SCRUTINY OF HEARTS
Uffy Golinko didn’t call.
Father Iandolo never answered his phone.
It was the weekend.
They each deserved a pass.
He cursed them relentlessly.
After checking out of ‘Il Mirtillo’, Duncan put on Midlake’s album, The Courage of Others, and they drove back past the scene of their near-miss for one last visit to the Capuchins of Martina Franca. Duncan went into the courtyard of the convent, called out, clutched his right arm as if having a heart attack, cursed Iandolo for old time’s sake and returned to the car.
‘Strike two?’ Mack said.
Duncan grunted and turned the ignition.
‘So,’ Mack said, ‘about last night, when I came back into the room and you were floating?’
‘No. Just stop.’
‘Why are you doing Motta’s bidding? Don’t you think there’s something in all of this for you to explore? What you need is to make another movie. Your own movie.’
‘And you need to stop auditioning for the role of my life coach.’
‘Maybe we can swap roles. You be the one who tries and I’ll be the little bitch.’
‘I think someone needs a hug.’
Mack folded her arms and they drove past yesterday’s skid marks and the untouched dumpster, then headed toward the coast.
It was an hour and a half to Montescaglioso, where they needed to check out two convents: a lot of highway driving, which gave him time to unclench his jaw. Midlake’s album, its feudal imagery and textured, flute-laden sound, helped lift Duncan’s spirits. If he squinted he could banish the highway and the boxy buildings and picture Giuseppe walking from parish to parish with the Minister Provincial who pushed and cajoled the young simpleton to go into ecstasy. To awe the villagers to the point they wrote songs about the flying friar.
Giuseppe volava!
The album ended as they bore away from the coast and shot north. The crumpled right-hand side of the Micra didn’t seem to affect its aerodynamics.
Mack: ‘Can I have my DJ privileges back, please?’
‘What are you going to play?’
‘Something we both know. I’m generous like that.’
‘Not more nineties.’
‘Okay babe.’
Thirty seconds later the car filled with the dramatic drum intro to Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Don’t bring me down’.
Away from the coast, the landscape was lumpy without being hilly. The two main crops: wheat and solar panels. A windmill sprouted every couple of miles, though the turbines refused to budge.
The Romantics, ‘Talking in your sleep’
The Records, ‘Starry eyes’
Cheap Trick, ‘If you want my love’
She was fucking with him again. Trying to lure him into one of her little scenes. To ask if she had feelings for him. Or open up about his flying dreams. He wouldn’t know for sure until he went for the bait, but he wasn’t going to. He kept his lips pursed, his eyes on the road, though he let them flick every now and then to the cubist rendering of the view in Mack’s wing mirror. He was certain now that he wasn’t going to tell anyone about the damage until Rome. The lost time, yes, but also the red flags it might raise back in LA.
Insurance claims already? That’s it, call him back.
The car handled fine. The doors all opened. The windows worked. He could see behind him well enough.
The land rose up before them like a ripple in a pond, frozen in time. The ridge was capped with basking houses.
Montescaglioso.
‘Nice,’ Mack said.
The gradient of the road increased to the point Duncan had to change all the way down to first gear. The picturesque buildings dissolved and left in their place monstrous seventies apartment blocks.
‘Not so nice.’
Once they’d reached the top of the hill, the GPS guided them through the town, which did its best to obscure any views of the plains below with buildings so brutish and abraded it was as if they weren’t nearly four hundred metres above sea level but squatting in the intertidal zone and everything got ravaged twice daily by the harsh, corroding forces of the ocean.
They turned on to a lane with slick cobblestones. It was like driving on the floor of a basilica — the slipperiness, the squeal, the mortified onlookers. Ahead of them: a small piazza and another Capuchin church and convent, except there were cars parked all over the piazza. Duncan found a gap and slotted the Micra in.
‘You’re getting better at this,’ Mack said.
‘Now that I’ve lowered your expectations.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘You coming in?’
‘I might go for a walk.’
Duncan went to try the church door. Bolted shut. It was 10.30 a.m. The door to the convent was only a couple of yards to the right — the church couldn’t have been that big inside — but that was locked too. There was an intercom, so he pushed it, unfolding the itinerary as he waited for a response. He didn’t have a contact for this convent. Uffy had only included one bullet point:
Possible source of alternative material for Capuchin scenes.
Alternative material would be good, the way things had gone in Martina Franca — he allowed a chuckle at how both he and San Giuseppe had failed there — but there was little he could do if no one opened the fucking door. He stepped out from under the terracotta awning that shaded the entrance to look for movement in any of the upper windows. Maybe it was a Capuchin thing, not answering phones or opening doors. He was pretty sure they didn’t take a vow of silence — they were a branch of Franciscans after all, and hadn’t Saint Francis tried to chart a new path for his followers, one more connected with the community than sequestering themselves off to illuminate manuscripts and make liqueur?
His phone vibrated. Mack? No. A text message from Uffy. It must’ve been well after midnight in LA.
You’re not making a hash of things, are you Duncan?
That was it. He’d tried to sound collected on her voicemail. To make it clear Father Iandolo and her itinerary were the ones letting him down. Maybe that was why she’d waited until after he’d have left Martina Franca to bite back. Well, screw her then. He wasn’t just out to hitch himself to the Motta-train now. He also wanted to uncouple Uffy. Two birds, one amazing lookbook/presentation/fireside chat — he still hadn’t nailed that part down — with the Great and Powerful Motta.
