The Secret of Santa Vittoria

by Robert Crichton

  All of them were there, Copa and Mazzola, Dr. Bara, Vittorini the mail clerk, their families, their children and even Francucci, his eyes sealed, his teeth broken, his lips split.

  “Maybe they won’t come,” Mazzola said. “Maybe they’re cheering something else.”

  “They won’t hurt us,” the wife of Francucci said. “We’ve already paid the price.”

  “What, for twenty years of rotten bread?” the doctor said. “You have only paid the first installment.”

  “If we knew who was leading them we might be able to figure out something,” Copa, the mayor, said.

  “Every man has his price,” Mazzola said.

  “Where the hell is Pelo?” Copa asked. “I’ll break that bastard’s neck.”

  They had sent Romano Pelo, the least offensive of men, a shadow of a human being, to go into the town and find out what the noise from the Piazza Mussolini was about. He had not come back. Now they sat in the darkness of the cellar of the Mansion, the government house of Santa Vittoria, behind barricaded doors, and waited and listened.

  “If we can only last into the night,” Mazzola said. “They’ll forget us. The people’s memory is short.”

  Mazzola was always hoping for the best. There was another shout from the piazza, this time loud enough to seem to come right through the stones of the house and it made the baker begin to weep.

  “All I ever did for them was to bake their bread and now they want to come and harm me,” Francucci said. He was becoming obsessed with the idea that the people wanted to put him in his own bread ovens and bake him alive.

  “We must find a way to surrender to them before they can come to us,” Vittorini said. “In that way we can surrender on our own terms.”

  Little by little, as the day wore on, the mail clerk was assuming command in the cellar. He was not a Fascist, but he was a paid employee of the state, a “functionary” as he preferred to call himself, and since Vittorini is above all things a man of form he felt it his duty to be counted with the recognized legal machinery of government.

  If the Communists ever take over Italy or Santa Vittoria, Vittorini will hang a picture of Marx in the post office.

  “The thing we must do now is seize the initiative,” Vittorini said.

  “Very beautiful words,” Dr. Bara said. “Well stated.”

  The most impressive fact about Vittorini, more impressive even than his character, is the uniform he is entitled to wear, and which he wears on all state and religious holidays, and which he had the wisdom to put on this morning.

  It is from one of the fine regiments although no one remembers the name of it now or the number. It was made from a white whipcord twill that had been cleaned and bleached so many times that it was impossible to look directly at Vittorini in the sunlight. Across his chest he wore a red-and-white-and-green silken sash, and on the sash was a gold medal that swam in the silk like a sun rising from the sea. There were black patent-leather boots that flared out at the knee and a sword in a golden scabbard that clinked against the cobblestones when he crossed the piazza to enter the church. The green epaulets are trimmed with gold braid, but most of all it is Vittorini’s hat. The hat is made of shiny black patent leather with a little stubby visor and from the top, which is high, cascades a fall of cock’s plumes, a shiny black-and-green shower of them so that when Vittorini walks Vittorini ripples.

  “We must discover the nature of the enemy,” Vittorini told them, “and capitulate to it. They must not come and take; we must give. It is the only way.”

  He shook his head to emphasize his point, and the dark river of feathers began to run again.

  “These are very beautiful words,” the doctor said.

  “Where in Christ is Pelo?” Copa said.

  THE IRON GRILLWORK of the catwalk that circles the top of the water tower had been burning for half the day and it was hot to the touch, but Bombolini never felt the burning when he crawled up onto the walk. He sank onto the iron and almost at once he slept. He had no intention of ever getting off the tower. He had prepared himself to die. He even yearned for the release of dropping softly down through the softness of the afternoon sky. He knew the people in the piazza were waiting for his last performance and he wouldn’t disappoint them, but at the moment he was too tired even to contemplate dying. That would have to wait until he woke again, unless he rolled off the walk while he slept. Until then he lay stretched on the iron slats and burned.

