The Sadness of Things by Claus von Bohlen

The Sadness of Things      Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt1  Vergil ‐ Aeneid Bk. 1, l.462      There is a small valley high in the Alps. The valley is called Val Gardena.  Beyond the valley lie the jagged granite cathedrals known as the Dolomites. They  are grey and austere and the rock is hard and abrasive but good for climbing. The  valley itself is green and lush and puts forth many flowers, each in its own season  ‐ bright blue cornflowers in April, buttercups in May, and the snow white  leopard’s bane in June. Here the cows roam in summer; healthy cows, their  brown hides effulgent in the bright sunlight. Their eyelashes are long and they  bat them demurely; their breath is as sweet as the grass they continually chew.       The people of Val Gardena are a mountain people. They do not waste their  words. When they speak, they do so in Ladin, a hybrid language left behind by  the Roman legionnaires who used to guard the high passes to the  north. You will  not understand Ladin. Do not let it concern you. These mountain people will  observe you from a distance. When they see that you are to be taken seriously,  then no barrier of language will prevent them from extending the hand of  friendship. It is a rough and a calloused hand, but a strong one; it can be relied  upon, both when the meadow grass is warm and lush, and when the blizzard  blows bitterly and the land provides no sustenance for man or beast. Then that  same hand will give you a half of whatever it holds, for that is the custom. And  how could it be otherwise? If you are born in the valley, and every day you see  the sun rise and set on those distant stone cathedrals, then there can be little  room for meanness in your heart.      The valley is famed for the quality of its craftsmen. They are sculptors of  religious objects, and their material is wood. In summer they select those trees  that will not survive another winter. From the fragrant pines and gnarled                                                           1 The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.

Translation by Robert Fagles

cypress that clothe the sides of the valley, they will choose the old and the infirm.  The trunks are cut down and carried to the workshops. Then, in the winter  months, the sculptors will set to work with axe and chisel, plane and paper. The  washed out days  are short and the dark nights are long, but the workshops are  warm and bright and here the skill and the art is passed from father to son down  the generations. From Val Gardena, the sculptures are exported throughout the  world, as they have been for centuries. Thus there is at least one thread of  continuity in this world of flux.      *      In the south of Mexico, in the state of Chiapas, there is a town called San  Cristobal de  las Casas. Wide‐hipped women in round bowler hats come to sell  maize and highland fruits in the market square. Behind the square is the pale  blue and white stucco façade of the Iglesia de Santa Lucía. In the whitewashed  interior, a wooden effigy of Saint Christopher occupies a niche. The statue is  made of wood; the wood has darkened with age. The statue’s toes are polished  bright from being rubbed by the greasy fingers of supplicants. The statue was  carved by the deft chisels of the craftsmen of Val Gardena.      *

The Church of the Holy Family in Kilglass, in county Sligo, stands on a  small raised plot of land.  The gray shale walls glisten with rainwater, as they do  almost every day. A Parcelforce lorry is parked in front of the church. Father  Martin Mullaney stands in the porch and signs his name on the touch sensitive  digital screen which the driver has thrust towards him, then his head retreats  back into the folds of his cassock like a turtle’s. Four burly men, pillars of the  Church, brave the blustering rain and climb into the back of the lorry. When they  reappear, they are carrying a wooden box the size of a simple rectangular coffin.  The box contains a newly carved effigy of the Madonna with child. There is a  stamp on the lid of the box. The stamp reads: Prodotto di Val Gardena.      *

A wizened man in blue overalls stands outside the sacristy of the Basilica  of St. John Lateran in Rome. His name is Francesco. He smokes a cigarette,  furtively. The door to the sacristy opens and a younger man’s face appears. His  name is Karl‐Johann and he is the new Bavarian exchange deacon. He has shaved  recently and his sensitive neck is still flushed from the violence of the blade. He  sees the man in overalls and calls to him,    ‘Buongiorno Francesco. De novo?’    ‘Si, padre,’ replies Francesco, discarding the still smoldering cigarette in  the gutter behind him.    ‘Vengo,’ replies the young man, then he disappears back inside the  sacristy.    Five minutes later both men are walking through the shaded porticos of  the Loggia delle Benedizioni. They walk slowly since Francesco, a senior member  of the Holy See’s army of cleaners, has a limp. They enter the Cathedral by the  portico of Leo XIII. Shafts of sunlight fan across the dark and cavernous interior.  Karl‐Johann catches his breath, as he does every time he enters the building. He  is an aesthete.    Francesco leads the young deacon to the Corsini chapel.  Their passing  stirs up the mites of dust which are caught in their untold multitude by the shafts  of light. Francesco unlocks the ornate grille to the chapel and indicates the small  stepladder which stands beside the altar’s tabernacle. Karl‐Johann mounts the  three steps and sees the dusting of wood particles on the sill beneath the carving  of a cherub on the frontispiece of the tabernacle. He strokes his finger across the  cherub and feels the rough, sandy texture of the decaying wood.    ‘E finito,’ affirms Francesco.    Karl‐Johann nods. ‘Devo parlare com a bottega en Val Gardena, no?’      *

