I bit my thumbnail, a childhood habit long discarded. Aldo reached forward, and my hand fell instinctively to my side.
“Last year,” I said, “or so I was told, the university staff took part and a large audience watched from inside the palace.”
“This year,” replied Aldo, “only a few privileged people will have seats in the palace. Most of the university staff will be in the piazza del Mercato.”
“But that’s below the palace,” I protested. “How can they see anything from there?”
“They’ll hear plenty,” replied Aldo, “and be on hand for the final act, which will be the most outstanding.”
Someone knocked on the door leading from the audience room to the gallery outside.
“See what it is,” said Aldo.
One of the students—Sergio, I think it was—went to the door and talked briefly with the page who had admitted me inside the palace. After a moment he returned.
“The sentries have brought in a fellow prowling round under the western portico,” he said. “He had no late pass, and when questioned was abusive. They want to know whether to let him go.”
“City man or student?” Aldo asked.
“Student. C and E. A big lout, wanted a scrap.”
“If he wants a scrap he shall have it,” said my brother. He told Sergio to have the intruder brought in.
“It could be my bully,” I said, “a fellow who wanted to douse me in the fountain after the uproar on Monday. I saw him in the canteen tonight, and he was boasting he hadn’t got a pass and didn’t care.”
Aldo laughed. “So much the better,” he said. “He might entertain us. Masks, everyone. And one for Armino.”
Giorgio came over to where I stood and gave me a small black mask with slits for eyes, similar to those worn by the two duelists on Saturday. Self-consciously I put it on, as did Aldo and the twelve. When we were all masked and I looked around me and saw how we were lighted only by the flares, the rest of the room in shadow, I realized that to an outsider the effect would be far from reassuring, even startling.
The sentries, masked as we were, entered, bearing the prisoner between them. They had bandaged his eyes, but I recognized instantly the bully from the canteen. Aldo glanced towards me and I nodded.
“Loose him,” said my brother.
The sentries threw off the bandage. The student blinked and looked about him, rubbing his arms. All he could see was a dark room lit by torches, and fourteen men disguised and wearing masks.
“No late pass?” inquired Aldo gently.
The bully stared. It was possible, I thought, that he had never entered the ducal palace in his life. If so, the surroundings would seem forbidding.
“What’s it to do with you?” he countered. “If this is one of the Arts rags I’d better warn you you’ll be sorry for it.”
“No rag,” said Aldo. “I have authority here.”
Nobody moved. The student shifted on his feet. He rearranged his collar and tie, which had become disheveled during his struggle to avoid arrest.
“What authority?” he asked aggressively. “Do you think by putting on fancy dress you can frighten me? My name is Marelli, Stefano Marelli, and my father owns a chain of restaurants and hotels along the coast.”
“We are not interested in your father,” said Aldo. “Tell us about yourself.”
The question, smoothly asked, deceived the bully into greater confidence. He looked at the rest of us with condescension. “Commerce and Economics, third year,” he said, “and it couldn’t matter to me less if I’m expelled. I don’t need a degree to get a job—I shall take over one of my father’s restaurants. He also happens to be a member of the syndicate owning the Panorama, and anyone who sacks me on a flimsy excuse will find himself unpopular with a fair number of influential people.”
“Unfortunate,” murmured Aldo. He turned to Giorgio. “Is he on the list of volunteers?” he asked.
Giorgio, who had been consulting a list while the questioning took place, shook his head.
The student Marelli laughed. “If you mean the Communist do at the theater on Monday night, I was not there,” he said. “I had something better to do. I have a girl in Rimini, and a fast car. Draw your own conclusions.”
Despite my strong dislike of everything about him, from his personal appearance to his attempt to douse me in the fountain, I felt some stirring of compassion. Every word he uttered made his fate more certain.
“In that case, you won’t be taking part in the Festival?” asked Aldo.
“The Festival?” echoed the student. “That charade? Not likely! I shall slip home for the weekend. My father’s throwing a big party for me.”
