The Communist

by Guido Morselli

  He’d needed to get that off his chest, after so many days. To make sure he didn’t change his mind, he gave the letter to the kid in the trattoria. “Now run and post it.” A minute later he was already thinking that the letter wasn’t clear, that Oscar Fubini knew nothing of that cuckold Lonati nor of the honest Mazzola either. No problem, I’ll tell him when I see him, I’ll explain. On Sunday I’ll see him. I’m going to Reggio. To Reggio? But on Sunday there was the rally in Frascati, Cagnotta had said so. Simple: he wouldn’t go. He’d hold a rally at home, with the comrades of Reggio, his base. Whether Cagnotta liked it or not. Now he felt calmer. To the man who brought him his lunch, he said, startling him, “Lent is over.” His penitence, he thought to himself, had been hypocrisy. But that was to malign himself: his approach had been sincere and tentative, provisory. With relief he enjoyed the taste of the rice with sausage, alla Monzese, his Friday meal, which they had brought without waiting for him to order.

  Up in his room, he found a parcel Nuccia had sent. A vial of tranquilizers and a book, just published.

  The book was titled Comparative Study of Industrial Safety Legislation. Then he noticed that it was published by the Common Market Interparliamentary Assembly. After the advent of de Gaulle, no one among the PCI deputies had a less flattering opinion of the newborn European Common Market than Ferranini. The acronym MEC, as Italians called it, stood for Militarists and Capitalists, Ferranini had quipped, and his remark had spread across the left benches and even into the public domain.

  He immediately stopped reading, thought about this business of the tranquilizers, and swallowed two. He’d never taken any in his life before. He threw himself on the bed, just as he was, and fell asleep.

  Later, Giordano’s little girl came in, as usual without knocking. In her hand was a letter. She sat down in a chair near the bed and stayed there, serious, looking at him. Ferranini woke for an instant and saw her. He woke again after a while and the little girl was still there. He fell back to sleep again.

  It was 9:00 p.m. when he got out of bed; he was rested and feeling well. He had an appetite, and went out again. The express mail letter the little girl had brought came from the Federation of Reggio. He didn’t open it; he had no desire to. He wasn’t ready to resume the weight of occupations, interests. His political life, his entire life, depended on what he would decide in the next few hours. But he didn’t feel any hurry. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll see. He was astonished and pleased by his capacity to dismiss thoughts that had once been the very foundation of his beliefs. Eat, sleep: apparently this was what mattered. He ate once again in his trattoria, ravenous, silent; as the man selling the evening newspapers moved among the tables, he yanked his eyes away so as not to read the headlines.

  At home, getting undressed just before 11:00 p.m., his gaze fell on the letter, and this time he opened it.

  There was nothing but a telegram inside. A day and half old, from New York. It informed him that Nancy was ill, gravely ill, and would have liked to see him. “If possible.”

  •

  Dawn was just breaking, the streetlights were still lit, and Ferranini was waiting on the street below Reparatore’s. He had sent him a telegram. Reparatore came down with his bag, he was leaving at 8:30 for Foggia. A car took them to Palazzo Margherita. Signora Francesca’s brother, Reparatore’s brother-in-law, was head doorkeeper there at the American embassy.

  They had to wait; he wasn’t awake yet.

  “A weeklong visa. Sir, they won’t even give you one for a day.”

  “Well, try!”

  “Impossible, and you know why.”

  Ferranini, the Communist, knew all too well why. Exasperation’s illogical lucidity came to his aid.

  “I’m married to an American citizen! Here, look at this. All the details are in this memo. Show it to them.”

  The other man shrugged, doubtful, but he took the memo.

  “And what’s more, you want to leave tonight. It’s going to be difficult in any case. Okay, I’ll get on it, let me try. Call me back at noon.”

  Having accompanied Reparatore to Termini station, Ferranini inquired about air tickets. But there wasn’t a single seat available.

  He could, of course, at his own risk, try at Ciampino Airport a few hours before the flight departed. Sometimes a seat turned up. After he left the agency it occurred to him that even if there were a seat, he didn’t have the money to pay for the ticket. He didn’t have it with him, and he didn’t have it at home. The cheapest ticket he could buy would cost him 400,000 lire. He thought of Amoruso. Too far away in Formia. Anyway, it bothered him to think of borrowing money from Amoruso.

  He went to sit in a lounge. The same lounge where he had spent the night between Wednesday and Thursday. He was alert, though; his head responded. A solution soon came to mind. Go to the chamber and try to get an advance on his pay. He leapt onto the running board of a bus.

  To the office of the presidency of the chamber. He asked for the deputy president, but without much hope: at that hour, 9:15 a.m., he wouldn’t be there. And he wasn’t. Instead the president himself was in, a man noted for his singular early-morning habits, as it happened. A few minutes of waiting, and Leone had him let into his office. Scowling, very polite but severe, a penetrating gaze.

  “I’ve been following your case, I know why you have come.”