Spring has returned to Val Gardena; it has done so shyly, like a pretty  young maid entering the empty bedroom of the master of the house. Her pale  wintry cheeks blush ever so slightly; she is cautious, tentative, and also – why not  admit it? – a little excited. Just so the long meadow grass, which has lain flat and  dun coloured for many months, now blushes in its own way, touched with vernal  green.     But first came the midday thaw, and then, after a while, the dripping from  the slate rooftops continued through the night. Patches of snow still remained in  the hollows and in the shadows of houses, but now these patches are no more  than a memory. Daily the green hue intensifies as the young shoots grow in  strength and confidence. But soon the green shoots will be eclipsed by the  meadow flowers; they shall form a carpet of colour whose brightness and cheer  are irrepressible.      *        Santa Cristina is the name of one of the villages on the valley floor.  The  cobbled main street is lined with shops which cater to the whims of tourists –  cafés, stores vending sports equipment, a museum devoted to traditional wood  carving, a small police station and an even smaller art gallery. The art gallery also  displays works in wood, though they are not religious artifacts. Some are  contemporary and produced by professors at the school of modern design,  further up the valley. There are also two or three carvings made from twisted  and gnarled roots. These are painstakingly produced by an old man who lives in  a small house on a steep hillside, an hour’s walk from the village.      If you follow the main road out of the town, you will see a forester’s dirt  road forking off to the left. The road snakes its way up the northern flank of the  valley. After a while the road breaks out of the forest and meanders between  meadows whose incline is too steep for machinery. Here the grass is still scythed  by hand; it is stored in dark barns in preparation for the winter months. At the  top of the highest meadow is the house which belongs to the old man who carves  the twisted roots.      The old man is called Geppetto. Many years ago, during his  apprenticeship, Geppetto’s instructors observed with wonder and a twinge of

envy that the young boy’s chisel was able to breathe life into the religious statues  which were, at that time, the valley’s sole export. The agony of Saint Sebastian,  the fatigue of Saint Christopher, the forgiveness of Christ himself; all were  captured with astonishing felicity. Pinocchio himself was not more lifelike, and  so the young apprentice soon came to be known, only half‐jokingly, as Geppetto.          Today Geppetto sits on the divided tree trunk that serves as a bench in  front of his house. His hands hold a sheet of fine sandpaper and the twisted root  which he has been carving. His eyes take in the verdure of the meadow in front of  him. He leans back and rests his head against the wall of his home. He closes his  eyes and lets the sunlight warm the leathery skin of his face. The old man’s face  is craggy like the cliffs that rise up from the woods behind his house. The deep  folds and wrinkles are like the ravines and the gorges of the surrounding  mountains. Maybe that is something to hope for ‐ that our faces will one day  reflect the landscapes that we have loved.      In years gone by, the warmth of the sunlight on his face would have  brought a smile to the old man’s lips. But he does not smile, for he is sick at heart.      *      Geppetto’s life has not been an easy one. His apprenticeship was  interrupted by the war and he spent two years with the partisans fighting the  fascists. His band was ambushed by a troop of German Gebirgsjäger and he was  shot in the leg. Separated from the rest of the band, he was lucky to evade  capture. At the end of his strength, he finally limped into the tiny village of Eschio  and knocked on the door of the first house he came to. It belonged to the  landowning Paravicini clan. They took him in and looked after him until his  wounded leg had healed.       During his convalescence, Geppetto,  then still a boy of 17, fell in love with  the maid who brought him his meals. Eva was just 16 years old, but the flame of  young love burned no less brightly in her breast. When Geppetto’s leg had  mended he rejoined the partisans. The wound had healed well but he no longer  leapt from rock to rock with his former fearlessness. In surviving death he had  come to fear the end of life, for now his mind was filled with thoughts of Eva.

