Mimi's Ghost by Tim Parks Page A

really?’ But Morris’s mind was suddenly racing. Who could it be? What unhappy coincidence was working against him? The planets, the stars, always against him.
    â€˜His name’s Stan,’ Bobo said.
    â€˜Oh, Stan!’ Morris laughed, but almost choked. ‘Yes, Stan Albertini!’ God, of course. That was why the dumb American had been toiling up the hill on his stupid bicycle, to see Antonella, who no doubt must have photos of Massimina all over the living-room. He racked his brains to remember. The same Massimina Stan had seen calling Morris from across the platform when he picked up the ransom money at Roma Termini. For a moment Morris felt desperately sick, as if he might just throw up the much-praised cappuccino and brioche all over the marble-topped table. At the same time some automatic pilot managed to get out most amiably: ‘Still wearing his kaftan and beads, is he? Not a very good teacher, I’m afraid.’
    Bobo got up to pay the bill. ‘Maybe not, but he does have some good stories to tell.’
    Morris, however, was beginning to get a hold on himself by now and simply let that one pass. If anybody had really known anything he would have been serving a life sentence already.
    In gaol rather than out, that is.

11
    Like any philanthropist, Morris liked to visit the beneficiaries of his charity, muck in, have lunch with the boys, ask them if all was well, here in the hostel, over at the factory: conditions of work, pay, food. He particularly liked to perch on one of the window-sills at the villa near Marzana, frugally spooning up a brodo di ver dura he himself had indirectly provided. He would listen to Farouk’s pidgin English, encourage the brave young Ramiz, who had lost parents and sister when their boat capsized off Bari, discuss the disgraceful behaviour of the Serbs with Croatian Ante.
    Then if he had time on his hands he might sit patiently through Forbes’s presentation of the perfection of Raphael, the decadence of Tintoretto. Raphael had died at thirty-seven. Ars longa, vita brevis. Tintoretto at seventy-six. Somehow that was always the way with the great and the not quite so great. Shelley and Browning, for example. In his late sixties himself and never without his flowery ties, Forbes projected slides onto the powdery plasterwork of the sitting-room, where the immigrants lit wood fires using sticks they collected on the hillside above. Still unrepaired, the chimney refused to draw, the hearth smoked. Farouk dozed off, his head on Azedine’s shoulder. One of the Ghanaians was whittling something. And as Forbes’s plummy voice plodded learnedly on and flame-light flickered over the rich colour of St George slaying the dragon or a Last Judgement, Morris could feel himself quite marvellously part of it all, this curious world he had invented: the underprivileged, art, Italy. His family, almost.
    This morning, steering the Mercedes up the foggy track to the house, he told Mimi that, given the mistakes he had made in the past, she could hardly deny he was doing his best to atone. Could she? Which surely was all anybody could ever ask of anybody. Constant atonement for the mistakes one was constantly making. Wasn’t that the essence of Catholicism? ‘Until the mistakes become the atonement,’ he surprised himself by inventing, ‘and the atonement the mistakes,’ Certainly that was the case with Paola. He made his voice more intimate, more sad: ‘Every time I have sex with her it reminds me of you. It’s the perfect fioretto, a constant mortification, I’m betraying you and atoning at the same time,’
    Beyond the windscreen, cypresses and palms in milky whiteness traced out a satisfying otherworldliness, perfect backdrop to this bizarre line of thought. Morris put the phone down as he drew to a halt. A figure loomed suddenly from the fog and leant forward to open the door for him. Kwame, his favourite. Perhaps he should