The Big Story

by Morris West

  “Does that apply to Orgagna, too?”

  “Most of all,” said George Harlequin gravely, “it applies to Orgagna. I have seen what you have written about him, and all of it is true. He is a financial manipulator, an unscrupulous politician, an adventurer with ambition to rule. But that is not the whole truth, because you cannot write two thousand years of history in a single sentence. A man like Orgagna is not explained with adjectives. He is not damned by a dozen documents like yours. I cannot explain him to you. Your only hope is to have him explain himself. And then…”

  He broke off as if at a loss for words.

  Ashley prompted him, quietly.

  “He begins to explain himself. What then?”

  “Then, my dear fellow, you will understand why I fear for you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WHEN HARLEQUIN HAD LEFT HIM, Ashley packed his bags and left them strapped and ready for the porters. He went downstairs and paid his bill and walked briskly round to American Express to withdraw the two thousand dollars. He presented his passport and signed the quittance and the clerk handed over twenty hundred-dollar notes, crisp and new from the presses. Ashley counted them and shoved them into his wallet.

  Then the clerk handed him a letter. It was post-marked at Rome and bore the office symbol. When he opened it, he found two minute clippings from the continental edition of the New York Times. The first was a two-line teaser from a gossip columnist:

  What press baron is slated for what diplomatic appointment and why?

  The second was a brief paragraph with a London date-line:

  Mr. Charles Langdon, London Office Chief of the Monitor chain, has been awarded the O.B.E. for conspicuous service in the furthering of international understanding through the medium of the press and news services.

  The clippings were pinned to a sheet of office note-paper, on which was scrawled in Hansen’s dashing, violent script: “Up the Press! There’s hope for us yet!”

  Ashley grinned at the little professional gag. He was in the wrong company it seemed. Birthday honours and diplomatic appointments were reserved for sober citizens who drove carefully and kept their hands free of the smuts of scandal. He shoved the envelope into his pocket and walked out into the clear dry sunshine of the square.

  The morning traffic was milling round the big bronze statue of Saint Antonino, patron of the town, who looked down with a tolerant smile on the motley crowd of visitors who fed his people during the summer and helped them to live a step or two further from starvation during the harsh winter. They came in all shapes, sizes and nationalities—the brown girls in bright sun-frocks with bare shoulders and proud young heads crowned with crazy straw hats, the long-legged boys in denim shorts and flowered shirts, sober Germans in cream suits and heavy clod-hopping shoes, dowdy women from the French provinces and sleek young cavaliers from Rome on the look-out for an American wife.

  They were hurrying down to the Marina to catch the morning boat to Capri. They were writing postcards at the little table on the pavement. They were turning over the lace-work and the inlaid boxes on the trays outside the tourist shops. They were sitting near the little rotunda under the orange trees, drinking coffee and eating sweet biscuits. They were bargaining with the taxi-men and the cocchieri for a cut-price drive to Positano or a leisurely clip-clop run down to Massa Lubrense.

  Waiters in espadrilles and striped cotton coats were washing down the marble-tops of the tables in the bars. Peasant women padded along in wooden sandals, with big glass jars or bundles of washing on their heads. The couriers were standing at the bus stop, resplendent in braided caps, and a policeman in a green uniform with a black gun on his hip blew his whistle and waved his arms helplessly at the traffic piled up round the feet of Saint Antonino.

  It was gay, inconsequent and charming, and Richard Ashley felt as remote from it as the man in the moon.

  He stood to one side of the big iron gates that opened into the hotel gardens and smoked a leisurely cigarette. A shabby fellow sidled up to him and offered American cigarettes at a hundred lire under the market. Ashley waved him away. The chances were they were made in a back-yard factory in Naples from the butts which the beggars picked out of the stinking gutters.

  An old woman thrust a knotted filthy hand under his nose, beseeching alms. He dug into his pocket for a handful of coins and she moved away, blessing him wheezily in the name of God and the blessed Virgin and the twenty-eight saints of Sorrento.

