SERENITÀ

Honey’s draft itinerary had allotted a full hour for its own disassembly and reconstruction, but there was nothing Duncan or Mack could fault. They would check out The Nursery first, meet some newcomers to the community — fresh flowers, as if they could be called anything else — then have lunch at its cafeteria before spending the afternoon at The Green House, which was neither green nor a single house but a collection of buildings now owned by Mille Fiori to accommodate their experiments into the depths of human capability and the limitations of Newtonian physics. Beds had been offered in a dozen different houses and apartments, and they were both happy to leave it open, see who they met during the day and what kind of experience they’d like on the ‘homestay’ portion of their visit. Some alone time with James ‘Gas Plant’ Alby-Cooper was pencilled in for the morning of day two before rounding back to The Green House for some more show and tell, a debrief with Gypsy, the comms person and Voice of Mille Fiori, and a group dinner at the pizzeria.

‘Well,’ Red said, ‘if that all sounds fine, maybe we just head straight to The Nursery now then?’

‘Will Honey be joining us?’ Duncan asked, careful to be out of range of Mack’s elbows.

‘Honey?’ Tansy asked. ‘She is on the reception today.’

‘Oh drat,’ Mack said.

The Nursery sat on a rise behind the main road through the village. According to Tansy, the whole area had been generously landscaped in the eighties by the municipality responding to the population boom in San Marino after the Second World War and preparing for further growth that didn’t hit until the flowers began to blow in on the four winds. Tansy was proud of the work in recent years, a collaboration between the government, the villagers and Mille Fiori. The fresh plantings, a new blacktop and LED floodlights for the basketball court, the children’s playground with its collection of scaled-up wooden toys: a shimmying snake with seats on its back, a delivery truck, a bi-plane. The kind of place Zeb would’ve liked — might still like, if you could pry him away from whatever screen held him. If he could just forget himself long enough to make believe he was a pilot, a delivery man, a passenger on the Rainbow Serpent as it carved out the hills and rivers of a new land.

The main building was a not-so-old brick church that had been converted into a kind of meeting hall/movie theatre/ping-pong stadium. Most of the workshops Mille Fiori put on for the people of the village — and curious types from further afield — took place inside. Posters at the entrance announced ‘Verbal Remedies: The healing power of words’ for that evening. A group of fresh flowers were busy inside, clearing away tables and benches to make space for an informal meditation group. Tansy clapped her hands. Work stopped. She made the introductions. None of these newest members of Mille Fiori could have been much past twenty-five. Their floral names — Snapdragon, Evergreen Candytuft, Sea Thrift — made them sound more like My Little Ponies than future Thought Leaders or Nobel Laureates. They seemed particularly keen to discuss the film they’d seen two nights ago, Duncan’s film, but Tansy was quick to intercede.

‘Non abbiamo tempo. Mr Blake is only here for two days. And you all have duties to perform.’

‘It’s fine,’ Duncan said. ‘Maybe we could have a Q&A session?’ He turned to Mack, raised his eyebrows. ‘Maybe tomorrow afternoon?’ He began unfolding his Mille Fiori itinerary. ‘I probably don’t need so long with Gypsy. Maybe we could have it here, if there’s nothing on?’

‘I’m not sure if that—’

‘C’mon, Tansy,’ one of the ponies protested.

‘Yeah,’ said another.

She folded her arms. ‘We will see.’

After watching the group meditate for thirty seconds, Duncan lowered his camera and whispered, ‘What’s next?’

Tansy led them outside. Red took Mack one way around the building, while he and Tansy went the other.

The old Divide and Conquer trick.

The manicured landscape dropped away and the two of them came to a stop. Yellow and red wildflowers jostled with seeding grasses just beyond the path. Duncan got on to one knee to take a photo through the grass.

‘Have you been to La Città?’ Tansy gestured at Monte Titano, the castles on its three peaks. A dark crown resting on the countryside.

‘No,’ he replied, standing. He snapped a shot of the mountain. ‘We came straight here from Pietrarubbia.’

‘Lo vedo,’ she said, her eyes locked on to his.

‘We’re tight for time on this trip. But we might come back.’

‘Certo, per filmare. To film.’

‘You got it,’ he said.

‘Strange that you would leave it so late to make contact? What was it, three days ago? You were already in Europe, yes?’

‘We were,’ he said, thinking this was why they had separated him and Mack. That for all their open doors and hospitality, there was something sinister here. A thing they would guard fiercely. A thing Duncan shouldn’t give two hoots about.

She smiled, a thin line of white visible through the part in her lips. ‘We are a little different to your last film, no?’

‘I guess.’

Tansy hitched her pants again. ‘And may I ask what else you are doing on this trip?’

