She hung up indignantly and turned to Polletti. His chair was empty.
“Where did he go?” she asked the bartender.
“He just left,” the bartender said.
13
Polletti was driving a Buick-Olivetti XXV which he had borrowed from the generous nephew of one of his friend’s sister’s boyfriends. He hated the car because it was painted fuchsia, a color which Polletti always associated with typhoid fever. Still, it was the only car he could get at the time.
Two miles outside of Rome he pulled into a service station. With a lordly gesture he told the attendant to fill the tank, and then he opened the door and stepped outside.
He heard a wild screech of brakes, turned, and saw a mocha-colored Lotus bearing down upon him. Polletti stood his ground, frozen, not knowing which way to jump even if he had been capable of jumping.
The Lotus swept around him in a perfect Immelman turn and came to a stop. Caroline got out, her musky perfume cutting through the stench of burning rubber.
“Hi,” she said.
There were many possible ripostes to a statement like that, but Polletti availed himself of none of them. “Why,” he said bluntly, “are you following me? What is it you want?”
Caroline moved closer to him, her perfume like Parthian mead to Polletti’s heightened senses. Noticing this, Polletti immediately got back into his car.
“May I have just two minutes of your time?” she asked.
“No.”
“One minute?”
“I’m late, I have no time,” Polletti said, paying the station attendant and starting his car.
“Listen. …”
“Call me next week,” Polletti said.
“That’ll be too late,” Caroline said. “Look, I’m in Rome to make a survey on the sexual behavior of the Italian male. My firm is interested in any unusual aspects—”
“Then you wouldn’t want me,” Polletti said.
“—but of course we’re even more interested in any usual aspects,” Caroline said quickly.
Polletti frowned.
“Within a definite framework of highly individual particularity, of course,” Caroline added. “That’s why I’m interested in you. It would be a television interview at the Colosseum. I’d ask you questions—”
“Just me?” Polletti asked.
Caroline nodded.
“I thought you said it was a survey.”
“I said it was an individual survey,” Caroline explained. “An inquiry in depth, a profile approach instead of a surface analysis.”
Polletti blinked once or twice. “I don’t understand why you want me, in particular, for this interview.”
Caroline smiled and turned slightly away. Her voice had a hint of shyness. “It’s because I’m drawn to you,” she said. “There’s something about you—a certain elusive weakness, a tantalizing fragility. …”
Polletti nodded understandingly and smiled. Caroline reached for the door handle. Polletti slammed his car into gear and raced off.
14
Polletti drove north on the old coastal road to Civitavecchia, past an endless row of cypresses on his right and a rocky beach to his left. Polletti’s mood could be ascertained by the fact that he had the accelerator of his Buick-Olivetti XXV jammed to the floorboard, and he was not planning to let up for any obstacle, animate or inanimate. The fact that the weary old car was incapable of a speed greater than 31 miles an hour made Polletti’s gesture poignant, but no less genuine for that.
He came at last to a stretch of beach enclosed by a wire fence. There was a gate, and above it was a sign: THE SUNSETTERS. An attendant came forward and swung wide the portals with a show of deference so great as to be derisive. Polletti nodded curtly and drove in.
He slammed to a stop in front of a little prefabricated hut. Past it was a grandstand, partially filled with middle-aged bodies belonging to people of various sexes. Beyond the grandstand was the sea, and just above the water’s edge was the fiery red rim of the sun. Polletti checked his watch. It was 6:43 p.m. He entered the hut.
Within was his associate, Gino, seated at a table checking a column of figures.
“How many this time?” Polletti asked.
“Fourteen thousand two hundred and thirty-three paying customers,” Gino said. “Also five cops, twenty-three boy scouts, and six of Vittorio’s nieces, all on free passes.”
“We’ll have to tell Vittorio to stop that,” Marcello said. “I’m not in this business for my health.” He sat down on a camp stool. “Only fourteen thousand? That barely pays the rental on the grandstand.”