  An optimistic pedlar tried to sell him a straw hat. A little schoolgirl offered him a posy to buy for the local convent. A restaurant tout waved a brochure under his nose and wanted to change his money. Then he saw Roberto, the barman.

  He was crossing the square from the direction of the petrol station. His head was down and he was hurrying like a man who is late for work. Ashley watched him come and as he entered the big iron gates, fell into step beside him.

  “Good-day, Roberto!”

  Roberto looked up, startled, and gave him a nervous smile and a mumbled good-morning. He tried to quicken his pace, but Ashley caught at his wrist and drew him off the path among the palm trees. It was a shady spot, half-screened from the path, with a tiny pergola where middle-aged tourists came to sit and drink aranciata when the afternoon sun drove them under shelter.

  Roberto tried to pull himself away, but Ashley held him and twisted his wrist, forcing him under the pergola and out of view by passers-by. Roberto looked up at him with frightened eyes.

  “Signore, I beg of you ... for the love of God! I am late for work. Please, what do you want with me?

  Ashley wrenched his arm up into hammerlock and with his free hand hauled him back against his chest and held him, with his wrist hard against his throat and his fist forcing his head backward. Roberto gasped and tried to struggle, but the pain was too much for him and he relaxed, sweating and trembling against Ashley’s chest.

  “If you do that again,” said Ashley sofley, “I’ll dislocate your arm, understand:”

  “Capito!” It was a whisper of abject terror.

  “You gave me a message yesterday, Roberto. It was a message of warning. I was to take what was offered but to trust the offerer not at all. I paid you five thousand lire for that. Now I want to know more. Who gave you the message?”

  Roberto was trembling with fear. Ashley could feel his heart pounding under the skinny rib-case.

  “Who gave you the message?”

  “I—I don’ t know the man, signore.”

  “You’re lying.” He jerked the imprisoned arm and Roberto gasped and choked as the wrist closed on his wind-pipe. Ashley was ashamed of his brutality but his own life was at stake. He had no time to be squeamish. “Who was the man? What was his name?”

  “There—there was no name, signore. It was a man I have not seen before. From Naples, possibly. He gave me the message and an envelope with ten thousand lire.”

  “What else?”

  “He—he also gave me the telephone number.”

  “What number?” In his excitement, he tightened his grip and Roberto gave a high, animal squeal.

  “Please, signore, please! You will kill me. I am trying to tell you.”

  “The telephone number!”

  “This—this was the number I was to ring, if you left the hotel. I was to say what time you left and with whom. I was to say also where, if I knew.”

  “And you did that:”

  “Yes, signore.”

  “When?”

  “After you went out with Her Excellency.”

  “What was the number?”

  “I—I have forgotten it, signore.”

  “Remember!”

  “It was… Sorrento 673.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, signore! Nothing! There was nothing more. I swear it on the bones of my mother and the grave of my father.”

  “Why should he give you a message that means nothing?”

  “I—I do not know, signore.”

  “Guess!”<
br />
  “To—to make trouble between you—mistrust.”

  “To provoke a quarrel?”

  “It was suggested.”

  “Which you would report in the same way to the same number?”

  “Yes, signore.”

  “If you’re lying, Roberto…”

  “Signore—for pity! I swear that you have had the truth.”

  He released him then and watched him scuttle away, rubbing his bruised throat, massaging the wrenched muscles of his shoulder. He didn’t blame him too much. It was part of the trade in this country—the small profit for petty intrigue. Times were hard in Italy and a man could give small thought to the morals of an act that put ten thousand lire in his pocket and fed a wife and three bambini.

  Ashley smoothed down his rumpled jacket, straightened his tie and walked thoughtfully back to the square. He crossed in front of the statue of the benign Saint Antonino and made his way to a small bar just beyond the petrol station. He walked in, bought a slug from the attendant, and went to the telephone in the comer.

  Carefully, he dialed the numerals 6—7—3. He heard the jangling characteristic note of ltalian receivers. Then the ringing stopped and a man’s voice said:

  “Pronto!” Villa Orgagna!”

