40

I’m assuming it was Gerry who delivered Marja’s letter, given that our postman seldom calls. That was kind of him. I wouldn’t have returned home so late had I not impulsively decided to stay down in Camaiore and have dinner after doing the shopping. I had gone to see that smarmy little house agent, Benedetti, to tell him he should ignore the letter of complaint about my neighbour I wrote to him, oh, weeks ago now, and which needless to say he has never even acknowledged. Once the sale is through they wash their hands of you. Anyway, he was out of his office and I certainly wasn’t going to wait. Probably it doesn’t matter now. It was just that after this surprise discovery that Gerry is perhaps serious after all, or at any rate interestingly connected, I felt I’d been a bit hasty and mean to complain about him to a maggot like Benedetti. From now on, thanks to the discovery that underneath that pose of inflexible Englishness Gerry actually speaks amazingly good Italian, if I have complaints I can make them directly to his face. Anyway, enough of him. Let’s see what my darling sister has to say. Venice, ek ni? I smell drama.

Dearest Matti

Well, that’s that: Mekmek & I have eloped! We just got the hell out. The fact is that since Timi got back from America he’s been making a perfect pest of himself & I couldn’t bear it any longer. I didn’t ring you because I was scared you’d try to talk me out of it. Mekki’s being just great. He’s a computer programmer, did I say?

Heaps to tell you. I got away without telling a soul, not even poor Mili, & we flew direct from Voynograd to Vienna & then on to Venice. By the time you get this we’ll probably be heading slowly in your direction. I expect Timi & Father will have set Captain Panic on my trail but it’ll be way too late. Once we were in Venice I e-mailed Ljuka so he’d know I was safe. With any luck he’ll head Father off from drastic action.

Sorry, Matti, this is in haste. Will call in a day or 2 when we’ve decided what to do. Making straight for you would be feeble as well as being the first place they’ll think to look so we’ll probably linger, either here or on the way. Venice is a first taste of real freedom at last & boy does it feel gooood! I don’t have to explain, do I?

Can’t wait to see you. You’ll know what to tell them when they call. Oh, and you’re going to love Mekki, I just know it. He’s cuddly & mmm!

Tons of love

Well, I was right to smell drama. No doubt my phone has been ringing these last several hours. Thank God I haven’t got one of those answering machines yet. So that’s that. She’s made the break and we’ll just have to see what happens. Tonight’s meal has left me very mellowed and much inclined to go to bed, to be honest. Time enough to worry about Marja tomorrow which, as we Voynovians so wisely say, is another day. (I wonder if other nations have these devastating insights?) I’m also beginning to wonder if that second bottle of wine wasn’t a mistake, especially with the Fernet over coffee; but what the hell, it was just the once. I surely have a long way to go before I risk becoming like Gerry, poor fellow.

I’m cleaning my teeth and trying to ignore that perennial sneaky worry about exactly what my next job of work is to be. Pacini hasn’t so much as hinted what he intends doing after Arrazzato’s in the can and it’s time I was thinking seriously about the future and an income if I want to keep my independence. Nothing in the universe will make me run to Father to ask him to bail me out, not now. (What an independent tearaway this studious elder daughter has become!) I’m just about to pour myself a tiny nightcap of Fernet when a familiar sound begins to steal into the house. Of course! Dear Ljuka wouldn’t wait for phones to be answered at a moment of family crisis, bless him. Action men act. His helicopter approaches and I’m ready outside the back door with a torch when he lands. Up here on the otherwise silent mountainside the noise seems cataclysmic and I’m briefly conscious that Gerry’s complaint about disturbance was not unreasonable. Then my attention is distracted when I notice it’s a different helicopter, but I’m quite sure the pilot’s my baby brother and so it proves. We embrace beneath the still-whirling main rotor.

‘Rather too much,’ is his reply, half muffled as he eases his helmet off, to my anxious greeting ‘What’s new?’ ‘Marja’s done a bunk – did you know? Much worse, though, is they’ve arrested Father.’

‘What? Who? Why?’

‘The police, apparently working with Europol. Panic called me in Trieste and warned me to lie low for a bit and certainly not to come home. It’s politics, of course. Basically, our dear government will do absolutely anything to get the country into the EU at the next intake, whenever that is. Panic says the old alliances are far from reliable any longer. So the police rolled up without the usual courtesy warning and took Father off with them to headquarters. I can’t imagine they’ll hold him for long. Panic got the lawyers down there within the hour. But even so. Oh – and they impounded that black helicopter of ours, as well as the Cessna, so that’s why I came in this.’ Ljuka gives a backward jerk of his handsome head to indicate the machine in the paddock, now dark and without sign of life except for a faint ticking of cooling metal. ‘It belongs to the company.’

