Cocaine

  “And no more enemas.”

  Tito was secretly delighted. He knew very well that the bowels must be left alone.

  In fact the famous doctor turned to the other two and said: “If you give him an enema you’ll kill him. Even a midwife would know that.”

  All the same Tito said to himself, they gave me twenty-four and I’m still alive. And they were just like the Niagara Falls.

  “He must have cold baths to bring down his temperature. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, doctor,” Maud, Nocera and the landlady replied.

  “Afterwards he must be put back to bed immediately. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

  And they left.

  The patient felt he was coming back to life. It was not surprising that treatment for the wrong disease should be ineffective. But when the diagnosis was correct . . . And in this case there was no doubt that it was correct, for he was very well aware of having drunk a whole tube of bacteria culture on which the word “typhoid” was written.

  But what baffled him was why those steaks and enemas had not killed him out of hand.

  In the hands of these three doctors he felt as if he were being held by the feet by three acrobats hanging from the ceiling at a circus and being thrown from one to the other over long distances, turning giddy somersaults on the way, and his impression was that it was pure chance that they always caught him.

  He was awakened from his meditation by Nocera and Maud, who gently ushered him into the cold bath.

  “It’s awful,” Tito groaned, struggling and with his teeth chattering.

  “Be patient, old man.”

  “Be patient, my love.”

  “Just another minute,” said the landlady with a watch in her hand.

  “It’ll bring down your temperature,” Nocera said.

  “It’ll make you better,” Maud said.

  They quickly dried him and put him back to bed; he was as livid as a drowned man.

  “You’ll soon get warm again, darling,” said Maud.

  But instead of getting warm he felt colder in bed than in the bath, and he had a stabbing pain in the region of his right rib.

  And he coughed.

  Then he coughed again.

  Then he spat blood.

  The first doctor, who arrived soon after he was taken out of the bath, said that the stabbing pain in the ribs was merely an intercostal pain.

  The famous doctor, the luminary of science, reassured everybody by saying: “It’s nothing. It’s a bone abscess characteristic of typhoid. Even an army medical officer would know that.”

  But Tito knew that he had caught acute pneumonia in the bath.

  When he started spitting blood the doctors silently withdrew, and Maud hurried out to fetch them back.

  And Tito saw a priest in front of him, black and solemn, talking to him with a more than human voice.

  “Who sent for you?” the patient said.

  “No one,” the landlady lied.

  “Priests can smell when someone’s dying,” Tito said in a little trickle of a voice. “They’re like the flies that lay their eggs in the nostrils of the dying. But, as he’s here, let him stay.”

  The priest showed him a crucifix and made him say a prayer under his guidance.

  “Listen, father,” Tito said. “There’s a box in that drawer with a photograph in it. Please bring it to me.”

  The priest brought him the box, and Tito took from it the photograph of Cocaine in the nude.

  “You’re going to tear it up, I hope,” the priest said, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.

  “No,” Tito said with a laugh. “I want to look at it for the last time.”

  “But in this last hour God is near your bed,” His minister said warningly.

  “Good. Then He can look at it too.”

  “And now you will confess,” said the priest, seizing the obscene photograph and putting it between the pages of his breviary.

  “Confess? Is that laxative lemonade for the soul really necessary?”

  “Don’t blaspheme, wretched man.”

  “Go away, you fool.”

  And he turned over on to his side, turning to the priest that part of his body into which three thousand million bacteria (Wright’s vaccine) had been injected.

  The priest left. Halfway down he opened his breviary and blushed.

  Nocera came in with an aunt of Tito’s, a horrible woman whom he rarely saw. In every family there’s at least one horrible aunt. There’s one in mine too.

  She was glad that Tito was dying, but wept hot tears all the same.

  “If you’re weeping it means I shall get better,” Tito said to her. “If I were going, you’d be laughing for joy.”

  A man came in with three oxygen cylinders.

  “Three? Why three?” the aunt who was one of those horrible aunts that they have in every family, including mine, wanted to know. “Why did you order three? Supposing he only uses two? Will the chemist take the other one back?”

  “Yes, he will.”

  “And will he give you the money back?”

  “Listen, Nocera,” Tito exclaimed with his last remaining breath. “Get rid of this dreadful woman for me, otherwise I’ll get my own back on her. I’ll pay her the dirty trick of not dying.”

  The high priest of medical science walked in.

  “How are we, are we feeling better?” the illustrious doctor said, taking Tito’s pulse. “Are we feeling better?”

  “Yes, we are, we’re going.”

  And he died.

  Nocera, Maud and the landlady went down on their knees round the bed, with their heads on the bedclothes, just as in the prints showing the death of Anita Garibaldi or Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour.

  And that’s how one can get better after swallowing typhoid bacteria and being treated for septicemia and then for Malta fever. And that’s also how one can die of pneumonia after undergoing the classical treatment for typhoid.

