The Sexton’s Tale
was looking for a very small, very old medieval church called the Chiesa di San Giovanni in Villa, or, in German, Sankt Johann im Dorf. Both names mean Saint John in the Village. The Village, it seems, was the earliest of Bolzano’s settlements. The church should have been easy to find, because Bolzano was repeatedly bombed during the second world war, and the once-medieval streets of the Village are lined with modern construction; so a thousand-year-old building should be as obvious as a Model-T in a Ferrari showroom. I’d spotted the craggy Dolomites between the I said, flashing my best non-threatening smile, She replied in rapid Italian that it was “…two steps away, it’s almost always closed, but come – we will see, perhaps he will be there…” She turned quickly into a narrow alley, and in thirty strides I was on cobblestones, and in the Middle Ages.
