by André Aciman
C’s house was at the top of the hill: where, with the vegetable gardens in abeyance, the area was more densely built up. It was a small, isolated, cream colored building, on two floors, with a reserved air to it. Of light colored wood, and furnished with a pair of well polished brass handles, the front door had a no less distinctive appearance.
I pressed a small buzzer, the only one. After a few moments the door was opened by a tall, dark-haired woman, of the palest complexion, and very buxom.
She let me in and closed the door.
“How can I help you?”
I explained who I was and where I’d come from. In the meantime, while staring straight at me, she lifted a hand to adjust her hair, and in doing so disclosed a phenomenally hairy armpit.
“His Excellency hasn’t come back yet”—she declared at last. Soon after lunch they had come to take him to Salerno, where that very afternoon there was to be a council meeting.
“And what time will he be back?”
She shrugged her substantial shoulders, and gave the ghost of a grimace.
“Depends. Sometimes they stay out till two, or three . . . ”
She grinned.
“Till after midnight, there’s little doubt,” she added, with a wink.
“May I wait?”
“As you like,” the woman replied.
She turned her back on me, leaving me there, in the anteroom.
I sat on a bench placed along the wall beside the entrance. The room was cool. A single, tiny, pinkish lamp which hung from the faraway height of a huge concave ceiling with vaulted panels was the only source of light. For my face and eyes, inflamed by the sun and wind and dust, I could have asked for nothing more soothing.
The woman dawdled in the adjoining room, and didn’t cease her humming for a moment. I heard her subdued voice, a little hoarse; heard her cloth slippers interminably slapping the floor which I guessed to be of tile; I heard—and it seemed to be coming from the remote depths of the house—a confused din of laughter, exclamations, glasses and crockery banged down with some force.
Suddenly, after a brief pause of absolute silence, the door facing me was thrown wide open.
A man in shirtsleeves appeared.
“You’re here, and without saying a word!” he exclaimed from the threshold.
He marched right up to me with his hand stretched out.
“Do come through, for heaven’s sake!” he continued in the same loud voice. “Have you had supper? Come on, get up, I’ll introduce you to my friends!”
He shook my hand vigorously.
“I’m P,” he concluded, giving a wearied smile.
So it really was him, Giulio P, the renowned trade union organizer from Livorno who was so often spoken of in Rome, in the papers and in the Party: about his five years in prison, four in internal exile and the seven spent in France alongside Carlo Rosselli! As we walked down a long corridor in semidarkness, he in front and I behind, I gazed at him with sadness. Poor creature—I said to myself. Stooped, wearing Friulian black velvet sandals, trousers held up with braces, his shirtsleeves rolled up above his pale, angular elbows, what was wrong with him? Was he ailing perhaps, or just growing old? A moment before, in the anteroom, he had smiled at me. Parting his bloodless lips, he bared a double file of long, yellowish teeth, their gums wrecked by pyorrhoea . . .
The dining room was so exaggeratedly lit up that for a second I was dazzled. Soon enough, I began to discern six or seven persons seated around a big oval table: all men, all of them in shirtsleeves like P, but in contrast to him, with red, shining faces, glowing from the food, the wine and the joy of life. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t smile warmly at me. Behind, leaning on the broom handle, so tall she almost loomed over them, the beautiful maid, housekeeper, or whatever else she was, lingered at the threshold of the kitchen. She too looked at me. But with a serious, perhaps even hostile, expression.
“Have you eaten?”
I hadn’t had dinner. And yet, I’m unsure why, I said I had.
“You’re not just being polite, are you?”
I shook my head.
“Well, tell us about Rome.”
On the table, some opened, some not, there were various tins of preserved food: American tins, naturally. I’d never seen any before. Fascinated I read their labels: Meat & Vegetables; Pork.
I took my pipe out of my pocket.
“Put it away and try some of mine,” said one of them.
A hand stretched forth proffering something green, flat and shiny. What a wonder! I took the packet, and brought the opening up to my nose, and half closed my eyes.
In Rome, at the Party headquarters, they entertained a great many illusions about C’s house. Although it had been requisitioned by the Allies, and so ought to have been one of the finest houses in Naples, it was by no means the kind of spacious military hotel they imagined! At a certain point, when a tally of the rooms was made, it soon became clear that there would be no place for me. I had to find somewhere else. And it was C in person, the very evening of my arrival, who found me a place not far from there, in Via Carlo Poerio, as the guest of his old comrade and sharer in both the political struggle and the internal exile, who was currently employed by the CIA.
Although, even there, space was all too evidently lacking. Without doubt, it was a big, even gigantic, baroque building whose facade, blackened and covered with moss, loomed over Via Poerio like an age-old Apennine rock about to crumble in a landslide. But the flat, or rather the typical straitened quarters occupied by C’s friend on the piano nobile? Leaving aside the little bathroom, the kitchen that barely had space to turn round in, and a tiny entrance hall where I slept on a camp bed, it essentially consisted of only two rooms: a bedroom with a double bed and a straitened breakfast room. So fairly cramped to have to share, in whatever circumstances.