  Ashley hung up the receiver and walked out of the bar. The heat was beginning to beat up from the pavements and from the stuccoed walls of the houses. He shivered like a man who had just looked into his own grave.

  When he reached the hotel he found the blue Isotta drawn up in front of the entrance and, behind it, a small estate car into which the aproned porters were stacking luggage, watched by a chauffeur in dark-blue uniform. The manager was going through an elaborate ceremony of farewell with Cosima and Orgagna, while Elena Carrese and Tullio Riccioli stood a little apart, talking in low tones.

  They looked up when he entered and greeted him with the constrained smiles that politeness demanded. His arrival shortened the leave-taking and, two minutes later, they were piling into the Isotta—Orgagna and Cosima in front, Tullio and Ashley in the back, with the girl between them.

  Orgagna swung the big car out of the drive, eased it through the alleys and across the square and soon they were heading up the rise and over the shoulder, along the high winding road that led westward to the end of the peninsula.

  The hood was down and the wind of their swift progress ruffled their hair and blew gratefully in their faces, but the grey olives hung motionless in the heat and the shrill chorus of the cicadas sounded above the deep purring of the engine and the whip of the tyres over the metalled road. The sky was a dazzle in the eyes and the sea was a blue miracle beyond the grey thrust of the cliffs and the nestling of the fisher villages in the small crescent beaches.

  On their left, the hills climbed steeply to the spine of the mountains and the olives and orange trees marched over them like grey-green armies. On the right, the land was terraced to the cliff-edge and, where the trees were sparse, there were the garden-plots of the peasant farmers, cabbage and onions and the tall knobbed stalks of the artichokes.

  Thick-bodied peasant women bent among them, and bare-legged boys and tattered girls waved and shouted as the big car swept past them. Donkey carts trundled along the verge of the road, and they passed an occasional carozza with its plumed horse and its load of conscientious sight-seers.

  Orgagna was in a good humour. He drove fast and expertly. His face in the rear-vision mirror was smiling as he pointed out the landmarks and made little jokes about the local oddities. He was at pains to make himself agreeable and the others responded with more and more freedom—all except Elena Carrese who sat, stiff and unresponsive, between Tullio and Ashley.

  At last they came to a small, cobbled turning. Orgagna swung the car into it and they drove down a winding lane hung with olive trees to a pair of great iron gates flanked by high tufa walls. When the car stopped, Ashley could see the big metal bosses, with the sculptured crest of the House of Orgagna.

  Orgagna sounded his hom and an old, gnarled fellow with tousled hair and a wizened face came trotting to open the gates. He swung them back and dropped the bolts, then came to Orgagna. His old lips framed a blessing and he seized his master’s hand and kissed it. Orgagna smiled at him and returned his blessing in dialect and rumpled his hair with an affectionate gesture. Then he eased the car up the long, gravelled drive to the villa.

  The first sight of the place was a shock to Ashley. By some trick of association he had imagined it as one of those white, square boxes with blind walls and Moorish arches, canted out on the hillsides of Capri. He had thought of it as a holiday resort with bright shutters and striped awnings and candy-stick umbrellas spread over cane tables on the terrace.

  Instead it reared itself up—three storeys of baroque magnificence, with curlicued balconies and great carved doors, with a wide terrace and a marble balustrade below which the rockeries dropped away to green lawns, which spread themselves out to the fringe of the orange gardens and the olive-groves.

  Ancient pines towered over the roof-top, and below them was the feathery drooping of palms and the brighter green of shade trees. The flower-beds were ablaze with colour and beyond them was the rich blue of the Mediterranean.

  As Orgagna brought the car to a stop, the big panelled doors swung open and a tall grey-haired fellow in the livery of a major-domo came forward to meet them. Behind him Ashley could see half a dozen servants, male and female, lining the wide hall. It was a princely homecoming for His Excellency the Duke of Orgagna.

