by Tim Parks
Morris had stopped shock-still on the stair. Not only was she laughing, but her laughter was mingled with the cruder, deeper cackle of his father, who said: ‘Serve him right for a week or two, vain little pansy.’ To which his mother, with a complicity Morris could never forgive her, replied: ‘Perhaps you’re right, Ron. Anyway, it can’t do him any harm.’
Couldn’t do him any harm! To look scrofulous! Monstrous! And she had called the old pig by his name! An obscenity Morris hadn’t heard for some very long time. ‘Ron.’ If there was one thing worse than being called Morris, it was being called Ron. Though the old beer swiller would never have appreciated that. He wasn’t sensitive to such things. Turning abruptly, Morris had rushed back to his room to find himself in the mirror in the wardrobe door. Under the forty-watt pallor his father always imposed as part of the long war of attrition against Morris’s ‘reading habit’, his features presented a lurid battlefield of acne and pox spots. The clean, fresh blondness of his normal self was quite lost, quite unimaginable. But Morris had forced himself to look all the same, forced himself to savour his ugliness, to appreciate exactly what it was that after all these happy years had caused his mother to betray him like this. And with Father of all people! For the problem with ugliness, Morris realised as he stared it in the face, his own face, was not so much that it rendered one unattractive, both to oneself and to others, but that it encouraged a complicity, or even conspiracy, amongst others against oneself.
Looking in the bathroom mirror now, with the wraps finally off and the truth at last taking something of its shockingly permanent shape, Morris’s first reaction was not rage, horror or even plain sadness at his lost beauty, so much as fear, fear that these livid scars, this unnatural skin texture and the general if elusive loss of symmetricality could only stack the cards the more heavily against him. Wouldn’t Paola be eager to be rid of him now? Morris had always sensed how much her being attracted to him depended on his physical beauty. Might she not start to air some of the suspicions she quite clearly had. Fendtsteig, after all, needed only the barest whiff of evidence to be setting his teeth into the grisly truth.
And Antonella? Would she be so sympathetic still? Mightn’t she see this ugliness as the revelation somehow of an inner spiritual ugliness? Did Morris see it that way himself? (Up to a point perhaps, though he had never subscribed to anything quite so ingenuous as Platonism.) And Forbes? Why should Forbes love him any the less merely because he had lost his fair complexion? Yet Morris felt he might. He might. Perhaps even Kwame would be less amenable, and reasonably so, especially if he sensed that all the other vermin were abandoning the good ship Duckworth.
The truth was, Morris himself felt less confident without the talisman of what had been an undeniable beauty, those moments when he glanced in a mirror over somebody else’s shoulder, or perhaps only in a plate of glass, a window, a tabletop, and saw that he was fairer than they, brighter than they, younger and healthier than Marangoni, infinitely more composed and attractive than the likes of Fendtsteig and Bobo.
Moments that would be no more! For in the blurred and broken mirror of the squalid hospital bathroom Morris found only an unprepossessing stranger with flattened patchwork cheek and lopsided ears under a shaven head of concentration-camp poignancy. Lifting a finger he ran it ever so gently across the skin, which felt nothing. It was the gesture of a lover, a mother. His eyes filled with tears.
‘Mimi,’ he mouthed. ‘Mimi, you won’t turn against me, will you?’ Still gazing, tears still falling, it occurred to Morris that the advantage to be drawn out of this‘ as experience taught him there was always some kind of advantage to be drawn out of every debacle - otherwise where would he be, for whom life had been nothing more than one debacle after another? - the advantage to be drawn was that his disfigurement would bring him into even closer communion with Mimi. As prison had, as hospital had. For he needed her more than ever now. And she -unlike the others, who flattered, pestered and accused - she could live only through him, comely or hideous as he might be. For he was the only person who truly remembered Mimi, truly wanted her inside himself. Their destinies were locked together for all eternity, and far more convincingly than if they had merely married.