  When he did wake he was conscious of three things. His eyes were pressed against the open slots of the grillwork and he could see from the shadows of things far below him that time, a good deal of time, had passed. Part of his body was in shadow. He watched an ox plod along a track through the terraces. The road was ankle-deep in dust, and white and bone dry, and it looked as if it had been drawn through the green terraces by a piece of white chalk. At each step a plume of dust spiraled up behind the cart and hung in the still air of late afternoon like a white banner.

  I am thirsty, Bombolini thought. I am dying of thirst.

  He could see the people working on the terraces in the vineyards, deep among the vines, working in the shaded tunnels of fat, green grape leaves, resting in the cool of the wine-green shade. And he could hear the sound of water bubbling by his ear, just on the other side of the thin concrete skin of the water tank.

  I am being driven crazy, Bombolini thought.

  And finally he became conscious that someone else was on the tower with him. From the other side of the tank came a rhythmic sound, a soft and steady lapping like waves on the side of an anchored boat.

  Before I roll off I will find out who is on the tower, he told himself. He tried to say something, but there was no sound. He tried to move and found that it was impossible. I can’t even kill myself, he said to himself, and he sighed, and then his eyes saw the wine bottle, the cork out of the neck, standing at attention like a little soldier a few inches away from his hand.

  I will drink a little of this wine and then roll off, he told himself.

  The wine was hot from the sun, but the heat didn’t bother Bombolini. He could feel the wine run down his throat and enter his stomach and then begin to course through the bulk of his body as if it were the sun itself. The second swallow was easier and each one after that became easier, every mouthful exploding inside him like a small hot sun, the source of life itself running inside him. He could feel it go poom in his stomach. The wine was working for Italo Bombolini the way a transfusion works for a man who has lost too much blood. When he was through with the bottle he found he could sit up, and he leaned against the concrete and all at once allowed his legs to drop over the side of the catwalk, which caused a great shout from the piazza.

  “Who’s on the tower?” he said.

  “Fabio.”

  The sound stopped but then it resumed, the slap, slap of the paintbrush against the concrete.

  “I knew it would be Fabio,” Bombolini said. It was an effort for him to talk. “If anyone would come for me I knew it would be Fabio. Fabio?”

  “Yes?”

  “God shower His blessings on you, Fabio.”

  Fabio was unable to answer. Things like this embarrass the people here. It might be all right for Sicilians, but not here. They are very emotional and vulgar and sentimental, much too emotional for us.

  “Let me see you, Fabio.”

  “No. When we both are on the same side the catwalk starts to fall off.”

  “Fascist bastards,” Bombolini said. “They cheated on the specifications. They were supposed to put up a ladder and they put up that pipe and pocketed the difference. They were supposed to put a platform up here and they put up this thing. How far are you now?”

  Fabio had already painted out MUSSOLINI IS ALWAYS RIGHT and was halfway through the eight DUCE’S.

  “Four more to go, eh?”

  “Yes. Whoever did it, overdid it,” Fabio said.

  “I did it,” Bombolini said.

  Fabio was silent. It emba
rrassed him to think of a man risking his life to climb a tower and write DUCE DUCE DUCE all over the side of it. And he could not imagine this man as ever having been young.

  “I was young once, you know. I was tall and lean. I used to look like Garibaldi. I had long shiny-black hair. I wonder what made it curl? Ah, well. When I was through I wasn’t even tired.”

  Fabio went on with the painting.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Fabio. You don’t have to tell me,” Bombolini said. “But you have to try and understand how it was then. It wasn’t like this now at first, Fabio. He was beautiful at first, Fabio. He was promises for us.”

  They felt the tower tremble and they gripped the iron railing, but then it passed. The mountain rises and falls here, a little bit each day, like a giant shifting in his sleep.

  “And what promises, Fabio. I don’t mean the stupid ones like building the army and making Italy fierce again. They were going to help us build a school and pay for teachers. Everybody was going to join in. They were going to help us build a road, and we were going to plant the hillsides with grass and trees so the land would stay on the hills and the water would stay on the land and there would be no more landslides. We believed that, Fabio. Oh, there was excitement then, Fabio. Everything seemed possible. And we believed.”

