He is watching her, waiting for her to say more, but there is nothing more about the English patient to be said.Maybe this is the way to come out of a war, he thinks. A burned man to care for, some sheets to wash in a fountain, a room painted like a garden.

“If you are staying,” she says, “we are going to need more food. I have planted vegetables, we have a sack of beans, but we need some chickens.” She is looking at Caravaggio, knowing his skills from the past, not quite saying it. 

 

“I lost my nerve,” he says. 

 

“I’ll come with you, then,” Hana offers. “We’ll do it together. You can teach me to steal, show me what to do.” 

 

“You don’t understand. I lost my nerve.” 

 

“Why?” 

“I was caught. They nearly chopped off my rucking hands.” 

At night sometimes, when the English patient is asleep or even after she has read alone outside his door for a while, she goes looking for Caravaggio. He will be in the garden lying along the stone rim of the fountain looking up at stars, or she will come across him on a lower terrace. She is always made to feel that she is the one who has found him,this man who knows darkness, who when drunk used to claim he was brought up by a family of owls.Two of them on a promontory, Florence and her lights in the distance.

“Were you a spy then?”  She asked him.

 

“Not quite.” 

 

He feels more comfortable, more disguised from her in the dark garden, 

“At times we were sent in to steal. Here I was, an Italian and a thief. They couldn’t believe their luck, they were falling over themselves to use me. There were about four or five of us. I did well for some time.