Mimi's Ghost

by Tim Parks

  Meanwhile his brother-in-law had said something.

  ‘Scusami, no, sorry, I was thinking of something else.’ Again he smiled brightly. The fact that he was so relaxed as to indulge in a little absent-mindedness must be unnerving for Bobo.

  ‘I said’ - the boy’s voice had a whiny petulance that somehow went with the hints of acne - ‘I said that if the National Insurance catch up with us on one of any number of counts, not to mention the Guardia di Finanza, they’ll close us down.’

  Still swinging his leg, Morris asked: ‘Why should they catch up with us?’

  ‘Some of the day workers are not happy with the situation. They think it is bad that we are exploiting the immigrants. They think there could be more overtime for themselves. It would only take an anonymous letter. . . .We are vulnerable on a wide range of issues.’

  Morris did what the last few years had taught him to do in these kinds of conversations: sit tight a moment, pace it. Never blurt. Smile. Let the other betray himself. Though he did object to the word ‘exploiting’.

  ‘And some of them don’t like blacks in general. They want them out.’

  Here Morris suspected that Bobo was referring to himself. ‘That’s hardly Christian,’ he remarked. Without changing tone at all, he added: ‘Still, if we do get a visit from the INPS or the Finanza I imagine you can always do with them what you did with the VAT people back in June.’

  As he said this he deliberately looked away so as not to capture whatever expression of anger or surprise might be crossing Bobo’s face. Or rather, so as not to give Bobo the chance to feel that in not showing anger and surprise he had scored a point. Though it was only in the very moment that he looked away that Morris appreciated why he was doing so. This was extremely interesting. The fact was, Morris was becoming a natural, becoming entirely himself. Instinct and design were somehow one. He couldn’t go wrong.

  Bobo was trying for an unconvincing imperturbability: ‘And what did I do, prego, with the VAT people back in June?’

  Morris laughed. ‘Don’t tell me the computer has a better memory than you do.’ Then, determined to be friendly to the bitter end, because this really was such a far cry from his hangdog, poor-boy-out-in-the-cold, chip-on-the-shoulder days of some years ago, he protested: ‘Really, Bobo, what’s the matter? Is it just because ,’ thought of it that you don’t like the scheme? Think of something better yourself and I promise I’ll go along. But you’ve got to admit, this is a money-spinner. We’re building up the kind of capital that will allow us to expand, diversify.’

  But Bobo’s stare was fierce. There was a distinct redness about the glassy bead-brown eyes. Almost hatred. Morris realised that rather than it being a question of the boy’s not liking the blacks, or the risks, such as they were in a country where to pay tax was to offer oneself up as a laughing-stock, it was simply that his brother-in-law didn’t like Morris Duckworth. Indeed he loathed him.

  But why? Why? What had Morris actually done not to be liked? He was handsome, affable, charitable, clever. What did these provincial plutocrats want in the end? Hadn’t he bent over backwards? Changing tone to something more plaintive, because it was time to show he was hurt, he said: ‘And then we are helping these people, you know, Bobo. Those poor young men would be freezing in the cemetery if we weren’t looking after them. They were complete outcasts and we’ve given them a place, however humble, in society. Kwame tells me he is actually sending money home. I mean, it’s not just us getting richer, but families in the Third World who really need it. That’s why I feel we must continue.’ He smiled at Bobo’s incredulity. ‘Which reminds me, please do thank Antonella for the bundle of clothes she sent.’

  Bobo stood up as if suddenly, brusquely coming to a decision. ‘Va bene,’ he said. ‘OK, two thousand more cases it is.’ Then pushing lank hair from his forehead he suggested they go out for a cup of coffee. Morris experienced that sudden twinge of disorientation that came with getting what one wanted. Perhaps the boy didn’t hate him after all.

  The two put on their coats, left the office, walked past the dog, now thankfully chained, and drove a kilometre or so to a small bar in Quinto where Bobo made a resigned sort of small-talk, spooning the froth off his cappuccino. Never one to crow, Morris was more avuncular than triumphant over a brioche with custard cream. Even in the dowdiest out-of-town bars, he remarked, the Italians knew how to make a coffee and pastry such as you wouldn’t find anywhere in the UK. Not to mention the courtesy of the service, ‘an innate sense of the signorile, he added warmly, ‘of what civiltà really means.’ Somewhat overdoing it, he said: ‘I really envy you Italians your culture and background, you know. I really do. The English are so inelegant.’