  “How could you?” Fabio said. “You believed because you wanted to believe.”

  “Yes. And because he believed, too. I really think Mussolini believed.”

  “And then none of it happened.”

  “Some of it happened. This thing, this tower, happened. Oh, we were going to be like America here, Fabio. Look.” The wine seller pointed although Fabio could not see him. “Can you see Scarafaggio from where you are?” Fabio said that he could. “When the tower was built they fell down in the streets with envy from looking at us. ‘Our turn next,’ they said. ‘It’s happening. The miracle is happening.’”

  He told Fabio of the famous morning when the tower was to be dedicated. The dignitaries had come from Montefalcone in cars and been taken up the mountain in oxcarts decorated with flags and flowers. A great flag had covered the top of the tower and when the string was pulled and the tank was revealed, there, shining fresh and black in the morning sun, was MUSSOLINI IS ALWAYS RIGHT and all the DUCE’S, and on the catwalk was Italo Bombolini.

  “I was a hero once, for a few days, and then they turned the water off,” Bombolini said. “After that I was a fool.”

  When the leaders from Montefalcone had gone The Band assumed control of the water tower and began to charge for the water. When the grape growers refused to pay, the water was turned off, and soon the cement spillways began to fill with leaves and dirt and the people went back to the old way, praying to God to send rain, and He was, as always, not quite generous enough. But the people forgot about the tower.

  While he talked Bombolini threw the bottle off the tower, and there was a shout from the people as it arched out over the town and finally crashed in a tinkle of glass on the roof of the Cooperative Wine Cellar. A minute or two afterward an old man with white hair and a face as red as wine came out onto the roof and shook his fist at them. It was Old Vines, the keeper of the wine.

  “I’ve upset the sleep of the wine,” Bombolini said. “If he had a rifle he would shoot us off this tower. Are you almost done?”

  “Yes. Two more DUCE’S and one DU.”

  “I ran out of paint. No,” he said, “it wasn’t Mussolini himself at first. We didn’t blame him. It was the water. The country might have been falling apart, but we couldn’t see it. You know what The Master says. ‘Men are apt to deceive themselves in big things, but they rarely do so in particulars.’”

  “I don’t know who The Master is.”

  “Niccolò Machiavelli,” Bombolini said. “He’s my master. Have you studied him?” Fabio said that he had.

  “Well I read him. I memorize him,” the wine seller said. “I have read The Prince forty-three times.”

  The young man was astonished by this information, and he didn’t believe it. His father had once told him that beneath Bombolini’s clownish exterior there was a better mind than anyone could expect, but Fabio had never been able to see any sign of it.

  “I don’t suppose there is any more wine?”

  Fabio thought about it. If Bombolini got drunk it might be the end of them both, and yet the wine had made the journey down seem possible. He opened the knapsack and uncorked the second bottle of wine and slid it along the catwalk.

  “God shower blessings on you, Fabio. Rain them down on you. Flood you with them, Fabio. God drown you in blessings.” And he began to drink the hot red wine. They were silent while he drank.

  “When I’m through with this bottle,” Bombolini said, “I’m going off this tower, Fabio.”

  “Oh no,” Fabio said.

  “I can’t disappoint my audience. Look at them down there. They’ve been waiting for me all day.”

  “I didn’t come up here for nothing.”

  “Can you imagine what they would say? The poor son of a bitch can’t even fall off the tower.”

  The young man began to paint more swiftly. The paint was running short, and he was becoming tired. If he was ever to get Angela’s father down, it would have to be done soon, before he got too tired, before darkness fell on them, before the effect of the wine began to wear off.