One night a messenger came to Geppetto. The messenger reported that  Eva was with child and that the baby was due in four months.  At this time the  Germans were retreating on all fronts. The war was almost over, at least in the  Southern Tirol, and so Geppetto returned to Eschio to propose to Eva. The bump  was scarcely visible and by the time their first son was born they had returned to  Val Gardena, so even the gossiping old ladies were unaware of the potential for  scandal.      Geppetto resumed his apprenticeship. Many churches had been destroyed  during the war and the demand for statues and carvings was high. He worked  hard and his work was widely praised. Having completed his apprenticeship, he  set up his own workshop in a small barn high up on the hillside. The barn was  attached to an old abandoned house. Owing to a disagreement about inheritance,  the joint owners wanted to sell the house as it was. The anonymous artists of Val  Gardena do not command large sums, but Geppetto was never short of work and  after two years he was able to make a modest offer. The offer was accepted.  Geppetto devoted that first summer to repairs and improvements. In the autumn  Eva gave birth to a second boy.      These were happy times. In winter, Geppetto carved in the warmth of the  old barn. In summer, he often worked outside, inhaling the scent of the meadow  and occasionally stopping to watch the fluffy dandelion seeds borne aloft by the  wind, like summer snow flakes. Sooner than he would have thought possible,  Geppetto found himself waving a daily goodbye to his two sons as they set off on  foot for the school in the valley.       By day, Geppetto’s skillful hands crafted the faces of saints. In the quiet  evenings, his eyes took in the distant granite cathedrals of the Dolomites. At  night, Eva tended to him no less fondly than she had when she was nursing him,  in the early days of their love. Geppetto realized that he had much to be thankful  for and the religious feeling grew in him. He began to pray ‐ not the dry sterile  prayers of duty, but prayers giving thanks for the bestowal of gifts of inestimable  worth.      As his two sons grew, so their boisterous activities required more and  more space. Geppetto let them roam freely in the woods and fields. He realized  that the more they tired themselves, the quieter his evenings were. In the late  1950s, a young man by the name of Reinhold Messner had started to make a  name for himself in the Dolomites. Geppetto’s young sons followed his progress  with adolescent obsession. They set off on small adventures of their own, in  emulation of this hero of the valley.

Eva packed sandwiches for the boys. In winter she gave them a thermos  of tea. Often, as Geppetto and Eva ate their own lunch indoors, they watched  their two sons a couple of hundred metres further up the side of the valley,  reclining in the snow with the same satisfaction as if they had just pioneered a  route up a formidable north face.      On a day of perfect sunshine and topaz skies in March 1957, both boys  were swept to their deaths by an avalanche.      Geppetto and Eva heard the roar of the mass of snow. By the time they got  to the window, all they could see was a gaping wound slashed into the side of the  valley. They ran as fast as they could across the snow covered fields, to the  mound of snow and rocks and uprooted trees which marked the terminus of the  avalanche’s descent. They did not know where their boys had been and they  could not be sure they were buried in the debris. Mountain rescue were called;  they searched the surrounding area until late into the night. Geppetto and Eva  sat through that night and the next, hoping against hope that the boys had  explored further afield than usual and might, at any moment, wander into the  kitchen. Hope can be stubborn; it was not finally extinguished until the frozen  bodies of the two boys were found in the spring, when the mound of debris  melted.      Only the grief stricken parents themselves truly know the awful silence  that reigns in a home from which children have been untimely torn.     Geppetto and Eva spent their days and nights alone. Their nearest  neighbours lived three miles away. The snow lay thick that winter and the going  was very slow; there were few visitors. The postman made the journey on foot  once a week. Geppetto and Eva received letters and telegrams of concern but no  condolences ‐ the bodies had not yet been found. Eva’s relatives promised to visit  once the snows melted and the passes reopened.     Eva retreated into herself. She sat at the kitchen table staring with cloudy  eyes at the gash sliced into the flank of the valley. Geppetto watched as, day by  day, the light dimmed in her eyes. Eva stopped speaking, then she stopped  eating. She caught a chill which became a fever which consumed her as surely as  fire consumes a dry funeral pyre. Snow had made the road to the house  impassable to vehicles, so Geppetto set off on foot to fetch the doctor. When they  returned four hours later, Eva was delirious. The doctor tended to her as best he