  14

  When Pietro Nocera opened the will the only other person present was Maud. Her eyes were red from weeping.

  Tito had stated clearly that he was going to kill himself, and he had killed himself for her.

  This was the first time that Maud had ever felt remorse.

  “If I had been more faithful to him, or had made him think I was faithful, he would now . . .”

  “Forget it,” Nocera said to her. “Remorse is the most useless thing. You’d do better to go home and sleep. I’ll see to all the funeral arrangements.”

  Maud once more kissed Tito’s brow, put a little rouge on her lips and went home to the room facing the courtyard that had been hers when she was a girl, the room to which an appetizing smell of good upper-class cooking floated up from the floors below.

  Her father, with the respect due to her grief, asked whether there wasn’t a mid-season overcoat among the deceased’s belongings.

  The official physician whose duty it was to ascertain the cause of death called at the deceased’s address and left again immediately, and a priest called and stayed for half an hour.

  “My poor friend was an atheist,” Nocera pointed out.

  “The deceased does not have to have been a believer,” the priest said, “It’s sufficient if the survivors are believers.”

  “I really —”

  “Not you, but . . .”

  “Well, how much does it cost?”

  “Twenty-five lire for each priest.”

  “How many priests are necessary to make a satisfactory show?”

  “At least eight.”

  “That makes two hundred lire.”

  “Then there are the nuns.”

  “How much are they?”

  “Two lire each with used candles, three lire with new candles.”

  “And how many are needed?”

  “About a hundred.”

  “That makes two hundred lire.”

  “But not with new candles.”

  “As they have to be lit, it se
ems to me not to matter very much if they have been lit before.”

  “You must add fifty lire for the carpets to lay at the church door.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “It’s essential. Then there’s the mass and the benediction.”

  “Can’t you give me an all-in price? What’s the least for which you can do it?”

  “Mass, benediction and carpets, a hundred lire, not including the priests and nuns.”

  “Very well, then.”

  “Will you give me something on account of expenses?”

  “Will two hundred be enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you see to everything?”

  “Yes. Will four o’clock tomorrow afternoon be all right?”

  “Yes, Father. But how can mass be celebrated at four o’clock in the afternoon if it has to be said on an empty stomach?”

  “We take it in turn to fast.”

  Next the undertaker’s representative arrived to make arrangements for the hearse and the trappings for the horses. Nocera telephoned the cremation society, who sent a representative, and a musician also called.

  “I’m the first clarinet in the prize-winning Musica in Testa band, and I can offer you very favorable terms,” the man said. “We have a select repertoire of funeral marches: Gounod, Donizetti, Wagner, Petrella, Grieg and Chopin. We have a worn banner, it’s so worn that you can’t read what’s written on it; it looks like the banner of a charity of which the deceased was a patron and benefactor. Every player has his own special headgear, and for a small supplement he will also wear a sword.”

  “What does it come to with the sword?”

  “Two hundred lire.”

  “Very well, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “What about the pieces?”

  “What pieces?”

  “The pieces of music.”

  “You choose them. The best you have in stock.”

  Some men arrived with the coffin.

  Nocera took out Tito’s green silk pajamas, and the men helped him to put them on the dead man.

  Then they put him in the coffin.

  “Shall we close it straight away?”

  “Yes, unless there’s anything else to put in.”

  The hearse was waiting outside the door. The undertaker’s assistants carried down the coffin and put it in the hearse with neatness and precision, and the procession set off. The balconies were full of curious onlookers, and women shopkeepers came to the shop doors and gossiped.

  The procession was led by an undertaker’s assistant with moustaches trimmed in the American style.

  He was followed by the band, which consisted of

  A piccolo,

  eight flutes,

  two cornets,

  two trombones,

  percussion group and triangle,

  two baritone saxhorns,

  and one bass.

  Next came the nuns dressed in green.

  They looked like a walking salad.

  Then came the priests, singing psalms. There were eight of them, but one was lame.

  The hearse was very solemn and was adorned with chrysanthemums as soft as ostrich feathers. The horses were in full canonicals.

  Then came Maud, in a black veil.

  Nocera.

  Maud’s father, wearing an overcoat belonging to the dead man. It was a perfect fit.

  Then came many women and many men. People Nocera had never seen before.

  A number of old women made the sign of the cross when the hearse went by.

  A boy on a bicycle rode beside the band with one thigh on the saddle and both legs on the same side, pedaling with one foot only.

  Two dogs who were closely examining each other went on doing so.

  “It’s the dead man’s sister,” one of the mourners said, referring to Maud.

  “His wife.”

  “His mistress.”

  “Quite good to look at.”

  “She has a lovely . . .”

  “And two lovely . . .”

  “She’s old.”

  “I don’t think so. About thirty-five.”

  “She’s older than that.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s a . . .”

  “Yes, she always has been.”

  “And he?”

  “He shut one eye.”

