‘It’s fifteen years now since your father was put into the earth. I miss him. Ultimately, what we human beings need most of all — I’m not speaking now in a political sense — is to be understood. You agree?’
‘No,’ said Salvatore.
‘Still, your father, who was my closest, no, let me be honest, my only friend, is dead. That means he’s gone for good, rotted away. You know of course that Antonio Gramsci spent whole nights in prison at Turi talking, I think to Trombetti, about the question of the after-life. Trombetti was a Bolognese. He shared Nino’s cell in Turi.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘But you had the opportunity to speak to Nino?’
‘I was ten years old. We didn’t go to a prison, we went to a clinic in Rome.’
‘Nino’s great fear was that he might become so weakened by illness that the priests would get permission to visit and corrupt him by talking of the imbecile promise of immortality which the Church holds out.’
‘It’s imbecile, but in my experience it’s harmless. It doesn’t seem to do any harm to my patients.’
Sannazzaro smiled indulgently. ‘Let me explain. Nino believed in immortality, but an immortality of this earth. Every man survives in his useful and necessary actions. Every useful and necessary action passes from the father to the son — if he is a good son — in an unbroken chain.’
‘I can’t believe that Gramsci put that forward as a substitute for religion.’
‘Why should men need a substitute for religion?’ said Sannazzaro, trembling violently. ‘Or women either? Do they need a substitute for unemployment, or a substitute for dysentery?’
Pasquale, who was hurling glasses into a bowl of warm water beneath the counter, looked at Salvatore and tilted his head a little backwards, nodding it up and down and half closing his eyes. This didn’t indicate that he considered Sannazzaro mad, only a little cracked, a ‘natural’, and so, like nature, to be endured patiently. Salvatore did not make the gesture of response. It enraged him to see this pure unreproachable heart, this smalltime book-keeper who had all the nobility of life’s authentic losers, sitting here in the musty Café Centrico, too used to ridicule even to notice it. On the other hand, Pasquale was a good sort and tolerated Sannazzaro, no doubt, whenever he came in, in a way that he himself couldn’t. He was found guilty again, before a court he had never been asked to recognize. He saw himself being driven into a corner, without hope of defence, as a good son, and, more culpable still, as one who had been granted the opportunity to see Nino Gramsci in the flesh. To be reproached, what else could you call it, by the unknown Bolognese Trombetti, who, it seemed, shared the martyr’s cell and preserved his thoughts on eternity, to be put down by the transparent humility of Sannazzaro, to be shamed by the casual kindness of Pasquale, what could be a more monstrous injustice to a hardworking man who had only a few days to spare for a business transaction? The old conscience, the old consciousness, risen from the dead in the form of a hollow nonentity in a book-keeper’s jacket, reinforced at the cuffs.
‘Mickey,’ said Sannazzaro. ‘I am going to ask you something. Don’t sell your land. You don’t mind my discussing your affairs?’
‘I do mind, but since you’ve raised the subject, let me tell you that’s exactly what my mother says.’
‘And I, too, am saying it.’
Salvatore controlled himself. ‘There’s no mystery about it. At the present time I have a use for the money.’
Sannazzaro was convulsed for a few moments, reaching out for the mineral water with closed eyes and, from long practice, pouring it accurately into the glass. Salvatore, assuming the voice of the old-time practitioner, said: ‘You should take care of that cough. Just because you’ve had it so long doesn’t mean that it can’t get worse.’
‘Don’t part with it lightly, Mickey. Don’t sell it lightly. Hear me out. Your brothers are putting a rumour about that the Cassa del Mezzogiorno will grant a loan to rebuild the tomato paste factory. They hope to sell your land for building.’
‘I know they’re saying that. Why shouldn’t they, if it amuses them?’
‘Hear me out. Don’t cut yourself off from Mazzata. Once you’ve sold your inheritance you’ll be quite adrift. I don’t say this as your mother does, for a woman’s reasons, always hanging back, always frightened of change. These women, these women! If the world was in their hands, we should still be living in caves.’