As for my host, I remember he was called Pietro. Pietro M. From Piedmont, perhaps Novara, and a former captain in the Carabinieri, he too had emigrated to France at the time of Matteotti’s assassination, and from there, after the Maginot Line had been breached, he fled to the U.S. He seemed to be entirely obsessed with rations, his own private and personal rations, kept carefully locked away in the bedroom wardrobe with tall mirrors, in the breakfast room sideboard and in the kitchen cupboard.
Despotic and grumbling, he was like an arzdóra* from the Ferrara countryside, whom he strongly resembled not only because of the mass of keys hung from his belt, but also because of the bulging contours of his belly and backside. Given which, his sudden athletic changes of mood were surprising, to say the least. On particular days when he was in a foul mood he would brutally turn on me, calling me a scrounger, a “mouse in the cheese,” making it clear to me that if I didn’t find a way to pay him back, sooner or later he’d be forced to chuck me out—it wasn’t money he was after, not at all: but as an Italian newspaper in New York was pestering him for a local-color piece on Naples, and he hadn’t the time to do it, I could easily write it for him myself . . . Another day, though, he would bestow on me the most intimate confidences. Had I noticed the maid in C’s house?—he wasn’t beyond asking me, in low tones, with a wink. Well, yes I had. Cuckolding the good P, who for some time, though in vain, had been buzzing round her, it was he who was making love to her: and also because of that, I should try to understand, having me always about the house was hardly convenient! Little by little, however, aided by an occasional good mood, he told me many things about himself. He told me he was a member of the Masonic Lodge, that he was there in Naples employed by the CIA, it’s true, but also and above all to attempt to restore to some kind of order the local Lodge which, once a flourishing concern, had gone into deep decline during the years of Fascism. He also told me he was a very important figure in the Freemasons, even more important than a general inspector of the thirty-third degree . . .
I had no reason to suppose he was exaggerating. While we were having lunch or dinner, the doorbell would continually ring. It was
always he who, with a conspiratorial air, would go to open it. And while I remained in my seat and continued eating, I could hear him speaking in low tones in the small entrance hall. With whom? It was clear with whom. But had I dared to ask him when he reappeared, he would not have put up with it.
Once when M had to leave the table to rush to the bathroom (his sudden agility at such times was a wonder to behold), an unusually vigorous ringing induced me to sally forth in his place.
A tall, distinguished-looking, middle-aged man, with the authoritative presence of some high official, walked in.
“Where are you?” he asked loudly.
Without waiting for a reply, he went through to the breakfast room. But as soon as he set foot there, I saw him suddenly come to a halt.
The sight of a table laden with food and, even more than this, the sideboard fully open, had suddenly precipitated him into a state of evident confusion. He approached the sideboard, and resting one knee on the ground, leaned over, almost bent double, and knelt there, staring: with the same manner, I thought, as a literary enthusiast who suddenly finds himself in front of a shelf brimming with rare editions.
“Stew; Salmon; Corned Beef; Corn.” He whispered the English names with a flawless pronunciation.
Suddenly, with his hand still adjusting his belt, M burst into the breakfast room.
The other hurriedly got to his feet.
“Greetings,” he said, embarrassed.
The former policeman didn’t reply. Aware that the doors of the sideboard were wide open, he threw me a sideways, furious look. He grasped his companion by the arm, and without further courtesies, dragged him almost bodily to the small entrance hall.
For a good five minutes, they stayed out there, muttering in an agitated manner. Finally the door to the stairs was slammed shut.
“How many times must I tell you,” shouted Pietro M, returning to the breakfast room, “not to let anyone in? If they ring, let them ring.”
I was putting on fat at a fair rate. The winter of 1943 to 1944, spent in Rome under German occupation, had reduced me to skin and bones. In the evening, before going to sleep, I dwelled on the coffee with milk, the butter, the orange marmalade that in the morning would be set before me. I’d consume them a thousand times beforehand with the help of my imagination.
I constructed that local-color piece on Naples for M. I sent various articles to the paper, entrusting them to a Communist Party car which ferried back and forth between Rome and Naples, and also wrote to Val every day. But most of my time I spent wandering about and, all considered, merely loafing.
Each morning I would take the Cumana train, as far as Lucrino. The train would stop right in front of a small seaside bathing establishment, half-wrecked by shelling and machine-gun fire.
On the beach, with my back leaned against a bathing hut, I would wait for B, an old university friend whom I’d been surprised to meet in C’s house a few days after my arrival. Having returned from Russia, where, naturally, he had fought for the Axis powers, he’d taken lodgings in that area in a small villa requisitioned by the American counterespionage unit which had established a paratrooper training camp beside Lake Avernus.
Between me and B there were many things in common: university, as I’ve already mentioned, then the Naples Littoriali, and finally, now, we both belonged to the same Party. And yet, who knows why, if we talked it was always about something else. For my part, about general ideas: liberalism, Socialism, Communism and so forth. He, of his parachute jumps, to which he submitted, he confessed to me, only by having to overcome each and every time the protest of his whole being. He suffered from vertigo. Throwing himself out of an aeroplane was for him the worst self-inflicted punishment imaginable.
Seeing me approach, he would raise an arm.
