The American by Martin Booth Read Free Book Online Page A

thinks; the musician listens to life and plays it on his violin; the actor pretends reality. I am no true artist, not one of these breeds. I am merely an observer, one who stands in the world’s wings to behold the action occurring. The prompter’s chair has always been my place: I whisper the words, the stage directions, and the plot unfolds.
    How many books have I seen burned, how many paintings faded and grimed, how many sculptures smashed by weapons, chipped by frost or split by fire? How many millions of notes have I heard drift in the air to peter out like the smoke of an abandoned cigar?
    I do not have long to await. By chance, the first arrival is P. machaon . The butterfly settles on the damp spot in the earth. It has smelt the trap. One of its eye-spots is missing. A gash has ripped the wing. The tear is the exact V shape of a bird’s beak. The butterfly uncoils its proboscis like a watch spring losing tension. It lowers it to the ground and probes for the dampest area. Then it sucks.
    I watch. This beautiful creature is drinking up a part of me. What I waste, it enjoys. I imagine my urine salty, the honey sickly sweet and the wine heady. It is not long before there are half a dozen of P. machaon supping at my drug, accompanied by other species in which, today, I have no interest. The first swallowtail, with the torn wing, has had enough and stands in the scant shade of a thistle, opening and shutting its wings. It is drunk on my salt and the wine. This will not last long. In twenty minutes it will be recovered to flit down the hillside in search of flowers, more wholesome yet less wonderful.
    I do not understand how men can kill such beauty. There can be no joy, surely, in capturing such a masterpiece of evolution, gassing it with chloroform or squeezing its thorax until it is dead, setting it on a cork board until rigor mortis is advanced then pinning it, frozen by death, in a glass-topped case, hung over with a curtain to keep the light from fading the colours. To me, this is the height of frivolous insanity.
    Nothing can be gained from killing a butterfly. Killing a man is a different matter.
    The piazza in the village of Mopolino is triangular, eight trees standing in a row shading the western end, their trunks scarred and gouged by careless parking, their projecting roots stained by dog urine and fertilized by cigarette butts. They grow from beds of dirty gravel and are surrounded by kerbstones which afford them no protection. Kerbstones are not guiding marks but mere inconveniences to Italian drivers.
    At the eastern apex of the piazza is the village post office, a tiny place no bigger than a small shop, which smells of hessian, stale tobacco, cheap paper and glue. The counter is at least as old as the postmaster, who I should say is not under sixty-five. The wooden surface is highly polished by wax and the sleeves of jackets, but it is also cracked, the splits filled with an accumulation of the dust of years. The postmaster’s face is similarly polished and cracked.
    The advantage of the piazza is that it contains two bars, one on either side. This is of great use to me, for I can sit in one and cast an eye over not only the piazza but the other bar, too.
    There is little likelihood of a watcher drinking in the same bar as myself. He would feel he had to move away if I was to enter, or go to sit at one of the tables outside. This would make him conspicuous. He would prefer to be across the piazza, observing me from a distance.
    I took a long time finding the right post office.
    In the town where I reside, the main post office is too big, too busy, too public. There is always a throng of people milling about it and the telephone company next door, many of them waiting to make a call from a kiosk, post a letter, send a telegram, meet a friend. They read newspapers, chat to each other or stand and survey the crowds. Some walk up and down impatiently. They are a perfect cover for a clandestine