  “And opened his purse.”

  “But he did it with style.”

  “Everyone knew about it.”

  “Also he’d been in prison.”

  “Forged promissory notes.”

  “And what did he die of?”

  “TB.”

  “Syphilis.”

  “Really?”

  “And a pretty good dose too.”

  “The American kind.”

  “No doubt he gave it to her.”

  “It was she who gave it to him.”

  “Really?”

  “Everyone knows it.”

  “I know the doctor who treated both of them.”

  “A fine state of affairs.”

  The band, the nuns, the priests, the hearse, the whole procession had stopped. The undertaker’s assistants took the coffin and carried it into the church; then they brought it out again and then took it in again.

  The procession set off once more.

  Slowly, slowly.

  Too slowly.

  Funerals ought to be motorized. The deceased should be in a car and the procession on motorcycles. The nuns should be on motorcycles, the band should be on motorcycles, and the relatives, inconsolable at the premature loss, should be on motorcycles too.

  Nocera looked back. There were fewer people now, but there were still a great many.

  Poor devils who never had a loan of two lire or a word of comfort in the whole of their lives are escorted to the cemetery by a crowd of solicitous people. The most ignorant elementary school teacher is given a funeral oration by the director of education; the lawyer at the local magistrates’ court is given his last farewell by the president of the high court; and the poorest village doctor is mourned as if he were a real loss to science; the solitary individual always to be seen sitting by himself and reading the newspaper on a park bench is accompanied to his “last resting place” by several hundred intimate friends “in sad and orderly procession.”

  A living man may still spring surprises on you. He may round on you, harm you, let you down, change his mind and alter his will. But when he’s dead, it’s final, and you know where you are.

  A coffin is always followed by the dead man’s close enemies: the husband by his wife’s lover, the man killed in a duel by his opponent, the debtor by his creditors.

  The passers-by raised their hats and the procession went on.

  “It’s her I’m sorry for.”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  “Not immediately.”

  “As soon as she finds someone else.”

  “She’ll already have someone lined up.”

  “More than one.”

  “Men will go after anything.”

  “Women of that sort.”

  “With that painted face.”

  “And those false teeth.”

  “And that wig.”

  “And her profession.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She works for men.”

  They were near the cemetery. The white chimney of the crematorium came into view.

  They went through various gates and made towards it.

  Stop.

  Out with the coffin. Silence. Speech by a gentleman whom no one had ever seen before.

  Did anyone else wish to speak?

  No one did.

  Two attendants took the coffin into a white room and put it on a trolley, which moved away.

  An official of the cremation society announced that the next of kin could watch. Maud stayed in the chapel to pray, and Nocera took up a position behind the big lens, through which he would be able to see his friend
’s body devoured by the flames.

  “It’ll take an hour,” the official said.

  Nocera gave him twenty lire. “See that’s he’s well done.”

  “Leave it to me.”

  Nocera could see nothing. Suddenly the body came in, naked. No flames surrounded it, but it moved, contracted, writhed.

  So it’s true, Nocera said to himself with his face to the lens, so it’s true that it rises, kneels, contracts, curls up, assumes obscene attitudes. Tito was right. A pity he’s not here to see, because he’d be amused. He puts his hand to his brow as in a military salute. He presses his fists to his eyes, like a fetus. Is it a return to the womb?

  The body changed color, shriveled, blackened, was consumed, carbonized, turned to ashes.

  When it was over, they withdrew the trolley and gathered the ashes with a silver trowel.

  Nocera had brought the two shining spherical urns, and he filled both. Some fragments of bone were put in a regulation red clay urn and put in a wall in which there were many small memorial tablets.

  He put one urn in one pocket and one in the other and offered his arm to Maud. Everyone else had slipped away.

  “And where shall we go now?” Nocera asked her as he helped her into a cab that was waiting outside the cemetery.

  “I’ve got to go to the dressmaker’s to order my mourning.”

  “Black will suit you very well.”

  “I hope so. But not dull black. Shiny black suits me. I’ll order shiny black, so it won’t look so much like mourning.” No one had told the cabman where to go, but he was driving back towards the city.

  “I’m not hungry,” Nocera said.

  “I couldn’t touch a thing,” said Maud.

  Nocera sighed. Maud sighed.

  “Oh, well.”

  “All the same, we can’t fast for a month. Shall we go to a restaurant?”

  “I couldn’t eat a thing.”

  “Neither could I.”

  “Perhaps a little soup.”

  “Or an egg.”

  Nocera gave the cabman the name of a restaurant, and Maud thought it right to weep a little.

  And she wept a little while the taciturn Nocera recalled the Dantesque spectacle of the body in the furnace.

  And so they arrived at the restaurant without noticing it. A whole hierarchy of waiters hurried to offer them seats and take their coats. Maud was not hungry. She couldn’t touch a thing, and nor could Nocera, but they ate all the same.