Damnation of Adam Blessing

by Packer, Vin

  “I am the same.”

  “Well, good! I couldn’t be more pleased!”

  There were several moments of awkward silence then, broken by the waiter’s arrival with Adam’s Scotch. After the waiter left the table, Billy leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table top. “Now, let’s get everything straight right now, Addie, all right?”

  A chill ran through Adam. “Yes. How are you? How is everything going?”

  “The first thing we’ll get straight, Addie, is that how I am, and how things are going with me, is none of your goddam business!”

  Adam gulped while he lived through another chill. Billy said, “I wrote you the week before I left Switzerland and told you to get out of my apartment. Let’s start there. You stayed on until the end of August.”

  “I didn’t take you seriously, was all, Billy. I get mad an say mean things, too … I just — didn’t take you seriously.”

  “What did you take seriously, Addie?”

  “Look, Billy, you never wrote after that, did you? Not a word! Not one word! I had to read about your marriage in the newspapers! How did you think I felt?”

  “I didn’t write after that because I thought you knew enough to get the hell out when someone tells you to!”

  Adam took a gulp of his whisky. “You’re not using a very nice tone of voice, Billy. We all make mistakes!”

  “Mistakes!” Billy rolled his eyes back in his head and hit his palm with his fist. “You were harassing the Cadwalladers to a point where they were threatening to call the police! Do you think you were welcome in my place after that!”

  Another gulp of whisky … Adam said, “Yesterday I had drinks with Mrs. Cadwallader — no it was the day before. Anyway, I’m telling you the truth. We had drinks and today I bought her a gift right here on the Via Frattina, Billy!”

  “I know all about the day before yesterday, and if I were you, Addie, I’d cancel the gift.”

  “She told me you were in Rome. What would she have told me that for, if she didn’t like me?”

  “We all make mistakes, as you say, Addie. Mrs. Cadwallader called us to warn us you were around.”

  “I’ll have another drink,” Adam said, draining his glass.

  “Not with me, mister!”

  “What’s the point in asking me for one drink?” Adam said.

  “Addie, goddam it, I didn’t ask you!”

  “No,” Adam said, “you didn’t.” His eyes were a blur of tears. He hoped Billy could not see them in the dim light. If he could change the subject, it would be O.K…. he could get hold … he had not really lost hold yet. “I like your dinner jacket very much,” he said. “Did you have it made here?” He did not trust himself to raise his head and look into Billy’s eyes, fearing tears would roll from his own. He said, “Since my money — since I came into it, I’ve not gone in for flashy things myself. I’ve always been more conservative.”

  “That’s another thing,” said Billy, “this money you’ve come into! Christ, Addie, why kid yourself! You must have about a thousand dollars of that money left!”

  “The Mart was worth more than that, Billy. You never thought I could become involved in a big business, did you? Well, I was.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me you sold out?” Billy was holding his glass, rubbing the sweat off the sides of it with his finger, eyeing Adam suspiciously.

  “Yes, I sold out. What did you think?”

  “I know,” said Billy. “I don’t have to think, Addie. I met an old friend of yours a month or so ago. Dorothy Schackleford, remember her, Addie?”

  “She wasn’t a particular friend. She doesn’t know my business!”

  “She was a better friend than you deserved, mister. She told me the only thing you got from that whole deal was that album that belonged to Goethe’s son, the one you showed off that night we all met for the first time.” Billy sipped his Scotch, finishing it, signaling for the waiter as he said, “She told me you got about $50,000 — period, which wasn’t bad pickings for a clerk!”

  Adam laughed. “I don’t care if you do know I was a clerk! You think I care?”

  “Enough to lie! What’d you lie for? Christ, Addie, you’re such a goddam small-time snob!”

  “Dorothy Schackleford doesn’t know anything about me or my money!”

  “Keep your voice down, Addie.”

  “Let people stare! Do you think I’m not used to it?”

  “I just bet you’re very used to it!”

  “You’re not my friend,” Adam said, and now the tears were starting, down his cheeks. He took out his handkerchief and brushed them away. Billy watched him with a look of disgust. The waiter came, and Adam said, “Another for me!”