“A pity,” said Aldo. “We could have given you some excitement here. However, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a foretaste of it tonight. Federico?”
One of the bodyguard approached. In their masks they all looked alike, but the lithe build of this one, and the light hair above his mask, suggested to me that he was one of Saturday’s duelists.
“Have we anything in the book that would suit Stefano?” asked Aldo.
Federico looked at me. “We had better consult Armino,” he replied. “He’s the expert.”
“Federico’s my translator,” explained Aldo. “He marked the various passages for us from the German history. Born in a concentration camp, he has a facility for languages.”
The unease that had come upon me since the arrival of the captured student grew stronger. I shook my head. “I remember nothing,” I said.
Aldo turned once more to Federico, who, drawing a sheaf of papers from his doublet, consulted them. He read them through in silence while we waited.
“The page,” he said at last, “the incident of the page would suit Stefano well.”
“Ah, yes, the page,” murmured Aldo, “the punishment for the page who forgot the lights. To heap coals of fire upon the head of one who would douse in a fountain those smaller than himself would be a fitting climax to a braggart’s career. See to it, will you?”
The student, Marelli, drew back at the approach of the two sentries and of Federico. “Now, look here,” he said, “if you try any trick on me I warn you that…”
But he was interrupted. The sentries seized either arm. Federico, stroking his chin, gave the appearance of one plunged into thought.
“The old brazier,” he said, “stored with the ironwork in one of the rooms on the upper floor. It would fit him like a crown. First, shall I read to him the passage from the book?” He pulled out the papers once again. They were copies of the notes I had given Aldo on Sunday. “On one occasion,” he read, “a page, who had neglected to provide lights for the Duke’s evening repast, was seized by the Falcon’s bodyguard. They enveloped the wretched lad in cerecloth coated with combustibles, and after setting fire to his head drove him through the rooms of the ducal palace to die in agony.” He replaced the paper inside his doublet and signaled to the sentries. “Let’s to it,” he said.
The student Marelli, who not two minutes before had boasted wealth and influence, crumpled between his guards. His face went suddenly gray and he began to scream. The screams continued as he was dragged out into the passage, and they echoed along the gallery and up the stairs to the floor above. Nobody spoke.
“Aldo…” I said, “Aldo…”
My brother looked at me. The screams died down and there was silence.
“Renaissance man had no compassion, why should we?” he asked.
A sudden horror seized me. My mouth went dry. I couldn’t swallow. Aldo removed his mask, and so did the others. Their young faces bore a fearful gravity.
“Renaissance man tortured and killed without compunction,” continued Aldo, “but usually he had a motive. Someone had done him a wrong, and he acted from revenge. A mistaken motive, possibly, but that is open to argument. In our time men have killed and tortured for their own amusement and for experiment. Those screams you have just heard, caused solely by cowardice
and not by pain, were uttered with just cause day after day, month after month, in Auschwitz and in other prison camps. In the prison camp, for instance, where Federico and Sergio were born. Romano heard them in the hills when the enemy caught and tortured his friends the partisans; so did Antonio and Roberto. If you had been abandoned, Beo, you might have heard them too. But you were lucky. You were preserved by conquerors, and led a sheltered life.”
I tore off my mask. I searched each one of their grave, unsmiling faces, listening at the same time for some sound from the upper floor, but there was none.
“It doesn’t work out like that,” I said. “You can’t torture that student above because of what happened in the past.”
“He won’t be tortured,” Aldo said. “The most that Federico will do to him will be to set a firecracker on his head and drive him out. Unpleasant, but salutary. Marelli will benefit from the experience and think twice in future about soaking smaller men in fountains.” He beckoned Giorgio to his side. “Tell Beo the true story of the assault on Signorina Rizzio,” he said.
Giorgio was one of the bodyguard whom I recognized from Saturday. It was he who had been born near Monte Cassino, his parents killed during the bombing. He was a big, broad-shouldered lad with a shock of unruly hair, and when he had been masked just now had looked strangely formidable.
