Free The Gospel Of Judas by Simon Mawer Page A

‘You don’t think of the English as instinctive, do you? People imagine them as hidebound and obedient. But they are not. That is the mistake the Germans have made.’
    ‘The Germans have made a mistake?’
    ‘You must work on your endings, Checco. It’s the great problem with Italians speaking English.
Mistake
, not
mistakah
. Chop the consonant off at the end. Oh, yes, they have made a mistake all right.’
    ‘And you?’
    ‘Me? Oh, I’ve made many mistakes.’
    ‘Was marrying Herr Huber one?’
    She is silent, perhaps considering the question, perhaps wishing to ignore it. ‘This flower.’
    ‘Fuch-sia,’ he says.
    ‘In English one says
fushia
.’
    ‘But it is
fuch-sia
, after the botanist Fuchs.’
    ‘But in English that sounds rather rude. So it is
fushia
.’
    ‘To be polite. That is typical, isn’t it? Instinctively polite.’
    She laughs. ‘We grow these at home, do you know that? My father’s hobby. We have a
fuchsarium
. Very famous in Moravia.’ Her hand holds the flower, turning it upwards so that the delicate inner parts are exposed, the stamens and the inside of the corolla. ‘Have, had, who knows what will happen to it?’
    She drops the flower and goes on down the path towards the gravel clearing where the
tempietto
stands. The wooden door opens as she pushes it. Inside is swept bare. Light filters down from the lantern at the summit of the cupola, but it is not strong enough to disperse the shadows that collect at the circumference of the floor. He closes the door behind them. Standing inside the cylinder it is as though they are at the bottom of a dry well, cool and damp and secret.
    ‘We had a hut amongst the rhododendrons,’ she said. ‘
Have
. It’s still there, I suppose. It was our den,
die Bude
– my brother’s and mine. It was … oh, dozens of things: a ship, a cave, a fortress, a home.’ She glances round the drum that surrounds her, the exactly fitted stones, the ribs of the dome, the lights above them. ‘The light was like this. There must have been some kind of skylight … yes, a window in the roof … and it gave light just like this.’
    ‘And your brother?’
    ‘My brother is dead. He died at Rostov.’
    They stand still for a moment, and let that fact – a distant, presumably cold death that is difficult to picture in this lush, bright garden, with the paths winding down between the beds, and the sounds of crickets and birds loud in the luminous air – lie between them.
    ‘Why did you marry Herr Huber?’
    She looks at him in surprise. ‘Why is it anything to do with you?’
    ‘Was that a mistake, marrying him?’ He talks in German now, and with the change of language his tone is more insistent, as though he is now more confident that what he means is what he says. ‘He is so much older than you. Gretchen, tell me.’ And suddenly, surprisingly he takes hold of her hand, as though almost to shake her into giving some kind of answer – ‘Was it a mistake?’ – while she looks at him with an expression of faint bewilderment. ‘That is none of your business.’
    But what is his business? Where do the bounds of intimacy lie? He holds her hand – a narrow, fragile hand – and watches her as though waiting for an answer.
    ‘Please let me go,’ she says quietly.
    ‘Do you realise what I feel for you?’
    ‘Francesco, don’t be absurd. Please let me go.’
    He lets her hand drop. She stands for a moment looking at him, bewilderment still there in her expression.
    ‘Have I offended you?’ he asks.
    ‘Of course not.’ She smiles. ‘You have flattered me. But you have trodden on dangerous ground.’
    ‘A minefield?’
    ‘If you like. It might be better if you wait here for a while,’ she says. And then she has pulled open the door and gone out into the sunlight, leaving him alone in the block of light that comes in through the doorway. Her steps are brisk on the path, fading away into the general sounds of the morning.

Magda
    Far below the