Five thousand lire for a half-litre bottle. The most expensive he’d ever seen. He looked at her, the cheap clothes, the gold, the dead, strained eyes.
‘A husband and wife can’t run an estate on their own,’ he said. ‘Too much labour.’
The card read: Aristide and Chavah Greco. There was a hand-drawn map on the back to a place in the hills, an offer to buy direct from the farm at special prices. He thought of offering his help. But she looked penniless too. Had to be, from what he knew…
‘I do other things,’ she said very quietly.
‘Like what?’
‘First crop.’ She held up a bottle and looked a little awkward. She didn’t want to answer the question. ‘I’m hoping’ — she shrugged her sturdy shoulders at the cardboard cases of bottles of oil piled high behind her — ‘I won’t have to lug every one of these back to Fiesole when this party’s over.’
She smiled a weak smile. He guessed she hadn’t sold much at all. The tourists might fall for this trick, but not the Florentines. They never spent a cent without good reason.
‘You’re Greek,’ he said, thinking of the surname.
‘No. Greco’s my husband’s name. He’s from Calabria. I’m Chavah Efron and I come from Newark, New Jersey. Via Kathmandu, Morocco, and several places I’d best not mention.’ That smile again. ‘Efron.’
She made a tweeting sound. Trying so hard to sell something. The oil. Herself.
‘My mom came from Tel Aviv. In Hebrew Efron means lark.’
He picked up a leaflet from the stack on their table. It was a big pile. Not many people were interested in paying a fortune for fresh green olive oil that had never been near insecticide. The words and pictures told a kind of story, a myth about a couple trying to find their way back to the Garden. A couple of hippies. Took over a rundown estate five years before. Had to wait that long to get organic accreditation. They even had short profiles of themselves. Chavah left America to ‘travel’ when she was just sixteen. Asia, Africa, Europe. Ari, a big, unsmiling thug, clean-shaven; none too bright by the looks of the photo. Son of a ‘businessman’ from Reggio in Calabria, the very toe of Italy. A world away from here. Ari was a good head taller than her, though looking at the photos he guessed she wore the trousers.
‘Chavah Efron,’ he said when they went back for the last two cases.
‘That’s my name.’ She looked tired and a little puzzled. But grateful somebody was talking to her. No one else came near.
‘Why Florence?’
She scowled and said, ‘Life beats you up sometimes. I’m bouncing back.’
‘Efron means lark?’
‘Like I said.’
‘And Chavah?’
He didn’t know why he asked that.
‘It’s Jewish. In the Torah it means the mother of all life.’
‘What the hell’s the Torah?’
She laughed. ‘The Book of Moses. The Jewish Bible, if you like. Don’t ask me to explain. Not my thing.’
His head was hurting. He kept seeing the blood-smeared paintings on the wall. And something else too: another memory of her, that time almost a month before.
The first Thursday of the month. A little piece of hell come down to earth.
‘What kind of name’s that?’ he asked, almost to himself.
‘My name.’ She seemed bemused by this conversation. ‘The mother of all life, of everything… Sounds pretty good to me.’
‘I meant…’ he began. ‘As a name.’
She folded her arms across her chest. He tried not to stare.
‘I guess you’re a Catholic. Don’t get me wrong. Doesn’t bother me. I got a Jewish mom. Doesn’t make me one. Worked that out when I tried the kibbutz thing and a little…’ She looked guarded. ‘Other stuff. I got too much going on in the present to worry about tomorrow. God…’ The woman glanced at the marquee door, back to the severe black and white facade of Santa Croce. ‘You got that bastard coming out of your ears.’
She waited. When he didn’t speak she said, ‘Chavah. Eva. See the connection?’
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t think.
‘Eve! That’s where it comes from,’ she said, as if it were nothing. She held out her hands and did a little dance. The snaking, sinuous movements brought back more memories. ‘Eve!’
He stood there, shaking, seeing her in his head, another time, naked, laughing, twisting, crying, in a room full of lascivious men bawling for more.
When he calmed himself he thought of the husband. The stories he’d read in the papers.
First Thursday of every month.
However much they pressed, she wouldn’t go back. She couldn’t. It was unthinkable.
‘What other things?’ he asked.
‘Is this a job interview or something?’
‘Maybe. I’ve got friends who could use this stuff. Thursday. You’re here in the market? I know someone who runs a restaurant.’
She looked suspicious. ‘Give me his number. I’ll call.’
‘Thursday evening. Not the day…’
A moment of hesitation, a scared look on her face, then she said, ‘Thursday evening I’m busy.’
‘Eve…’
‘I said it meant Eve. My name’s Chavah.’
All things happened for a reason.
‘My friend with the restaurant. He’s got big money. Only night he closes is Thursday. You could cancel.’
She sighed. ‘What do you mean, I can cancel? I told you. Thursday’s taken.’
And so, he thought, are you. ‘How much for a case?’ he asked.
She put a grubby finger to his fleshy lips, thinking. ‘Sixty thousand, list. But I think you’d have a nice face if you let me see it. To you, forty.’
‘I’ll take one…’ he said, and didn’t move.
‘Two for sixty. You can sell it to your restaurant friend.’
‘Two it is,’ he answered, and didn’t move.
She waited, tilting her head from side to side, soft black locks shifting, golden earrings alive with light. ‘When you’re ready…’
‘For two I have to bring my car. And the money. I don’t have either with me now. When the market closes.’
‘Fine,’ she said, and handed him a card, sighing as if to say: you’re just a time-wasting lunatic. You won’t show and we both know it.
And Thursday I’ll be back in the same place, whatever happens, because I need the money. I’ve got to be there.
‘Six thirty. Signor…?’
‘I’ll help you, Chavah,’ he said. The thin, unsmiling mouth broke just a little. ‘With your van.’
She raised a glass of olive oil as if it were a toast. Chartreuse, the French liqueur. That, he realized, was what it looked like.
‘Six thirty,’ he repeated, then walked out into the cold and rain.
The direct way was not that of Pino Fratelli. Five minutes after setting off for Santo Spirito, he diverted to his terraced house with the admonition, ‘A book. We need a book. The Grassi dragon will be on guard. Stay behind, smile and keep silent.’
The cause of his apprehension turned out to be a large woman in a threadbare dress who was sweeping the stone stairs with great vigour as the two of them arrived. Home was an ancient terrace, the ground floor two storerooms, one full of cardboard boxes of junk, the other occupied by the skeletons of old bicycles and several motor scooters in pieces. At the top of the staircase the place divided into two separate apartments, his on the right, the rented studio that Julia Wellbeloved was using to the left. He never locked his door. Most of the time it was half open, with the strains of old jazz drifting through.