She shook my hands off. ‘Let go of me. Idiota! Do you think I am a peasant and am going to scream? It’s only that I need—’ She didn’t finish, but in the light of my torch I saw that her eyes had a feverish, starved look.
There was something about her face that was quite frightening. She looked as though she were in hell. ‘What do you need?’ I asked her.
‘Nothing.’ Her voice was high and harsh. ‘We must get to the car. Hurry!’ She pushed past me and flung herself at the front door. When she found it was locked she turned like an animal in a trap. Then she darted towards the servants’ quarters. A candle glimmered in the darkness of the passage. ‘Agostino!’ It was Sansevino’s voice.
The candle halted. ‘Si, signore?’
‘Get upstairs and shut all the windows.’ Sansevino came through into the hall. ‘It’s hopeless,’ he said. ‘Thick as hell.’
‘We must get to the cars.’ Zina started to push past him, but he caught hold of her arm. ‘I tell you, it’s hopeless. You’ll only get lost if you go out. I’ve told Roberto to start the light plant. We’ll have to stay here till the ash lets up a bit.’
Zina sagged against the wall as though all the stuffing had been knocked out of her. Agostino’s wife had joined us now, passive as a buffalo, one hand holding a candle and the other fingering the beads of her rosary. Her lips moved as she reiterated again and again, endlessly, ‘Mamma mia! Mamma mia!’ as though that in itself would keep the ash at bay. The little girl I’d seen when we arrived clung to her skirts, her eyes enormous in her white, frightened face.
The bulbs in the chandelier glowed into life, flickered and then brightened. We stood blinking at each other in the sudden brilliance. Sansevino was almost unrecognisable, he was so caked in ash. The air was thick with dust. A white film covered everything. We might have been in a building that had just been hit by a bomb.
Roberto came in then from the servants’ quarters. His hair and face were powder-grey and pellets of cinder slid from the shoulders of the leather jerkin he’d flung on over his singlet. Zina clutched at him. ‘We must get the car, Roberto. If we can reach the autostrada we—’
But he threw her off. ‘Impossible,’ he grunted.