The old man bobbed up and down before him. “You should have let us know you were coming, Don Cesare,” he said. “We would have had the house ready for you.”
Cesare smiled wryly. “It is an unexpected visit, Gio. I can only remain overnight. Tomorrow I must be on my way home.”
A frown crossed the old man’s face. “Home, Don Cesare? This is home.”
Cesare started up the steps toward the house. “Yes,” he said gently. “I keep forgetting. But now I live in America.”
Gio pulled the valise from the back seat of the car and hurried after Cesare. “What happened in the race, Don Cesare? Did you win?”
Cesare shook his head. “No, Gio. My generator burned out. I had to stop. That is how I had time to come here.”
He crossed the big chilly entrance hall and came to a stop under the portrait of his father. For a moment he stared up at the thin patrician face that looked down at him from the portrait. The war had broken him. Spiritually and physically. He had spoken out against the Germans and Il Duce ordered the lands confiscated. The old man had died soon after.
“I am sorry about your car, Don Cesare.” Gio’s voice came from behind him.
“The car, oh, yes.” Cesare turned from the portrait and walked to the library. He hadn’t been thinking about the car, not even about his father. He had just been realizing how changed it all was.
He had come back after the war and everything was gone. His uncle had come to own everything then. The bank, the lands. Everything except the castle and the title. His uncle had never forgiven his brother for legitimizing Cesare, thus depriving him of succession to the title.
No word was ever spoken aloud about it but everyone knew how the miserly little man who owned the exchange bank felt. Cesare remembered bitterly how he had gone to see his uncle.
“Signor Raimondi,” he had said arrogantly, “I have been told that my father had some monies deposited with you.”
Raimondi had peered at him shrewdly across the dirty black desk. “You have heard incorrectly, my nephew,” he had said in his thin reedy voice. “It is, in truth, the other way round. The late Count, my good brother, unfortunately died owing me vast sums. I have here in my desk mortgages on the castle and all its lands.”
It had been the truth. Everything was proper and in order. Leave it to Raimondi Cardinali to do that. For three years after the war Cesare had to live under the old man’s thumb. Dependent upon him for his very existence, he came to hate him. He even had to come to his office to get money for carfare to his beloved fencing matches.
It was one such afternoon that Cesare had first met Emilio Matteo. He had been in his uncle’s office in the bank when there was a great commotion outside. He turned and looked out the glass-framed door.
A handsomely dressed gray-haired man was walking toward it. There was much bowing and scraping as he walked along. “Who is that?” Cesare asked.
“Emilio Matteo,” Raimondi had answered, already getting to his feet in greeting.
Cesare raised an inquiring eyebrow. He had never heard of the man.
“Matteo,” his uncle explained impatiently. “One of the Dons of the Society. He has just come back from America.”
Cesare smiled. The Society, they called it. The Mafia. Grown men playing like boys, spilling their blood together, calling each other Uncle and Nephew and Cousin.
“Do not smile,” his uncle had snapped. “In America the Society is very important. Matteo is the richest man in all Sicily.”
The door opened and Matteo came in. “Buon giorno, Signor Cardinali,” he spoke with a heavy American accent.
“I am honored by your visit, Signor Matteo.” Raimondi bowed. “How can I serve you today?”
Matteo looked inquiringly at Cesare. Raimondi hastened forward. “Allow me to present my nephew, Count Cardinali.” He turned to Cesare. “Signor Matteo from America.”
Matteo looked at him with a calculating eye. “Major Cardinali?”
Cesare nodded. “That was during the war.”
“I have heard of you,” Matteo said.
It was Cesare’s turn to look at him. There were very few people that had heard of him during the war. Only those who had very special information. He wondered how much the man knew. “I am honored, sir,” he said.
Raimondi wanted to get down to business. Peremptorily he dismissed Cesare. “Come back tomorrow,” he said importantly, “and I will see if we can spare you the money to go to your petty fencing match.”
Cesare’s lips tightened, his blue eyes grew dark and cold. For a moment his body tensed. Someday the old man would go too far. Already he took upon himself too many liberties. He could feel Matteo’s eyes upon him as he went to the door.
He heard Raimondi’s voice as he closed it. “A fine boy but an expense. He is a relic of the past, trained for nothing, he can do no work…” The door closed, shutting off the patronizing voice.
***
Gio had started a fire in the library and Cesare stood in front of it, holding a glass of brandy in his hand.
“I will have dinner ready in half an hour,” the old man said.
Cesare nodded. He crossed the room to the desk and picked up the photograph of his mother that still stood on it. He remembered her eyes. They were blue like his own but soft and warm and kind. He remembered the day she came upon him in the garden. He was only eight years old then.
He had been absorbed watching the big green fly he had impaled on a pin in the wood struggling to get away.
“Cesare! What on earth are you doing?”
He turned and saw his mother standing there. He smiled happily and pointed. Her eyes followed his finger.
Her face had paled, then grew angry. “Cesare, stop that! Release him immediately. That’s cruel.”
Cesare pulled the pin from the wood but the fly still stuck to it. He looked up at his mother curiously, then down at the fly. Quickly he pulled the wings from it and dropped it on the floor and stepped on it.