could and promised to send four strong men to carry her to Santa Cristina the  following morning; from there she could be driven to the hospital.      Geppetto sat beside Eva through the night. He held a cool compress to her  burning forehead, as she had done for him when he lay in the Paravicini house in  Eschio. Exhausted by his vigil, Geppetto fell asleep at dawn. When he awoke, Eva  was dead. It is a foolish man who says that the health of the body does not  depend, at least in some instances, upon the will to live.      The priest and the doctor persuaded Geppetto to spend the rest of the  winter in the guest room in the rectory. They feared for Geppetto’s sanity were  he to stay alone in the empty house. Geppetto complied for their sakes. At first  the days dragged heavily; he was unaccustomed to idleness. But he found some  distraction in repairing the draughty doorways and cracked window frames  in  the rectory. Since this activity appeared to speed the grieving process, the priest  asked Geppetto to complete a number of repairs in the church. Geppetto spent a  whole day in the priest’s kitchen, considering the request. When the priest  returned after his rounds that evening, Geppetto informed him that he was afraid  he could not agree to the request.     ‘Why not?’ asked the priest.     ‘The Lord has taken from me my wife and my children. I shall not set foot  in his house again,’ replied Geppetto. And indeed, Geppetto never did enter a  church again; the men of Val Gardena are men of their word.      When the snows had melted, Geppetto returned to his house on the  hillside. He opened the doors to the barn to let in the fresh spring air. He picked  up his chisel, but he found he could not bring himself to craft another saint. The  religious feeling had died in him. Instead,  he took to wandering the hillsides.  And, like a child picking at a scab, he was unable to stay away from the gully  created by the avalanche which had killed his sons. By an enormous effort of will,  Geppetto forced himself to roam elsewhere. He took to wandering greater  distances, ranging further and further over that high, rocky terrain. But even  then he would frequently find himself picking over the strewn boulders left  behind by another avalanche, on another hillside.      An avalanche destroys everything in its path. It will uproot trees and  carry with it enormous boulders. It will tear up the brown winter grass below  the snow, scrape off the humus and expose the rock beneath as if it were bone.  When the snow melts in spring, the roots and branches are left high and dry

amongst the boulders and the rock. Because there is no humus, there is no  moisture, no bacteria, and no rotting. Roots and branches are dried and bleached  by the summer sun. They twist and harden into strange new shapes.       *      It is a hot summer’s day six months after the avalanche which killed his  sons. Geppetto is striding up a rock strewn gully. The sweat stings his eyes and  he mops his forehead. He flicks the sweat from his fingers and watches the  droplets land on a lamb whose head is half hidden between two outstretched  forelegs. But it is no lamb; it is the bleached and twisted root of a tree. The lamb’s  body merges with the whitened tree trunk. Geppetto bends down to examine it  more closely. He admires the forelegs, the button nose. The knots of wood are  like so many locks of hair. Geppetto traces the shape of the knots with his thumb.  The wood is warm beneath his touch and it calls to him like a living thing.      The next day Geppetto returns to the same place. He has brought with  him a saw and with this he separates the lamb from the rest of the tree. Heavy as  it is, he carries it back to his barn. He clamps the wood in a vice and picks up his  chisel. Tenderly he begins to shape the back legs, the little tail. He does not touch  the head or the forelegs. Rather, he attempts to copy nature’s imitation of nature.      Two weeks later, Geppetto brings the finished lamb to the central office  which processes all requests for religious art from Val Gardena. He knows that  when orders are cancelled or craftsmen make a small error, the resulting pieces  are sometimes sold to visiting tourists.  The manager of the central office looks  skeptically at the lamb.       ‘E bello, certo,’ says the manager.  ‘Ma non è un Santo.’ He strokes his chin.  ‘Non so,’ he says pensively.      A third voice interrupts the negotiation. ‘Io lo comprarei,’ says a man with  a trim goatee beard. He introduces himself. He is the owner of the new art  gallery, he has overheard the conversation. He offers a price that far exceeds  what Geppetto had hoped for. The lamb is sold and the owner of the gallery says  that he will buy anything of a similar quality. A rare smile crosses Geppetto’s lips.

