"Burke, Betsy - The Orphan Of San Frediano" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burke Betsy)

"The laughing child."

"No kidding?" I figured, here we go, it's one of those shaggy dog stories with a lousy punchline and it takes years to tell, and the kid's laughter was only the first part of it.

"I was sitting in the library cutting the pages of the Leopardi. I was going to stay up and read. I had put a chair out on the terrace earlier and with the light on in the hallway, there would be just enough to read by. When the electric light is extinguished there is only the light of the moon.

"And then I heard it. It was like... gold. I can't tell you what effect it had on me. I hesitated for a moment then went out onto the terrace. I could hear the laughter all around me. Miraculous laughter. I looked down into the garden.

"He was standing in darkness, hidden in the shadows cast by the fountain and the myrtle trees that surround it. He stepped forward. He's a tiny little mite and not older than five or six years. He has a head of blond curls that shake when he laughs. He was wearing a little orange coat with a fur collar..."

"Joe, Joe," I had to stop him. It was ridiculous, "Joe, a coat, in this heat?"

"I know. I can't explain it. Later, I thought he might have been ill. You know how the Italians are about drafts."

"So then what happened?"

"I asked him what he was doing down there and he said he was one of the children from the orphanage in San Frediano. I asked him if he'd like to come inside. And he said, yes, he would. I ran downstairs and unbolted the lower doors that go out into the garden. I was afraid he might become frightened and run away. But he was there when I opened the door. He came inside and we went up to the library. There are some old children's picture books there. We were there for ages. At times I read and at times he pointed at the pictures and made up his own stories for them. Then he said he wanted to stay with me. He said, please, stay here with me. I left him in the library and went to get the house keys so that I could lock up when we left. When I got back he was gone. But the very strangest part of all was language. I don't know if we were speaking Italian or English."

"It happens."

The next day I was in Joe's neighborhood and I went into a bar and asked them where the old orphanage was. They said there had been an orphanage before and during the war, but it closed shortly after. I couldn't wait to tell Joe that somebody was having him on. I cut my lunch short that day and raced down to Harry's. Joe wasn't there yet, so I ordered and waited. Then I ordered my second. There were more tourists in there than usual, bad drinkers, loud and sloppy. I hate loud and sloppy drinkers. I wanted to turn around and tell them to shut up or go home. By my fifth drink, I realized Joe wasn't coming. Harry's Bar was crammed with these lippy, brassy foreigners by then. I decided to call it a night.

So the next day my curiosity was really piqued. I was dying to hear what he had to tell me, why he hadn't come.

But he didn't show the next afternoon, either. I started to get worried. Maybe something had happened to him. Maybe he had got so pissed after a Scotch night that he fell face-first into a ditch and drowned in an inch of water. Not that I wanted to get engaged to the guy, understand, just that I had the feeling he counted on our daily meetings.

I drank alone that evening. Joe never showed. I wondered if he had got tied up with the laughing kid, was babysitting.

It was the same the next day, though. No Joe. And the next and the next. I figured it was time to look him up. Villa La Pergola in San Frediano.

I asked around and found the house down one of the darker side streets. It was impossible to tell from the outside what was on the inside. It was all wall, crumbling, in need of a paint job, and overgrown with Virginia creeper. There was one heavy wooden door and one window with an ornate iron grate over it. I rang the bell. No answer. I must have been there for ages leaning on that bell, and it worked, because I could hear a faint ringing inside. Then a woman from the neighboring house asked if I was looking for somebody in particular and I said, yeah, the guy that was renting the place. And she said she didn't know anything about that but she did know the agency that managed the house. She gave me the name, Agenzia Focardi, and said they would show me the place if I was interested, but personally the house was too old and rundown for her tastes.

I phoned the agency and had one of their people meet me at the house. They sent a woman, fat, in the hinterland of her sixties, face makeup like a death mask.

On the doorstep, I said, "And the guy that's been renting this place, Joe Bianchi, what's happened to him?"

"You're mistaken, Signore," said the woman. "This house has been empty for over a year. There were some Germans staying here but that was at least thirteen months ago."

"Let's take a look," I said. I wondered if Joe could have been living there illegally, having found a way in and seen that the place was half-abandoned. It would have been a smart move. Florentine landlords wanted a king's ransom.

The woman unlocked the door. The smell that blasted us in the hallway was like that in my archive crypts. With two keys she opened the inner doorway and we went inside. The furniture was draped with dust sheets. The dust was everywhere. There were mouse tracks in it, but no human footprints.

"Who's feeding the cats?" I asked.

"Excuse me?"

"I thought the cats came with the place."

"There are no cats, Signore, only the strays in the garden, i randagi."