The Communist

by Guido Morselli

  “When the line permits, more than a hundred forty kilometers per hour. Two thousand horsepower.”

  “And have you been using it for a long time?”

  “Several years now. Our electro-diesel engines are the same model used in the United States.”

  He said it quite coolly, without a hint of professional pride. In the meantime, Ferranini had come forward, and Amoruso introduced him.

  “He’s Italian too. Son of an engine driver, a colleague. Now tell me. Why did you make that comparison with the United States?”

  “The Soviet Union and the United States are two of the greatest industrial nations.”

  “Yet socially and politically they are two opposite poles.”

  The man thought for a moment. “Whether in Russia or in America, if you drive the same engine, you live the same life.”

  “And what life is that?” Amoruso went on.

  “Well, in the cab we have drivers’ seats of foam rubber and air-conditioning. There’s no more hot or cold for us. And if I want to stretch my muscles, I do gymnastics at home.”

  “Progress, in short.”

  “But when I’m driving, it’s like the train’s seven hundred tons are all sitting on my chest.”

  “Nervous tension. How many hours were you on this morning?”

  “Four.”

  “Are you tired?”

  “I feel slightly drunk. I don’t quite understand what you’re saying to me.” His mouth twisted into a frown.

  Ferranini took Amoruso by the arm. “Let’s leave him in peace.”

  When he was a kid, he’d heard the same words from his father when he came off his shift: “I’m drunk.”

  Amoruso had a further question. Was there snow on the route? The driver replied that there was snow and it was still snowing. His train had in fact been delayed.

  “How much?”

  “Eleven minutes.”

  “Did you hear that?” exclaimed Amoruso. “God bless the Soviet Union. Eleven minutes and they call it a delay!”

  The conversation had been extremely useful, thought Amoruso. He gave up the idea of traveling by train, and right there from the station they telephoned the Aeroflot office to reserve seats on the plane.

  The effect on Ferranini was different. He reflected that he had discussed these questions with Amoruso back in Rome and the doctor had seemed to take them seriously. Now he’d completely forgotten. As if nothing had happened. What kind of man was this? One who amused himself, a tourist. A bourgeois.

  The trip back was long and fairly turbulent. Terrible atmospheric conditions. They arrived the evening of the 5th and Ferranini did not get home and settled until midnight. In the morning, the trouble began.

  In the stack of mail was a notice from the Reggio Federation of a meeting of the provincial membership on the 7th at 2:00 p.m., and also, separately, a letter from Viscardi. It said: “On the 7th we have a meeting in Reggio of great importance to me, where I hope the situation will finally be resolved. I urge you to be there, because I believe I’m entitled to your support. If you leave Rome on the 8:00 a.m. rapido, I will pick you up by car in Bologna, and bring you up to date on the way. Please telegram, your presence will be extremely useful to me.”

  So there it is, he thought, just what I need to feel right at home. That conceited Bolognese egotist! The day after tomorrow I’m supposed to go to Reggio, not to offer my advice on how to advance socialism in my home district but to “support” him. Because he wants the job. Well, he can wait. A bunch of selfish pigs, all of you.

  The mail also included the notice of another meeting on the 7th, that too in Reggio. This was a recently convened interprovincial committee to promote a new bridge across the Po between Emilia and the province of Mantua, a committee over which Ferranini presided. A memo had been prepared for the Ministry of Public Works. The project itself had been submitted to the ministry a number of months ago but had met with the usual inertia (or stupidity), and so before he left, he had written directly to the minister using strong words: “The Po, alone among all the great European rivers, cannot be used for navigation. And it can barely be used for irrigation. It is absurd and shameful that this river’s exclusive purposes are 1) to flood low-lying areas, and 2) to serve as a barrier between the inhabitants of the two banks.”

  He had gone at the matter with all his determination, as if it were personal (whatever small amount of prestige he had left was tied up in it, he felt), and used the occasion to unleash all his ideological and personal ire on the central bureaucracy. He decided he would go to Reggio to the interprovincial committee without showing up at the other one. He’d go just to show them the letter he’d sent to the minister and assure them that at least this once, the bureaucrats of the bourgeois state would not prevail.

