The American by Martin Booth Read Free Book Online

rest of humanity, but the kind which alters the air we breathe, the water in which we bathe, the soil upon which we tread our brief spans, which affects the way we think.
    It is better to change the manner in which a man perceives the world than it is to change the world he perceives. Think upon this.
    Rested, my breath back and my heart thumping less loudly from the exertions of the climb, I set about the reason for my trip out of the town. Reasons: there are two.
    The first is quickly accomplished. It takes but a few minutes. With my binoculars, I survey the western hillside to the narrow valley. It is wooded, oaks and chestnuts, mountain ash. There is no discernible pathway up from the valley floor, where the nearest village huddles like a group of travellers sheltering from an oncoming storm. Indeed, the houses are travellers, time’s travellers, and the storm, time’s storm. I know the village, not a house newer than a hundred years and two erected in the twelfth century. One is the village bakery, as it has ever been, the other a moped garage and repair shop.
    Knowing the topography of these mountains, I can tell the ridge at the top of the woods hides an alpine meadowland beyond.
    One cannot buy maps in Italy, not detailed ones such as the British foolishly sell in every bookstore and stationery shop. Ordnance Survey maps are unobtainable in Italy. Only the authorities keep them, the military or the water companies, the polizia , the provincial governments: Italy has had too many wars, too many bandits, too many politicians to risk such information getting out. Maps which show contours, mountain tracks, derelict and uninhabited mountain villages, disused roads, are not publicly available. A 1:50,000 map of the region would be of immense value to me: for a 1:25,000 I should willingly pay three-quarters of a million lire. Yet I dare not seek it. I am sure the map would be there for the asking, but he who asks is known. Instead, I have to rely upon my experience of the mountains and my knowledge tells me there is an alpine meadow over there, ideal for future requirements.
    I make a few notes, decide to drive over the mountain and spy out the land as soon as there is an overcast day. On sunny days, a car window can flash like a heliograph in the mountains. From the loggia, I have seen the reflection of a vehicle twenty-seven kilometres off.
    That done, I set to my next task, a portrait of Papilio machaon , the common swallowtail.
    Anyone who has never seen this creature is much the poorer for the omission of such beauty from their lives. It is, to quote the 1889 edition of Kirby, a large, strong butterfly with broad triangular fore-wings and dentated hind-wings. The wings are sulphur-yellow, fore-wings black at the base, and with black veins. They also have black spots on the costa, and a broad black submarginal band dusted with yellow. The hind-wings are broadly black, dusted with blue, before the hind margin, and the eye-spot is red, bordered in front with black and cobalt blue. All the wings have yellow lunules before the hind margins. It expands to three or four inches in width, flying with a gracile speed, the wings beating rapidly. Suffice to say it is exquisite.
    There is a warm updraught between the ruined tower and the little church, blowing from the valley floor, from the barley and lentil fields, from the patch of saffron, from the vineyards and the orchards. It wafts only here and the butterflies use it as a highway to cross the ridge from one part of the valley to the next, rising upon it as raptors ride thermals. I pour my trap upon the earth, a medicine bottle of honey and wine mixed with an eggcupful of my own urine. It soaks into the gravellous soil, leaving a dark, damp stain.
    Art is only a matter of observing. The novelist examines life and recreates it as narrative; the painter scrutinizes life and imitates it in colour; the sculptor pores over life and immortalizes it in everlasting marble, or so he