Free The Bell-Boy by James Hamilton-Paterson

doubtfully, thinking of the vines of Valcognano which rampaged like weeds along the brinks of abandoned terraces and in autumn hung their pounds of grapes over the abyss. Italy was suddenly very far off, rugged and prosaic. Simple though his own room at home was, it had none of the bareness of this cell with its straw mat on the floor in one corner. On the other hand there was an extreme richness here which his own room lacked, an exotic self-containment that amounted to luxury. A few articles were lodged here and there among the leaves: a piece of mirror, a coconut shell of soap ends, a clean shirt, a short knife acutely curved as if for pruning.
    ‘Knife for making toddy,’ explained Laki. ‘Each time to fetching must to cut again very thin piece.’
    ‘Oh,’ said the boy, understanding not at all.
    As if he had suddenly remembered it was wiser to be discreet about his tapping activities, even in front of a foreigner who plainly hadn’t a clue, Laki sidetracked the conversation abruptly by stabbing a gourd. Instantly a bleb of clear liquid gathered at the wound and descended in a long, swinging drool towards the floor. ‘Sticky,’ he said, touching the filament and making threads between his fingertips.
    ‘Can you eat them?’ Jason asked.
    ‘No, not to eating.’ Laki produced his catapult once more. ‘We try kancha outside now?’
    As Tessa had discovered, the Nirvana backed on to the lush and largely unfrequented garden of the Redemptorist Fathers. Laki led the way across the roof, pointing out the shallow cement trough by the tap where the women did their washing to the discomfort of Room 41’s occupants. The area was crisscrossed with wires from which hung threadbare sheets stamped with the hotel’s name. After stopping to pick some pebbles from the mud of the dovecote’s walls, Laki squatted by the low parapet and pointed. Far below, one of the Fathers’ deer was grazing near the pagoda, a buck whose antlers shone in the sun. He fitted a stone into the pouch, drew a bead, and let fly. The deer leaped and bolted. There came the distant rattle of stone off antler.
    ‘Golly,’ breathed Jason, the hum of the pebble through the air still in his ears.
    There followed some ten minutes of tuition, at the end of which he could hit the pagoda with pieces of gravel four times out of ten.
    ‘One year to practising,’ Laki told him with pleasure at his pupil’s progress. ‘You be good hunter.’
    ‘I don’t think my mother would like that.’
    On his next try a strand of elastic came loose from the pouch and snapped back, stinging his outstretched thumb, so they went back into Laki’s house for repairs. The bell-boy produced scissors and an old motorcycle inner tube from deep within the vine and sat down on the pallet. Jason wondered what else the vine concealed. It was like an open-textured safe, for unless one knew where to thrust one’s hands among its leaves and flowers and fruit there would be little chance of finding any particular thing. In response to a patting gesture of the hand he went and sat by Laki, who busied himself trimming a thin length of rubber from the opened-out tube.
    ‘How is your house?’ Laki asked as he worked.
    ‘Quite big. Old. We live up a mountain.’
    ‘How many rooms you have?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Jason counted to himself. ‘Twelve, including the stables downstairs. Oh, thirteen with the bathroom.’
    ‘Thirteen rooms? You have many brothers and sisters? Grandfathers?’
    ‘No, just the three of us.’
    ‘Thirteen rooms and three people?’ Laki’s estimation of the Hemonys’ wealth, which had been slightly dented by the description of the house as ‘old’, went considerably higher. It would need confirming, however. ‘You have TV?’
    ‘We’ve got one, but sometimes if there’s no petrol for the generator it won’t work.’
    This was inconclusive, although the generator sounded hopeful. ‘How many animals?’
    ‘We’ve got two dogs and four cats.