by Tim Parks
The second morning Signora Ligozzi brought up an ancient valve radio and plugged it in beside the bed; for something to listen to, she said, seeing as he was stuck there for a while. And so now Morris had to keep his eye on that too and was scared of falling asleep lest Massimina should hear something on the news. He tried to keep it almost solidly on classical music and opera and the only spoken broadcasts he would listen to were the Radical Party’s election phone-in and Radio Moscow’s afternoon readings from the Black Book of Capitalist Imperialism. He really wouldn’t mind working for Radio Moscow, and if the worst came to the worst …
‘Your mother votes Christian Democrat?’ he asked Massimina.
‘Papa was going to be a Christian Democrat MP when he died,’
‘Oh really. And you?’
She didn’t know, she said. She wasn’t interested in politics.
‘You’d vote Christian Democrat,’ he said. She was sitting by the window watching out and even that he envied her. Why was it always Morris who had to get the worst of a bad deal? All he could see, supine and shivering where he was, were the wooden feet of Christ crucified (rather clumsily) above him.
‘You’d vote Christian Democrat because without them, all your money and property would dissolve away in a few years. I mean, if they started to tax people properly in this country, if they made people pay all the taxes they’re supposed to, that is ….
‘Mamma pays all her taxes.’
‘I bet she doesn’t.’ He’d have burst out laughing if he hadn’t been afraid of throwing up.
Massimina didn’t want to argue. ‘So what would you vote?’
‘Me? Communist. For honesty and equity in the formation of the New Man,’ he added, which was something he had picked up from Radio Tirhana. ‘Except after we’re married I’ll probably vote Christian Democrat like you. I’ll have a vested interest.’
‘No, Morri. If you believe it’s right to vote Communist, then vote Communist. I don’t care. Understand? I don’t care about any of this money. As long as we can be happy together I don’t care what happens.’
‘But who is it always keeping the purse strings tight, cara?’
‘Oh Morrees, why do you have to say these things? I don’t know anything about politics and money. I only know that we have less than five hundred thousand now and …’
And he had made her cry. She didn’t seem to appreciates Morris thought, that seeing as he was English he’d never be able to vote in Italy anyway.
Pensione Quirinale was three battered though still genteel floors run by the widowed Signora Ligozzi and a mentally retarded daughter. The son was working as a cook in London, a large Italian restaurant in Clapham of all places; so that once Morris had begun to improve, the signora came up on a number of occasions to talk to him about England and when would be the best time to make a long delayed visit because Franco had a fidanzata now and she didn’t want them to go and marry before she’d had a chance to meet the girl.
To Clapham, never, was Morris’s opinion, but he plumped on September for some reason and extolled the virtues of Clapham Common in early autumn (the sun trailing its colours over yellowing horse chestnuts, the blacks straddled over their bicycles, turbaned Indians head down, hurrying to wherever turbaned Indians hurry to; and hunched behind this dubious oasis of green and dogshit there would be the remains ofthat great waste of industry that was the glorious past, plus those awful, awful houses that decayed away no sooner than some optimist had sacrificed his life savings to renovate them). But you couldn’t say these things. You had to be kind. And if the lady nursed harmless illusions it was scarcely Morris’s business to carve them up. He wasn’t cruel.
‘Clapham’s a nice area,’ he said.
Yes, she knew, she said. Franco had told her and sent postcards.
Postcards? Of Clapham? Morris said nothing.
Over the next few days Morris was to discover that Signora Ligozzi was particularly proud of the fact that her son was making a success of things in England, as if the Anglo-Saxon culture were somehow a step up in the world and Morris had made a pitiful mistake moving south to the land of misgovernment and disorder. The bug he had caught she took as a confirmation of this opinion and she asked him constantly when he was going back and what sort of job he intended to take up when he got there. (Would he be anywhere near Clapham? Could he take a tin of amaretti to Franco?) He and Massimina should get married as soon as Morris was better and then go back directly, she advised. Morris sighed with relief when she left the room and Massimina giggled. Not that she wouldn’t be very happy to go to England if Morris wanted …
On the second afternoon of his illness with his temperature down to 101 (his faculty for mental arithmetic had returned too), Signora Ligozzi moved them into a larger room on the other side of the building away from the fierce sunshine that beat on the windows of the south side. Morris collapsed on the huge double bed under a sad, gilt-framed photograph of a young man in uniform and looked out at a blank blue sky. This had been where she and her husband had slept, Signora Ligozzi smiled and hurried off to her cleaning. The room cost five thousand a night more than the other one.
All in all there were nine other rooms in the pensione, mostly taken up by foreigners, thank heaven, which reduced the likelihood of Massimina’s striking up dangerous conversations. The only real problem was that Signora Ligozzi insisted on asking any American or English-speaking visitors if they would be so kind as to go up and talk to Morris and keep him company every now and then. On the third morning there was a graduate student from Yale who bored him for hours with endless questions about the Cambridge English department, comparisons with Yale, and, worst of all, detailed accounts of his thesis on a Structuralist Interpretation of Phantoms in Narrative.