The first thing Geppetto does when he returns home is to attach a large  board to the inside of the wall of the barn. He paints the board white and from  then on he marks on it the location and date of every avalanche he comes across.   The first one he marks is the avalanche that buried his sons.      *      Many years have passed since Geppetto carved that first lamb. In the  intervening period he has found many interesting pieces of twisted wood. He has  made eagles in all positions of flight – feathered wings extended, wings retracted,  talons grasping, talons hidden. Sometimes the wear of the wood has suggested  feathers, sometimes he has carved the feathers himself. He has carved the clumsy  paws of sleeping wolfcubs and the delicate hands of countless marmots. For each  gnarled and twisted piece of wood which sounds a note in Geppetto’s creative  imagination, he walks the mountainsides for two, three, maybe four weeks. Still  he is drawn to the exposed rock gashes where the avalanches have torn down  the steep slopes. But here, on the dry rocks, in the dry heat, he is happy. As happy  as he can be.      After midsummer, Geppetto puts aside the wood he finds. He knows that  he will not be able to range freely when the first snows come, and he needs  enough work to keep himself busy through the long winter months. He is afraid  of not having enough work. Afraid of the brooding, of what his mind might throw  up.      If Geppetto can turn out a new piece every few months, then he is content.  He believes that the gallery pays him well. He has more money than he needs,  though truly he needs very little. The gallery owner would like him to visit, to  give a talk, to meet the buyers. Geppetto does not want to talk about his work. He  expresses himself in wood, not in words. His love of the animals, his painful love  for his family, his twisted love for the mountains – it is all there in the twisted  wood, in the carving. Let them buy my pieces, he says, I do not want to talk about  them. In fact it is many years since he has visited the gallery. If he went there, he  would be shocked by the prices his works command.      *

Geppetto is seated on the divided trunk outside his house, eyes closed,  craggy face raised towards the light. A work in progress – an eagle in repose ‐  rests in his hands. Every year there is a day on which, for the first time, the sun  makes good its promise and the light contains real and life‐giving warmth. Today  is that day, and in years gone by it would have brought a smile to the old man’s  lips. But Geppetto does not smile. He is sick at heart, for he knows that his days of  walking the hillsides are numbered. If he cannot walk, then he cannot find the  dried wood, and if he cannot find the wood, then he cannot work. And he cannot  walk because the old injury from the war has come back to haunt him. On days  when the air is humid, he cannot bend his knee without wincing.       On an impulse, Geppetto opens his eyes. For a moment he is  disorientated. He sees his eldest son standing in front of him, staring at him. The  boy does not move. They stare at each other in silence. But when Geppetto’s eyes  have adjusted to the light, he realizes it is not his son, though very like his son.

‘Are you lost?’ asks Geppetto.

The boy shakes his head. His expression is composed, serious.

‘Cosa vuoi?’ asks Geppetto. What do you want?

‘Can you show me how to make the animals?’ says the boy.

‘The animals?’ asks Geppetto.

‘The wooden animals, in the gallery. The man said you make them,’ replies  the boy.      Geppetto sighs. ‘I would have shown you but I have no more wood.  Finding the right wood is the hardest part. An old injury makes it hard for me to  walk.’

‘I could look for you,’ replies the boy.

‘It’s not so easy,’ says Geppetto. ‘You have to know where to look, and you  have to look with your imagination. You have to see the potential in each piece.  That cannot be taught.’

‘Where do you look?’ asks the boy.

‘Where there have been avalanches,’ replies Geppetto.

‘If I find the right piece, then will you teach me?’

‘Then, yes,’ says the old man.

The serious boy smiles. Then he turns and makes his way back down the  dirt road.      *      Over the next month, spring breaks into summer. Even the nights are  warm, which rarely happens in the mountains. Geppetto continues to work on  the eagle in repose. He spends many hours sitting on the divided trunk in front of  his barn, sanding the wood. The sun darkens his skin.      Late in the day he closes the barn door. When he turns around, the boy is  standing in front of him again.       ‘Look what I found,’ says the boy as he hands Geppetto a twisted, sun‐ bleached piece of wood. ‘The head is like a sleeping lamb,’ he says.      ‘Yes, yes it is.’ Geppetto turns the wood in his callused hands. He inspects  it from all angles. ‘This is a fine piece,’ he says. ‘It reminds me of a piece I once  found.’

‘Will you teach me how to carve the rest?’ asks the boy.

‘Yes, I will,’ replies the old man.

