, frightened by the continuing chaos, hid under the house more and more. The cows were in a similar state, reluctant to leave their barn at all, and nervous enough when they did that they produced far less milk than usual. One of them—Gianetta, it was, normally the most tractable of the three—turned on a particularly annoying motorcyclist and chased him so fiercely on his little Honda that he spilled the bike into a blackberry bush, to much applause from his competitors. The other hunters afforded the cows a somewhat wider berth after that.

  On the very rare occasions when Bianchi found himself actually alone on his farm—no wonder the poems won’t come, how did I ever take it so for granted, my lovely solitude?—La Signora would even more rarely appear, followed both by her son, already a third the size of a grown male, and a certain contentment, inexplicable but profound, that almost compensated, but not quite, for the loss of his poetry. He was happy to see her, but in a quieter way than he had ever been.

  “Why are you here, Signora?” he asked the unearthly glory under his apple trees one unseasonably soft night. The unicorn looked up at his voice, while her son continued nibbling on windfalls, half-mouthing, half-playing with them. Her eyes, as always, reached through Bianchi’s own and beyond them, to the farthest recesses of his heart. The Virgin’s eyes were supposed to do that to you, but Bianchi had never found it so, even as a child. “Why are you here? Yes, you were waiting to welcome him, even a stupid farmer understands that in time . . . but why do you stay on my little scratch of ground, when you can fly across the wide world as you choose, when wiser hunters than these louts here, and far better poets than I, will all rise alike to worship you and try to kill you? What can you be waiting for now?”

  White-gold as a northern sunrise, she made no response to his questions, but stayed near him all that night, while the black unicorn frisked about the apple orchard in the moonlight, sometimes rearing comically on his slender back legs, as unicorns are so often depicted, and so rarely do. Bianchi eventually fell asleep with his back uncomfortably against a tree; when he woke, stiff and lonely, both unicorns were gone, off to turn invisible in some deep wrinkle of his acreage, though he could never fathom how they managed never to be flushed from cover by a phalanx of yearning yokels. Do you know, do you ever consider, how beautiful and impossible you have made my life? Do you care?

  He saw the other, deeper hoofprints three times, once so near his house that he was surprised to have heard nothing about it from Garibaldi or Cherubino. On the other two occasions, he had been patrolling the scrubby hills at the untended edges of his property: something he did when he could spare the time, in vague hopes of warning off vagrant unicorn hunters. In both cases he erased the tracks as carefully as he could, and went home looking over his shoulder, feeling like a trespasser himself on his own land. He never mentioned them to Giovanna, though he could not have said why.

  One afternoon in what felt like early spring but was more properly late winter, while he was replacing a fan belt on his tractor, he was approached by a monster. The monster was middle-aged, and wore a tan topcoat in approved movie style, slung around his wide shoulders. He was notably better dressed than almost all of the unicorn hunters, whether they arrived by helicopter or laboring Vespa: they had come clad for utility, after all, and they might have mocked him for being a toff or a dandy . . . but they knew him, and they kept their distance.

  The monster sauntered up beside Bianchi, who was too occupied to notice him at first, and peered into the exposed engine with a knowledgeably scornful air. “Bertolini, hey? Underpowered, even for a handkerchief-sized place like yours. Hard to get parts, too.”

  Bianchi turned to study the monster slowly and thoughtfully. The monster was actually shorter than he was, with the deep chest and flaring nose of an opera singer; he carried himself with the subdued swagger of a much taller man, with nothing to prove. He gave his name, which Bianchi did not recognize, but he knew a monster when he saw one.

  “’Ndrangheta, is it?” he asked politely. “I wondered how long it would be.”

  The monster smiled. He had large, strong-looking teeth, showing almost no stains, despite the Cigarro Toscano jutting up between them. That American actor, in the cowboy movies—he smoked Toscanos. I remember. “I am pleased that you did not confuse us with the Mafia. So many do.”

  “What do you want?” Bianchi asked. “I have work to do.”

  “Of course you do,” the monster agreed. “But this should not take long. How much for the unicorns?”

  “The unicorns do not b
elong to me.” Bianchi’s hands were slipping on the new fan belt, but he kept his voice down to a casual grunt, and did not look at the monster. “You are an intelligent man, you must know that.”

  “Mmm.” The monster nodded. “How much, then, for a farm with a couple of unicorns on it?”

  “That would be a foolish offer from an intelligent man. Unicorns go where they please. You must know that too.”

