“Disguise him how?” asked Gino. “You know Donati told our crowd to turn up just as we are.”
“That’s it,” said Caterina, “in shirts, jeans, sweaters, anything. Look at Armino. That city suit, that shirt, those shoes. He even dresses like a courier! Give him a different haircut, and a colored shirt inside a pair of jeans, and he won’t even recognize himself.”
“Caterina’s right,” said Paolo. “Let’s take him to the nearest barber and get him crew-cut. Then we’ll find him something to wear in the marketplace. We’ll share the cost all round. All right, Armino, keep your two thousand lire; you may need them.”
I became a lay figure in their hands. We left the café, Paolo paying for the drinks, and I was taken to a barber who transformed me from what I had hitherto believed myself to be, an elegant representative of Sunshine Tours, Genoa, into an undistinguished backstreet hipster. This transformation became even more pronounced when they escorted me later to a cut-price store, and there, behind a row of bargain goods, I divested myself of my one good suit—the other was in the suitcase on board the “Garibaldi”—and donned a pair of black jeans, with a leather belt, a jade green shirt, an ersatz leather jerkin and a pair of sneakers. My own clothes were put in a parcel and handed to Caterina, who told me they were terrible, and she would do her best to lose them. They stood me in front of a mirror in the store, and—I suppose it was chiefly the haircut—I doubted if even Aldo would recognize me. I might have been an immigrant just landed on American shores, a semi-barbarian already, with only the flick-knife missing.
“You look terrific,” said Caterina, squeezing my hand, “much better than before.”
“You have style now,” said Gino. “Before you had nothing.”
Their admiration both baffled and discouraged me. If the object I now was pleased their aesthetic taste, what point in common had we? Or were they merely being kind?
“We’ll live it up a little longer yet,” said Paolo. “No need to return to Ruffano before dark. Caterina shall catch a later bus, and Armino ride with me. We’ll escort the bus on our motorbikes. Let’s go and see if the Sports Palace is open. Caterina, you meet us there.”
Once again I mounted behind Paolo, and for the next few hours I enjoyed the doubtful pleasure of a student’s holiday. We careered backwards and forwards by the beach, by the hotels, up and down the viale Trieste, sometimes racing in company with Gino and Mario, sometimes chasing tourist cars. We patronized the cafés with the loudest radios and the most crowded bars, ending up at a restaurant where we consumed bowlfuls of brodetto, the fish soup flavored with saffron, garlic and tomato that Marta used to make me as a child. Finally, when it was nearing nine, we took Caterina, still carrying my discarded clothes, to catch her bus, and escorting it on either side, much to the disgust and fury of both driver and conductor, we rode back to Ruffano. What fate awaited me no longer mattered. I had ceased to care, while standing on the beach at Fano some five hours before. I clung to Paolo’s belt, and like outriders to the bus we scorched and swerved over the intervening hills.
Ruffano, a celestial city, rose in front of us with a thousand winking lights, the floodlit Duomo and campanile seeming to shine with a white radiance between either summit. Here from the east the ducal palace was screened by other buildings, but the pale glow in the sky revealed its presence and that of the university beyond, while staring across the slopes directly facing us as we rode towards the encircling wall below would be the lights from my old home in the via dei Sogni, where the Butalis must now be dining.
From one of those windows, impossible to discern among its neighbors, Aldo and I had looked across the valley here as boys, feeling ourselves superior to those who lived in the farmsteads beneath, and as I remembered this, clinging tight to Paolo’s belt as we approached the porta Malebranche, I glanced up instinctively to the row of lights, uniform and straight, that came from the foundling hospital on the northern hill. There, in that cold building, forlorn, unclaimed, Aldo would have spent his childhood but for my father and for Luigi Speca. There, clad in a gray overall, with close-cropped head, he would have been a foundling boy, and matured, adult, he would have borne another name. I, the only son of my parents’ later years, would have been christened Aldo in his stead.