*      Geppetto and the boy work together on the lamb. The boy is called Fabio.  He tells Geppetto that he lives in Santa Cristina, that he walks past the gallery  every day on his way to school. Ever since he can remember, the animals have  called to him. They have animated his dreams.    Fabio lives with his mother on the outskirts of the town, in one of the  cheap new apartments. His mother worries about money ‐ the rent, the food. In  the gallery window Fabio has seen the prices which Geppetto’s works sell for. If  he could make and sell one such piece, his mother could cease her worrying.

Geppetto shows Fabio how to chip away at the wood, how to chisel the  fur. He guides the boy’s hand and is surprised by its steadiness, its sensitivity to  the feel of the wood. When the work is finished, Geppetto drives down to the  gallery with the boy. He shows it to the owner. The owner likes it, but he does  not like that it is not all Geppetto’s work.       ‘So tell them it comes from the studio di Geppetto,’ says Geppetto. ‘Like  Michaelangelo,’ he smiles.

‘The prices will fall,’ says the owner. ‘Your work should be unique.’

‘Pah!’ says Geppetto. ‘We are working together now, Fabio and I.’

The gallery owner grudgingly gives a nod. He pays Geppetto for the lamb.  In the car on the way back up the mountainside, Geppetto gives half of the money  to Fabio. His eyes open wide. ‘Madonna,’ the boy whispers under his breath.

In the ‘studio’, Geppetto shows the boy the map he drew on the board on  the wall. He explains where he thinks the avalanches will have come down this  winter. Spring came early and there were no late snow falls; the heavy sun‐ warmed deposits on south facing flanks are the ones most likely to have slipped.  The boy listens carefully.       Geppetto does not see the boy again for two weeks. When he reappears,  he has in his arms a magnificent piece.

‘It’s a fawn lying down,’ says the boy.

‘Yes, I see it,’ says Geppetto. ‘E bello.’

They start work on the fawn the following day. While they are working,  Geppetto says: ‘Fabio, you have an fine eye for wood. I did not teach you that. But  I will teach you that you must find the wood now, if we want to have enough to  keep us busy through the cold months. In winter the wood is buried under the  snow.’      That evening, before he returns to the village, the boy tells Geppetto that  he will spend the rest of the month hunting for wood.

‘A wise choice,’ says Geppetto.

Over the next few days, Geppetto finishes sanding the fawn’s head. It is a  good head; the features are delicate, bashful. Then he builds a second workbench  in the barn, for Fabio. He puts nails into the barn wall and hangs a set of chisels  above the workbench. He sits on the divided log outside the barn and eagerly  awaits Fabio’s return.      Geppetto is sitting outside the barn when he sees a black sedan climbing  the dirt road up to the house. A trail of dust rises behind the vehicle. The car  stops and two men climb out. One of the men is very tall; both are wearing suits  but their faces are obscured by the cloud of dust. When the dust has thinned,  Geppetto sees that they are humourless, efficient men. They have unkind faces.

‘Are you Geppetto, the artist?’

‘I am,’ replies Geppetto.

The two men introduce themselves. They are carabinieri. They work in  the vice squad.

‘You have a boy called Fabio working for you?’ they ask.

‘Working with me,’ corrects Geppetto.

‘But you pay him?’

‘I suppose so, yes.’

‘Do you realize, signor Geppetto, that Fabio is only thirteen years old?’

‘Is that a problem?’

The two policemen look at each other. ‘It certainly is a problem,’ the taller  one replies. ‘That’s child labour. It’s illegal.’

‘I was apprenticed when I was thirteen,’ says Geppetto truthfully.

‘Times have changed, Signor Geppetto. You have heard of the EU?’

Geppetto catches sight of the workbench he has just finished building.  ‘And if the boy wants to work here?’ he asks.

‘He has been told not to come here,’ says the taller officer.  15

The second officer scrutinizes Geppetto. ‘You have read about the  church?’ he asks pointedly.

Geppetto is uncertain what the man means.

‘The scandal in the Catholic church?’ continues the officer. Then, after  another pause: ‘Signor Geppetto, we work for the vice squad.’

‘What are you saying? If you think that…’

‘Signor Geppetto, we are not saying anything. We are just warning you.  The boy must stop working here.’