  There was a slight pause in which Morris savoured this generous humility. Then Bobo said: ‘Speaking of English, did you know that Antonella wants to learn?’

  ‘Oh, I’d be delighted to give her lessons,’ Morris immediately came back. ‘Delighted.’ Clearly it would be churlish of him not to show that he was more than willing to make himself useful. As long as they were decent to him. Give and take.

  Bobo smiled, but there was a twist to his pale lips.

  ‘Actually, she’s already found a teacher.’

  ‘Fine.’ Morris shrugged. ‘Fine.’ After all, the last thing he wanted was to bore himself stupid again teaching a language he was only too glad to have stopped thinking in. There had always been something constraining about English, as if he couldn’t really be himself in it. Then it was hardly likely that the moonish Antonella would be a star student, was it? Let somebody who needed the money have the work.

  ‘A funny sort of person,’ Bobo said thoughtfully.

  ‘Oh yes? Good.’ Morris just couldn’t be affable enough.’ I’ve always said, a bit of humour’s a great help when you’re teaching.’ The only thing that saved one from death by tedium more often than not.

  ‘And he knows you very well,’ Bobo added. In fact I think you told us a story about him that night when you came to see us all, with Massimina.’

  ‘Oh really?’ But Morris’s mind was suddenly racing. Who could it be? What unhappy coincidence was working against him? The planets, the stars, always against him.

  ‘His name’s Stan,’ Bobo said.

  ‘Oh, Stan!’ Morris laughed, but almost choked. ‘Yes, Stan Albertini!’ God, of course. That was why the dumb American had been toiling up the hill on his stupid bicycle, to see Antonella, who no doubt must have photos of Massimina all over the living-room. He racked his brains to remember. The same Massimina Stan had seen calling Morris from across the platform when he picked up the ransom money at Roma Termini. For a moment Morris felt desperately sick, as if he might just throw up the much-praised cappuccino and brioche all over the marble-topped table. At the same time some automatic pilot managed to get out most amiably: ‘Still wearing his kaftan and beads, is he? Not a very good teacher, I’m afraid.’

  Bobo got up to pay the bill. ‘Maybe not, but he does have some good stories to tell.’

  Morris, however, was beginning to get a hold on himself by now and simply let that one pass. If anybody had really known anything he would have been serving a life sentence already.

  In gaol rather than out, that is.

  11

  Like any philanthropist, Morris liked to visit the beneficiaries of his charity, muck in, have lunch with the boys, ask them if all was well, here in the hostel, over at the factory: conditions of work, pay, food. He particularly liked to perch on one of the window-sills at the villa near Marzana, frugally spooning up a brodo di ver dura he himself had indirectly provided. He would listen to Farouk’s pidgin English, encourage the brave young Ramiz, who had lost parents and sister when their boat capsized off Bari, discuss the disgraceful behaviour of the Serbs with Croatian Ante.

  Then if he had time on his hands he might sit patiently through Forbes’s presentation of the perfection of Raphael, the decadence of Tintoretto. Raphael had died at thirty-seven. Ars longa, vita brevis
. Tintoretto at seventy-six. Somehow that was always the way with the great and the not quite so great. Shelley and Browning, for example. In his late sixties himself and never without his flowery ties, Forbes projected slides onto the powdery plasterwork of the sitting-room, where the immigrants lit wood fires using sticks they collected on the hillside above. Still unrepaired, the chimney refused to draw, the hearth smoked. Farouk dozed off, his head on Azedine’s shoulder. One of the Ghanaians was whittling something. And as Forbes’s plummy voice plodded learnedly on and flame-light flickered over the rich colour of St George slaying the dragon or a Last Judgement, Morris could feel himself quite marvellously part of it all, this curious world he had invented: the underprivileged, art, Italy. His family, almost.