‘But there’s nothing to keep me here, ragionere. There’s nothing for me to do.’ Perhaps the old man wanted him to apply for the job of community doctor. He looked at the seamed face, which struck him as having changed less than his own.
‘As an intellectual, Mickey, your place is here. Here, in the country, intellectualism is poisoned at its source. Our duty, as Nino constantly told us, is to create intellectuals who owe nothing to the middle class, and who will resist the temptation to desert their birthplace for the cities. In this task the Party has failed us completely. You have the temperament for it and the education. Unfortunately you were encouraged from childhood by your mother not to co-operate, but to compete, to shoulder others aside and to advance yourself. When you told me just now that I should take care of my cough, I assume that you couldn’t avoid calculating that your words, as a successful consultant, were worth let us say five thousand lire. Forgive me if the amount is wrong, I have no means of knowing the present scale of medical charges in Tuscany.’
‘I don’t know how much my words were worth,’ muttered Salvatore.
‘Mickey, they were worth nothing.’
‘That’s quite possible, but in that case I don’t know why you call me an intellectual.’
‘Every man is an intellectual,’ Sannazzaro cried, ‘even if not in the sense you’re giving it, of a man whose words can be exchanged for cash. But not one in twenty thousand, or a hundred thousand, will take the place which an intellectual owes to society, that is to say, to stay in the corner of the earth which gave him life and make himself listened to, as you are listening to me now. The future for which Nino suffered and died is impossible without human preparation. That was what your father expected of you. He had other sons, but you are the one he chose.’
Inconveniently, Salvatore now remembered clearly, as he hadn’t done before, walking between his father and Sannazzaro, half bored, half angry at what he couldn’t understand, and stopping by the case of sweets and biscuits in the piazza where Sannazzaro could be relied upon to draw out his shabby purse, more like a woman’s, and treat him to something. That must have been the father of the present sweet-seller, and it was probably the same tricycle. One might think that they’d been waiting for twelve years in the dust and sunshine to betray him. All this, in common justice to himself, must be put a stop to.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘my land amounts to twenty hectares and a half. If one could get building permission, well and good, otherwise it’s only fit for growing vegetables.’
By this time his elder sister, with the shoe-repairer, the chemist, and the local auctioneer, who also owned the garage, had arrived, with one or two supporters, at the Café Centrico. Out of convention they had waited for what they considered a correct interval before interrupting Salvatore’s conversation with the crazy book-keeper, to which everyone in the place had been openly listening. Now time was up, and the sister and her husband advanced from their table to summon him. Sannazzaro, flustered by the presence of a woman in the café, sprang hurriedly to his feet. The sudden movement produced an unexplained sound of ripping or tearing, like a sharp sigh. The sister ignored both this and Sannazzaro himself. Salvatore had never detested her so much as at this moment. Pushing back his chair, he threw his arm round Sannazzaro and said tenderly, but almost at random:
‘I want to tell you this, ragionere. I don’t want to hide anything from you. I told you that I needed to raise some money, but it’s possible that you don’t know why. The fact is that I’m about to be married.’
At this Sannazzaro’s face broa
dened into an indulgent smile. My God, Salvatore thought, even he doesn’t believe it.
37
Chiara had been told that Salvatore was on a necessary visit to his mother. There was, of course, some truth in this. To endure the time until he came back she went to England. Barney was the only living being who was likely to understand what she felt at the moment.
Barney had told her OK, come if you want to, but her father and mother, who never consulted each other’s convenience or anyone else’s, were away, though in separate places, for the next few months. They would let her know, they said, about their plans. To her disgust, Barney had found herself obliged to stay in London with her grandmother.