‘But if his mother‐‘

‘There are no ifs, Signor Geppetto. If the boy returns here and you do not  report it to us, then we shall have no choice but to arrest you. I am sure you can  imagine how child abuse is viewed by the rest of the criminal population, many  of whom have children of their own.’      Children of their own. Geppetto feels a ripping, a tearing in his heart, like  the avalanche tearing down the slope, ripping a wound into the hillside.    The officers climb back into the sedan. The vehicle throws up another  cloud of dust as it leaves.      *      Everyday Geppetto looks out for the serious boy. Sometimes he imagines  him watching from the shadows inside the barn, but when he looks up the boy is

not there. If he were there, what would Geppetto do? He does not know. He does  not want to think about it.     Fabio never returns to the barn. The new workbench gathers a layer of  fine dust as Geppetto continues to sand the fawn. He sands all summer, until the  fawn’s features have been completely expunged. He sands through the autumn,  when the rains come. By the time of the first snowfall, he is left with a smooth  white piece of twisted wood, nothing to indicate what it once was. Geppetto does  not know how he will get through the winter.      *      An hour before dawn, two hooded figures break into the Iglesia de Santa  Lucía, in San Cristobal de las Casas. Using just a pencil light to guide them, they  skirt around the walls to the altar at the far end of the building. They take the  silver candelabras, the ornate offering bowl and the wooden effigy of St.  Christopher. They wrap these artifacts in stained blankets before sneaking out of  the building.       The loot will be sold to an American collector of religious art via an  intermediary in Miami. The thieves will use the proceeds to pay the ransom for  another member of their family, currently held by one of Chiapas’ many drug  lords. The theft and sale of these objects will save his life.      *

Having carried the wooden box into the church of the Holy Family, the  four burly pillars of the community doff their caps to Father Mullaney and pile  into the battered Vauxhall which groans beneath their combined weight. Frank  Coffey, burliest of the four, drops his friends at their respective houses. Then he  returns home to pick up his wife before heading out to the Killarney on Dublin  Road.     It has stopped raining but dark clouds glower in the distance. ‘Don’t forget  the umbrella,’ his wife says.

The warm human fug of beer and smoke and sweat envelops the couple  as they enter the pub. There is a smell of wet wool, wet dog. It’s Friday evening  and the bar is crowded. Frank shouts at the new bargirl – a Jameson’s and a  white wine spritzer – and ogles her pendulous breasts as she pulls another a  pint.     Three hours and many drinks later, Frank and his wife stagger out of the  pub. The sideways rain stings their faces.    ‘Did you bring the umbrella?’ asks his wife.    ‘Forgot.’    ‘Didn’t I tell you‐‘    She doesn’t finish the sentence. Frank swings his bearlike paw into the  side of her face, sending her sprawling in a puddle. Blood streams from her nose  and combines with the mucus to form a red glistening bubble which  expands  and contracts as she attempts to control her frightened breathing.      *      Karl‐Johann, the Bavarian exchange deacon to the Vatican, receives the  two boxes which have been shipped from Val Gardena. He opens the larger box  first, prizing off the wooden lid. He strokes aside the packing material to reveal   the rounded features of a perfectly crafted cherub. He calls the head carpenter of  the Holy See and informs the man that this cherub is to replace the one that has  decayed on the tabernacle in the Corsini chapel.    The second, smaller box is addressed to Karl‐Johann himself. He picks it  up and carries it to his room in the seminary. The room is whitewashed and bare  but for a bed, a writing desk and a shelf of wooden sculptures. Karl‐Johann opens  the box and lifts out his newest purchase – a sculpture of a lamb fashioned from

a bleached and twisted piece of wood. He rotates the lamb in his hands, enjoying  the texture of the smooth sanded surface. The lamb’s sleeping face, nuzzled  between its forelegs, is of a delicacy so exquisite that it threatens to bring a tear  to the young deacon’s eye.    Karl‐Johann is an aesthete. The collection of  these works is his only vice.  But is it a vice? The learned theologians would dispute it at length. Indeed, in  bygone times, the question might have merited its own council. Karl‐Johann  smiles at the thought. But for him these sculptures are profoundly religious – a  celebration of creation, of nature, of nature’s ability to imitate art, and, unusually,  of art’s ability to imitate nature’s imitation of nature. Karl‐Johann strokes the  sanded surface of his newest purchase. He thinks to himself that there is much to  wonder at in this piece of wood. The piece may have been sculpted by an old man  in Val Gardena, but surely it is only by the grace of God that man can make  anything at all?