“It’s not like the old days,” Gino agreed. “I remember when—”
“Forget it,” Polletti said. “Did you check them all for weapons?”
“Of course,” Gino said. “I wouldn’t want you picked off in the middle of your work.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Polletti said, staring gloomily into space.
There was a short, uncomfortable silence. Then Gino said, “It’s 6:47, Marcello.”
“Indeed?” Polletti replied cuttingly.
“You must go on soon. You have less than five minutes. How do you feel?”
Polletti could find no words to express his state of mind, so instead he made a bestial face.
“I know, I know,” Gino said soothingly. “That’s how you usually feel, especially just before you go on. But we can take care of those unhappy, unwanted feelings, eh? Swallow this.”
He handed Polletti a glass of water and a tiny red pill shaped like a Paramecium. Polletti knew from long experience that it was Limnium, one of the new drugs designed to isolate and energize the so-called ‘expansiveness’ factor in the human psyche.
“I don’t want it,” Polletti said, but he swallowed it. Then, resignedly, he swallowed a tiger-shaped purple-and-white-striped pill of Gneia-IIa, the newly modified evoker of charisma developed by I. J. Farben. Then came a little golden sphere of Dharmaoid, the propinquity-perception-reduction agent developed in the Hyderabad Laboratories; then a carefully timed, tear-shaped ampule of Lacchrimol; and at last a wolf-shaped capsule of Hyperbendex, the latest psychic energy energizer.
“How do you feel now?” Gino asked.
“I’ll get by,” Polletti said. He pursed his lips and glanced at his watch. Then, as the various ingredients hit, he leaped up from the camp stool and bolted to a makeup table in one corner of the hut. He removed his business suit and struggled into a simple white plastic redemption gown, hung around his neck an imitation Mayan sun plaque made of imitation brass, and pulled a curly-blond wig over his dark hair.
“How do I look?” he cried.
“Great, Marcello; you look just great,” Gino said. “As a matter of fact, you’ve never looked as great as you look now.”
“Do you really mean that?” Marcello asked.
“I swear it by everything I hold dear,” Gino said, just as he always said. He looked at his watch. “Less than one minute! Go out there and give it to them, Marcello!”
“I think I shall be sensational tonight,” Marcello said, and walked grandly out the door. Gino watched him go, and felt a little throb in his throat. He knew that he was witnessing a real trouper; and he also knew that he was about to have an attack of indigestion.
Polletti marched out grandiloquently to face his audience. His gaze was calm, his step unhurried. Behind and around him the dulcet strains of “O Sole Mio” were diffused upon the still and expectant air.
Nearby was a bit of withered sedge upon which no bird sang. Just past that was a red pulpit to which Polletti repaired. Facing the audience and adjusting the microphone, Polletti declaimed, “Today, at the close of this day like and yet unlike all other days, upon our frail bark of mortality with which we journey across the storm-tossed waters of eternity, we think to ourselves this thought. …”
The audience leaned forward expectantly. Polletti saw Caroline smiling at him from the front row. He blinked rapidly once or twice and then recovered.
“These last rays of the dying yet ever-renewing sun,” Polletti stated, “come to us from 149½ million kilometers away. What can we derive from this? This distance is supernal and illogical, implacable and yet illusory; for shall not our fiery father return to us?”
“Sure he will!” several thousand voices cried.
Polletti smiled sadly. “And when he returns—will we be here to bask in his life-giving splendor?”
“Who indeed can tell whether or not this proposition is true?” the audience responded instantly.
“Indeed, who?” Polletti responded to their response. “Yet we can take comfort in the thought that our dear father has not in fact disappeared at all; that even now he is merely speeding on his urgent journey to Los Angeles.”
The sun was sliding beneath the ocean’s waves. Most people in the audience were crying, except for an irreducible few who were arguing various sides of the doctrine of solar pseudopropinquity. Even Caroline seemed moved. Polletti himself was in tears as he came to his closing peroration, which he delivered entirely in demotic Greek.