  He began to look for the copy, rummaging in drawers and on shelves, in the bag that was still on the floor to be emptied. He shook out his briefcase with his papers; he even looked under the bed. Everything was in scrupulous order; each evening he would go through his papers, catalogue them, and file them. Without that meticulous ceremony his day did not come to an end. So he began searching again, starting with the chest of drawers, but meanwhile his hands had begun to tremble. His rage (not out of proportion, but where did it come from? he wasn’t sure) had begun to boil, it clouded his eyes, and when he bent over to search the wastepaper basket he lost his balance and hit his temple hard against the corner of the table. Swearing brought no relief. He kept on opening and closing things; obsessively, mechanically, moving things about. Almost frantically.

  His valise was underfoot, and he gave it a kick that sent it flying through the doorway and left it upturned on the landing. A patient hand gathered up the dirty socks and handkerchiefs and lightly returned them to the bag. Nuccia, on her way up.

  “So?” he shouted. Enraged now.

  Nuccia was bent over the bag.

  “What are you doing here?”

  But she was intelligent, she loved him. Walter’s rages were never without reason, no matter how trivial the pretext. This she had grasped in their few months together. The rage was a sign of disappointment, of misery. This time it was the trip.

  “This is the third day I’ve come, Walter. I didn’t think you’d be away so long.”

  “I mean, at this hour! Why are you not at the store. At nine in the morning.”

  “Come on, calm down, you look like a ghost. It’s Epiphany, that’s why I’m off. Tell me what happened.”

  She was standing with the bag by the door; he was blocking it.

  “You know you mustn’t come up here any more. Wait for me down on the street.”

  “I won’t come again. But for now let me in, be a good man.”

  She could come in.

  “I warn you, though, I’m leaving. I’m off to Reggio.”

  “Are you kidding? Giordano told me you got back at midnight.

  Anyway there are no trains now. You can leave at two.”

  “I’ll leave when I like.” And he went to sit on the bed.

  “Tell me what happened, Walter. On the trip.”

  “We were delayed coming back. Because of the snow, they didn’t want to let the planes take off.”

  “No, I mean over there. Your impressions.”

  “Impressions don’t count. Facts count.”

  Things must not have gone so well. But it was pointless to insist. After a while she dared to say, “I came back on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Why?” he said distractedly, and already calm.

  “Why? What choice do I have? Giulia remains with her grandparents. By now I’ve long given up the hope of bringing her to Rome with me, but I wish her health were better, she’s so thin. A serious little girl, her eyes are too big. Who doesn’t want to do her homework. And what is worse, doesn’t want to play.”

  He had reclined on the bed and was staring at the ceiling, not even listening.

  “The news when I got back was not very pleasant. Cesare, my hu
sband. He came by the bookstore and asked for me; luckily I was out at the time. Then he wrote to me.”

  “Ah.”

  “He says he’s set up house in Rome, and that business is excellent, but he is sick. I can’t remember what illness it is. ‘Let’s meet again; let’s put things back together.’ ‘Let’s get Giulia to come and live with us; we’re not all that old.’ And finally, ‘On Wednesdays and Saturdays I eat my supper at Tre Scalini in Piazza Navona. I’m there from eight to eight thirty and will wait for you before starting to eat.’ ”

  Ferranini snickered. “He’s better to you than I am. What are you waiting for; make him happy.”

  “I’m waiting to be sure you don’t love me anymore. No, that’s not true. I’d find Cesare odious in any case. However, I really don’t know whether you do love me. Couldn’t you just tell me?”

  He glanced at her. That thin face, nose, neck, that dark knot of hair with the copper streaks. Her long, fine nose with those strange delicate nostrils that quivered. She was tiny and so alive. So much life inside. What’s more, he liked her. He liked to watch her get excited, respond to him.

  “Come over here.”

  “And where is that?”