My brother towers in the kitchen shedding his jacket. He catches sight of Marja’s letter lying on the keyboard where I dropped it and picks it up. ‘When did this arrive? Is she OK?’

‘Read it,’ I tell him. ‘I was out earlier and she may have phoned. As far as I know they’re somewhere between Venice and here. Have you met this Mekmek fellow? Is he all right? I mean, is he at least better than Timi?’

‘Probably. She only told me about him the other day, cross-my-heart top secret, and I haven’t been allowed to meet him yet. Computer geek, I think. That could be useful, in the circumstances.’

I make us coffee and Ljuka takes the torch and goes back out to fetch a small overnight bag from which he produces a bottle of galasiya from the estate – the real thing, ninety-two per cent proof. ‘Luckily I had this in the Trieste office,’ he says. ‘Make the most of it. It looks as though you may have to do without food parcels from home for a bit.’

He sits on the sofa with his cup and leans back, eyes closed. I suddenly realize he’s all in. For the first time I can remember, my little brother looks like a tired adult.

‘How bad is it?’ I ask. ‘Really?’

‘Pretty bad.’

‘Are they after you?’

‘Oh, probably. Possibly. I don’t know. It’s too early to tell whether they’re trying to give Father a scare – or a warning, which amounts to the same thing – or if this really is it and from now on we’re going to be chivvied and harried wherever we go. Arrested, released; arrested, released – you know. Much the same tactics as the Russians used, I gather. Only this will cover most of Europe. Raids on our offices, bank accounts frozen, our people picked up on trumped-up charges, our computers hacked into, electronic surveillance.’ His voice dwindles as he takes a gulp of coffee.

‘“Trumped-up”, Uki? No – I’m a coward; I don’t really want to know. That makes me a hypocrite, too, since we all know how this house was paid for, the car, my subsistence here until Pacini’s cheques began coming in. But …’

‘Better you don’t know, Matti. If there are innocent parties in all this they’re obviously you and Marja and we must keep it that way. Not that I think ignorance will be much defence if they’re really determined.’

What a fool, I think, looking at him with such fondness it may not be that second bottle of wine that fills my eyes with tears and swells my heart with protectiveness. What a stupid boy and how predictable all this is. How predicted it was, given my last conversation with him in this very room a month or two ago.

‘Stay here, Uki,’ I tell him. ‘You’ll be safe here.’

He shakes his head with a smile. ‘As safe as anywhere, that’s true. Anyway, I’ll gladly sleep the night here. I’m bushed.’

‘Do we still have money?’ Really I’m thinking of dumb practical details like being able to fill the helicopter’s tanks.

‘They can’t possibly know all the accounts. They’ve been disguised and dispersed over years. Hell, Matti, you yourself have a dozen at least.’

‘Of course you have. So has Marja. What do you think Father’s been doing with his money all this time? He’s been steadily salting away a good part of it for us children. “Family first”, remember. What did you imagine?’

‘You’ll think me crazy,’ I say humbly, ‘but to tell the truth I’ve never really given it a thought. I’ve been too interested in, well, music I suppose. And wanting to make my own living.’

‘Oh, Matti, you’re hopeless. Small wonder Father despairs of you.’

‘He does, does he?’

‘Honestly, this misconception of Father is ridiculous. He loves you deeply. He loves all of us deeply. But you know his character, that generation. It’s perfectly natural that sometimes he gets a bit exasperated by your, I don’t know, other-worldliness or something.’

‘Only I bet he doesn’t use that word. I bet he says I’m prikmul.’

‘It’s true.’ My brother smiles into his empty coffee cup. ‘Other-worldly to the detriment of your family obligations. He says what other word can he use about a daughter who shows no inclination to settle down and get married and make a grandfather of him, as is his right. Prikmul. Says it all.’

‘And do you think that too, Uki?’

‘No. No, I know you better than Father does. I know you’re not deliberately prikmul, Matti. I guess you’re an artist, and that’s that. God, I’m bushed,’ he repeats.

Prikmul or not, I suddenly become concerned for my little brother and start throwing sheets over the sofa. ‘I’ll get you a pillow from upstairs.’ But by the time I come down with it Ljuka is already asleep. There is a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. Although he has taken his jacket and trousers off and despite the altitude up here it is a warm Tuscan night in September. I leave him with the sloppy smile one bestows on sleeping babies and go up to my empty letto matrimoniale where I remember I never asked him whether Father already knows that his other daughter, too, has fled the coop. I’m smitten with a pang of guilty affection for this father who, all unbeknownst, has been making generous provision for me and whose empire may even now be starting to collapse around him. I stare sleeplessly up through the darkness past the invisible beams and through the stone roof, but without seeing the hard-eyed galaxies staring back. For the first time in a long while I realize I actively miss my mother.

The absolute uselessness of regret.