It was completely dark now; and so, to mingled cheers and curses, Polletti left the stage.
A hand seized him in the darkness. It was Caroline, tears running freely down her face.
“Marcello, it was so lovely!” she said.
“I guess it was all right,” Polletti said, still weeping, “if you like sunsets.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not particularly,” Polletti said. “I just happen to be in the sunset business.”
“But you’re crying!” she pointed out.
“A drug-induced response,” Polletti told her. He wiped his eyes. “It’ll pass soon. One needs to build empathy in this business, and that’s hard when one doesn’t feel any. But of course, that’s business.”
“How is the sunset business?” Caroline asked.
“It used to be a lot better,” Polletti said. “But nowadays. …” He stopped and looked at her. “But why are you asking? Is this an interview or just curiosity?”
“Oh, both, I suppose.”
“Do you still want that interview with me?” Polletti asked abruptly.
“Of course I do,” Caroline said.
“Very well, then,” Polletti said, “I’ll do it. For a suitable fee, of course.”
“Let’s say three hundred dollars,” Caroline suggested.
Polletti looked blank and began walking to his hut. Caroline followed him, saying, “Five hundred?”
Polletti walked on. With a faint hint of desperation, Caroline bid a thousand dollars.
Polletti stopped. “How long would it take?”
“An hour, two at the most.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning, at ten o’clock in the Colosseum.”
“All right,” Polletti said. “I think I’ll be free. But perhaps you should put down a deposit to make sure.”
Dazed, Caroline opened her purse, took out a crisp $500 bill, and handed it to him. Polletti removed his wig and unzipped a little change purse in the lining. He stuffed the bill in, zipped the zipper shut, and said, “Thanks. I’ll see you later.”
Coolly he walked on into the hut.
15
Polletti changed into his street clothes and then sat for ten minutes contemplating his right index finger. He had never before realized that it was fully two centimeters longer than his right ring finger. The discovery of this asymmetry, which at another time might have given him a certain wry amusement, now served only to anger him. And his anger in turn served only to depress him, and to produce in his mind images of digital guillotines, ragged-edged hatchets, serpentine yataghans, bloodstained razor blades. …
He shook his head violently, pulled himself together and swallowed a stiff dose of Infradex, a drug designed to alleviate drug reactions. Within seconds he was his old, normally depressed self. This cheered him considerably, and he left the hut in a mood teetering on the edge of equanimity.
Outside, in the near darkness, something or someone touched his sleeve. Polletti’s lightning-quick reflexes took over and he whirled into Defensive Maneuver Three, Part 1. Simultaneously, his right hand streaked out like a striking puff adder, snatching for his holstered gun. Unfortunately, he had the bad luck to trip over a cypress root. His hand missed the gun’s butt by a mere 1.6 centimeters, and he succeeded only in ripping his jacket as he fell heavily to the ground.
So this is it, thought Polletti. One moment’s inattention, and the long expected death came at last—unexpectedly! In that agonized moment, sprawled helpless upon the uncaring ground, Polletti realized that no preparation for one’s own death is possible. Death has had too much experience in catching men off guard, in piercing their attitudes and reducing their poses.
All that remained was to die with dignity. Therefore Polletti wiped a fleck of spittle from his lips, choked back an unworthy belch, and smiled with ironic acceptance.
“Goodness,” said Caroline, “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you hurt?”
“Nothing is damaged except my self-esteem,” Polletti said, getting to his feet and dusting off his clothing. “You shouldn’t jump at a Victim like that; you could get killed.”
“I suppose I could have,” Caroline replied, “if you had gotten your gun out without falling down. You’re sort of clumsy, aren’t you?”
“Only when I lose my balance,” Polletti said with dignity. “Would you mind telling me why you’re hanging around here?”
“That’s a little hard to explain,” Caroline said.