His mother stared at him angrily. “Cesare, why did you do that?”
His face turned serious for a moment as he thought, then it wrinkled in a winning smile. “I like to kill,” he said.
His mother had stared at him for another moment, then turned and went back into the house. A year later she was dead of the fever and after that the Count took him to the castle to live and there was a succession of teachers and tutors but no one that dared speak to him with impunity.
He put the photograph down. He was getting restless. There were too many memories here. The castle reeked of the past. What he should do was sell it and become an American citizen. That was the only way to deal with the past. Cut it cleanly as if with a knife so that no trace of it remained anywhere inside you.
He thought of the message that summoned him here. The message that took him from the race, that kept him from meeting Ileana on the Riviera. He smiled to himself when he thought of Ileana. There was something about those Rumanian women, especially the demimondaines with the titles. By now she was probably on her way to California with that rich Texan.
Gio opened the library door. “Dinner is ready, Your Excellency,” he said.
5
The napery was white and soft; the candles, gold and glowing; the silver, polished and gleaming. Gio had done himself proud. There was cold sliced eel, flecked with sparkling ice and hot steaming scampi in the warmer on the sideboard.
Gio had changed to his purple and green butler’s uniform and stood proudly, holding the chair at the head of the long, white, empty table for Cesare.
Cesare sat down and reached for a napkin. “My compliments, Gio. You are indeed a genius.”
Gio bobbed proudly. “I try, Your Excellency.” He began to open a bottle of white Orvieto. “It is not like the old days, when the board was crowded for dinner every night. It has been a long time.”
Cesare tasted the wine and nodded. It had been a long time. But the world had moved on. Time would not stand still, even for Gi
o. He looked down the table.
***
It had not been like this after the war. Then they were lucky if there was food on the table, much less cloth. He remembered the night that Matteo had come to see him. It had been the same day that he had met him in his uncle’s office. He had been seated at this same table then, eating cheese and bread and apple from the naked wooden board.
There had been the sound of a car outside and Gio had gone to the door. A moment later he was back. “Signor Matteo to see Your Excellency,” he had said.
Cesare told Gio to bring him in. Matteo had come into the room, his quick appraising eyes seeing everything at once. The naked board, the poor food, the steel cutlery. His face told Cesare nothing.
Cesare waved him to a seat and invited him to share the food. Matteo sat down and shook his head. He had already eaten. Cesare couldn’t care less. He was of the class to whom poverty wasn’t important. It was a point of annoyance, not of embarrassment. He was secure in his position.
The amenities over, Gio cleared the table and Cesare leaned back in his chair, his strong white teeth biting into the apple.
Matteo looked at him. He saw the lean rakish face, the dark, almost black, ice-blue eyes and strong jaw of the young man opposite him. He also saw the savage strength in the wrist and hands that held the apple. “Do you speak English, Major?” he asked in that language.
Cesare nodded. “I was educated in England before the war,” he answered in the same language.
“Good,” Matteo answered. “If you don’t mind we’ll speak in that language then. My Italian… well… I left here when I was a child of three.”
“I don’t mind,” Cesare answered.
“I suppose you are wondering why I am here?” Matteo had asked.
Cesare nodded silently.
Matteo waved his hand, indicating the castle. “My father used to tell me of the wonders of the Castolo Cardinali. How they used to look up from the village and see it all gay and sparkling with light.”
Cesare put the core of the apple on the table and shrugged his shoulders. “It is the fortunes of war.”
Matteo answered quickly. “Or the good fortune of your uncle.”
“That moneylender,” Cesare said contemptuously. “He owns everything now.”
Matteo looked directly into Cesare’s eyes. “While he lives,” he said.
“That kind is too stingy to die,” Cesare said.
Matteo smiled. “In America we have a name for that kind of man. Shylock. After the usurer in the play.”
Cesare smiled back. “America has a way of expressing things very pithily. Shylock. It is very good.”
Matteo continued as if there hadn’t been the minor diversion. “Your uncle is alone, he has no family, no other relative but you. And he has a bank with two hundred million lire.”
Cesare looked at him. He recognized himself in the older man. “I have thought about it many times. The pig does not deserve to live. But if I were to kill him it would do me no good.”
Matteo shook his head seriously. “True. But if he were to die, say while you are at the fencing match one hundred fifty meters away from here, you would be a rich man again.”
Cesare looked at him for a moment then got to his feet. “Gio!” he called. “Bring that bottle of Napoleon brandy. We are going into the library.”
When Gio had closed the door behind him and they were alone in front of the leaping fire, Cesare turned to Matteo. “Why did you come here?” he asked directly.
Matteo smiled and picked up his brandy. “I had heard about you, Major.”
“Heard what?”
“You remember of course that part of the war just before the Allies invaded Italy?” He didn’t wait for Cesare to answer. “An associate of mine, who is at present in Naples, and I gave the American government a list of people to contact in preparation for that invasion. These people were members of an underground that had existed long before the war, before even the first war. The Mafioso.”
Cesare didn’t speak.