Massimina left the room with an enjoy-yourselves-together smile almost as soon as the conversation began (who could blame her?) so that Morris didn’t know where on earth she’d got to for a solid two-and-a-half hours, which left his nerves raw amidst the fog of what seemed an interminable headache. The police would be in there handcuffing him, he thought, before Ronnie Gutenberg had finished with his phonemes and phantasms. Thank God he’d left university anyway, rather prison than that. At least he didn’t go around boring people to death. Then when Gutenberg had triumphantly resolved the function of Hamlet’s father, the only remark Morris could make was that surely a real ghost was more interesting than one that turned out to be just a narrative sign slipped in by the author. (If Giacomo or Sandra came back to loom all bloody and beaten over his bedside? See if he could write that off as a complex introduction of the objective third person into dramatic narrative!) But Gutenberg was argumentative and said that sounded like a typical piece of Cambridge anti-contemporaryism (even the word conservative was out of fashion apparently). Morris grinned a weak devil's-advocate-found-out grin and said he needed some sleep.
Later it turned out Massimina had gone to a church in Via Umiltà to pray for him and afterwards she had asked the priest what documents they would need to get married. Romeo and Juliet stuff.
‘You’ll have to go to a questura for a permesso di soggiorno and a certificate of good conduct.’
‘As soon as I’m better,’ Morris promised. Good conduct!
Four more days.
June is the beginning of the watermelon season and Massimina fed Morris great juicy red slices cooled in Signora Ligozzi’s fridge and served with Signora Ligozzi’s spoons. She changed Morris’s sheets, rubbed cream into his skin and anti-dandruff lotion into his scalp and each long evening she read to him from I Promessi Sposi. This having himself read to, and from this book in particulars Morris regarded as a confirmation that genius was still shining in his feverish brain.
Firsts he had always wanted to read I Promessi Sposi - it was considered a sine qua non of understanding Italian cultures was it not? Seconds it kept Massimina happily by his side and thus out of harm’s way, partly because it touched just the romantic chord the dear girl was after
and partly because it gave her the impression of being allowed to enter into that area of Morris’s character she admired most, his intellect and cultured educational background. Third, and this was rather a surprise, he discovered that Massimina read quite well; her usual giggly and sometimes jarring voice evened out into the long periods of Manzonfs great character descriptions and she read with a remarkable dramatic sense and intelligence which made her failure at school quite interesting from an educational point of view. Something else one might look into later with time and money on one’s hands. So all in all it was a wonderful way to pass the evenings if only he hadn’t felt so shivery and ill, and then nervous too every time they heard the phone ring down in the hallway, or when more than usually decisive footsteps climbed the stairs.
Morris’s illness had temporarily cut out any further sexual activities. But at the same time, because of the heat, Massimina moved around the room for most of the day very scantily dressed in just the green cotton skirt they’d bought in Vicenza and then one of his own loose white shirts, often completely open at the front (extraordinary how quickly she’d lost any sense of modesty with him), so that from his bed, from day to day more comfortable as the fever receded, he was able to follow the lines and movements of her body most carefully, the slight bounce of all her flesh as she walked barefoot across the boards, the way her breasts changed shape from standing to bending to sitting to lying, the pucker of her face as she concentrated on reading aloud, occasionally making as if to toss back the long hair she no longer had, a gesture that set her nipples a-quiver. (Yes, he would definitely buy a camera once he had the money. He might even paint, damn it. Who knew what precious stones the ILEA mightn’t have left unturned.) When she sat cross-legged on the bed, creasing her brow over the melon she was feeding him, he was able to follow the soft soft contours of the skin that crept up from her knees to inside the skirt, whitening as it went. It was all novelty to him. And Morris thought really, as long as a woman was well-trained and stayed young, he wouldn’t mind spending a lifetime with her at ail.
On the fourth day in bed, sitting up and bright now, he persuaded her to cut away the hair under her armpits which had been bothering him (did you ever see a statue or painting with hair under its armpits?); and when she wouldn’t actually razor them because she was afraid of cutting herself, Morris offered to do it himself with his own razor and she lathered under her arms and he did it without cutting her at all. (It would be the same with children, he thought, doing things for them, modelling them, the poor man’s only chance to be an artist in the end. If only he could wangle his way out of all this.)
The fifth morning finally, a scorching Thursday, Morris had to slip the tip of the thermometer into his tea to get it over normal. A moment later, feeling right back to his usual self, he switched on the radio and for the first time braved the national news. Why not? What could there possibly be after nearly two weeks had passed since the kidnap, six days since Giacomo and Sandra?
Nine o’clock: the Russians had rejected an offer on nuclear missiles, the Italian political parties were making their final campaign statements before the elections on Sunday. The reader went through the headlines with a clatter of fake typewriters in the background to add a sense of urgency. The engineering union was coming out on strike over contracts, fifteen more mafia arrests in Palermo - Morris sipped his morning tea - ‘and in a development in the Rimini murders case, police are now looking for a young blond man and his girlfriend known to have been staying in a pensione not far from the victims’ hotel. The young man was seen in the victims’ hotel shortly before the murder and is believed to have eaten …’
“Morri! Come mai? What on earth are you …’
He tumbled across the bed and snapped the thing off.