The thought was sobering, even chastening. I should have been different too. Instead of growing up in Aldo’s shadow, fearful, overawed, docile to his command, the whole course of my life must have been otherwise. We passed under the porta Malebranche and I knew I would not have it changed. He might not be my brother, he might not be my parents’ son, but from the beginning he had possessed me, body, heart and soul, and he possessed me still. He was my god, he was my devil too. Through all the years I had believed him dead my world had been empty, without meaning.
The bus ground to a halt inside the city gate. Paolo and I, with our companion vespa, shot away to the northern summit and the piazza del Duca Carlo. Here, the scene of Tuesday’s episode, Duke Carlo, floodlit as he had been then, gazed down benignly on the crowd beneath him. Students and Ruffanesi milled backwards and forwards across the piazza and around the gardens under the statue. The Honors graduates paraded wearing medallions strung on chains, as was the custom, so Paolo informed me, applauded and followed by strings of admiring fellow students. Extempore music filled the air—mouth organs, whistles and guitars. Proud parents watched and strolled with indulgent eyes. The inevitable collecting-boxes rattled. Crackers burst and dogs fled howling. Those who possessed cars drove slowly along the piazza, while the vespas, ours among them, roared and spluttered in an ever-widening circle.
“What did I tell you?” said Paolo as two carabinieri wandered sedately past us, immaculate in uniform. “Neither those fellows, nor a dozen others in plain clothes, would look at you. Tonight you’re one of us.”
The largest crowd of students had formed themselves into a group of some hundreds strong outside Professor Elia’s house, and were shouting and calling for him.
“Elia… Elia…” they chanted, and then, as for one brief moment he appeared and waved to them from the front door of his house, a burst of cheering came from the assembled students. Grouped behind him were his associates and members of his Department, and it seemed to me as he stood there, smiling and waving, that something of self-confidence and bravura had returned, yet not quite all. A momentary hesitation when, on the fringe of the crowd, an unseen student shouted “Where are your bathing briefs?” followed immediately by an explosive burst from a cracker and a gulf of involuntary laughter, suggested, as the professor gave a final wave and then withdrew, that the memory of Tuesday night was with him still.
“Who said that?” cried Gino angrily, turning, with many others, to the back of the crowd from where the disturbance came, and at once the murmur rose from all about us, “It’s an Arts man from the other hill. Get him, murder him…” In a moment all was confusion, heads turned, the crowd broke up, people began to run.
“A foretaste of what’s to come,” said Paolo in my ear. “Why worry about him now? We’ll get the lot tomorrow.”
Once more he set the vespa in motion, and Caterina, appearing suddenly from the midst of the crowd, dashed forward and climbed onto the narrow space between the handlebars.
“Come on,” she said breathlessly, “it will take the three of us. Let’s see what’s doing on the other hill.”
We swerved out of the piazza del Duca Carlo, followed by Gino and Mario, and so on to the encircling road on the southwest side of Ruffano, beneath the city walls. Now the façade of the ducal palace shone in splendor, the twin towers paramount, and it was as if the whole edifice was suspended there between heaven and earth, carved out in silhouette against a canopy of stars. We roared down into the valley and up onto the southern hill, but as we topped the rise beneath the students’ hostel and the new university buildings we saw at once that the intermediate roads were blocked. A group of students was there, and not only in force but armed.
“What
is it? Are the Arts crowd rehearsing?” shouted Gino as we caught the flash of steel. But they were running down the hill towards us, silently, not shouting, and as Gino braked with his foot and swerved a spear came hurtling through the air and struck the ground in front of us. “Come on at your risk!” a voice called. “My God,” cried Paolo, “that’s no rehearsal!” and braking, like Gino, he turned, before a second spear could follow the first.
We plunged back the way we had come, down into the valley beneath the city walls, braking to a halt on the further side, where we dismounted, staring at one another, while in the distance the floodlit ducal palace shone unheeding and serene. All four faces were white. Caterina was trembling, but with excitement, not with fear.
“Now we know,” said Gino, breathing quickly. “That’s what they have in store for us tomorrow.”
