The Secret of Santa Vittoria

by Robert Crichton

  It is not necessary to put down all the details. It is enough to know this: that in exchange for a sacred and a solemn vow by Bombolini that the persons and the property of those who had gone before—which meant The Band—would be respected, he, Italo Bombolini, would be handed the key to the city and the medallion of the mayor would be placed around his neck.

  “Do I so have your sacred and solemn vow?” Vittorini said. “Remember, it is witnessed by the priest and thus by God Himself.”

  Someone prodded Bombolini.

  “You so have my solemn pledge,” Bombolini said. Vittorini turned directly toward the people in the piazza then. While Polenta sanctified the pledge by making the sign of the cross, Vittorini lifted his sword and the flag.

  “Citizens of Santa Vittoria,” he cried out to them. “I give you your new leader.”

  There was almost no response from the people. They had not understood, and it still was not clear to them. What response there was—a few cheers and a few groans, a shout of laughter from Babbaluche, the sound of snoring from Fabio in the back of the cart—soon died away in the rush of the late afternoon wind and finally the only sound at all was that of Vittorini’s flag fluttering. It was beginning to grow dark in the piazza, although the sun was still bright on the roof tops of the surrounding houses. Vittorini made a small sign with his hand; he turned it upward as if to say to Bombolini, “I have done my job, the rest is up to you,” and Dr. Bara pushed up behind the soldier.

  “Get the medallion,” he said. “They don’t want him. Get the medallion back. We have made a terrible mistake.”

  But at that moment Bara was proven wrong. Bombolini had turned around on the cart and back to his people and had said something to them, and this was followed by an enormous cheer and a great surge of movement. Vittorini turned to Bara.

  “And what would you call that?”

  Men seized the great cart wheels. They almost lifted that iron oak cart into the air in their eagerness to turn it around and drive it back across the piazza.

  “And what would you call that if he isn’t the leader?” Vittorini said. “They would have torn us apart.”

  The women lowered the holy pictures and the statues, and Padre Polenta began to walk back across the clearing piazza to the bell tower. The others turned around and started back inside the Leaders’ Mansion, because one of the promises Vittorini had made was that they would be out of the Mansion by sundown that evening.

  The wine seller had said four words: “And now your wine.”

  * * *

  When Rosa Bombolini heard the sounds coming up the Corso Mussolini she had shut the shutters of her windows and run downstairs and closed and locked the iron gate that guards the front of the wineshop and then gone back upstairs and stood behind the shutters, where she could see into the Piazza of the People without being seen.

  Her husband’s cart came to a stop twenty feet from the wineshop.

  “Open the gates,” Bombolini shouted. When there was no answer, someone handed Bombolini a cobblestone that had been pried out of the piazza. Bombolini gave the stone to one of the younger Pietrosantos and made a sign, and the young man sent the stone crashing against an upstairs shutter.

  “Open the gates,” he shouted again. The shutter opened this time and his wife looked down from the window into the cart.

  “I open no gates to no mob,” Rosa Bombolini shouted to them.

  “This is no mob. These are the citizens of Santa Vittoria,” Bombolini called back. She made a gesture with the fingers of her right hand that only men ever make here and then only when they are among men.

  “I order you to open these gates,” Bombolini called.

  “Order?” She made that laugh that all Santa Vittoria is familiar with, the one they are afraid of. “Whose order?” The words were spit on her lips.

  “The order of the mayor of the city of Santa Vittoria.”

  He held up the key to the city and then the medallion of the office of mayor, and the people cheered. She opened the shutters wide then.

  “Up the fat you-know-what of the indescribable mayor of this indescribable city,” she shouted.

  The new mayor looked very tired then and sad. He pointed to the gates.

  “Down,” he said. He described the action with his hands. “Pull them down.”

  She was at the window again. “You son of a bitch. I own this house. I own this wineshop. You listen to me. You touch those gates and you never walk into this house again.”

  It would be his first decision as mayor. He didn’t look up at her when he made it, but the decision was made.

  “Down,” he ordered. “Take them down.”

  It was the Sicilian cart that did the job. They lifted Bombolini down from the cart and then they ran it back and forth to build up the proper rage, like a bull preparing to make his charge, and all at once they released it. The gate was no match for the cart. The iron was old and the hinges and bolts that held it were rusted. It gave almost a once, and after that the front door gave, and then the entire front of the wineshop. The plate-glass window came all apart and it shattered into the shop and into the piazza. The reign of Italo Bombolini had begun.

  IT WOULD BE gratifying to be able to write that the people of Santa Vittoria acted in some other way than they did that night. But the people acted like proper Santa Vittorians and like people getting something for nothing. Because the wine was free, everyone drank too much, and drunkenness and greed are never gratifying.

  Someone set fire to a goat and it went blazing down the Corso Mussolini and nearly set fire to a stall. Someone threw a bottle from a roof and cut someone. It was not all bad. Some of the young people had accordions and a shepherd came down from the high pastures with pipes, and although they don’t dance here often the men danced and then the women and finally even the men with the women.