  “If I may. I’m here to request—”

  “Believe me, Ferranini. I know! And I say this to you: Parliament’s integrity is above any and all groups. Whatever measures the group intends to apply. Or better, presumes it can apply.”

  “No, no. If I may speak, Signor President.”

  Leone removed his spectacles and polished them at length on his handkerchief. It was the third time he performed this maneuver. Another one who’s always fiddling with his eyeglasses, thought Ferranini annoyed. Not one of them who can see with his own eyes.

  “Very well, speak. Well, what it is you want to say? Your mandate comes from a part of the electorate. It is irrevocable.”

  “Look, forgive me, I’m here for a strictly private reason. Allow me to speak!” The annoyance, the irritation, were fraying his nerves.

  “Speak, speak! Who’s stopping you?”

  He explained in a few words. The other made a face and took off his eyeglasses. His booming Neapolitan voice turned mother-hennish.

  “I see, I see. Sorry about your wife. Inform your group that you must absent yourself. The rest of it is beyond my sphere, it’s a matter for the general secretary. Go, you may go now.”

  He was lucky. The end of the month was near. He got the approval, his MP’s allowance was paid in advance, before noon he was finished and out. He hadn’t wanted to call from the chamber and looked for a public phone instead. Caputo, head doorkeeper at the embassy, told him he hadn’t been able to accomplish anything. He should call back later, not before 3:00 or 4:00 p.m.

  Nuccia’s bookstore was only a few steps away. He appeared.

  “Where is Signora Corsi? Is she out?”

  “She’s in Milan. Didn’t she tell you?” said Holzener. Indiscreet.

  “That woman’s never here,” he shouted. “Never.”

  She had told him, of course. But who had the brains to remember? The fact was, he needed her, and she wasn’t there.

  “To Milan to do what? To do what, I say. Always in Milan, always away! Never here.”

  He was shouting. Holzener, the former seminarist at the Collegium Germanicum, was tall, cross-eyed, and tended toward melancholy. He kept him at a distance with an amused, contrite expression.

  Ferranini gave a kick to the door and went into Nuccia’s office, sat down heavily in her chair. In front of him was a packet of Turmac, her cigarettes, just opened, and, like a bullet aimed at the ceiling, the little golden warhead of her lipstick. He looked to see if there was a sheet of paper and an envelope to leave a message. He opened a leather file and then a drawer. With difficulty. He was quivering with rage.

  “Holzener,
get me an envelope! There isn’t a sheet of paper in this effing store!”

  This time the clerk appeared. All shyness. “The envelopes are there, sir. There, inside. There they are.”

  But now he didn’t feel like writing.

  “You tell her,” he said to the girl in the shop, looking her up and down without lowering his voice, “I have to go away, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Say this to Signora Corsi: that now I have a better picture of things, and all the rest is hog shit. Those exact words. Hog shit!

  The girl, surprised and dismayed, looked at him and shook her head.

  “I’m saying that to you, and I can say it to anyone, I’m not ashamed!”

  He took out the telegram, the telegram from New York, and opened it on the desk, slamming a paperweight on top. He left. When he got to the corner, he turned around. He walked back through the bookstore, arrived at Nuccia’s desk, and put the telegram in his pocket. He saw the golden lipstick case. He put that in his jacket pocket, too, and left.

  •

  Back at home, he packed. As he struggled to fasten a belt around his old valise, he understood that this was not a departure but a return.

  Those thirteen years that had passed compressed themselves more easily than the contents of his overstuffed bag. Despite all the life they held, they were only an interruption. All that life, all those things that had mattered so much for thirteen years.

  Dragging his bag behind him, he arrived at Palazzo Margherita.

  The good Caputo spread his arms wide. Still nothing.

  Yet Ferranini had no doubts he would depart. Two hours later, when his passport was returned with a visa for a week’s stay as, irony, a “tourist,” Caputo proudly claimed a miracle while for Ferranini it seemed no more than he’d expected. Nor was he surprised when at Ciampino they gave him a seat for the 8:45 p.m. flight. He had to leave. The cycle was finished; Nancy’s call had come at the right moment. As always Nancy was the designing woman, like the title of that film he’d seen at the cinema. She had marked the hour of his departure, and now she marked that of his return.

  At the airport, another lounge, and some two hours to wait. He wrote to Amoruso. Putting the Formia address on the postcard, he added, “Many thanks to you and Adele for everything.” It was a farewell.

  To who else could he send his farewell, keeping himself busy while he waited? A name came to mind, but for that, a phone call would do. That morning, from the taxi, he had recognized Reparatore’s daughter across the street in the doorway behind her father.

  He called. She came to the phone.

  “If you only knew how happy I am to hear from you,” she said before he could even say who he was. “I had a bad night. Tell me, tell me what’s happening with you!”

  He told her: he was leaving. He explained, briefly.

  “What? But aren’t you divorced? Forgive me, Walter!”

  “I am. Divorced.”

  “And you,” she regained her voice after a pause, “you hope not to get there too late.”