“The break-in was easy,” he said, “and the girls we locked in their rooms were disappointed, so we thought, because we did nothing to them. Five of us went to Signorina Rizzio’s room and knocked on the door. She opened it in her dressing gown, thinking one of the girls had knocked. Then she saw us, all masked and doubtless dangerous, and told us quickly that she had no valuables, she kept nothing of any worth in the hostel. I said to her, ‘Signorina Rizzio, the most valuable thing in the hostel is yourself. We have come for you.’ She might have thought, from my words, that I meant to kidnap her, but her mind jumped to the obvious. She told us instantly that if it was that we were after we must go to the girls. The girls would be willing. We could do whatever we cared to do to them if we left her alone. I repeated my warning. ‘Signorina Rizzio,’ I said, ‘we have come for you.’ Then, luckily—at least, for us—she fainted. We carried her to her bed and waited for her to come round. When she did so, about ten minutes later, the five of us were standing at the door. We thanked her for her generosity, and left. That, Armino, is how the rape of Signorina Rizzio was accomplished. The sequel was what she made of it herself.”
Giorgio’s face had lost its gravity and he was laughing. So were the others. I understood the laughter, I could appreciate the hoax, and yet…
“Professor Elia,” I asked. “Was that part of the pantomime as well?”
Giorgio looked at Aldo. Aldo nodded.
“Not my sortie,” answered Giorgio. “Lorenzo was in charge.”
Lorenzo, a Milanese like the Head of the Department of Commerce and Economics, was half the size of the man he had helped to strip. His manner was evasive, diffident, and he had the veiled eyes of an innocent child.
“Some of my friends among the C and E students,” he murmured, “have suffered from the attentions of the Professor from time to time. Both male and female. Therefore, after consulting with Aldo we worked out our plan of campaign. Entrance to the house was easy—Professor Elia thought at first that students wearing masks were the prelude to an intriguing game before dining at the Panorama. He soon learned otherwise.”
So I was right. My brother had been behind both incidents. I saw that in his view, and in that of these boys, justice had been done. The scales were balanced, according to the strange laws of Duke Claudio the Falcon over five hundred years ago.
“Aldo,” I said, “I asked you this last night and you didn’t answer me. What is it you are trying to do?”
My brother looked at his eleven companions and back to me. “Ask them,” he said, “what they hope to achieve in life. They’ll each give you a different answer according to his temperament. They are none of them totalitarians, you know, or ideologists. And they have their personal ambitions.”
I looked at Giorgio, who was nearest to me. “Rid the world of hypocrisy,” he said, “starting with the old men of Ruffano, and the women too. They came into the world naked like the rest of us.”
“Scum settles at the top of a pool,” said Domenico. “If you skim it off you find clear water underneath, and all the living things. Clear away the scum.”
“Live dangerously,” said Romano. “It doesn’t matter where or how, but with your friends.”
“Find hidden treasure,” said Antonio. “It could be at the bottom of a test tube in the lab. I’m a physics student, so I’m prejudiced.”
“I agree with Antonio,” said Roberto, “but no test tubes for me. There’s an answer somewhere in the universe when we explore further. And I don’t mean heaven.”
“Feed the hungry,” said Guido. “Not with bread only but with ideas.”
“Build something lasting that won’t be swept away,” said Pietro, “as the men of the Renaissance did, who built this palace.”
“Tear down the barriers that exist everywhere,” said Sergio, “the fence between one man and another. Leaders, yes, to show the way. But no masters and no slaves. That goes for Federico too—we’ve often discussed it.”
“Teach the young never to grow old,” said Giovanni, “even when their bones are cracking.”
“Teach the old what it felt like to be young,” said Lorenzo, “and by young I mean pint-sized, helpless, and inarticulate.”