‘I want to get up. I feel fine.’
‘But you have a temperature of …’
Morris was on his feet, already rummaging for a shirt. Just today and tonight to get through, just today and tonight and then tomorrow morning around noon the train would be in Stazione Termini: he’d pick up the money, train out to Civitavecchia, then the boat to Sardinia where … but he could decide on that when they got there. He wasn’t obliged to think about that now. The thing was to get his passport off that woman downstairs and get out now before the newspapers were full of identikits.
Morris dressed and looked himself over in the mirror. He was quite conspicuously pale of course, his forehead more furrowed than he remembered it and the whole face a shade drawn, especially about the eyes. But he was okay. He would make it.
Massimina came and stood behind him: she rested her chin on his shoulder so that their two faces were reflected together, his thin and sharp and straight hers wide and round with two full lips that pouted a smile, plus the little silver St Christopher of Giacomo’s around her neck. Morris kissed her spontaneously. He put an arm round her and kissed her on her mouth, pulling her soft body into him.
What would he do without Massimina?
‘Don’t you think you should rest at least one more day, caro?'
‘l thought we’d get a train down to the beach for the day and take it easy. Get some fresh air. Then I’ll phone a friend of mine in Sardinia who’s always inviting me out there and see if we can’t spend a week or two by the sea. Before getting married,’ he added.
‘Morri.’ She kissed his ear. “But I thought you wanted to see Rome.’
‘I don’t think I can face it now. Trailing round a city. I feel too weak.’
And he did. Weak at the knees and in the bowels. Too weak to go down and settle everything with Signora Ligozzi, face to face. Who knew what she mightn’t have heard on the radio, seen in the papers, what photofit pictures she mightn’t have contemplated over her morning coffee? He sent Massimina, saying he would pack himself. He turned on the radio and worked quickly, folding his clothes into the suitcase. He was really looking forward-to buying some new stylish clothes, something one could really cut a figure in, a change anyway from the endless round of two pairs of trousers and half a dozen T-shirts. And for her too. There would be bazaars and designers’ shops in Sardinia no doubt. And if the money went back into her family in the end (if they got married and bought themselves a house) then where was the crime in it all? Nowhere.
While he was waiting for her to come back, Morris folded Massimina’s things over the top of his own. T-shirts two skirts, bras and pants. How on earth were you supposed to fold a bra? It was so curious being alongside someone who wore these different things. Who had a completely different inside from oneself. Could you imagine climbing into tiny pants like that, for example? The whole crotch part would feel totally different. Perhaps it would be fun one day to try out each other’s clothes just to see how … Damn, the girl was taking forever. Morris suddenly zipped the case shut and looked quickly around the room. He had to hurry. He had to get out. Not sit here fiddling.
All set. He carried the cases downstairs, surprised to find how powerless and exhausted he felt. On the second landing he had to stop for a breather. He really was ill still, damn it. Which seemed a justification for everything.
‘Buon giorno, Signor Duckworth, buon giorno, come va?'
Not so loud with the name., Morris thought. Two or three people were lounging in the tiny little lobby-cum-sitting room where Signora Ligozzi did business with her guests. The room smelt surprisingly of French cigarettes this morning. Morris smiled a wan, convalescent’s smile and said buon giomo. Where was Massimina? Yes, perhaps he should stay just a day longer but he wanted to go to the sea and get some fresh air. He kissed the old woman on both cheeks and thanked her warmly for her kindness.
'Your young lady is just writing down her address for me so we can all keep in touch.’
‘Good,’ Morris gasped, turning abruptly to see Massimina standing at the makeshift reception desk, scribbling.
'It’s under T,’ she said, ‘for Trevisan. I've put the phone number too.’
Signora Ligozzi barely looked at t
he thing and slipped the slim red address book high up on a shelf behind the desk, ‘Grazie mille. If I go to England I’ll let you know so that I can bring you something back if you like.’
‘Bene, bene. Grazie infinite.’
He had to get that book! Had to. It was one thing having his own name down in the register and quite another having hers there in the address book. Her surname. Because it would be her name in the paper after all at the end of the day, not his. (And why in God’s name did they have to leave addresses like that when neither of them really had the slightest damn intention of ever seeing the other again? Rome was four hundred miles from Verona.)
Out in the street he said, ‘Mimi, let’s buy her some flowers. She’s been so nice.’
Massimina thought it was a good idea. She wouldn’t spend money on the rapido of course but she was willing to throw it away like this without a second thought so long as she could feel generous. They found a florist’s on Via 24 Maggio. Morris didn’t know anything about choosing flowers, he said, so he’d leave her to it while he popped a little further down the street for a paper.
It was a small newsagent’s without an Arena, but the ‘Cronaca’ section on page four of La Mattina had a report on the Rimini case. Morris drew his breath. There was an identikit picture the spitting image of himself. He leaned against a traffic light and read, the paper trembling in his hands.