The grandmother lived in South Kensington, which Chiara remembered as a hushed district with no sky, no river and no air. But no matter, the house seemed beautiful to her, as everything at that time seemed beautiful. She loved No 23, Carlisle Gardens, the drawing-room watercolours in their thin gold-washed frames, the oils on heavy canvases, battered like a ship at sea, which hung in the dining-room, the butterflies embroidered in silk in the spare-room, the tapestry cover for the Radio Times, the cosseting of the windows in voluminous curtains, the beds submerged beneath under-blankets, blankets and blanket-covers, the crockery, the rockery, the immovable hall table on which lay blue-skied postcards from Barney’s parents, saying that they felt much rested. Happiness destroys the aesthetic sense. When she had first met Salvatore at the concert she had known that the Brahms was badly played, now in her transfiguration she might not even have realized that.
‘This place is the dregs,’ said Barney.
The two of them lay in a heap in Barney’s bedroom at the top of the house. It was very warm, with the murmurous central heating turned up to Full, Barney claiming that if you let yourself get too cold the hair on your legs grew more thickly. ‘You have to watch it. You can get shaggy even above the knees. That’s the trouble about a really cold house like Painstake.’
‘Painstake!’
‘You forgot, I don’t blame you.’
‘But Barney, did you go there?’
‘I went there.’
‘But what happened? What did?’
On the other side of the door an elderly voice, worn but clear, said, ‘Is one permitted to enter?’
Barney’s grandmother never knocked on young people’s doors, because it might look as though she didn’t trust them. She preferred to make some little remark, quite lightly. The door-handle turned and she came in, wearing a soft knitted suit with a Jaeger scarf signed Jaeger, and a Hermès scarf tucked through the belt and signed Hermès. This gave her an air of authenticity, but her expression was uncertain and discontented.
‘This is Chiara Ridolfi, Granny. You weren’t here when she arrived. Cha, this is my grandmother, Lady Jones.’
Chiara sprang up to shake hands, to apologize, to thank, and to take some small presents from Chiasso Cornino out of her suitcase.
‘My dear, what pretty things, what pretty, pretty, things! It’s astonishing what a trick the Italians have for making these pretty things. Not like those straw hats that we used to wear from the Far East that had to be made by little children, poor creatures, sitting under water. No, with these things you can tell there was joy in the making.’ She held them to her breast and looked restlessly round the room in search of something that could be tidied or altered a little without giving offence.
‘I hope you’re looking after your guest, Lavinia. I hope you’ll see that she has fun. Are you having fun, my dear?’
Lady Jones had an unwholesome craving for admissions from young girls that fun was being had. Indeed, time spent without fun she apparently thought of as squandered.
‘You’re both of you going out this evening, I take it?’
‘No, we aren’t,’ said Barney.
‘But wouldn’t it be amusing to go out dancing? Of course, you’d have to find a partner for your friend. Italians are always so light on their feet. I might be able to help you, you know, if you couldn’t think of anyone. I could telephone around a little.’
Barney said nothing, and Lady Jones, with a certain amount of hesitation, as though she was practising leaving the room, went out.
‘I know she’s a case,’ said Barney. ‘She always talks like that. One of these days I’ll have a man hidden in the cupboard for her to find, what delirium for her. But you shouldn’t have been so polite to her, Cha. It’s the same old story. It encourages her, and besides, it’s foreign.’
‘How long ago did she lose her husband?’
‘I’ve no idea. I think he deputy-governed something somewhere.’
‘What did he die of?’
‘I don’t know. Fun, perhaps.’
Barney suddenly burst into tears. It seemed not possible, and had never been seen to happen before. Swine that I am, Chiara thought, inhuman that I am, why didn’t I ask her about it earlier?
‘All I want you to do is to look at me,’ Barney sobbed.
It was like one of those portents or miracles, when to the terror of the lookers-on a great statue weeps, the very thing it was created not to do.
‘Just look at me, Cha. Do I look any different from usual?’
‘Just at the moment, yes, of course you do. Otherwise no, you always look the same.’