  The waiter looked questioningly at Billy, but Billy shook his head. “I’m leaving,” he said to Adam.

  “I have something for you. For you and Charity.” Adam took the packages from under the small table. “Look, I have something.”

  “We don’t want your gifts, Addie. Thanks just the same.”

  “But I bought them for you! They’re wedding presents.”

  “It’s a little late for that, Addie.”

  “Why? Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Things aren’t going well, are they?”

  Billy stood up. He tossed some large paper bills on the table. “Dorothy Schackleford’s working here in Rome, in case you’re interested, Addie. You could probably benefit by looking her up. She works for the Fellow’s Rome Foundation. Some kind of missionary work … Good-by, Addie.” He started out the door, but Adam jumped up and ran after him. “Your presents!” he said; “if you don’t want yours, at least take Charity’s!”

  “She doesn’t want hers either, Addie!”

  Billy had stopped, just outside the entranceway of the bar. He was fairly gritting his teeth, his-eyes narrowed, his words very nearly forced out of the sides of his mouth, softly, slowly: “You’ve turned into some kind of nut, mister! I don’t know what kind and I don’t give a goddam, but stay out of my way, I warn you!”

  “Hit me,” Adam said, “go ahead and hit me, if you want to!”

  “Beggar!” Billy said, “You beggar!” And he left Adam standing there, holding the gifts, trembling….

  14

  Safety Deposit-South Orange, N.J. (Savings and Trust): $10,000

  In $20 bills, black suitcase, (802): $16,040

  In $50 bills, cowhide suitcase (400): $20,000

  In Traveller’s Checks (Am. Express): $10,000

  Spent since September: $19,560

  Totel: $75,600

  FROM ADAM BLESSING’S JOURNAL

  “You have been so very kind,” said Adam to his new friend.

  “Nonsense,” Ernesto Leogrande said. “I am bored with the way my people treat the American tourists.”

  Adam had been quite drunk when Leogrande had come up to him in the bar opposite the Mediterraneo. Leogrande had prevented the waiter from overcharging Adam by a thousand lire, after which he helped Adam leave, supporting Adam by crossing one of Adam’s arms over his shoulder. At another bar, he had gotten a coffee for Adam, and sat with him while Adam sipped it slowly and pulled himself together. He had brought Adam to this small trattoría on the Portico di Ottavia.

  Adam said, “It’s not the money, Ernesto. I hope you believe that. I was just treated rather cruelly by a lifelong friend, then for a perfect stranger to help me — well, I appreciate it.”

  “Sì,sì — ” Leogrande brushed aside Adam’s gratitude, and took another stab at his veal. He was a large, hook-nosed Italian with a sunburned face and straight, dark eyebrows, black wavy hair and a wide white smile. He wore a light blue shirt open at the neck, a brown-and-black checkered sport coat, and light blue slacks. While he ate and drank, he smoked a cigarette that rested in the plastic ashtray beside his plate, and around his neck on a silver chain he wore a religious medal. His English was good. He was from Civitavecchia, he told Adam. His family ran a pensione there, and all spoke English. He was in Rom
e on a holiday.

  Adam said, “I insist on taking you to dinner, Ernesto.”

  “No, no, forget that! You are my guest. Besides, hang on to your money. Rome is expensive. Save enough to come to Civitavecchia. We have a good beach. You like to swim?”

  “I never learned,” Adam said. “I was fat as a boy. I was afraid I would sink.”

  Ernesto threw his head back and laughed as though Adam was a great comedian, and Adam joined in, warmed by his friend’s congeniality.

  “Don’t worry about my money,” said Adam. “I have enough.”

  “But be careful in Rome, Adam. All the hands are open.”

  “I insist on taking you to dinner,” Adam said again. “Really, Ernesto, I have enough money and more!”

  Leogrande changed the subject. He told Adam that this section where they were dining was the old Ghetto.

  “Some say the persecution of the Jews was bad with Hitler,” said Ernesto, “but here in the Middle Ages, much worse.” He told Adam that it used to be during Carnivale that the Romans rounded up the Jews and made them run races down the whole length of the Corso, naked. “Cruelty,” he said, “such terrible cruelty! What’s the matter with mankind anyway, Adam?”

