Eminence by Morris West

On his bad days - and this was one of his worst in a long time - Luca Rossini fled the city.

His staff were accustomed to his sudden exits and entrances. They could reach him at any moment on his mobile number. His peers, who could recite by rote his titles and offices, knew also that he was a special man commanded from the highest place. They accepted that he was charged with secrets-they had secrets of their own. They understood also that gossip was a dangerous pastime in this city, so they kept any resentments for private and comradely moments. His master, a curt man, never called him to account for his movements, only for his official transactions.

He traveled widely and generally alone. Few were able to chart his movements or the reasons for them, yet wherever one turned one was conscious either of his presence or of his influence. His reports were laconic. His actions were brusque. The reasons he offered were clear and precise, but he declined to argue them with anyone except the man who commanded him. He could be agreeable in society but he committed himself rarely to intimacy. Before he left the city, he would change into jeans, walking boots, a scuffed leather jacket, an old cap. He drove an elderly Mercedes, which he kept garaged at his apartment, twenty minutes walk away from his office.

His refuge was always the same: a small holding in the foothills, which he had bought twenty years before from a local landowner. The property, invisible from the road, was enclosed by an ancient stone wall pierced by a heavy wooden gate studded with hand-forged country nails. Inside the walls was a small cottage, once a barn, with a roof of barrel tiles. It consisted of one large living space onto which he had built with his own hands a country kitchen and a paved bathroom. There was water and electricity and the gas was delivered in bottles. The furniture was sparse: a bed, a dining table, a set of chairs, a battered sofa and armchair, a modern CD player with a large collection of classics, a bookcase over which hung an olive-wood crucifix with a grotesquely agonized Christus. The garden contained a vegetable plot, a stand of fruit trees, a trellis of vines, a pair of rosebushes in pots. During his absences, which were many and long, the garden was kept by a villager, whose wife cleaned the house. When he came, as he was coming today, he lived a hermit's life. When he departed, he left money in an envelope propped against the table lamp to pay the custodian.

This was the one place in the world where there was no curiosity about his identity or his station in life. He was simply Signor Luca, il padrone. Heaven or hell - and sometimes he had wondered which it was! - this was his true home. No one could look in on him. He could not see beyond his own garden wall, but he recognized that this was a place of healing. The cure had been slow. It was not ended yet; perhaps it would never be ended. But as he pushed open the gate and walked into a garden rich with the first flush of autumn fruits, he felt a sudden surge of hope.

His rituals began the moment the gate closed behind him. He walked into the house, laid out the few purchases he had made along the way: bread, cheese, wine, mineral water, sausage, and ham. Then he made the circuit of the room. It was clean; dusted every day, as he required. There was fresh linen on the bed, and towels in the bathroom. He tested the pressure in the gas cylinder and checked the pile of wood in the locker by the fireplace. He would have no need of it in this mild weather, but there was comfort in the thought that he could make a fire if he chose. He paused by the bookshelves and looked up at the twisted figure on the olive-wood cross. He talked to it in a sudden burst of Spanish.

"It still isn't settled between you and me! You're out of it-out of it and into glory. That's what we claim, anyway! I'm still here. I'm held together with string and sticking plaster. The moment I got out of bed this morning, I knew it would be a bad day. I'm in flight again. What else can I do? I'm still in the dark."

He pushed aside the volumes on the top shelf of the bookcase. Behind them was a small steel safe in the wall. The key hung around his neck. He opened the safe and took out a pile of letters held together with faded ribbon. He did not read them. He knew every line by heart. He held them in his hands, rubbing his thumbs over the thick paper as if he were handling an amulet. Then he put the letters back into the safe, relocked it, and replaced the books.

Isabel and he still corresponded; but her letters now were evanescent texts on a computer screen, read and erased, leaving only a trace of her in his memory, like the track of an insect on desert sand.