‘I didn’t want you to say that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I know it’s true. People don’t see any change. They see I look just the same and so they think I don’t feel anything.’
‘I don’t think you don’t feel anything.’
Chiara put her arms round her heaving friend.
‘What happened about your He?’
It seemed that Barney now called him the Disaster. The change had taken place in one day, less than one day. ‘It started off quite well, Painstake was just as usual. You know what Painstake’s like.’
Chiara had been there once, and did know. Curiously enough the house looked, at least from the front drive, rather like the Ricordanza. It had been built about 1734 or so in the Italian taste, a Ricordanza set down in the East wind among many acres of Norfolk turnips and plough and the nobly spreading leaves of great cabbages.
Across these acres Barney had tramped and turned and tramped again. She had things all to herself, none of the other females were going to turn up till lunch time. At every stand she took up her position close to the He and up to mid-day she had felt that she wanted him more than anything on earth. The last stand was at the end of a ride which formed a sort of wind-tunnel for an icy north-west gale. By this time, Barney said, they understood each other perfectly. Words had not been necessary, and she herself had never been a great believer in them. But as the Land Rover bringing the lunch came jolting up the cart-track he had said, ‘Thank the Lord!’ then, turning to watch it arrive, ‘I’m afraid I’m rather a clod about my food.’
One chance remark can do it, one change of the angle of vision under the clouds and wind. Looking at him in the clear light of a Norfolk mid-day, Barney had seen a thin trickle of saliva leaving the corner of his mouth.
‘It was all like a revelation. He’d described himself exactly. He was a clod.’
‘But Barney, that was nothing, he just dribbled, it wasn’t enough.’
‘Anything’s enough if you’ve got the wits to understand it. This Rossi man behaved like a lunatic at the Harringtons, but you couldn’t care less because unfortunately you’re totally blinded by love.’
To Barney it had been a release from blindness. She had gone back to the house with the Land Rover. She broke down once again while recounting the horror of sitting through dinner next to the Disaster, considerately placed beside her by the hostess, chair to chair, thigh to thigh as he edged and fingered her in the shelter of the starched table-cloth, confident of his welcome.
‘He went on and on, finally I had to pretend to reach down for something and take the opportunity to run a fork into his hand.’
‘Did you draw blood, Barney?�
�
‘I think so. Oh, he’s got the ordinary animal courage, if that’s what you want.’
She let her firm weight slide gradually down onto the carpet. To Chiara it seemed like the fall of the great Barney, whose judgements had for so long seemed beyond dispute.
‘I seem to hear laughter,’ said Lady Jones on the far side of the door again. ‘Such a joyous sound in this house nowadays. Of course I’m not asking to be admitted to your councils. I only came in case you might have forgotten the time.’
‘We’re not laughing, I promise you, Lady Jones,’ called out Chiara.
38
Before going away Chiara had of course told her father that she wanted to be married at some time that would be convenient for everybody, but as soon as possible. She was in love with Dr Salvatore Rossi, the neurologist. Giancarlo was very much surprised, but he had given up the habit of showing his emotions and felt this was probably not the moment to go back to it. He asked when they were to have the pleasure of seeing the doctor at via Limbo.
‘As soon as he comes back,’ said Chiara. ‘He had to go away. He went away seven hours and forty-three minutes ago. You understand that he can’t have time off just as he likes.’
Her happiness was not discussed, it wasn’t necessary, it could be felt and seen and seemed to stir the air, rather uncomfortably, between them.
‘But you’re in touch with him, my dear, he’ll telephone us?’
It turned out that there was no telephone where Dr Rossi was staying and that although he could ring from the café, Chiara couldn’t endure the thought of waiting all day for calls without knowing when they’d come. She would like to go back to England for the unendurable week. The telephone, with its power of idiot silence, had become her enemy. Giancarlo thought that she might regret this, and also that she seemed to have been home for a very short time — he wished now that he hadn’t made the expedition to Rome — but he said nothing.
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