Morris had entered hospital on Sunday, April 10. The trial of Azedine and Farouk was to be celebrated (Morris hoped the term would prove appropriate) on April 28, which was also the day (obviously quite deliberately) that the second ransom letter had set as the deadline for payment of a thousand million lire. The police, however, despite pressure from the carabinieri, were refusing to consider the affair as anything more than a squalid hoax and would not have the trial postponed. The immigrants, Marangoni was convinced, were guilty, and would doubtless be very popular victims of the judicial system. The press were happy with the solution and playing down the ransom letter business. In any event, Morris, Morris felt, should get out of the hospital as soon as he possibly could.
But Dionisio explained that the doctors always kept skin- graft cases for a further four days after removal of dressings, for observation. It was important to see how the operated area reacted to the air. ‘In what sense?’ Morris demanded. He was growing impatient. In an inexplicable reaction to his inertia of the past week, every second seemed vital now. He must, must, must find out what had happened to his coat! He couldn’t afford to become a creature of mere speculation.
‘The skin, it can become very, very loose. Is important.’
Morris shrugged his shoulders. It was not as though he didn’t recognise a lost cause when he saw one.
Then he was aware of a new feeling: he suddenly felt desperately, almost maliciously eager to see how all the others would respond to this truly ghastly face of his. If nothing else he would have the pleasure of judging them, of appreciating how wise or otherwise he had been to put his trust in them. So, having fobbed Dionisio off with a little chat about the improved situation on the District Line since the installation of new trains with passenger-operated doors, Morris waited till the idiot nurse was out of the ward, grabbed his clothes from his cabinet, dressed quickly in a distressingly dirty loo and walked right out of the hospital, exactly ninety-six hours before anybody expected him to.
Good.
His first move was to take a cab to the town centre and sit at one of the tables that made such a brightly coloured chequer-board of Piazza Bra. When the waiter came and Morris looked quickly up from his newspaper, he was able to gauge the exact level of shock suppressed in a sudden lowering of the eyes and a moment’s hesitation. He ordered an aperitivo and appropriate munchies and turned his dog-ravaged face to the April tourists thronging the sunlit esplanade. Squinting in the bright light, Japanese and Germans would turn away from the elegant ruin of the arena to the sparkling hedonism of the cafe tables, weighing up for a moment the nuanced pros and cons of the various bars, the blue tables, the green, the red, the yellow awnings, the white, the pink, a paradise of pastel shade and splashing brightness, until - perhaps on the very brink of choosing this bar rather than another - their eyes came to rest on Morris’s shaven head, the livid darkness of those scars, the gashed patchwork of ill-matched skins. At which there was that sudden involuntary recoiling from something that offends a common sense of niceness, as when one sees a spastic child push food into its eye. A passing priest quickened his pace, right hand instinctively moving to his breast to sign Our Saviour’s Passion. A tall woman tried to pretend she wasn’t looking away by staring at something just over his shoulder. Only a little boy stopped to gape, and was quickly hauled off by his mother.
Morris grinned. Grotesquely, he supposed. Dialling her number on the mobile phone purchased for his hospital stay, he said: ‘I have become a memento mori, Mimi. How apt!’
The thought that his very presence might in the future serve to shock people out of their complacency was not, now one had the first inklings of getting used to it, an entirely unpleasant or inappropriate one. Wasn’t this, after all, one of the roles that Morris had always
cast for himself, especially vis-à-vis the silver-spoon-fed elements of society - Paola and Bobo to name but two? ‘You know, Mimi, now I come to think of it, perhaps this was exactly what God had in mind for me when he sent me charging so madly at that mad dog. . . .’
He broke off and, on instinct, dialled his father’s number. But the pig was out, and anyway had doubtless forgotten all about Morris’s chickenpox. Any memory more than a week or so old was quickly drowned in the swill of alcohol. Perhaps it was just as well. Morris seemed to be getting sidetracked so easily these days. He must concentrate on the matter in hand.
He had just dialled Antontella’s number and was waiting for the connection, when he caught a glimpse of Forbes across the square, tie visibly blossoming even at a good hundred metres.