He shot some exteriors, energised by the thought that each shot of rusted spouting or dusty, stained-glass martyrs could be the one that makes Motta’s mouth drop open, his feet leave the floor. Then he set off to find Mack. She hadn’t made it far. About a hundred yards down the street she stood in front of a concrete-block wall that came almost to her chin. In her white trainers she was probably his height again. She was fitter, though. Could run rings around him.
As Duncan got closer he saw the view, framed vertically by two buildings and horizontally by the top of the wall and a powerline. From where he stood, slightly uphill from Mack, the shot was half sky and half earth; the earth a mixture of forest and pasture, with tiny buildings visible only if you tried to find them. He took a photo and shouted, ‘Nice view.’
She turned, rubbed her eyes as if she couldn’t believe Duncan was there. ‘No luck?’
‘Next!’
Back inside the Micra, he handed her his phone. ‘Read this text I got from Uffy.’
‘I thought you guys didn’t get on?’
‘We don’t, obviously.’ He took his phone back.
‘If that’s not good-natured ribbing, babe, it’s flagrant flirting.’
‘What? No way. You don’t even know her.’
‘What would I know, right?’ She turned to look out her window.
‘She wants me to fail. She thinks I’m a threat to her.’
She turned back to him. ‘And are you?’
‘No. I mean, we might ultimately want similar things. But I’m the one who has already made a film.’
‘So you get a free pass to keep on making them? White male privilege alert!’
‘Earlier this morning you were yelling at me to make another movie. Now you’re telling me to sit down and let a sister have a turn?’
‘Babe.’
‘Don’t Babe me. Travelling with you is like having the entire Twittersphere in the passenger seat. Any opportunity to pile on and wham.’
Mack made a show of biting her tongue.
He unfolded the itinerary as if it was a handkerchief he was about to lay over an unsightly stain. ‘We need to go to Abbazia Di San Michele Arcangelo.’
‘Yes, sir. Say it once more with feeling,’ Mack said, holding out her phone to detect Duncan’s voice.
The abbey was at the northern edge of Montescaglioso. As they approached, it seemed the town had at last given up its game of keep-away with the view.
‘Maybe it’s a form of portion control,’ Duncan said.
‘Huh?’
‘With the view.’
‘Okay.’
‘Sorry, I forget sometimes you can’t read my thoughts.’
‘Or can I?’
‘They say Giuseppe could. Although they called it Scrutiny of Hearts in his day.’
The only space available near the abbey was a parallel park between a green three-wheeled Gorilla car and a white panel van. The shattered wing mirror slowed him down, but the fact he’d already smashed the car up lowered the stakes. He completed the manoeuvre and pulled back the handbrake.
‘Gimme your phone for a sec,’ Mack said.
‘Why?’
She snatched it anyway, then held it out for him to unlock with his fingerprint. He obliged.
‘Just watch this video,’ she said, typing. ‘It’ll only take two minutes.’ She handed back his phone.
White text on a black background: Why Levitation?
‘You might wonder,’ a male voice began, the New Zealand accent and the influence of whaikōrero — Māori oratory — evident in the first three words and the loaded pause, ‘why bother with such a phenomenon as levitation. So extreme, so rare.’
The screen was awash with light and lens flare, as if J.J. Abrams was trying to depict the afterlife.
‘Your cult?’
‘Just watch it.’
He put his phone to sleep and said, in his disappointed-parent voice, ‘What would I have to gain from screwing with the itinerary just to spend a day with a bunch of hippies who think they can fly?’
Mack folded her arms.
‘This location-scouting gig,’ he continued, ‘is a means to an end. I’m just trying not to stuff anything up so that I get fed something else. I’m prepared to live on scraps for a while, work my way back up—’
‘Ingratiate yourself.’
‘—and hopefully learn something along the way about how to make a big film that still has a heart and a brain.’
‘Why does it need to be a big film?’
‘Why does everything I say get picked apart?’
‘Babe, I am genuinely trying to help. Maybe we could have a conversation, you know, like two friends or something. I swear I saw you six feet off the ground when I came in the room last night. If anyone should be looking for the truth, it should be you. What does your heart say, Duncan? What does your brain even say?’
‘“Don’t listen to her.”’
‘No, seriously. Take a minute to commune with yourself—’
‘You visit a couple of cultish websites and suddenly you’re this guru?’
‘I spoke to Bruno. I spoke to Gianluca. To his sister. You know, people who live here. Who know stuff. Gah!’ She had to lean her shoulder into the door to make it come free. ‘You think I’m hard work. That I need to be managed.’ She turned back to face him. ‘Ameliorated. But being with you. It’s draining. I came here for the absolute opposite. To be recharged. You haven’t even asked—’ She stopped herself. Took a giant breath. ‘I’m constantly fighting this massive bummer, babe.’ She climbed out of the car. ‘Kari was right.’
Duncan leaned across the passenger seat. The door slammed inches from his face. ‘What’d Kari say?’ he shouted. He pushed himself up, turned the key in the ignition so he could lower the passenger window, and shouted, ‘When did you even talk to her?’
She kept walking, slightly hunched, as if her shoulders had been permanently moulded by the weight of her stupid leather coat.
Duncan knocked the back of his head against the headrest once, twice. Looked into Mack’s wing mirror, its spidery view of the road behind him.