  The monster crowded gracefully past Bianchi to crane farther under the old tractor’s hood. He brushed the long ash from his cigar tip with a tap of his little finger, and it in turn brushed Bianchi’s hand as it fell into the engine. “Impacciato, goffo!” he berated himself. “My apologies, I am so clumsy. I should not be around machines—things just seem to happen. You know how it is with some people.”

  “It is nothing.” Bianchi was consciously taking long, slow breaths as he worked, trying to slow down his racketing pulse.

  “On the contrary,” the monster replied. “It is not nothing at all.” He flicked the cigar again, and more ash fell.

  Bianchi took a last deep breath and turned to face the monster directly. The monster’s eyes were brown and friendly, with deep space beyond them. Bianchi said, “I will only tell you this once, because you already know what I am going to say. Nothing here is for sale. Not because you are who you are, but because I do not choose to sell my home to anyone, especially a pezzo di merda like you. I like it here.”

  “Ah.” The monster seemed to take no offense at all. He nodded again. “Well, if you should ever decide that you like it here a bit less, you might let me know.” And he produced from his vest pocket, tucked neatly behind the Toscanos, an ivory-white card with his name on it in raised letters. “I will not trouble you further. Unless you call the number on that card, you will not be hearing from me again. Buon giorno, Mr. Bianchi.”

  A Japanese helicopter was circling overhead as the monster walked away, and he waved to it without turning his head. A jeep with what looked like a harpoon gun mounted on the hood, followed too closely by a television van from a Messina station, started to cut across the monster’s path until the jeep driver—clad in camouflage clothing, like many of the hunters—recognized him and hit the brakes so hard that the jeep went up on its rear wheels, and the van smacked into it, jolting it into a half-spin, and producing a volley of screams, curses, and the distinct sound of buckling metal. The monster walked calmly by.

  Bianchi leaned against the tractor, waiting for the trembling that had spread from his heart to his entire freezing body to die down. ’Ndrangheta . . . I said “a piece of shit like you” to the ’Ndrangheta. And he most courteously told me that I’d live to beg him to take my farm. I am insane. I am an insane imbecile. I am dead.

  When his hands were steady enough for the work, he fitted and adjusted the fan belt, closed the tractor hood, then walked straight back to his house, and—perhaps the strangest thing he ever did in his entire life—sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a poem. The telephone rang three times, and reporters knocked twice at his door, but Bianchi hardly noticed. He worked on his poem for the rest of the afternoon; and when he decided it was finished, he drank two glasses of the Melissa Gaglioppo and telephoned Giovanna Muscari. Like a schoolboy, like a schoolboy with pimples and a high, piping voice. Your life is running backward, Bianchi.

  He did not tell her about the encounter with the monster. He said simply, “I have missed you.”

  “I, too.” Giovanna spoke so low that he knew Romano must be nearby. “There is too much confusion, there are too many people, watching everything. I did not want to make it all harder for you.”

  “I miss you,” Bianchi said again. “I miss your voice. I am still too old, and too mean, and it is breaking my throat to say this, but I have missed you very badly.”

  Giovanna did not answer immediately, but there was a smile in her voice when she did. “You are not mean. Cranky is different.”

  Bianchi laughed then, for what seemed the first time in years, or in his life. “Well, that is a great compliment. I thank you.”

  “I will come as soon as I can,” Giovanna said. “Before Friday. I will make Romano lend me his motorcycle.”

  Bianchi was astonished. “Can you drive a motorcycle, too? What a wonder.”

  “I am sure I can—do not worry.” Giovanna hung up. Bianchi bit his lip, of course, everybody can drive a motorcycle, everybody except you, and went outside to attend to the pigs.

  The two young men with the harpoon-jeep were still working on the stove-in back end into the early evening. Bianchi lent them a couple of wrenches, made a suggestion or two, and asked them, “Why are you hoping to kill the unicorns? Why would you not just take pictures, videos, with your cell phones, your fancy digital cameras, and let them be?”

  The young men looked at him, and then at each other, in plain astonishment. They were not bad or vicious young men—Bianchi even knew the father of one of them, who was a doctor in Reggio. They replied by turns, but they might as well have been speaking in unison. “What would be the point of that? Without the horn, the skull, all mounted on the wall, what would it mean?” Bianchi said nothing more, but helped them make the jeep drivable—at least, to take them home—and stood looking after them for some time when they left.