‘Pronto?’
He was in the company of a young man, though not, it seemed, one of the immigrants, since Morris had the impression, through milling Orientals, of a beard. Why did this fill him with disquiet?
‘Sono Morris.’
His sister-in-law’s voice was quiet, but brittle, as though barely repressing sobs. Something up. Keeping half an eye on Forbes and his oddly familiar bearded companion, Morris forced himself into alertness, sensitivity, only to be struck by the similarity with Mimi’s voice.
‘I’ll be a little late this evening,’ she was saying. ‘And I’ll only have time to read a chapter or so.’
Morris said not to worry. He felt quite resigned in his bed today, because they had told him he would be out of hospital soon. Immediately he reflected that it had required no reflection to tell this untruth. The only problem was to remember he had told it. She’d be in the hospital looking for him this evening. He’d have to be back.
‘Listen, I just wanted to warn you absolutely not to pay this money,’ he said. The ransom.’
She was silent for a moment. Again he had the impression of restrained emotion. At the same time the waiter brought his gingerino and white wine with noccioline. Morris coughed theatrically into the phone to cover anything the man might say. And where the hell had Forbes and that bearded bastard gone? It was so painful twisting one’s head round. Morris drank. ‘Medicine,’ he explained. And added: The fact is, I just don’t believe they’ve really got Bobo. I mean . . .’ He let his voice tail off. ‘Although of course I only know what the papers have been saying.’
Waiting for her to speak, he drank another sip of gingerino, then offered: ‘It’s only that if I were you I wouldn’t want to throw away a miliardo for nothing.’ Clearly Forbes and co. had popped into one of the bars. Probably in need of a bathroom.
Still she didn’t speak. Then when Morris decided just to wait, she swallowed and said flatly: ‘Morris, I found some letters. Just this morning.’
‘What!’ His heart missed a great deal more than a beat. What letters?
Antonella could contain herself no longer. She wept freely into the phone. ‘Oh, he was having an affair. He was! And it’s so awful! He’d hidden them in with his old first Communion photos!’
‘Tonia,’ Morris said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
How naturally that lovely diminutivo had risen to his lips!
‘O Dio. They go back months and months, it’s awful.’
Quite spontaneously, Morris said: ‘Oh, I wish I could be there to comfort you.’
‘Morris.’ The voice had cracked completely.
Respectfully, he waited a moment before telling her: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to tell the police of course. I mean, I know it’s unpleasant, but really you rather owe it to those poor immigrants. His disappearance could be something to do with this woman.’
‘Yes, yes, I know.’
A passing thought suddenly alarmed him. ‘I take it’ - he hesitated - ‘I mean, that you, that you have spoken to her? The girl. Whoever ... I mean she might be able to tell us . . .’
‘But that’s just the point. I don’t know who it is,’ Antonella wailed. ‘She just signs herself, “Your Bimbetta” The poor woman could barely speak. ‘Or “Your Sexy Girl”.’
‘But I mean, there must be some detail, some reference to somewhere. . . .’
‘They talk about nothing but sex,’ Antonella said brutally. ‘They’re disgusting. They’re . . . oh . . .’ For a moment she lost control of her voice.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Morris consoled, consoled. Because the elopement scenario had yet to be disproved. If anything, indeed, it was reinforced. The truth of the matter was that whenever something happened, a person’s disappearance, traces of a scuffle, you name it, there were always a hundred, a thousand ways it might have happened. All perfectly acceptable. There was no reason at all why Bobo shouldn’t simply have eloped with his young lady, faking a kidnap to tide over illicit nuptials.
Or somebody had been blackmailing them. Why not? Forcing them to disappear together.
There was a nose-wiping sound to Antonella’s voice now. Morris decided that silence would offer the best combination of condemnation and discretion.
‘How could he have done that to me, Morrees? How could he!’
‘People either do these things or they don’t,’ Morris told her truthfully. ‘I know I never could. But the thing is now that you must tell the police. It might affect the trial of those boys.’