  “To bed.”

  She was a woman, she thought she was pretty shrewd, and didn’t obey.

  “No, Walter. I’m staying put here.”

  He didn’t invite her again, but adjusted the pillows under his head on the unmade bed. (Some nights one pillow was not enough.)

  “So, you won’t tell me? Not much room in Walter’s life for his woman friend, eh? There’s room for memories. Room for ideas.”

  “You’d better say facts, not just ideas. The province of Reggio would not be what it is without Ferranini.”

  “I agree. Let’s say Reggio. Let’s say Il Migliore. Let’s not say parliament, because parliament doesn’t stir up a lot of ideas.” She was trying to make a joke of it.

  “I’m not one for gallantries. I guess I was rude just now. I was trying to find an important letter that has disappeared.”

  She looked around and saw the open drawers and the mess of papers. She went straight to the wardrobe and searched the pockets of his clothes. Turning, she tossed a pair of carbon copies, rumpled and half torn, on the bed.

  “Damn,” said Ferranini, astonished, “there they are.”

  “So, you do need me?”

  “Yes, I was just saying so. I won’t pay you compliments, I’m not like Cesare. But I can say this, and I don’t know how many men could say the same: I have nothing besides you. Not only no other women—no other human beings. There’s Oscar Fubini. He’s a political friend.”

  “Don’t treat me so badly again. Oh Walter.”

  “I don’t treat you badly,” he said, for he had already forgiven himself. “Look, a minute ago, I wanted to fool around with you. I tell you, that’s the truth.”

  “My dear, you must be able to come up with something better than that.”

  “Something better than that?” he said all too frankly.

  “Okay.” Now Nuccia’s laugh, too, was frank. “You wanted to fool around and then you changed your mind seeing that I resisted and didn’t join you in bed.”

  “No, I changed my mind when it occurred to me: she’ll think I only need her for that. And I don’t want to give you that impression.”

  “And I believe you.” She moved to his side and wrapped her arm around his head. “It’s easy for a woman to know a man, and with you, it’s very easy. You don’t pay compliments, no—but since you’re pretty rugged, when you come out with a sensitive thought, it’s quite convincing.”

  “Really?” he said, without having understood much.

  “Oh, my man. You.”

  Ferranini pulled himself up to sit on the bed. “Careful. I mustn’t lead you on.”

  He would have liked to say, Careful, I’m not in love with you in the way you want. But Nuccia understood differently, and still stroking his head, she said, “So it’s over, fast. Who are you pledged to, let’s hear. Yourself, or the party?”

  He didn’t deny it. “It should be one and the same.”

  “But are you sure it’s worth it?”

  Right. That was the point. Ferranini rose and began to walk up and down the room. The space was tiny, but Nuccia guessed he had already forgotten she was there.

  So she pointed out to him that the carbon copies were in shreds. Unusable.

  “Tomorrow morning I have to take them with me to Reggio,” said Ferranini. “I need to find the time to recopy them.”

  “I’ll copy them out for you. Give them to me and I’ll bring them to you tomorrow morning at the train.”

  At 7:30 a.m. she boarded the bus in order to be on time for the train.

  On the platform she saw Walter talking to someone, a small, gesticulating man. No way they would have even a moment together. She guessed the man was some political figure; how was she going to deliver the letter? She walked up to Walter and said, “Here are those papers, Deputy Ferranini. Will there be anything else?”

  She left, consoled by that smile he’d beamed at her.

  The political figure was the Red Hunchback. Asvero Ancillotti, also departing for Reggio. A nuisance, thought Ferranini; he was looking for a way to get free of him. (And what could he have come to Rome to stick his nose into?)

  “Dear Ferranini,” said Ancillotti with that ventriloquist’s voice of his, “so we’re all on our way to the plenum. An important meeting today!”

  Ferranini had just scanned the party paper l’Unità where the meeting, under the heading “Party Life,” was mentioned in a scant four lines of small type. Go screw yourself, he longed to say to him. You and your “plenum.” Fool.

