Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth Read Free Book Online

recommending the place, that Signora Sapori was a very kind and nice person. He was returning the smile and beginning to say that he would like some, yes, and how kind of her, when quite suddenly and unexpectedly, and in a way most uncharacteristic of his normal reticence, he was assailed by a strong impulse to put his hand up Signora Sapori’s skirt, worse than that, to throw skirt and apron up and over, to strip away whatever lay beneath, make free with her wasted delta. The eagerness of this impulse and the terrible tumescence that attended it he felt must show in his face, but apparently not, for Signora Sapori’s expression did not change. ‘In a few minutes, then,’ she said, nodding, pleased that he wanted some.
    Good God, Raikes muttered to himself when she had gone. What on earth is the matter with me? He felt feverish. This grandmother with the little white apron. Was it some association with apple pie? He tried to retrace his mental steps. The apron had reminded him fleetingly of a girdle. Mary’s, that she had loosened and thrown off, on her Assumption?
    In the stress of these thoughts he moved again, sharply, and caught sight of his own head and shoulders lurking in the dark shine of the window beyond the table lamp. Light from this threw a pattern of broken loops and ovals over his reflection, like loose metallic ropes. Above these encumbrances he could make out his cheeks and nose and high, austere forehead; but his eyes were lost in shadow and the lower part of his face was gagged with light.
    For some moments Raikes regarded with distinct unease this masked, fettered, curiously watchful acquaintance. Then he looked back towards his diary but there seemed nothing for the moment to add. However, he had omitted the date and he entered it now at the top of the page: March 20th, 1972 .

2
    IT HAPPENED ON the third and final day of the spraying; though Raikes did not think of it as an event exactly, anyway not at first: rather as a protracted quiver of the optic nerves, strained after so much peering. That there were elements in it that could not be explained in this way he hardly realized at the time.
    He was standing inside his enclosure of plastic sheets – Biagi had been commendably prompt with this – aiming with a half-appalled sense of violation straight into the Madonna’s face, driving minute particles of water at point blank range and high velocity into her eyes and mouth. The water hissed as it issued from the nozzle, broke against her face with a flatter, softer sound and fugitive gleams of light, the two sounds fusing into a steady sibilance of assault. Water ran blurring over the temples and cheeks, brimmed the eye sockets, sowed pearls in the clogged mouth, clung in beads to the fungoid deposits below the chin. She was so wet it seemed the water must come from within her, vomited from the mouth, wept from the slits of eyes, dripping from folds in draperies saturated by long immersion, as if she were newly dredged up, still running with the waters that had drowned her.
    Raikes straightened and stood back, closing off the nozzle of the spray. Some of the carbon had come away, there was no doubt about it; when she was dry again it would be easier to see how much. In any case he did not intend to go on with the spraying much longer, just an hour or two after lunch, probably; she had had three days of it, quite long enough. He glanced at his watch. It was gone twelve. Steadman would be waiting for him – they had arranged to meet in the square for a drink before lunch.
    He moved close to the Madonna with the intention of leaning the metal tube against the wall alongside her. In fact he was beginning to bend forward to do this. His eyes were on the statue still but he was on the point of looking away to where he was intending to place the spray. His face was very near the folds of the Madonna’s robe, where they gathered at the waist, too near to see any form or human likeness, only the ancient