  He didn’t reply. Why he didn’t know, but he was sure he would not get there too late. The end hadn’t come for him yet, he still had a life to live, and for that Nancy was needed, Nancy and all the rest. She would be there; as soon as he’d read the telegram last night, he’d known that’s what would happen.

  “And for the article, forgive me again, was there any unpleasantness?”

  The question led him back in time, disagreeably.

  “Nothing. They soft-pedaled it. Though did I ever speak out!”

  “What did you say? Soft-pedaled in what sense?”

  “We undertook to make a complete change of life, a positive change—”

  “Don’t talk so loud, we’re on the phone!”

  “What difference does it make? It’s a false promise, I said, because the final sum is always the same, even if the terms change, or the signs. There will be less injustice, not less total suffering! That’s what I said yesterday. They didn’t touch a hair on my head, everything as before, we’re all the best of friends.”

  “And isn’t that better? What did you want them to say? Walter, please, tell me when you’ll be back. You must come back!”

  “Come back? I’ve been away thirteen years and though I didn’t notice it, I missed America. There’s more space there. You can’t imagine. The countryside is immense there. Like huge estates. There’s more room. In every sense! It’s a different way of life.”

  “Think about it, please, think,” the voice was stunned and indignant. “You don’t mean to say you prefer America for that. Impossible.”

  “It’s another world,” he went on, “and I am tired, I want a change. I want to live, to be free, understand?”

  “Impossible, you’ll be back, this is an impulsive reaction, and you’ll be back soon, back to yourself—”

  “You don’t know. It’s easy for you to say. It’s been months, years that I’ve been debating this.”

  “No,” the voice begged, “change your mind, Walter, you won’t get what you’re looking for in America. That can’t be your country. It will disappoint you.”

  “But at least I’ll have a change. You don’t believe me, but I guarantee you there’s nothing to be done. I thought of myself as a follower, a peaceful type. Docile. I kidded myself, and probably also others. Enough! The time for clarity has arrived. You understand now, yes?”

  He felt ridiculously sordid and shabby. Had just finished the call and was closing the door of the phone cabinet. What was he doing? Telling that girl his private business, his deepest secrets, his weariness, his doubts, his battles.

  Letting himself be scolded, letting himself be commiserated with. Because he hadn’t found Nuccia, here he was grabbing on to this other one, confessing to this other. And he was supposed to like women, phony Communist Ferranini! Like Mazzola, who when the most dramatic moment of his life arrived, didn’t tell his wife a thing.

  He headed for the exit and went outside. He needed to move, to get some air. A nervous system with a brain as accessory: so Lenin had defined people like him. Ex-proletariat, yes, with a bourgeois nervous system.

  14

  THE MAN behind the counter who served him coffee pointed to another man at the far end of the bar, sitting deep in thought over his glass.

  “See that young fellow, the Negro? He’s flying with you and he just arrived from New York this morning. American. He comes in three or four times a month, doesn’t leave the airport, returns in the evening. He’s got money to throw away. He leaves these fliers in here or on the seats in the plane.”

  There was one on the table. It had a few lines printed on it. Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. While Ferranini was reading it, the American, athletically built, tall, elegant, about thirty-five, came over.

  “Those are lines from Shakespeare. Do you know Shakespeare?”

  “No.”

  “Would you rather speak Italian? I fought in Italy during the war, I speak the language.”

  “Better English. I need to practice.”

  They sat together at the table. After 8:00 p.m., it was the dead hour at Ciampino, and they were almost alone.

  “You hand out these sheets. Life’s but a walking shadow, a tale told by an idiot. What on earth do you mean? Not a very cheerful message for someone going on a trip.”

  Lamoureux (the man had introduced himself as “John Lamoureux from New York and New Orleans”) laughed. “Not cheerful but salutary. People who travel delude themselves they are keeping busy, or getting away, they delude themselves all the time. Their travel is supremely pointless, like that pinnacle of pointlessness, their lives. I’ve taken it upon myself to warn them. They should know they are going for no reason but to go. Would you like a drink? A cigarette?”

  “This moral, did you gather it from personal experience?”

  “Yes, from my experience as an American, and America is a world, it is
the world. And so it pertains to everyone. I hand out my fliers in Rome, Frankfurt, Paris. I land in those cities twice a week on average, alternating among them. But I alone don’t delude myself. Only I know I’m going with the sole purpose of going.”

  Ferranini asked no more questions. The Negro, who was lighter-skinned than many Italians, was too friendly, too histrionic for his taste. They separated and Ferranini went to the restaurant to eat. But fate would bring them together again. On the plane, they had adjacent seats. And after taking off in a whirlwind of rain, when the roar of the engines had quieted, Lamoureux turned to speak to him.

  “You look at me and find I’m not Negro enough. I don’t have that typical smell. In fact, I am half white. But my soul is black, and I’m black on the outside too for all intents and purposes. Your Sicilians are often darker than I am and have hair less straight than mine. But there’s the cornea, the damned cornea. In whites, including Sicilians, it’s white, or blue-white. Look carefully. Mine is pink. That’s enough. That marks me.”