“We were warned,” said Paolo quietly. “Donati warned us at the theater on Monday night. It’s a question of striking first, that’s all. If we get their forward lines with stones and break them up we can rush them and fight close before they have time to launch those spears or use their swords.”
“All the same,” said Mario, “we ought to tell our leaders what we’ve seen. Aren’t they meeting tonight in the via dei Martiri?”
“Yes,” said Gino.
Paolo turned to me. “This may not be your fight, but you’re part of it now,” he said. “What about your brother? Is he connected with the university?”
“Indirectly,” I said.
“Then you had better warn him what he’ll be in for if he goes on the streets tomorrow.”
“I think he knows,” I answered.
Caterina stamped her foot impatiently. “Why waste time talking?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we spread the word round among all our crowd?” Her small face, passionate and white, looked suddenly distorted under her cloud of hair. “None of us should go to bed tonight,” she said. “We ought to bring the others out here into the countryside and dig for stones. We’ll never find stones inside the city. They should be jagged, this size,” she formed a circle with her hands, “and bound with rope, so that we can swing them with greater force.”
“Catte’s right,” said Gino. “Let’s get moving. First to the via dei Martiri to tell the leaders—they may want to issue new instructions. Come on, Mario.”
He swung himself onto his machine, Mario behind him, and took the road towards the porta dei Martiri.
Paolo looked at me. “Well,” he asked, “what now? Do you want us to take you to your brother?”
“No,” I said.
I had made up my mind. To return to the pensione would achieve nothing. Aldo might even hand me over to his students with orders to drive me straight to Fano again. Whereas tomorrow… Tomorrow the cortège of the Falcon would leave the piazza del Duca Carlo at ten a.m. What it would consist of I did not know. Nobody seemed to know. But Aldo would be with it, that I felt certain.
The night was warm. The leather jerkin bought at Pesaro was protection enough. I would spend the night in the open on one of the benches in the public gardens behind the piazza de Duca Carlo.
When I told Paolo this he shrugged his shoulders. “If that’s how you want it, we won’t prevent you,” he said, “but you’ll join us in the morning, remember. We shall be on the steps of San Cipriano. If you’re not in your place by nine you may be stopped. Here, take this.” He handed me a knife. “I’ll get another out of Gino,” he said. “After what we’ve seen tonight you’re going to need it.”
Caterina and I climbed once more onto his machine, and we scorched our way up the northern hill again. The crowds had thinned. Townsfolk and students, relatives and visiting tourists, were wending their way downhill to the city center. I should have the public gardens to myself.
“Don’t forget,” said Caterina, “to fill your pockets with stones. You’ll find plenty there, under the trees. And take your parcel. It will do as a pillow. We’ll look out for you tomorrow, and good luck.”
I watched them swerve down the hill and out of sight, and as they disappeared suddenly, without warning, the floodlights were extinguished everywhere. The statue of Duke Carlo became a shadow. The campanile by the Duomo struck eleven. The city churches followed, one by one. And when the last note sounded I stretched myself out on a bench in the gardens, the parcel as a pillow, and with folded arms stared up at the darkening sky.
22
I don’t remember sleeping. There were just gaps in time between periods of cold. There was a moment when I stamped up and down blowing on my hands, so stiff and numb that I nearly crept for shelter within the comparative warmth of Professor Elia’s portico, but did not do so because my vigil in the open was, in its strange way, a sort of test. Aldo had done this in the past, night after night, among his partisans. Romano, Antonio, Roberto… the boys brought up in the hills during the Resistance years, they had lived thus as children, but not I. The sleazy furnishing of second-rate hotels, not mountains, formed my background. My ceiling was an apartment room, cramped, confining, not the sky. The adults who spoiled and petted me to win favor from my mother spoke an alien tongue. Their uniforms stank, not of sweat and the clean earth as the torn clothes of the partisans would have done, but of yesterday’s spilled wine, of perspiration dribbled out in lust instead of in war. Aldo and his comrades, the orphaned boys and theirs, had the hard ground for bed, or at most a sleeping bag, while I lay stifled with eiderdowns and coverlets in a small room next my mother’s, the partition thin; and the night-cries of the hills were never mine, nor the sound of mountain streams, nor the echo of storms, only the sighs of pleasure’s aftermath.