How kind he was being.
‘Yes.’
‘And don’t pay the ransom until you have absolutely cast-iron evidence that it is a kidnap.’
Apparently attempting to recover her pride by adopting a businesslike voice, his sister-in-law said: ‘No need to worry about that. I mean, I’m not supposed to tell you, but the carabinieri have told me to take the money, only they’re going to be there to arrest whoever it is. It’s the morning of the trial, early. Then I have to go and give evidence. It’s all so horrible. I just want to get it over and go away.’
Morris barely had time to open his mouth, though he had no idea what might have come out, when he saw Forbes and, yes, Stan wending their way over to his chair. Shutting his eyes to avoid any tell-tale flashes of recognition, and in the vague hope that with his new face they might not recognise him, he hurriedly told Antonella that the nurse had just arrived with the injections - he would see her for Ecclesiastes towards seven -for the moment, coraggio.
Just as he switched the line off, a gratingly loud voice announced: ‘Man, has some poor bastard been in the wars! Oh boy!’
Morris had never liked Stan. But it was one of those perversities of life that, however rarely they met, however curious the circumstances, Stan appeared to like Morris. Genuinely. The stupid American was all grins and solicitude. God damn, how had it happened? When, where? Jees, what incredibly bad luck! But not to worry, remember what bad shape he’d been in himself that time they ran into each other in Rome, or ‘hobbled’ might be a better word as far as he was concerned, yeah, half his goddam body in plaster after the car accident on the station. . . .
Addressing himself to Forbes, Morris said extremely coldly: ‘I didn’t know you two knew each other.’ At the same time he was thinking what a perfect fool Stan was: as if a disfigured face could ever heal the way a broken leg would. You could be dying of cancer and Stan would cheerfully remind you of some toothache he’d had.
‘I’ve been interviewing people for positions at the college,’ Forbes said, though why this should explain their walking across the square together wasn’t clear.
There was a moment of mildly embarrassed silence. From dusty eyelids, Forbes appeared to be watching Morris rather more sharply than of yore, unless it was merely his unwillingness to appear unwilling to look disfigurement in the face. Disconcerting, Morris thoughts how all his calculations vis-àvis people’s facial expressions would have to take another variable into account from now on. Except in cases, like Stan’s, of total insensitivity.
‘Pete is going to give me a post teaching A. H. in this school thing he’s setting up.’
Morris had never heard Forbes referred to as Pete before. Nor was he sure, off the
cuff, what A. H. might be. Arse-holery, quite probably.
‘Stan has a degree in art history,’ Forbes explained, a little apologetically. Certainly there was an awkwardness in the air, which presumably had to do with Morris’s face. But maybe not.
I thought,’ Forbes went on unnecessarily, ‘it would be good to get an American voice in the school to give it variety. It doesn’t do to be too exclusively English these days.’
At this point, Stan actually looped an arm round Forbes’s tweed jacket and gave the older man an affectionate squeeze, reminding Morris of an appalling discussion some years ago, in the days when loneliness had humbled him into frequenting the feckless expat community, on the supposed virtues of bi-sexuality. What impressed him most of all, however, was how the gentlemanly Forbes managed to disguise the distaste he no doubt felt at such mateyness. Clearly Stan was not worthy of the man’s friendship. When he got half a chance Morris would explain to the older man that there was no need to stoop to local third-rate teachers just to save money, since Morris would be quite willing to finance the salaries of a decent staff, at least for the first year or two.
He stood up. ‘I have to be getting back to the hospital. They only let me out for an hour or two to clear up a couple of things with the’ - he almost said the police - ‘to do with the old Signora’s will.’
Both Stan and Forbes promised they would come and visit. Tomorrow perhaps. Assuaging their guilt complexes at still being whole and healthy no doubt. Just as he was about to turn away, Morris said: ‘By the way, when it happened, you know, with the dog, you don’t remember who took my coat off, do you?’