The Constant Gardener

She opened an inner door and showed him. Guido was seated at a long table under a wooden cross, a crooked, breathless old man of twelve, white-faced, bone thin with haunted eyes. His emaciated hands rested on the table and there was nothing in them, so that it was hard to think what he could have been doing before Justin walked in on him, alone in a low dark room with beams along the ceiling, not reading or playing or looking at anything. With his long head craned to one side and his mouth open, Guido watched Justin enter, then stood up and, using the table to help him, toppled toward Justin and made a crablike lunge to embrace him. But his aim was short and his arms flopped back to his sides as Justin caught him and held him steady.

"He wants to die like his father and the signora," his mother complained. ""All the good people are in heaven," he tells me. "All the bad people stay behind." Am I a bad person, Signor Justin? Are you a bad person? Did the signora bring us from Albania, buy him his treatment in Milan, put us in this house, just so that we should die of grief for her?" Guido hid his hollowed face in his hands. "First he faints, then he goes to bed and sleeps. He doesn't eat, doesn't take his medicine. Refuses school. This morning as soon as he comes out to wash himself I lock his bedroom door and hide the key."

"And it's good medicine," said Justin quietly, his eyes on Guido.

Shaking her head she took herself to the kitchen, clanked saucepans, put on a kettle. Justin led Guido back to the table and sat with him.

"Are you listening to me, Guido?" he asked in Italian.

Guido closed his eyes.

"Everything stays exactly as it was," Justin said firmly. "Your school fees, the doctor, the hospital, your medicine, everything that is necessary while you recover your health. The rent, the food, your university fees when you get there. We're going to do everything she planned for you, exactly the way she planned it. We can't do less than she would wish, can we?"

Eyes down, Guido reflected on this before giving a reluctant shake of the head: no, we cannot do less, he conceded.

"Do you still play chess? Can we have a game?"

Another shake, this time a prudish one: it is not respectful of Signora Tessa's memory to play chess.

Justin took Guido's hand and held it. Then gently swung it, waiting for the glimmer of a smile. "So what do you do when you're not dying?" he asked in English. "Did you read the books we sent you? I thought you'd be an expert on Sherlock Holmes by now."

"Mr. Holmes is a great detective," Guido replied, also in English, but without a smile.

"And what about the computer the signora gave you?" Justin asked, reverting to Italian. "Tessa said you were a big star. A genius, she told me. You used to e-mail each other passionately. I got quite jealous. Don't tell me you've abandoned your computer

, Guido!"

The question provoked an outburst from the kitchen. "Of course he has abandoned it! He has abandoned everything! Four million lire, it cost her! All day long he used to sit at that computer, tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. "You make yourself blind," I tell him, "you get sick from too much concentration." Now nothing. Even the computer must die."

Still holding Guido's hand, Justin peered into his averted eyes. "Is that true?" he asked.

It was.

"But that's awful, Guido. That's a real waste of talent," Justin complained, as Guido's smile began to dawn. "The human race is in serious need of good brains like yours. D'you hear me?"

"Maybe."

"So do you remember Signora Tessa's computer, the one she taught you on?"

Of course Guido did — and with an air of great superiority, not to say smugness.

"All right, so it's not as good as yours. Yours is a couple of years younger and cleverer. Yes?"

Yes. Very much yes. And the smile widening.

"Well, I'm an idiot, Guido, unlike you, and I can't even work her computer with any confidence. And my problem is, Signora Tessa left a stack of messages on it, some of them for me, and I'm frightened to death of losing them. And I think she would like you to be the person who made sure I didn't lose them. OK? Because she wanted very much to have a son like you. And so did I. So the question is, will you come down to the villa and help me to read whatever is in her laptop?"

"You got the printer?"

"I have."

"Disk drive?"

"That too."

"CD drive? Modem?"

"And the handbook. And the transformers. And the cables, and an adapter. But I'm still an idiot, and if there's a chance of making a hash of it I will."

Guido was already standing, but Justin tenderly drew him back to the table.

"Not this evening. Tonight you sleep, and tomorrow morning early, if you're willing, I'll come and fetch you in the villa jeep, but afterward you must go to school. Yes?"

"Yes."

"You are too tired, Signor Justin," Guido's mother murmured, setting coffee before him. "So much grief is bad for the heart."

* * *