  The men and the women were on their way up from the terraces by then. Wherever Fabio looked he could see people coming out from the shadows of the vines onto the track that comes up the mountain from the terraces. A great number of them were already up the mountain, so when Bombolini let fly the second bottle the noise from the lower piazza, and now from the Piazza of the People as well, was the loudest of the day. Fabio by then had reached the bottom of the bucket and was on the last letter. It was strange, but there was exactly enough paint left to paint out the last letter, a U, and not a brushful more.

  “Now throw the bucket,” Bombolini said. Fabio threw the first bucket far out over the town, away from the piazza, out over the Fat Wall so that no one could get hurt.

  “Now the brush.” He threw the brush. There was a shout from the crowd. He threw the cheese, the olives, the second bucket, and each time the crowd roared and the noise grew louder and by the time Fabio threw the knapsack the piazza was in an uproar.

  “All right, let’s go now,” Fabio shouted. He had counted on the excitement to stir the wine seller. He came around to the side of the catwalk where Bombolini sat, and as he did the rusted iron bolts that had been drilled into the concrete years before suddenly cried out, screamed, in protest. He ran along the narrow walk and past Bombolini and on to the spiked pipe so that his weight was no longer on the catwalk. Now the people in the piazza were silent. There was no sound from the city at all.

  “They don’t want you to fall, do you see?” Fabio said. “If they wanted you to fall they would be shouting for you.”

  While he talked he reached up and began to work the lengths of rope under the arms and across the back and around the waist of Bombolini. His plan was crude, but Fabio felt it might work. He would tie the wine seller to the pipe, literally lash him to it, and then bring him down it spike by spike. He would place Bombolini’s foot on the next rung, or spike, below and then work the ropes down around him and the pipe and when he was secured there he would lift the next foot down. He would bring him down, all bound with ropes, like a bear being brought down from the high mountains. He made Bombolini slide along the narrow catwalk until he was at the pipe and then dip down until his feet could find the spikes to stand on. Even from where they were, so high above the piazza, they could hear the people suck in their breaths. When he was tied to the pipe they didn’t start at once, because both of them were tired even then.

  “Why are you doing this for me, Fabio?” Bombolini asked. Fabio didn’t answer him. How could he mention Angela? He wondered if he would have been on this pipe now for anyone else’s father, but then he realized that
only Angela’s father would be doing such a thing.

  “Why?”

  “Because you were a man in trouble. It is people’s responsibility to help others in trouble.”

  “Oh, Fabio,” Bombolini said. “I don’t know where you get ideas like that. It is people’s responsibility to look after themselves and nothing more. Let us try a step.”

  Fabio lifted Bombolini’s right foot and brought it down to the next spike below, and then he climbed up so that his head was level with Bombolini’s waist and he worked the ropes down a foot or more. They did it several times and rested.

  “Fabio?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to know one thing, Fabio. If I ever get off this tower and I am alive, if there is ever one thing in the world that you want and I can give it to you, I want you to ask me for it and I will give it to you.”

  Why couldn’t he say it right then? Why couldn’t he be honest with himself and with this man he had lashed to a spiny pipe and whose life he was saving at the risk of his own? One word. A few words—Yes, there is one thing: Angela; I want your daughter Angela in marriage. Instead, all he could do was murmur, “Come on, come on,” and feel himself turning red.

  Just before they began again, Bombolini began to point to the north. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Can you see that? Can you see there?”

  “Yes. Something is burning,” Fabio said. “Some city is on fire.”

  They could see a cloud of gray, which the late afternoon sun turned gold at the top. It rose from a city which sat on the top of a mountain like a crown, and the crown was in flames.

  “The whole mountain is burning,” Bombolini said, and it was true.

  IN THE Leaders’ Mansion they could hear the shouts from the piazza, and the cheering. The noise was now steady and they knew the crowd was growing, but none of them was ready to believe that the cheering was for Italo Bombolini.

  “Why would Pelo tell a thing like that?” Mazzola asked.

  “Because Pelo is a bastard, that’s why,” Copa said.

  Pelo had come back from the Piazza Mussolini and when no one in the Piazza of the People was looking he had knocked twice on the door as directed.