  This morning, steering the Mercedes up the foggy track to the house, he told Mimi that, given the mistakes he had made in the past, she could hardly deny he was doing his best to atone. Could she? Which surely was all anybody could ever ask of anybody. Constant atonement for the mistakes one was constantly making. Wasn’t that the essence of Catholicism? ‘Until the mistakes become the atonement,’ he surprised himself by inventing, ‘and the atonement the mistakes,’ Certainly that was the case with Paola. He made his voice more intimate, more sad: ‘Every time I have sex with her it reminds me of you. It’s the perfect fioretto, a constant mortification, I’m betraying you and atoning at the same time,’

  Beyond the windscreen, cypresses and palms in milky whiteness traced out a satisfying otherworldliness, perfect backdrop to this bizarre line of thought. Morris put the phone down as he drew to a halt. A figure loomed suddenly from the fog and leant forward to open the door for him. Kwame, his favourite. Perhaps he should have had the black with him when he went to see Bobo.

  ‘Ah, Kwame! All right?’ Morris took the huge meaty arm and squeezed it. There was something wonderfully convincing about the Negro’s mere physical presence.

  Kwame, however, made it clear that all was not right. Then Forbes appeared in a flurry on the steps. ‘Res ipsa loquitur,’ he mysteriously explained. ‘The thing speaks for itself.’

  When Morris just looked blankly at the foggy house, counting the misty statues on the roof (all still there?), Kwame said: ‘It don’t speak, man, it stinks.’

  He was led across the patio to the edge of the terrace, and now Morris became aware of a fierce stench of sewage in the air. Kwame took him by the arm and steered him away from a dark stain on the paving. Looking over the wall which supported the terraced garden above the road, he was shown two long black and clearly unpleasant streaks dribbling down through patches of ivy and capers.

  Morris was upset. As with his own house, no sooner had you got hold of something you’d always wanted than you found all kinds of defects. He was reminded of the roguish builder, a score still unsettled.

  The toilet facilities are unusable,’ Forbes said rather primly, as of one who wanted to make it perfectly clear that he didn’t feel his duties extended in this direction.

  They is overflowing,’ man,’ Kwame said. There is nowhere for us to shit.’

  ‘And unfortunately we are, urn, without a phone here.’

  Morris paced about the stain where the septic tank must be. Azedine and Farouk came out, the Egyptian boy with a cigarette in his mouth, grimacing and laughing. Certainly the stench was awful, but already Morris’s annoyance was fading. For the fact was that ten or twelve people were standing around waiting for him, Morris Duckworth, to act; a dozen people relying on him, on his munificence, his astuteness in resolving the small practical problems that inevitably kept one on one’s toes in this life. And just as when he sat with the boys by the fire listening to Forbes talking about Palladio and the reinterpretation of the classical, so now, facing the contingency of a clogged septic tank, he felt at home, and what’s more, the head of that household, a role that suited him. He prodded experimentally at a paving stone, as if septic tank diagnosis were one of his many talents. What a long way he had come from the pathetic figure of his childhood, the loner of his youth! In the end, perhaps, it suddenly occurred to him, in the end he might just decide to do without Paola and move in here. That would teach somebody a very big lesson. Doing nothing but watch mtv all day and wanting him to lick yoghurt off her fanny.

  Morris the patriarch (though still childless) went over to his Mercedes, took his address book out of a handsome Gucci bag, found the address of the man they had rented the place from, called him and got the number of a local mason who had apparently reorganised the plumbing some fifteen years before.

  His adoptive family and the ambiguously avuncular Forbes stood in a motley huddle round the car listening to his calls. Really, it was all most gratifying. ‘Sì, subito,’ he insisted, ‘at once.’

  Then they went in to lunch. There was a huge pan of water boiling away on the stove for the pasta, a great brown carrier-bag bulging with bread on the table. Morris placed his own contributions of a kilo of parmesan and two litres of decent Valpolicella beside it. ‘No Trevisan Superiore for us,’ he laughed.

  The windows steamed. Forbes tied aprons round the giggling young Ramiz, the more solemn Farouk, and began to explain about condiments. A wiry little Senegalese with a surprisingly pointed nose and cracked spectacles scrubbed at the wooden table. From the next room came the wail of Azedine’s Moroccan pipes meandering through the kind of tuneless Arab music that has neither beginning nor end, but just a sort of urgent, aimless vitality, so healthy, Morris pleased himself by thinking, compared with that Western obsession for getting from A to B, then on to something else. And as Kwame pulled up the biggest chair for him at the head of the table, he smiled straight into the boy’s great, soft African eyes. Indeed, he could have washed the lad’s big black feet at the thought of how wonderfully biblical it all was, and how New World too, how marvellously post-imperialist and Utopian. Had he been a latter-day saviour, these were just the people he would have chosen as his disciples. Salt of the earth. He didn’t even say anything when Azedine came down and lit a fierce cheroot. On the contrary, he almost loved him for it.