  Matteo Falcone, who had never before been to his house, came to visit the next morning, while Bianchi was repairing the damage caused by a reporter’s car to his onion field. Bianchi disliked Falcone as seriously as he bothered to dislike anyone, regarding him as a gangster little better than the ’Ndrangheta, taking advantage of his neighbors, who were compelled to sell him their produce at shamefully low prices because their trucks would probably break down on the way to a more profitable market in Reggio. He stood up slowly as Falcone came toward him. “What do you want?”

  Falcone was a lean man, bent as a windbreak tree, with thinning hair and watery grayish eyes. He began with an equally watery smile, saying, “Amico Claudio—”

  “Signor Bianchi to you, thief.” The last several weeks had done nothing for Bianchi’s civility.

  “Bene, Signor Bianchi, then.” Falcone appeared to have a brief coughing fit before he could get the next words out. “I understand that you have recently had a . . .” More coughing. “Ah—a visitor . . .”

  Does everybody in the whole world know everything about me? “So?”

  Falcone’s long, pocked face seemed to change in an odd way, becoming somehow more defined, as his eyes focused on Bianchi’s eyes. He said, “I know those people. I have . . . had dealings with them.”

  “I am sure you have. Get to the point and go, Falcone.”

  Falcone’s face broke open, revealing a face that Bianchi had never seen before: truly broken, frightened beyond coherence, yet actually—incredibly—concerned for the safety of another person, one who was not even family. “Bianchi, you do not say no to those people. It is very brave of you—I admire it—I wish I could be as brave as you—”

  “I am not brave,” Bianchi said. “I am stubborn and stupid, or I would not have kept on selling my vegetables to you all these years. But the day I get that Studebaker transmission fixed—”

  “Bianchi, they will kill you! They will hurt you first, in all the ways they know, and then they will kill you, like swatting a fly. Like swatting a fly! You call me a thief, but I am trying to help you—”

  Bianchi raised a hand, both to silence him, and in something approaching a peaceful gesture. “I know you are, Falcone, and I appreciate it.” It took a serious struggle to get the words out, but he went on. “It was . . . good of you. But they do not really want this porca miseria farm of mine. They want the unicorns they think are living on my land. When they finally realize that there are no unicorns—” he looked levelly into the gray eyes—“that there never were unicorns, that same moment they will lose all interest—”

  “But they will not believe, and they will not wait! They are the ’Ndrangheta, Bianchi—they like to make examples of peopl
e who cross them! They may decide to kill you anyway, just because you will not sell them your farm. They may!” Falcone was very nearly in tears.

  Bianchi put a hand on his bony shoulder. “Go home, my criminal friend. We all do what we must do—even unicorns, I suppose. I will be all right, one way or another. Go back to robbing poor farmers . . . and thank you. I thank you, Falcone.”

  Watching the gaunt, stooped figure trudging back to his funereal Fiat—and we know who paid for that car, don’t we, old friend?—Bianchi felt loneliness descend upon him like an old coat he had owned in his youth: a blue woolen coat so often soaked by mountain rains that it never truly dried, even in the sun, and had no warmth in it to provide him. I am afraid. I am more frightened than Falcone, and what sort of thing is that for a grown man to admit? I wish Giovanna were here. No, I am glad she is not here—there is too much danger now, what am I thinking? I must order her not ever to come. I wish I did not wish she were here.

  Whether due to the rumors of threats from the ’Ndrangheta, or simply to the boredom that Bianchi had so long predicted, the flood both of hunters and media commentators definitely dwindled in the ensuing days and weeks. The weather warmed; the big tourist hotels and resorts down at sea level were hiring, as were other people’s farms—Bianchi was known for almost never employing other hands than his own. There were far fewer television features and interviews, and almost no overflights by news helicopters or surveillance drones. Even the animal-rights people appeared less often on his doorstep with their loudspeakers and their lawyers. Bianchi was glad of this, and hoped that the monster and his fellows had taken notice.

  But he knew better, and could not help but be glad of that as well. For La Signora and her son, strangely obdurate as himself, remained as clearly present as ever, if only during the twilight hours at dusk and dawn, and not always visibly, even to Bianchi. But at this point, he could feel their nearness, whether waking or dreaming, and sometimes thought that he could walk straight out of his house in the night, with his eyes closed, and find his way to them. Actually, I would probably fall into a hole and break my leg—but maybe not . . .