Free The American by Martin Booth Page B

my friend.’
    He laughs lightly.
    ‘I am very rich. I have God in my vaults.’
    ‘Then I am not so affluent as you,’ I allow, ‘for that is one valuable I do not possess.’
    I sip my cognac.
    ‘You could . . .’ he begins, but then he stops. He knows better than to try and gain a convert over the pheasant and brandy.
    ‘What do you suggest I do or make?’
    ‘Fine jewellery. You should be a goldsmith. Make plenty of money. With your drawing skill . . . Maybe you should make banknotes.’
    He is looking at me shrewdly. I imagine, should the mesh be removed from the wall of the confessional, this is how he would regard the sinners who come to him for release and a penance. Years of experience have given him the knack of looking through dissemblance.
    ‘That would indeed be sinful.’ I attempt to make light of his subtle probing. ‘Even more so than eating a sensualistic meal at the table of an Antichrist.’
    I sense he knows something is not right. He knows I have money. He knows I cannot subsist on the portraits of swallowtails. I must be careful.
    ‘I am not a young man. I have my savings. From past work.’
    ‘And what was your work?’
    He is quite forthright with his question. There is no subterfuge in the man, yet I do not feel I want to trust him. He would surely not betray me but it is still for the best he should not know, have so much as an inkling.
    ‘This and that. I owned a tailor’s shop for a while . . .’
    I lie. He is fooled, for I have seemingly given in to him.
    ‘I knew this!’ He is triumphant at his skilful piece of detection. ‘You have the hands of a master needle-craftsman. Perhaps you should do this again. There is much prosperity in designing clothes.’
    He smiles broadly and raises his cognac in a mute toast, either to my proficiency as a tailor or his as a detective. I cannot tell which and follow suit.
    As I leave, bid him goodnight and walk through the shadows down the alleyway to the Via dell’ Orologio, I consider our conversation. I like this priest a good deal but I must keep him at bay. He must not uncover the truth.
    There are almost as many saints in Italy as churches dedicated to them. At the birthplace of the Venerated One, at the site of his or her miracles, monastic home or hermit’s cave, the place of death or martyrdom, there is a church. Some are grandiose edifices with lofty bell towers, imposing façades and spacious quadrangles of flagstones before them: others are, as religious houses go, hovels of the meanest sort. Yet even the very rudest has at least a piazza.
    If you go down the vialetto , turn left on the Via Ceresio and then left again at the Via de’ Bardi, you will come to the foot of a long flight of marble steps. They are but a metre or two wide at the base but, halfway up the hill, they widen until, at the piazza at the top, they are perhaps fifteen metres wide. The steps are worn smooth with age and the tread of pilgrims. Today, however, only shoppers struggle up or down them, lovers with their arms about each other’s waist, tourists with cameras and video camcorders. Sparse wisps of grass grow between the stones and litter blows over them. Of late, and in the early hours, the steps have become the haunt of addicts. Several times recently, I have noted discarded hypodermic needles lying against the side walls.
    The marble is of poor quality, chosen for durability rather than colour. It is veined with dark, sooty stains like the forearms of the addicts.
    Traffic zips by the top of the steps. The pavement is very wide there and a number of street entertainers and vendors gather at this spot in the tourist season. One is a flautist. He has his stand under an umbrella tied to a no-parking sign upon which a frustrated driver has spray-painted a derisive non sempre .
    The flautist is a tubercular young man, his skin pasty and his eyes hollow. I suspect he is one of the early-hours crowd, the heroin fixers and dope smokers, the twentieth-century