  The paper also reported that Roberto Mazzola of Turin had been expelled. “An individual who has amply demonstrated his faulty Communist preparation and persistent lack of discipline.”

  This piece of news was given nine lines on page six.

  •

  Parliament reopened (resumed its “work”) after a twenty-day break. Ferranini returned to the chamber, which smelled once again of cleaner’s turpentine and felt even more verbose, bourgeois, and superfluous.

  A brief, very brief encounter with Comrade Longo was the only event of note in those days. One afternoon, around the middle of the month, in a hallway: Longo was talking to Reparatore, and Reparatore signaled to him to come over. It had been some time since Ferranini had spoken to the man, esteemed and admired by him with hushed intensity from afar, because Longo had been the head of the early partisan command and then one of the leaders of European Communism. He went up to him, timidly studying that broad face with bushy eyebrows tumbling over a pair of keen, glacier-blue eyes. A gaze renowned (and feared) for its ironic edge.

  Ferranini saw that edge sharpen as Longo said, “I received your telegram. Thank you. Did Leningrad do you good?”

  Reparatore, consulted that same evening, interpreted Longo’s comment this way: “There’s no reason not to take it positively. He meant: Did you feel at home? The climate there is not that of Rome, did it trouble you? Good things, dear Walter. I trust my instincts on this.”

  “Oh, sure! He asks me whether the climate troubled me. He’s not exactly my uncle. He meant: Ferranini is an ailing socialist, from the ideological point of view, and in terms of habits, way of life. And therefore, I hope and presume that the trip to Leningrad served to . . . et cetera.”

  “Are you kidding?” said the other. “You’re here, a deputy in the chamber. Which means that one year ago the names of the deputables from Reggio Emilia appeared on Longo’s desk and yours was among them and he wrote to one side of it, ‘Approved.’ Dear friend, if one of us doubts himself, doesn’t that mean he doubts the whole apparatus?”

  It was the kind of dialectic that just might sway Ferranini’s conjecturing mind. Had Reparatore not continued: “And anyway, my permanent recommendation is to try not to give such a damn, or you’ll lose your mind. Or get a hang
-up.”

  “Listen, when I don’t give a damn, I don’t give a damn about anything. Understand? Nothing!”

  He was often at Reparatore’s house these days, in the evenings and on Sunday. Instinctively (he hadn’t yet really thought about it) he was in search of a friendship that could become real, concrete. For someone like him, it wasn’t easy to make friends. His affections, except for one perhaps, were mired in the fog of habit.

  He had returned to Reparatore’s one Sunday afternoon, the last day of January. In the morning he’d been to speak at the Federated Chamber of Labor in Tivoli. He had gone to Tivoli with Reparatore and Boatta, but when they got back to Rome the other two went off to the stadium for the Roma–Lazio game.

  One from Puglia in the south, one from Asti in the north, very different temperaments and mind-sets, the two, both nearing old age, were bonded not by shared, heartfelt political faith but by their passion for football.

  “But if it pours rain,” he had objected.

  “Let it rain, with our side heated up to a hundred and five degrees, we won’t even notice.”

  Ferranini knew nothing about sports; he didn’t even experience a small itch, let alone a big fever. And then there was a question of principle.

  “Sports,” he warned, “are a bourgeois distraction. The class struggle is a boiler under pressure. The bourgeoisie opens a crack in the boiler to let the pressure subside. Not by chance it is the big monopolists who finance football.”

  “Lenin didn’t denounce sports. And the USSR walks away with the Olympics.”

  “I guarantee you,” Ferranini went on, “no opium of the people is more powerful than sports.”

  Reparatore was teasing. Ferranini spoke with all seriousness.

  “And this, what’s this? Does it take the place of the party?” He had his finger on the team badge his friend wore in the buttonhole of his jacket.

  “That’s a Lazio badge. Aren’t you aware that the Federation here in Rome advises us not to wear our party badges? And it’s not the only group.”

  “In Reggio, I always recommended they be kept in evidence.”