Therefore tonight, at least, I would share in fantasy the beauty and the hardship of a reality I had not known. However cold I became, however numb, these sensations made me a partner in what had been. The stiffness of my limbs became an offering, my body’s chill belated sacrifice.
As I have said, there was a gap in time between sleeping and waking, and then when the temperature was lowest I awoke and went and stood close to the orphanage gate, and watched the dawn break on Ruffano. First light was gray and cold, a phantom day, a temporary shifting of night’s shadows, and then the sky hardened, becoming white, and the shrouded city turned to rose. The sun came up over the sleeping hills. Arrows of gold broke up the patterned valleys, then struck the shuttered windows of the city. The trees in the municipal gardens rustled, and the hesitant birds, waking to another day, stirred and murmured, then, as the light strengthened and the sunlight touched them, sang.
Day after day I had awakened as a child to Aldo’s voice, or to Marta calling from the kitchen, but not to this. Then there had seemed security and certainty, morning promised an eternity. Now as the sun turned the city’s spires to swords and the rounded Duomo to a ball of fire, I knew there was no promise and no eternity, or if eternity only a repetition of a million ages gone with none to care and all the dead extinguished. The men who had built Ruffano lived in memory alone. This was their epitaph. They had created beauty, and it was enough. They lived for a brief span to burn and die.
I wondered then why we should desire more, why we should yearn to perpetuate ourselves in some everlasting paradise. Man was Prometheus, bound to his symbol rock the earth and all the other undiscovered stars that shamed the dark. The challenge was to dare. To brave extinction.
I went on standing there, watching the sun bring warmth and life to my city of Ruffano. I thought, not only of Aldo but of all those students, now asleep, who in a few hours would be fighting in the streets. This Festival was neither play nor pageant, nor a mock representation of medieval splendor, but a summons to destroy. I could no more stop it than any single man could stop a war. Even if the order came at the last moment to cancel the Festival display, the students would disregard it. They wanted to fight. They wanted to kill. Just as their forebears had done through centuries in the same haunted, bloody streets. This time I should not escape, I should be one of them.
It was nearing
seven when I heard the horses first. The steady clopping sound came from the piazza behind me, and turning I walked back to the statue and I saw the leading string climb the summit of the hill. They came in pairs, each rider leading a second horse, and they were approaching from the long road leading up to Ruffano from the valley below.
Then I remembered how last night, when we were circling the city on our vespas, I had seen lights in the sports stadium to the right of us, which in the excitement of our ride I had soon forgotten. The horses and their escort must have camped there before sundown, and were now arriving in the piazza to take part in the display. This was the cortège mentioned by Aldo in the ducal palace on Wednesday night.
The riders dismounted, leading their horses to the shelter of the trees. The sun was drawing the moisture from the ground, and it rose like steam from the soaking grass about Duke Carlo’s statue, filling the morning air with scent like hay.
I drew nearer and counted the horses. There were eighteen of them, sleek and beautiful, their proud heads lifted curiously to stare about them. None of them was saddled. Their coats shone as though polished, and their tails, whisking at the first flies of the day, were like the proud plumes of conquerors. I went up and spoke to one of the men.
“Where do they come from?” I inquired.
“From Senigallia,” he said.
I stared at him, disbelieving. “You mean these are racehorses?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered, smiling, “every one of them. Lent for the Festival, each horse specially trained for this display. They’ve been training in the hills all winter.”
“Training for what?” I asked.
This time it was he who stared. “Why, for this morning’s run, what else?” he said. “Don’t they tell you what’s to happen in your own city?”
“No,” I said, “no. All we’ve been told is that a cortège leaves here at ten for the ducal palace.”
“A cortège?” he repeated. “Well, you can call it that, but it’s a poor description of what you are going to see.” He laughed, and called to one of his companions. “Here’s a student from Ruffano,” he said, “wants to know what’s going to happen. Break it gently.”
The Flight of the Falcon Page 30
