Ah, sweet mystery of life
At last I’ve found you,
Ah, sweet mystery of life
At last you’re mine
started to be sung by an unseen choir nearby.
We got back into the car and drove slowly through Lullaby Land, the section of Forest Lawn in which the very young are buried. Recorded birdsong was coming out of every bush, and childish voices were singing or reciting nursery rhymes. We were beyond laughter now. We had to escape the sound of those innocents telling us of Jack and Jill, and Humpty Dumpty, and the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.
*
Vanni had some news that he didn’t want to break over the phone. Could he spend a few days with me? That, I said, was an unnecessary question.
Circe, tail wagging in delight, rushed to greet her friend as soon as he arrived. Carissima he called her, and allowed her to lick his face. We went into the kitchen and I opened a bottle of white wine. He needed a drink before he could tell me what he had come to say face to face. The dog wrapped herself about his feet.
‘It’s the worst. It’s what I’ve been afraid of for years.’
I was silent, waiting for the revelation I had somehow already anticipated.
‘I am HIV positive.’
We shared a long embrace.
Vanni would entrust himself to the care of Dario, the youngest of his two younger brothers. Dario would soon become what he is now, the leading AIDS specialist in Florence. Since Dario had access to every new drug the moment it was patented, it was possible for him to give Vanni the best treatment available. Vanni was already taking pills when he turned up that day with his upsetting news. He stayed well, and sane, and active in his job as a tour guide for over five years.
He came to London in 1996, but did not stay with me and my partner, Jeremy. To my surprise, he had booked himself into an expensive hotel in Curzon Street. The idea of Vanni living it up in Mayfair struck me as preposterous, and indeed it was. On what would turn out to be his last holiday, Vanni indulged himself in a bizarre shopping spree. He bought eighty-two pairs of Armani underpants (Perché ottanta-due? became something of a family joke), ten cashmere sweaters, a dozen identical overcoats and six suitcases to contain them. He was washing down his medication with an excess of red wine. Jeremy and I spent an evening with him, bearing him back to the hotel after a meal in a Chinese restaurant. He insisted on a goodnight drink, but we – and the courteous hotel staff – insisted otherwise.
I had to leave for Germany the next day. Jeremy dined with him again. Vanni was copiously and uncontrollably sick at the table, but the staff in the restaurant were considerate, kind and diplomatic, swiftly clearing up the mess while Jeremy helped him to wash and clean himself in the lavatory.
Some while before this, Jeremy and I had spent Christmas with the family in Florence, and – accompanied by Jeremy’s mother – travelled from Rome to have lunch with them the following December. On both occasions, Vanni had appeared alert and relatively happy, joining in the conversation, swapping anecdotes, and commenting intelligently on the always-parlous state of Italian politics. But the desperate Vanni we saw in London was a different man. He was confident to the point of boastfulness, and we assumed that the combination of drink and drugs accounted for his erratic behaviour. We could not know that his decline into dementia had just begun.
Vanni had been given a credit card by his father, and in Amsterdam, the next stop on his travels, he went over the agreed limit – which was pretty generous, anyway. His brother Geri drove to Holland and took the untypical spendthrift home. He was not to be released again.
In the autumn of 1998, Jeremy and I had a weekend holiday in Florence, staying in a beautiful hotel (a former villa of Mussolini’s) in the hills above Piazzale Michelangelo. We called in on the family. Wine had been banished from the apartment, because even the scent of it caused Vanni irritated temptation. He was confined to his room, where we sat with him. His whole body was wasted, and his naturally large eyes loomed ever larger in his sunken face. He was watching an idiotic game show on the television, laughing at the crass jokes. He had lost all memory of his crazy last outing. It was impossible to talk of serious matters with him. Here was a man who had once recited whole passages of Dante and entire sonnets by Petrarch from memory reduced to a merrily gibbering wreck. At one point, the game show was interrupted by a news bulletin, giving details of a train crash. Vanni averted his eyes from the screen. Death was not to be contemplated.
Vanni phoned me at intervals, saying that he would be coming to London to stay with us. The first time he called, I wondered if Dario had effected a miracle. I rang Dario, who confirmed that no miracle had taken place. It was his brother’s happy delusion that he could travel. His last call was in 2001, some weeks before his death.