  ‘Splendid!’ he exclaimed as Ante ladled the pasta. Now he was exchanging warm glances with Forbes. For all the older man’s slight woodenness and primness, the curiously stiff way he moved and the occasional impression of suppressed disdain, Morris thought he had never seen him so happy. It was as if looking after these young men had been a kind of revelation to him. Even his usually dusty cheeks had a faint glow to them in the smoky bustle of the kitchen. Perhaps in the end Morris would be able to get him to drop the rich schoolboy business altogether. The upper classes would never have the simple vitality and gratitude these lads had. For a moment he was almost going to ask him to say grace, in Latin perhaps, but then changed his mind.

  ‘Solemn announcement!’ he suddenly proclaimed, interrupting the general hubbub. Five or six of the boys were already attacking their pasta, heads down. Morris raised his hands and repeated: ‘I have a solemn announcement to make.’ The boys looked up, watched him, chewing with unshaven jaws, eyes bright under unkempt hair, woolly or wiry. ‘I just want to tell you all,’ Morris said very slowly, aware of the language problems, ‘how grateful I am. Yes, grateful. The whole project, your living here and working for Trevisan Wines, has been an unqualified success.’ He paused. To cap it all, we signed a contract today that’ll keep you here, fed and paid, for at least another three months. Cause for celebration, I think.’

  The Senegalese translated for one of his friends. Kwame’s smile was brilliantly white, but for a staining of tomato puree. ‘No, everybody thank you, boss,’ he said. ‘Everybody goin’ to thank you so much.’ Forbes bent to whisper something in Ramiz’s ear and the boy beamed.

  ‘Now, as far as the toilet is concerned,’ Morris continued, brushing aside the chorus of gratitude, ‘the mason is coming about the sceptic tank at three. In the meantime I suggest we dig a hole in the bushes away from the drive. Anyone who wants to use a proper toilet will have to wait until he goes to
work.’

  He had said this with good humour and was surprised at the short silence that followed. Ante said darkly: ‘What toilet?’

  ‘At work, of course. The one in the bottling plant.’

  Kwame shook his head. ‘That toilet is locked for us, boss. Mr Bobo say we dirty it. We hide in it not to work. And the cleaners not clean black shit.’

  There was another silence, tensed by the irritating click of Azedine picking his teeth with a fingernail. Morris was genuinely shocked, then appalled at the thought that nobody had mentioned this to him before, that they had somehow imagined he was a party to this decision.

  ‘You mean you have to go out in the freezing cold?’ he asked.

  ‘But no, there is the chien,’ the Senegalese said excitedly. ‘The chien, on ne pent pas.’

  The dog,’ corrected Ante, ‘We can’t go out in the yard. The dog, he eat us before we have our pants down.’

  The dog is a demon,’ one of the Ghanaians said. ‘An evil spirit.’

  ‘So what do you do?’

  Kwame explained: ‘We use the bottles, boss, to piss in. And no shit.’

  ‘What, but that’s barbaric!’ Morris turned to Forbes: Tor heaven’s sake, did you know about this?’

  ‘I imagined . . .’the older man muttered vaguely. He looked more incongruous than ever with pasta sauce spilt on a tie of silk lilacs. ‘Volenti non fit injuria, if you see what I mean.’

  Morris didn’t. Nor did he have time to ask. He was furious. The heat flooded through his body. That this outrage should have been perpetrated on his boys without his even knowing! He felt the blood throbbing in his neck. Getting up from the table he went straight out of the house to the car and drove at breakneck speed through the fog to tell Bobo that he, Morris, would clean the loos himself if necessary , but this racism had to stop. It was a question of the merest sense of fellow-feeling, the absolutely most basic level of civiltà. And when Bobo said that one or two of the day workers had protested at using the same bathroom as a bunch of dirty immigrants, Morris went straight down to the bottling line and talked to the workers one by one at their positions in the din of the machines: four middle-aged and elderly women, a Mongoloid, a younger man with a limp who fixed things when they went wrong, a boy in a wheelchair and five girls giggling together who couldn’t have been a day over sixteen.