“I see,” Polletti said, smiling cynically.
“No, it’s not what you think.”
“Of course not,” Polletti said, smiling even more cynically.
“I simply want to talk with you.”
Polletti nodded ironically and smiled most cynically; then, since he detested extremes of attitude, he shrugged ever so slightly and said in a matter-of-fact voice, “All right, I don’t care. Let’s talk.”
They walked together across the low littoral at the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee, along the long silver-gray crescent of beach. It was twilight; behind them the eastern sky was blue-black, like a great purplish bruise on the soft white underbelly of the heavens. To westward, the fading colors of the vanished sun’s afterglow were drawn irresistibly into the steely waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea. A faint glittering of stars was already visible against the encroaching darkness to the south.
“Gee, those are pretty stars,” Caroline said, with unaccustomed shyness. “Especially that little funny one on the left.”
“That is U. Cephei,” Polletti said. “It’s a binary, actually, and its principal star is spectral type B, which corresponds to a surface temperature of some 15,000 degrees.”
“I never knew that,” Caroline said, sitting down on the close-grained sand.
“U. Cephei’s small companion,” Polletti went on, “has a surface temperature of only six thousand degrees, give or take a few degrees.” He sat down beside her.
“That’s sad, in a way,” Caroline said.
“Yes, I suppose it is, in a way,” Polletti said. He felt strangely lightheaded. Perhaps this was because the star he had so confidently identified as U. Cephei was in fact Beta Persei, also known as Algol, the Demon Star, whose autumnal effect upon certain temperaments is too well known to be discussed here.
“Stars are nice,” Caroline said. It was the sort of statement which Polletti would usually have considered banal, but which now he found endearing.
“Yes, I suppose they are nice,” he replied. “I mean, it’s nice to have them there every night.”
“Yes,” Caroline said. “It’s very nice.”
“It really is nice,” Polletti agreed. Then he got a grip on himself and said, “Look, we didn’t come ’ out here to discuss stars. What do you really want to talk about?”
Caroline didn’t answer at first. She was looking pensively out to sea. A long tress of blonde hair had fa
llen across her cheek, softening and framing the exquisite line of her face. Dreamily she picked up a handful of sand and let it run through her long, slender fingers; and Polletti, cynic though he was, felt a sudden irrational pang of sentiment run through the very depths of his being. Absurdly enough, he found himself remembering a little thatched house in the hills above Perugia, and a plump, gray-haired, smiling woman standing in the vine-shrouded doorway with an earthenware pitcher in her hand. He had seen that motherly figure only once, on a postcard which Vittorio had sent him. It had made no impression on him at the time; but now. …
Caroline turned to face him, and her great violet eyes reflected the last rosy glint of afterglow. Polletti trembled, though the sea-level temperature was 78° Fahrenheit and a sultry breeze was blowing from the southwest at five miles an hour.
“I want to know about you,” Caroline said simply.
Polletti managed to laugh. “Me? I am a very usual sort of man, and I have lived a very typical life.”
“I want to hear about it,” Caroline said.
“There’s really nothing to tell,” Polletti said; but he found himself talking about his childhood, and his first boyish experiments in murder and sex; his confirmation, and the days of his young manhood; his infatuation with serene and optimistic Lidia—an infatuation which marriage had transformed into a crescendo of boredom; his meeting and subsequent life with Olga, whose hectic wildness he learned too late was due to a congenital instability rather than to a passionate independence of character.
Caroline realized at once that, for Polletti, experience had brought only the bitter residue of pleasure which is the true essence of disenchantment. Certain delights which in his youth had seemed unique and unobtainable had turned out, upon acquisition, to be infinitely and drearily repeatable. Through this morose insight he had wrapped himself in that civilized gray cloak of ennui which some say is but the reverse side of the piebald garment of hope. It was sad, she thought; but surely not irrevocable.
The 10th Victim Page 8