Sterling is watching my face. He wants to know if I can really hear it. Dead or alive. Alive or dead.
“Make the turn to Falassi’s place,” I say.
He hesitates.
“I mean it. Go.”
The road is a whispering tunnel of green. There are no other cars. We arrive at a crossroads, make a guess, and keep heading east, coming out to ripe farmland dotted with rolls of hay, and the low-pitched clanging of hundreds of tin bells. A herd of sheep is crossing, guided only by a white dog. Two by two, docile as a class of kindergartners, they go out one gate, across the asphalt, and into the neighboring field. The dog stands on a rise and barks, the sheep stream past, and the bells are like a living wall of sound. There are no humans in sight. Even when the herd has disappeared, the dog continues to bark at our car. As soon as we creep past, he goes.
It sobers me. Simple equations that I never really understood. Dogs and sheep. Farmland and sun. Build your fortress on the highest ground. Not for the first time since I’ve been in Italy, the external world — the wild-eyed horses in the Palio, this troubled man beside me in the car — seems extraordinarily vivid, while my own self feels distant from the experience, more and more transparent. Is that what a career in the black box of the Bureau does to you? Numbs the senses, as well as the soul?
Marcello Falassi lives in a powder-blue trailer on the dark side of the road, the only structure for several kilometers. We have seen many low-income houses cheerfully surrounded by sunflowers and artichoke plants, but this one has nothing to say for itself, except bales of wire in the front yard. I suppose nothing grows because of the damp, sunless location. But when we pass a dead dove splayed out on the walkway, I wonder if something else is at play.
Signora Falassi opens the door. She is a depressed-looking, spectacularly overweight person about fifty with a mane of artificially jet-black curls, wearing a pale lavender blouse and matching slacks. Her mouth pulls tight into a wary expression as she affirms that her husband is a driver for Spectra.
“Perchè lei vuole sapere?” Why do you want to know?
We stand on the steps looking earnest while Sterling explains in Italian that we are an American couple who just bought a farm in the area and were told Signore Falassi is the one to talk to about getting the chemicals we need to cure olives.
“Non è a casa. Guida la sua strada.”
“Can you tell us where he is? Maybe we can catch him.”
The woman says to follow her, but she can hardly walk, toddling slowly down a narrow hallway by hanging on to the walls. I glimpse a kitchen and an ancient nonna taking something out of the oven that smells of rancid lamb fat. A few steps farther, and we enter a tiny sloping room crammed with boxes of files. A camp bed is buried under stacks of newspapers and indistinguishable clothing. Hollowed out of this dark rat’s nest is a corner desk with a laptop computer under a brilliant light.
Signora Falassi lowers herself to a wooden chair with a painful sigh.
“Sorry if we are bothering you,” Sterling says in Italian.
She waves her hand. No bother. It’s just her feet, and she lifts them up for our inspection — a pair of deformed stumps in rubber thongs. They look like pictures I have seen of leprosy. The toes curl sideways and the skin has erupted in permanent red welts.
Falassi’s delivery schedule spurts out of the printer.
“She says he’s making a drop at the feed store in San Piero,” Sterling says. “It’s close by; we can catch him.”
“Ask how we get to San Piero,” I say, not taking my eyes from the feet.
She begins to give directions, but it turns into a shouting match with the old lady — Falassi’s mother, listening from the kitchen — who knows a better way to go. Not getting her point across, the nonna shuffles into the office, screeching and jabbing, while Sterling smiles and holds up his cell phone, indicating, Thank you very much; we’ll use the GPS.
I don’t think they understand, but they do calm down, and then a long exchange continues among the three of them in Italian. I can’t stop staring at the old lady’s feet. She, too, is wearing rubber thongs, and her welts go up to the ankles. It looks like both women have been burned by a caustic substance.
“What was that all about?” I say when we are back in the car.
Sterling drives with an eye on the blinking GPS.
“They said there was an accident. The husband used to keep chemicals behind the house. The wife and mother are out in the yard one day, and they notice their shoes are melting. There’s a leak coming from one of the barrels. They didn’t even feel it at first. Corrosive substances dissolve the nerve endings, along with the skin. That’s the good news, I guess.”
“Did Falassi want to do damage, or did he just screw up?”
“He screwed up. The wife says she has no use for him. She’s disabled now, stuck in the house with his mother, and he’s never home, yadda yadda yadda. But she got some money out of Spectra after the accident, so she’s going on a pilgrimage to Fatima.”
“And never coming back?”
“The mother’s going with her.”
“Gotta love it.”
We arrive at San Piero as the feed store is closing. The entire town is closed for dinner and will reopen around eight p.m. The manager says Falassi left a few minutes ago, but we can catch him on the road, pointing the opposite way from which we have come. The chemical delivery man does not seem in a hurry to get home for that roast lamb dinner.
We jump back in the car and Sterling jams it. After several tense, silent minutes of wondering if we are in fact going in the right direction, we sight the silver Spectra van and slow down to tourist speed, keeping a distance. He continues for several kilometers and then turns off to the right.
We slide past and pull over. Sterling checks the GPS.
“Where does that road go?” I ask.
“Looks like it ends in the middle of a damn forest.”
We swing around and make the turn onto a short dirt spur — bumpy but passable. We take it slowly, stopping at an iron gate about a hundred meters in. It’s chain-locked to vehicles, but obviously the van has just passed through. There is no other way out and the tread marks are fresh. We leave our car and hop over the gate. It is late in the day. Steamy afternoon sun languishes in the high grass and dusty pines. Not a motor, not a chirp, only ambient leafy rustling. We are definitely in the middle of a damn forest.
The road is old, maybe thousands of years old, worn into the landscape. The light beneath the canopy of needle clusters is wavering and soft. We trek along easily on well-used tracks. Between the tracks, tufts of lavender and daisies run wild. The air becomes lighter and perfumed — the trees break and we find ourselves in an enchanted valley, the kind of spot that calls out for habitation, with its own human-friendly microclimate sheltered by the hills. There is a long-neglected olive grove and the remains of a stream. A meadow of irises where two pure white Tuscan Chianina cows and a tawny calf are grazing.
The road takes a turn, past four worn gravestones, and goes downhill. The grassy median that grew between the tire tracks in the sun disappears as we enter thick oak woods. As in a fairy tale, the signs are warning us that we have crossed into an unfavorable realm. The foliage has grown spikes — juniper, gorse, and forbidding nettles. The air has cooled; motionless and buzzing with gnats. The tire tracks continue around what seems to be a hillock, but on second look we see that it’s an old stone wall splattered with mustard-colored fungus and buried under eons of dead foliage.