  The major-domo helped them out of the car, Orgagna first, then Cosima, then the others, giving to each a carefully judged portion of respect and welcome. When he came to Elena Carrese, he took her in his arms, kissed her on both cheeks and held her a moment against his braided chest. The girl clung to him in childish pleasure and Ashley thought she was going to burst into tears.

  Orgagna caught his look of surprise and smiled.

  “The steward of my house—Carlo Carrese. Elena is his daughter.”

  “Oh!”

  It wasn’t a very intelligent comment, but what else was there to say? He was hedged about with mysteries and Orgagna’s domestic relationships were the biggest mystery of all.

  Finally the flurry of the greetings was over and Ashley was led upstairs to a big square room with a four-poster bed and a coffered ceiling, whose windows looked over the olive trees to a small, circular bay with a shoulder of cliff behind.

  The shutters were open ; the room was full of sun and, when the servant had gone, Ashley stood in the middle of the tiled floor and took stock of his surroundings.

  The room was big enough to deploy an army. Even the great bed was dwarfed by it. The ceiling was rich with gold leaf and the tiles of the floor were patterned with rose petals, so delicately done that he was tempted to reach down and touch them. The chests and wardrobes were made by Florentine craftsmen and the overmantel was a baroque masterpiece in mottled marble. The opulence of it would have oppressed him had it not been for the sunlight streaming in through the big french windows.

  He was reminded once again that he was an alien—a man from the new world, strange and uneasy among the surviving splendours of the old

  There was a knock at the door and another maidservant came in, lumping his suitcase and his overnight bag. He made a move to help her, but she refused, smiling, and began to unpack, laying out suits and linen, setting aside his soiled clothes for laundering.

  He stood, smoking a cigarette and watching her, finding a surprising pleasure in the sight of her thick body and her broad simple face and her work-stained hands busy over the humble, human service. in the wild unreality of his situation, she was his first link with reality and he was grateful to her. He asked her:

  “Come ti chiami’? What’s your name?”

  “Concetta.”

  “Have you worked here long?”

  Her head went up in a little gesture of pride and she smiled, broadly.

  “Son della famigl
ia, signore. I belong to the family. I am the servant of the Duchessa. She has asked me to look after you.”

  “The Duchessa is very kind.”

  “C’e una cara—a dear one, signore.”

  She picked up the soiled linen, stuffed it into the overnight bag and left the room.

  “C’e una cara—a dear one indeed! Dear and desirable—and damned expensive to a man who has come to the middle years and finds that he has no more love to spend, but must husband it carefully like the oil in a flickering lamp. The cynics might make a dirty joke of a thought like that. Yet it was true. The years might tame the body, but they left the soul still hungry. And the love dried out of it as the sap dried out of a tree and left it dying from the top. A man might die alone, by accident or act of God. But if he died unloved, then he died poor indeed.

  It was a morbid thought and he tried to thrust it away. He slipped off his jacket, undid his tie and knotted a coloured scarf round his neck. Then he walked downstairs and out on to the sunlit terrace.

  Orgagna was there, cool and scrupulously groomed in holiday clothes. He was leaning on the marble balustrade, staring seaward across the green fall of the land. At the sound of Ashley’s footfall he looked up and smiled a greeting.

  “Come and join me, Ashley. You’re comfortably settled?”

  “Very comfortably, thank you.”

  “You like my place?”

  “I like it very much. I envy you.”

  “Walk with me a while and let me show it to you.”

  “Surely.”

  There was so much friendliness in his smile, such genuine pleasure in his voice, that it was hard to believe he was the man who had plotted a murder to conceal a succession of criminal acts. In an odd fashion, Ashley found himself grateful to him. To live here in open hostility would have been an intolerable strain.

  Orgagna took his arm and led him along the terrace to a flight of stone steps flanked by twin marbles—a dancing faun and a bacchante in the smooth, bloodless style of Canova. The steps led them on to a gravelled path which wound through the lawns and into the orange groves, downward towards the sea.