  Adam had never talked very confidentially with anyone but Mrs. Auerbach. He found himself able to open up with Ernesto, and he told him quite a lot about Billy and Charity. “You mentioned cruelty awhile ago,” he told him. “How do you think I felt when after all this time I was brushed off like a fly by Billy? I didn’t even see Chary. I call her that. Pet name.”

  “A sad tale,” said Ernesto. “Tonight we eat and drink and forget, Adam! How about that?”

  The idea appealed to Adam immensely. He would be all right with Ernesto, no matter how much he drank. The trouble in the past was that he had been alone, with no one to talk to. He felt as though he could tell Ernesto anything, almost anything. The pair ordered another litre of Frascati, and clinked their glasses together in a toast to the Alban Hills, where the wine came from, Ernesto said. Ernesto was a great talker. The trattoría was within sight of the theater of Marcellus, and looming over the whole area was the huge, gloomy Palazzo Cenci. Ernesto told Adam about the Cenci family and the hideous crimes that stained the family name. Adam listened while he imagined himself dining at this spot with Billy and Charity, expounding as Ernesto did on the history of the area, ordering more Frascati, proposing the toast to the Alban Hills — all of it, while Billy and Charity admired his intimacy with this unfamiliar part of Rome, complimented him, perhaps, on his remarkable acclimation to Europe.

  “… and I mean every crime imaginable,” Ernesto was saying, “that was the Cenci family for you. Rape, murder, incest, torture — and plain old-fashioned robbery! No excuse for it — man’s inhumanity to man!” He poured more wine in both their glasses. “But I do all the talking, Adam. You talk.”

  “What did you think of the Zumbach kidnapping?” said Adam.

  “Detestable!”

  “Yes. I thought so, too. At least the other one — the one in our country was not so bad.”

  Ernesto said. “I remember hearing of your Lindbergh child.”

  “Oh, this Schneider case was different. The child was returned safely.”

  “And his kidnappers?” “There was only one, I think.”

  “Usually there are two, no?”

  “I think only one in the Schneider case. A civilized sort, you know what I mean, Ernesto? He never harmed a hair on the child’s head.”

  “Ah, well … crime is crime.” Ernesto picked up the check and began adding it up.

  “Please,” said Adam, “I would like to pay for this. I have plenty of money on me.”

  Ernesto, with a wave of his hand, brushed aside Adam’s offer. “On me,” he said, “and in Civitavecchia, you stay at our place.”

  “I’ll pay,” said Adam.

  Ernesto smiled. “Of course … there, I am in business.”

  “I’ll come as soon as I can,” said Adam. “I may even bring friends with me, my friends I told you about.”

  “You have forgiven them already?”

  “Well — ” Adam hesitated. Ernesto leaned across the table and gave Adam a friendly push with his long arm. He said, “Ah, you, you are a softie! I like you, my friend. I consider you my friend.”

  Adam’s whole being was swollen with sudden joy.

  After Ernesto paid the bill, the pair decided to have still another drink. Strega, Ernesto suggested, just the thing. Adam was a little drunk, but it was a pleasant sort of intoxication, warm and easy, not sloppy, and the only urgency, Adam’s growing desire to tell Ernesto more about himself. They had a Strega after the first, and one after the second, and Adam told Ernesto how Mrs. Auerbach had left him everything, and how her sister had come along and taken it all away from him.

  “But how do you have anything?” Ernesto said.

  “She left me one piece of stock worth plenty of money,” said Adam, and he felt bad that he had lied to his friend at their very first meeting. He wanted to undo the lie and tell Ernesto the truth, and he was very nearly on the verge of doing just that, when suddenly Ernesto said, “Well, how about it, Adam, we find some girls now!”

  “Girls?” Adam blinked, dumfounded. He had expected to stay on drinking with Ernesto, the two of them together in a great camaraderie.

  “Girls!” Ernesto said again, “we’re forgetting everything tonight, aren’t we?”

  “I thought we would be by ourselves,” Adam said, “talk more, and have more Strega.”