  There was an omen for Santa Vittoria that evening, the one thing that for a time calmed the people. While the first barrel of wine was being drunk, just after the sun had gone down, a strange early evening star was seen glittering to the north and east of the city. It hung up above the mountains there, shining in the gold of the late sun before dipping down into the shadows of the mountains. Everyone agreed it was a good sign.

  “That bastard Bombolini’s in luck,” someone said. “Someone is looking out for him.”

  If the harvest was good this year, for years to come people would look into the sky on this day to see the good omen again and announce that there would be another good harvest. If someone died, his family would look for the star on this day in fear that they would see it and someone else would die that year.

  But the star was forgotten, that night at least, when the second barrel was opened. No one at the end was sure how much wine was drunk. Bombolini says that three hundred gallons were drunk. It is a lot of wine for one thousand people, when many of them are very old and very young and over half of them are women.

  Long before midnight the dancing stopped. No matter how much wine was drunk the people would be down on the terraces in the morning when the sun rose. Only the young men were still up. A team of Turtles was playing a kind of soccer game with a team of Goats in the piazza, but even that was quiet and slow. One of the players found Fabio sleeping on the wet stones by the Fountain of the Pissing Turtle.

  “You’d better get up,” he told him, “or you’ll die in the night air.”

  “I have no place to go,” Fabio said. He was more tired than drunk.

  The soccer player pointed him in the direction of the Leaders’ Mansion.

  “There’s room for you in there. Bombolini is living there now. His wife has thrown him out.”

  Fabio crossed the piazza and stood outside the door. There was a light inside the house. He knocked, very lightly, and when no one answered he tried the door and it opened and he went inside. He was surprised to see Bombolini sitting on a box, with a tallow candle by his side, and reading a book. He wanted to say something but could not think
of the right thing, and he continued across the room until he was behind the mayor.

  The book was old and grimy. It had been abused by use and time. Lines of the text were underlined, and some of them were underlined two and three times, and some of these were in different colors, with all kinds of notes written in the margin.

  One read: “No, not true in Santa Vittoria.”

  Others Fabio could see said, “How very true” and “Try and tell that to the Fascists.”

  “Oh,” Bombolini said. He closed the book.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Well you succeeded.”

  Fabio came around in front of the new mayor.

  “You were reading your Machiavelli.”

  “I’m going to need him now. He’s going to have to tell me what to do.”

  Fabio sat down on a large wooden bench, one of the pieces the Band had left behind.

  “I want to stay here for the night if I may.”

  “Fabio. You may stay here for the rest of your life,” Bombolini said.

  “No. Just for the night. I am very tired.”

  Bombolini picked up the light and took Fabio upstairs to a room where several blankets and an old coat were stretched out on the floor.

  “I want you to take my bed,” he said, and when Fabio refused he forced him to lie down on it and went away with the light. Fabio has no idea how long he was there before the mayor returned.

  “Fabio? Are you awake? Listen to this.” He thumbed through the book he held and held up a hand with one finger extended, a gesture Fabio was to recognize later as the sign that Bombolini was about to quote from Machiavelli.

  “‘The wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests!’”

  Fabio sat up. “Who says that?”

  “The Master,” Bombolini said. “The wise fox, Niccolò Machiavelli.”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Do I have to keep those promises I made?”

  “You gave your word,” Fabio said. “Your sacred word.” Bombolini closed the book with a loud noise.

  “I knew I should have asked Babbaluche,” he said.

  There was darkness, and Fabio slept. But when he woke again there was a light in the room once more.

  “Just one other sentence, Fabio. An interpretation.” The mayor held up his hand. “‘Men must be either caressed or annihilated. They will revenge themselves for small injuries, but they can’t do so for great ones. The harm the leader does must be such that he need not fear revenge.’ What do you make of that?”

  Fabio did not want to be part of any bloodletting, but he was tired and the words seemed to have only one meaning. “I think it means you’re supposed to kill them.” Bombolini thought about that for a while, and before he said anything else Fabio was asleep.

  “I think you are right,” he said sadly, because he had little stomach for blood and at the same time a respect for the words of The Master. The next time Fabio awoke, the room was light again, but this time the light came from the piazza. He had been able to sleep for several hours, and he felt better because of it.

  “Fabio della Romagna, I want you to join my cabinet,” Bombolini said to him. “I want you to be a minister in the Grand Council of the Free City of Santa Vittoria.”

  “I am flattered,” Fabio said, and it was the truth. “I am proud you ask me, but my place is in Montefalcone. I have to finish my studies at the academy. It would not be good to quit now.”

  “Just for the emergency,” Bombolini said. “For the duration. I need you. I need educated men. That’s what you will be, Minister of Education. No. Minister for Advanced Education. You can live right here. We’ll get a bed for you and a desk, and Angela will bring us something in the morning and make us supper at night. It won’t be bad.”