The answers came swift and sharp from every lad like successive rifle shots. The last, Cesare, was the only one to hesitate. Finally, glancing across at Aldo, he said, “I think what we have to do is to make the men and women of our generation care. It doesn’t matter what they care about, whether it’s football or painting, people or great causes, but they have to care, and to care passionately, and if necessary forget about their precious skins and die.”
Aldo looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “What did I tell you?” he said. “They’ve all given different answers. Meanwhile, on the floor above us, Stefano Marelli has only one thought in mind, and that is to save himself.”
The screaming had started once again, and with it the sound of rushing feet. Giorgio opened the door. The rushing, blundering footsteps descended the stairs and ran along the gallery, seeking an exit. We passed through the Room of the Cherubs and stood at the entrance to the gallery, peering into the darkness. A figure came towards us, his hands bound behind his back, wearing upon his head a broken bucket, the bottom of it punched with holes. Squibs had been stuck in the holes, and they were spitting and sparking as he ran. Sobbing, he tripped, and fell upon his face at Aldo’s feet. The bucket rolled from his head. The squibs, with a final splutter, died. Aldo bent forward, and with a swift flick of a knife I had not seen cut the cord that bound the student’s hands. Then he jerked him to his feet.
“There are your coals of fire,” he said, kicking the bucket and the extinguished firecrackers. “Children could play with them.”
The student, still sobbing, stared. The bucket rolled along the gallery and settled. The acrid smoke filled the air.
“I have seen men,” said Aldo, “run from their flaming aircraft like living torches. Be thankful, Stefano, you were not one of them. Now, get out.”
The student turned and blundered along the gallery to the stairs. The shadow of his loping figure cast by the flare-light on the walls loomed shapeless and distorted, like a gigantic bat. The sentries followed, turning him across the quadrangle below, for he had lost all sense of direction, to let him loose through the great door between the towers. We heard the sound of his shuffling, frightened feet no more. The night enveloped him.
“He won’t forget,” I said, “neither will he forgive. He’ll go back and rouse a hundred others like him. He’ll magnify the story out of all recognition. Do you really want to set the whole city against you?”
I looked at Aldo. He was
the only one among us who had not answered my earlier question.
“That,” he said, “is inevitable. Whether Stefano tells his friends or not. Don’t imagine I’m here to bring peace to this city or to the university. I’m here to bring trouble and discord, to set one man against the other, to bring all the violence and hypocrisy and envy and lust out into the open, onto the surface, like the scum on Domenico’s pool. Only then, when it bubbles and seethes and stinks, can we clear it away.”
It was then that the conviction took hold upon me, which I had rejected before through loyalty and love, that Aldo was insane. The seed of insanity had lain dormant in him through childhood and adolescence, and now, ripened doubtless through all he had seen and suffered in war and afterwards, the shock of our father’s death, the disappearance and supposed death of our mother and myself, it was strangling his intellectual powers like a cancerous growth. The scum rising to the surface was his own madness. The symbol he took as the world’s ills was his own disease. And there was nothing I could do, no way in which I could prevent him from setting alight a conflagration on the day of the Festival which might, figuratively speaking, burn the entire city. His band of devoted students, themselves warped by the legacy of their childhood, would stand by him and question nothing. One person only might have influence, Signora Butali, and she, as far as I knew, was still in Rome.
Aldo led the way back into the audience room. He discussed for some little while further plans for the Festival, the route points, timing, and other technical matters. I barely listened. One thing seemed imperative, and that was to get the Festival canceled. Only the Rector could achieve it, no one else.
Sometime around ten-thirty Aldo rose to his feet. The half-hour had just chimed from the campanile. “Now, Beo, if you’re ready, I’ll drop you back at the via San Michele. So long, my braves. See you tomorrow.”
He went through to the Duke’s bedroom and thence to the dressing room. There he threw off his jerkin and hose, and dressed himself once more in his usual clothes. “Off with the masquerade,” he said. “You do the same. Here, in the suitcase. Giorgio will see to it.”
The Flight of the Falcon Page 23