The Secret of Santa Vittoria by Robert Crichton Read Free Book Online Page A

at them. It was Old Vines, the keeper of the wine.
    â€œI’ve upset the sleep of the wine,” Bombolini said. “If he had a rifle he would shoot us off this tower. Are you almost done?”
    â€œYes. Two more DUCE’S and one DU .”
    â€œI ran out of paint. No,” he said, “it wasn’t Mussolini himself at first. We didn’t blame him. It was the water. The country might have been falling apart, but we couldn’t see it. You know what The Master says. ‘Men are apt to deceive themselves in big things, but they rarely do so in particulars.’”
    â€œI don’t know who The Master is.”
    â€œNiccolò Machiavelli,” Bombolini said. “He’s my master. Have you studied him?” Fabio said that he had.
    â€œWell I read him. I memorize him,” the wine seller said. “I have read The Prince forty-three times.”
    The young man was astonished by this information, and he didn’t believe it. His father had once told him that beneath Bombolini’s clownish exterior there was a better mind than anyone could expect, but Fabio had never been able to see any sign of it.
    â€œI don’t suppose there is any more wine?”
    Fabio thought about it. If Bombolini got drunk it might be the end of them both, and yet the wine had made the journey down seem possible. He opened the knapsack and uncorked the second bottle of wine and slid it along the catwalk.
    â€œGod shower blessings on you, Fabio. Rain them down on you. Flood you with them, Fabio. God drown you in blessings.” And he began to drink the hot red wine. They were silent while he drank.
    â€œWhen I’m through with this bottle,” Bombolini said, “I’m going off this tower, Fabio.”
    â€œOh no,” Fabio said.
    â€œI can’t disappoint my audience. Look at them down there. They’ve been waiting for me all day.”
    â€œI didn’t come up here for nothing.”
    â€œCan you imagine what they would say? The poor son of a bitch can’t even fall off the tower.”
    The young man began to paint more swiftly. The paint was running short, and he was becoming tired. If he was ever to get Angela’s father down, it would have to be done soon, before he got too tired, before darkness fell on them, before the effect of the wine began to wear off.
    The men and the women were on their way up from the terraces by then. Wherever Fabio looked he could see people coming out from the shadows of the vines onto the track that comes up the mountain from the terraces. A great number of them were already up the mountain, so when Bombolini let fly the second bottle the noise from the lower piazza, and now from the Piazza of the People as well, was the loudest of the day. Fabio by then had reached the bottom of the bucket and was on the last letter. It was strange, but there was exactly enough paint left to paint out the last letter, a U, and not a brushful more.
    â€œNow throw the bucket,” Bombolini said. Fabio threw the first bucket far out over the town, away from the piazza, out over the Fat Wall so that no one could get hurt.
    â€œNow the brush.” He threw the brush. There was a shout from the crowd. He threw the cheese, the olives, the second bucket, and each time the crowd roared and the noise grew louder and by the time Fabio threw the knapsack the piazza was in an uproar.
    â€œAll right, let’s go now,” Fabio shouted. He had counted on the excitement to stir the wine seller. He came around to the side of the catwalk where Bombolini sat, and as he did the rusted iron bolts that had been drilled into the concrete years before suddenly cried out, screamed, in protest. He ran along the narrow walk and past Bombolini and on to the spiked pipe so that his weight was no longer on the catwalk. Now the people in the piazza were silent. There was no sound from the city at all.
    â€œThey don’t want you to fall, do you