“I learned that you were one of the Italian officers assigned to cooperate with the O.S.S. by the Italian High Command. You were assigned to contact nine men and secure their cooperation. You murdered five of them.”
“They would not cooperate,” Cesare said quickly. “That was explained in my report.”
Matteo smiled. “The official explanation does not concern me. I have made enough of them myself to have no faith in their veracity. But you and I know better. You see, the officials never saw the bodies of the men you killed. My friends did.”
Matteo put down his glass of brandy and looked across at Cesare. “That’s why I do not understand about your uncle, my friend. When death comes so joyously and easily to your hand, how you could let him live?”
Cesare looked down at him. “That was different then. It was war.”
Matteo smiled. “War was only the excuse for you. There were others. The soldier down in the village when you were still a boy, the young Englishman you ran off the road in your car the last year you were in school, the German mistress of your commanding officer in Rome when she threatened to expose you to him.” He looked up into Cesare’s face. “You see, I have much better sources of information than the authorities.”
Cesare sank into the chair opposite. He took a drink of his brandy and smiled. “So you have the information. It is of no use to you, so what can you do with it?”
Matteo shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t intend to do anything with it. I have told you just to let you know that I am interested in you. You see, we can be of much mutual help to one another.”
“So?”
Matteo nodded. “Circumstances have forced me to return to the land of my birth, but I am an American, not an Italian, in my heart. And also in my business interests. Unfortunately I cannot return to America for some time. Legally, that is. Of course I can go back for short periods but that is very dangerous and I cannot remain too long. Also I foresee a time when I will need an ally there, someone like yourself, someone that no one would connect me with, someone who could be of help when necessary.”
Cesare stared at him. “What about your associates? Your friends in the Society? Surely you have many allies there?”
Matteo nodded. “True. But they are all known. To each other and to the police. Sooner or later there are no secrets among them.”
Matteo got to his feet and walked over to the open hearth. He turned his back on the fire and looked over at Cesare. “You must be bored with the poverty of your existence by now. It is dull and drab and not at all in keeping with your nature. What would you do if you were free of all this?”
Cesare looked up. “I don’t know. Travel, maybe. I would get some cars and race them. Le Mans, Turino, Sebring. There is much excitement there.”
Matteo laughed. “I mean how would you make a living? Money does not last forever, you know.”
Cesare shook his head. “I never thought of that. I never liked business.”
Matteo took out a cigar and lit it. “Ah, the young, the thoughtless young.” His voice was pleasantly tolerant. “I have an interest in an automobile company recently acquired through some legitimate associates. In several years they plan to go into the American market. If by that time you had a reputation in the racing cars, you could conceivably become the head of the American company. Would you like something like that?”
“What is there about it not to like?” Cesare answered. “But what am I expected to do in return?”
Matteo looked at him. “A favor, now and then.”
“What kind of favor? I want no part of your stupid business, the petty gambling, the dope…”
Matteo interrupted. “Even if it should bring you undreamed-of wealth?”
Cesare laughed. “Wealth? Who needs it? All I desire is enough to do what I like to do.”
Matteo laughed with him. “Good. You are not ambitious then. Another point in your favor. There is no one who need be afraid of you.�
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Cesare picked up his glass again. “You still have not told me what kind of favor you will ask.”
Matteo stared at him. Their eyes met and locked. “Only to return the favor I will do you when your uncle dies tomorrow night while you are at the fencing match.”
A long moment passed, then Cesare smiled. “Good. It is done and we are agreed.”
Matteo’s face was serious. “You will take the oath?”
“I will swear on it.”
“Have you a knife?” Matteo asked.
A stiletto suddenly appeared in Cesare’s hand. Matteo stared at it. Cesare smiled and turned it over in his hand and extended it to him, hilt forward. “This is my brother,” he said. “We are always together.”
Matteo took it. “Give me your hand,” he said.
Cesare held out his hand. Matteo placed his left hand flat on Cesare’s palm. With a quick motion he pierced each index finger with the stiletto. The blood from each man’s finger bubbled up and then ran together into their palms.
Matteo looked at him. “Our blood has mingled and now we are of one family.”
Cesare nodded.
“I will die for you,” Matteo said.
“I will die for you,” Cesare repeated.
Matteo released his hand and gave him back the stiletto. He looked up into Cesare’s face. He stuck his finger into his mouth and sucked on it to stop the bleeding. “From this time on, my nephew,” he said, “we will not meet except at my wish.”
Cesare nodded. “Yes, my uncle.”
“Should you find it necessary to communicate with me, send a message to the postmaster in the village. I will get in touch with you.”
“I understand, my uncle.”
***
That had been almost twelve years ago. True to Matteo’s word, Raimondi had died the next night while Cesare was at the fencing match. The next five years had gone quickly. The races and the motor cars. The gala balls and romances. Then in 1953, just as Emilio had said, the offer came for him to head up the American agency of the automobile company. Much was made of his appointment in the press. His wild living and dangerous driving had made him an international figure of glamour. Twice he had fought duels over women. To America he was a man from another world.
Stiletto Page 4
