enough of life’s calamities and contretemps not to find anything extraordinary.
“Mr. Le Page says you’re the one to talk to about the Vannonis at the Manoir Ste. Madeleine.”
“Did he now? That would be because of my missus, God rest her soul.”
“That’s right. She worked there.”
“So she did. Became very friendly with that poor old lady they brought with them.”
“What poor old lady?”
“Patrizia, she was called. Italian, of course, like them. Oh how she wanted to go back again, that one! Didn’t speak much English, but she used to cry about it to my missus, she did. Died here, poor woman. Never got back. Mind you, she told Aggie they could never.”
“Did she say why? I thought they did go back from time to time.”
“Oh, not to Italy, she didn’t mean. She meant to the house and the place where she was born. I know what that’s like.” Dan Mahy looked around him. “Always want to be here, me, and now I got a little windfall, I have.” The old man chuckled and rubbed his hands together with a sound like the rasp of sandpaper. “Put it away in my pied-du-cauche.”
“That’s nice,” said Moretti. “Wouldn’t it be safer in the bank than in the toe of your sock?”
“Huh!” Dan Mahy snorted and spat. “Not for me, and no St. Peter Port, or St. Andrew, no thanks. Social Services keep at me, to get me out. Here, where I was born, this is where I’ll die.”
“So,” said Moretti, gasping hold of the direction of the conversation and wrenching it back to the matter in hand, “Patrizia said they had to leave a house? A place?”
“Right. You’re Emidio and Vera’s boy, aren’t you?” Dan Mahy suddenly said, looking at Moretti as if he had seen him for the first time.
“I am. Now, about the Vannonis and the old lady —”
“But you should know, lad. Your father now — he couldn’t go back, neither, could he?”
“My father?”
Moretti felt as if he had trodden on one of the old fortifications and uncovered a rusty mine beneath the surface. It still happened, from time to time.
“Just like Patrizia used to say about the Vannonis. That she couldn’t talk to anyone about her old home because of the bad things. No one talked about it, the house.”
“What house?” Scramble through it, thought Moretti. Stick with his train of thought, or we’ll both get lost. And at the moment, he seems to know what he’s saying, though God knows what he’s saying.
“She said she always had to remember the bad things didn’t happen. Like they told her.”
“Did she ever tell your wife where this place was in Italy?”
“Don’t remember — like I said, she didn’t speak much English. But Aggie brought old Patrizia out here to visit many times, that I do remember. She’d sit and look at the sea and say the same thing, over and over again. Then one day my missus told them back at the manor. Told them what the old lady had said, asked them what it meant. She never came no more.”
“What was it she said — do you remember?”
Dan Mahy screwed up his eyes and mouth. After a moment he said, “Pretty it was. Stuck in my mind, it did. Let me think — ah, got it. Said she could smell the sea again, that it did her good. Bury the past, she said. Then she said, ‘Maledetta Maremma, maledetta Maremma.’ Chanting, she was, like it was a prayer, over and over.”
“Maledetta Maremma, maledetta Maremma?”
Dan Mahy cackled appreciatively. “That was just like her saying it, ma fé! Just like your dad, you.”
Moretti decided to risk changing direction. “Why, Dan, should I know how Patrizia felt? You say my father could not return to Italy. But he did, from time to time.”
Not often, thought Moretti.
“Well, mon viow, it was more the running away for him, eh? Mind you, lad, there was many of us as would’ve run a mile or two for your mother. Nobody blamed him.”
“Blamed him?”
Suddenly, the old man became a child. “I’m tired. I want my dinner. Fiche le camp, Emidio.”
“Eduardo.”
But Dan Mahy’s moment of sanity — if that indeed was what it had been — was over. He turned on his heel and walked away from Moretti back to the home of his childhood, his oversize boots dragging on the wet road.
“Your eyes betray you, Contessa — I know them so well by now. Tell me where he is. Do not go on with this dangerous game, I beg of you!”
Before the Panavision cameras in the principal reception room of the Manor Ste. Madeleine, Gunter Sachs was sweating heavily, and regretting the self-indulgences of a month in the south of France that had added body fat to burn beneath the great arc-lights that lit the set. Although it was still early in the afternoon, it had already been a long day. Outside, the sun shone on a rain-soaked landscape, but in the manor it was night, blinds and curtains closed over the windows set in the gold-brocaded walls. Mario Bianchi had decided against using available light and had opted to set one of the pivotal dramatic scenes of the book and the movie on a hot July night in 1944 so he could use the magnificent candelabra and chandeliers in the room.
After much discussion in two languages about light levels and other technical details between the cinematographer, an American called Mel Abrams, who often collaborated with Monty Lord, the art director, Cosimo del Grano, the director, Mario Bianchi, and the head cameraman, the actual shooting of the scene finally got underway.
“Ah, Ricardo, mio. This is no game we play.”
Behind the cameras and lights, in the dark recesses of the great room, Monty Lord and Mario Bianchi smiled at one another. In one sentence, with one inflection of that magnificent voice, Adriana Ferrini reminded both men why they had paid a king’s ransom to get her for Rastrellamento. Later, the rushes would give them further proof, if they needed it, of the soundness of their decision.
Adriana Ferrini was a legend in the world of cinema — not just in Italy, but anywhere there was a movie house and people saw film. From her poverty-stricken roots, through her rise to screen goddess, to her present incarnation as model mother, faithful wife, and generous colleague, she had moved into the realm of icon. Good genes, good habits, and great cosmetic surgery had maintained the beauty of her youth into her fifties. To watch an Adriana Ferrini close-up was to see the cliché, “the camera loves her,” become reality.
Gunter Sachs, perspiring in his German com-mandant’s uniform, was only too aware of her charisma. His role was a gift, a chance to portray a character usually shown as a bumblehead or a bully — or worse — as a sensitive, cultivated man caught in a moment of history not of his making. Gilbert Ensor’s creation of Commandant Reinhardt Ritter was one of the most admired and praised elements of the original book, and the integrity of the character had been maintained through the various rewrites of the script. Although the other actors grumbled that this made his task easier,