  “Three is all the Stregas we need. Too sweet. There’s wine where the girls are, Adam! C’mon!” He was getting up, shoving his chair back, taking a long toothpick from his jacket and digging at his mouth with it. “It’s not far away either. We can walk.”

  “Are you sure we want to?” Adam said. He remained sitting at the table.

  Ernesto looked down at him, taking the toothpick from his mouth a moment, his face thoughtful. “Hey, there’s not anything wrong with you, is there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You like girls, Adam, don’t you?”

  Adam’s face felt hot, and he became angry. “Of course! What do you think I’ve been telling you about my Chary! What’s the matter with you anyway! I’ve been following her all over Europe!” Adam was disappointed in Ernesto for having such a thought. He had imagined Ernesto knew him like a brother, instantly.

  Ernesto laughed, came around and clapped Adam on the back. “All right then! Let’s go! It’s the only way to forget your Chary, my friend. I know a girl who can make a man forget his last name!”

  Adam got up. He said, “But I may be too drunk.”

  “This girl,” Ernesto laughed, “can take care of that too!”

  To get there, Adam and Ernesto had to make their way through twisting streets, where the houses huddled together, their shutters closed against the heat, giving the appearance that no one lived in them; there were no lights, and only vague signs of life — a cat prowling in an ashcan, an old man on a front stoop asleep with his head in his arms, a couple pressed against the side of a building making love, and in an alleyway a few doors from their destination, a drunk urinating.

  Adam smiled back at Ernesto uncertainly, and then he found himself standing in a kitchen of an old house with his friend. In the sink as they entered, a candle stuck into a wine bottle, was the only light. Ernesto called: “Signora! Subito! Ai! Signora!”

  A thin old woman came rushing out, shushing him. She wore a bright green satin dress, and a matching ribbon in her gray hair, rouge and eye make-up, shiny black high-heels, with no stockings and ugly blue veins on pale white legs. Ernesto spoke to her in rapid Italian, only some of which Adam caught. An American, Ernesto said, a nice girl for him, young but not too young, and other things Adam could not understand. Then there was some dickering about money, ending with Ernesto’s emphatic: “Ten thousand lire!” The thin woman frowned and Ernesto pinched her cheeks, which made her la
ugh and agree.

  “They don’t know any English,” said Ernesto to his companion, “so you are in a sinking ship together, ah?” He laughed, and punched Adam’s arm playfully. “But before the ship goes down, you — ” he made an obscene gesture. Then he left through the beaded curtains with a blond girl, who appeared suddenly and the thin woman pushed a brunette in Adam’s direction. She was smoking a cigarette, the hot ash dangerously close to her lips, her hands folded across an immense bosom. She shrugged and walked toward Adam, indicating with her thumb that he should follow her. He held out the lire to her, and with another jerk of her thumb, she indicated that he should give it to the thin woman. Then Adam followed her down a dark and narrow hall, into a very small room, with a bed in it, a screen hiding what seemed to be another sink, a white bowl on a table beside the bed, and a hassock with fringes on its side. The girl took her clothes off without a word. Adam removed his shirt, and stood helplessly by the bed. The naked girl came across the carpet scratching her arms, lighting another cigarette. Adam sat on the bed and removed his shoes. From behind the bed table, the girl took out a bottle of wine. She offered some to Adam in a dirty glass. He wanted to decline, but he wanted a drink just as badly.

  She spoke to him in Italian. “Is that all?” meaning, was that all he was going to take off.

  Adam shrugged, and she shrugged. She said, “Ready?”

  Adam sighed. He started to undo his pants. The girl walked over and began to help him. “You don’t want to take them off?” “No.”

  She bent and tried to kiss him. She smelled of something like rotten peach pits, and Adam could not bear it. He turned away. The girl asked him a question he could not understand. She repeated it, and he understood the sentence after: “Is that what you want?”

  “Drunk,” said Adam, and in Italian: “Intoxicated.”

  In English the girl said, “I take care. I know.”

  She pushed Adam back in a gentle way which surprised him, and he realized as his head hit the pillow and he shut his eyes, that he was dizzy, that his drinks had caught up with him at last. It did not matter at all, for he found out that nothing was expected of him, and afterwards, he slept.