  It was the thunderbolt again. It was all at once the most amazing idea that Fabio had ever heard—Angela carrying his breakfast; Angela meeting in doorways, saying good morning and saying good night; Angela preparing food for him with her own hands; Angela meeting him by error and design and chance in all those personal and private ways that can only occur when two people are alone in a house.

  “I don’t know,” Fabio said. He could barely bring himself to talk.

  “Everything will be upset in Montefalcone. You said the Germans were taking over the town.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I can put you down,” Bombolini said. He took out a soiled card from his pocket and at the bottom added Fabio’s name to the list of names. The card was old and the names on it were old and only Fabio’s looked freshly placed on the card, and he realized with a start almost as strong as the one he had felt before that this man, whom they called the Sicilian boob, the least likely man in all of Santa Vittoria to ever become a leader, had for months and perhaps years been walking about with a fully formed government in his pocket.

  Bombolini closed the shutters and it was dark in the room once more.

  “You should sleep,” he said. “But before you do I want you to think about this so you can think about it while you sleep. The Master says it is necessary to rule by fear or rule by love. One way or the other. I want you to think about the course I should follow.”

  When Fabio awoke the sun was fully up and the old blankets were hot against his skin. He thought about the night, the wine, the dancing—which he hadn’t done, although he had looked at others dance with her—the strange star in the sky, an omen for good or evil, and about the new thing, Angela and himself in this house and about something Bombolini had asked him to think about and which he had forgotten.

  He lay on the floor and became conscious of a strange sound coming from the piazza, a tinkling of glass, as if a river of glass were running across the piazza stones. When he looked out of the window he could see a group of old men and women with long-handled brush brooms sweeping the streets and the piazzas, sweeping up the broken glass of the night before. Such a thing had never happened before in Santa Vittoria; God’s winds swept and God’s rare rains washed. He was still watching the work with admiration when Bombolini came into the room, clean now and refreshed, although he could not have slept.

  “The Public Works Corps,” he said. “I stole the idea from the Fascists.”

  “But how do you pay them?”

  Bombolini smiled broadly and handed Fabio a square piece of paper.

  3 THREE 3

  SANTA VITTORIA LIRE

  This paper redeemable for

  legal currency at the

  end of the emergency

  Italo Bombolini

  Mayor

  The Free City of Santa Vittoria

  “Do you really intend to honor it?” Fabio asked. Bombolini was shocked by the suggestion.

  “You can fool the people about many things, but only a fool would be foolish enough to fool the people about money.”

  “The Master,” Fabio said. “I’m getting to recognize him.”

  It was clear that the mayor was very flattered. “In truth, Fabio, it was myself,” he said.

  Fabio was impressed. “You should write those down,” he said.

  “In truth, Fabio, I don’t write that well. If someone else could write them down…”

  It was in this manner that The Discourses of Italo Bombolini came into being. There are still several copies in Fabio’s hand somewhere in the city.

  “The people are saying we were born under a lucky star. A good omen, a good sign. I hope they are right.”

  “I hope they are right,” Fabio said. But all he could think about was when Angela would come with some broth or pasta. Bombolini leaned down toward him.

  “Do you remember I asked you to think about whether I should rule by fear or rule by love?”

  Fabio told him that he did, but that he had had no thoughts.

  “Well rest your brain then, Fabio,” Bombolini said, “because I have made my decision. I have decided to be lovably fearful.”

  2 B
OMBOLINI

  THE STAR they saw was me. The omen sent to Santa Vittoria was myself.

  This is the place where I enter the story. It is the price I ask you to pay in return for hearing the story of Santa Vittoria, which is admittedly a better story than my own. It is something that I have wanted to say to my own countrymen, my people, for twenty years; an apology written in the hope that some will understand and even that if enough understand I might some day be able to go back to my home and rebuild what is left of my life. I will try to make it short and make the price as inexpensive as possible.

  On the morning that Fabio told the story of the death of Mussolini, after it, while he slept, I was flying in the Odessa Darling, a B-24 Liberator bomber, somewhere over Italy. I have figured since that we might have crossed almost directly over Santa Vittoria at eight o’clock that morning, although no one here recalls a plane passing over that morning.

  I already knew the fate of Mussolini. The pilot of the Odessa Darling, Captain Buster Rampey, had told me about it before we took off that morning.

  “They kicked out that Muzzlini, you know that? What do you think about it?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I thought nothing about it.

  “I just thought you might want to know,” Captain Rampey said. “I thought you might want to be the first to know, you know? You bein’ Eyetalian and all like that.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I just thought you would.”

  “No, sir.”

  It was our fourth mission, and the first over the mainland of Italy. We had bombed Pantelleria and Lampedusa and some other island I have forgotten, but this was to be the first flight over Italy.

  I recall the beginning of the flight very well, because every once in a while, when I feel trapped here on this mountain like a sailor in a small boat at sea, I feel like flying again, to get out of here, up above all these people I have come to know so well and who think they know me so well.