‘Research. The project is a little vague right now. This trip is about narrowing it down.’

‘Closing off possibilities,’ she said.

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘Well, do not close yourself off completamente. Not yet.’

‘I won’t. It’s a shame about the fioritura all being away, but I’m really interested to see what people are up to in The Green House.’

Tansy broke eye contact at last, looked down at her watch, a tiny face on a delicate gold band. ‘For some people, even seeing is not believing.’

‘But surely if something’s real, if levitation is possible, why would anyone turn the other way?’

‘Questa camera,’ she said, cupping her hand beneath the lens in a way he couldn’t help but read as sexual, then bringing her eyes up to his, ‘it can act as a barrier. You put it to your eye and your guard goes up. You are not really here. Not really in the moment. You are thinking about il pubblico, people who are not really there, do not exist in any real sense.’

‘You lot seem pretty happy to get coverage.’

‘A TV crew is one thing. Un mezzo per raggiungere un fine. But you and your friend, you are different.’

It was too late to film this moment. Impossible now to raise the XC and point it in her face after what she’d just said. But he managed to lift his phone from his pocket, set it recording the audio, and slip it back in without Tansy noticing. He could see himself describing this scene to camera in a couple of hours. Having her words verbatim would help.

‘Different, how?’ he asked.

‘You asked why anyone would turn away from the truth, even if they could see it with their own eyes. GP talks about this in terms of risk and reward, but he was un uomo d’affari. A businessman. Me? I was a history teacher, so I will talk about history. Did you know this Republic was founded in the year 301? It has survived a great many things in that time. The improbability of its survival can be seen in the fate of other small sovereign states. In 1797, the threat was Napoleon’s army. But one of the Regents, a man named Antonio Onofri, befriended that little man and managed to get a guarantee that our serenità, our independence, would be protected. Napoleon even offered to extend the territory of San Marino so that we might have access to the sea, a port. How wonderful! But the Regents, in their wisdom, refused the offer. And history says they were proven correct. When Napoleon was overthrown, all annexed land was returned to its prior owners, often with interest. San Marino could have been wiped from the map. But it persists, small and static, its only glory its smallness, its longevity. Individuals think the same way. They do not want to overextend themselves, physically or emotionally, and certainly not— ah! Come si chiama? Come si dice “psichicamente” in inglese?’

‘Psychologically?’

‘Psychically. Can you say that?’

‘I think so.’

‘It is not what happens inside the brain, but the way the mind can act outside of its biological form.’

He thought about Mrs Pandy from the plane. It was as if he’d stumbled into her voyage of discovery by mistake. Not just the wrong story but the wrong genre. He’d need to be careful not to wind up in the arms of a shirtless Italian stud muffin.

‘People,’ Tansy continued, ‘do not want to overextend themselves in these ways because they do not believe the potential gains are worth it. We’ve survived this long without a seaport. I’ve survived this long without the ability to hover just about the ground. People fear that reaching for this new ability will fire back on them and they will never be as comfortable as they are right now.’

‘So you think the Regents should have accepted Napoleon’s offer? Taken temporary glory over long-term comfort?’

‘I think countries, borders, these are not important. What a thing for a historian to say, but—’ She mimed throwing something into the air with both hands. ‘I have come to see that the best move is always the one that lifts the most people upward. Were you a socialist once upon a time?’

The question caught him off guard, left him only with honesty to fall back on. ‘My wife more so than me.’

‘Okay, but you will know what happens when people buy houses and start having kids and all the best ideas become a little harder to fight for. Certo, if it worked out perfectly, if we had a workers’ paradise, then it’d be worth it. But when has anything ever gone to plan? If you elect the next Bernie Sanders, who is to say he will not make a mess like Chávez did in Venezuela? Then your house is worth less than your mortgage and your kids are losers. Losers.’

‘Okay.’

‘Come,’ she said, leading him along the path that looked as if it might spiral back down to the village. ‘You have a daughter, yes?’

‘A son.’

‘Ah, si. I thought you said a daughter.’

He couldn’t remember mentioning his family at all. Eager to change the subject, he asked if she knew anything about San Giuseppe da Copertino.

‘Ah, so that is why you were in Pietrarubbia?’

‘You know that story?’

‘Of course.’

‘And what do you think of him? What they said he could do?’

‘If there was not a kernel of truth to those stories, I would not be here. And, I suspect, neither would you.’

‘Well—’

‘Was it God, though? Is that your question? I was raised a Catholic. I still wear this.’ She slowed her pace, lifted a slender crucifix out from the neck of her blouse. ‘The older I get, the harder I must work to not rule anything out. You will see what I mean.’