“How do!” he’d greet me.
And then, exaggerating his broad Emilian accent:
“Today I’ve made another jump.”
But most times, finding him asleep (fat, suntanned, his armpits reeking, and snoring loudly), I’d sit beside him on the sand, hugging my knees. Not a breath of wind would come from the bay. Heavy with diesel disgorged from a dozen landing craft stationary a hundred meters or so from the shore, the sea lifted in slow, torpid wavelets without a sound.
When my friend woke up, he always behaved in exactly the same way.
He would lift his eyelids effortfully.
“Wait a moment,” he’d say, looking at me with his black, opaque, almost feverish eyes. “Have you eaten yet? Primum edere, postea philosophari.”
“Of course I’ve eaten.”
He wouldn’t listen. He would raise himself with a groan, then disappear inside the bathing hut, from which he’d emerge holding a rucksack brimming with all of God’s blessings: a thermos of coffee and milk, meat of every kind in bags, whole roast chickens, jams and a variety of cheeses, fruit in syrup, beer in bottles and cans.
Hard to resist.
“D’you want a smoke?” B would ask a few moments later, while, obdurately continuing to gorge myself, I tried to hold back a swelling nausea.
He would be taking out from a small pocket in his bathing costume a pack of Camels.
3.
I WAS phoned by the young friend with red shoes and a ponytail, the editor of an evening newspaper. She had something new for me today: she wanted me to look over a score or so of news photographs (she’d have them sent over straight away—she said—by dispatch rider) and to tell her “within a day” which of them interested me most and why. My response would help her in the “important” enquiry that she was conducting among “writers.”
“Go on, be nice,” she begged on the other end of the line, flourishing the full grace of her Tuscan accent.
Not half an hour had passed before the motorcyclist was already at the door: a tall, chubby youngster in a leather jacket, a leather helmet, big gloves, goggles, and cheeks flushed with the first chill of autumn.
To varying degrees, all of the photos had something to do with crime reportage. There was the funeral of a prostitute who had been stabbed by her pimp, who then committed suicide. There was the wife of a pharmaceutical industrialist, gagged by the power of attorney exercised by the latter. Seated at the kitchen table, there was the seraphic embezzler of millions from the Catholic Church, caught in the act of raising his fat, babyish lips toward a forkful of spaghetti that a hand outside the picture was holding suspended at the level of his forehead. There was the young, muscular English actor, more renowned for his drinking sprees than for his cinematic merits, who, under the eyes of his most beautiful wife watching the scene from inside a car parked at night in Via Veneto, was vainly milling his fists in the direction of a gaggle of paparazzi in flight . . . I glanced through the entire gallery, then, at the moment of choice, came to a halt. So I have to choose. But how? Best to dismiss the dispatch rider (as I immediately did), and look at the photos one by one.
One, two, three, four. The snapshot on which I stopped, the fifth of the series, portrayed a certain Signor T, I believe it was in a room in the police station, defending himself against the accusation of boasting in public of having been awarded the Gold Medal for Valour. And I wondered how from the start an image such as this could have failed to captivate me. How could I not have immediately sympathized with a figure who, first of all, was called T, Riccardo T (the surname a truncated, somewhat risible bisyllable) who, secondly, had tried to pass himself off as a Gold Medal recipient, and who, thirdly, was dressed as he was, in a wretched striped suit, all shiny and torn, and who, finally, although the top of his skull was adorned with a plume of crow-black hair, was irremediably an old man, more than seventy if he was a day?
I looked more attentively, screwing up my eyes, as though I had before me not a real individual, but a fantasy figure. The operation I was gearing myself up for, to shuffle the true with the false or—same thing—with the imaginary, presented itself to me this time as especially arbitrary and irreverent. But what did it matter? As
well as being intelligent (I deduced that from the sharp little pinhead eyes which glinted cannily behind his glasses), Signor Riccardo T was doubtless a kind and likeable person: in any case more so than many another model taken from life, which I’d necessarily had to resort to, ever since I’d begun writing short stories, novellas and novels. If he should happen to read these lines inspired by and dedicated to him, I’m convinced he will be understanding about them.
So then, we’re in some nondescript office in the police station. The room is sharply divided into two parts: one lit, the other in shadow. Of those present, only Signor T, seated in front of the inspector’s desk, is in the lighted part. The inspector, and the three detectives assisting the interrogation (one of these, acting as photographer, every now and then shooting with a flash) are all standing in the shadowy part, barely distinguishable shapes. They too could be anyone: southerners, of whom the police force has many. They have, however, a good-natured, courteous air, as if, beneath it all, they are having fun.
There’s little to do in the police station. They’re mainly just passing the time. From behind his desk, not unsympathetically, the inspector observes Signor T. He understands. Not only is the culprit old and poor as a church mouse, he’s also undernourished.
He smiles.
“Well,” he begins. “And how’s your health? Are you managing to survive?”
Signor T has a reply at the ready. He says that at seventy-eight he really shouldn’t grumble. He has no serious infirmities (except for his teeth, by now only three or four of which remain). If anything were to worry him it would be his “economic situation.”
The inspector really has got time on his hands.