by Nick Dybek
“What’s this for?” Sarah asked.
“It’s a funeral, after all.”
“What funeral? Today?”
“Inconvenient, certainly,” Maud said, as if she knew about Lee.
Did she? Sarah thought she must know, and that was part of why she put the dress on, why she sat in the taxi that sped west through empty streets and gray March drizzle, past the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne. There, a small group of mourners—ten, twelve—milled beneath umbrellas. A carriage waited with two veiled figures inside.
No one seemed in a hurry, despite the rain, despite the air raids. Eventually, a black coffin was slid into the hearse and the procession began, east along Boulevard Haussmann. The storefronts were either boarded or barren: the mannequins naked and ghost-white. Sarah’s heel caught in a tram track, and Maud helped her along. It was quiet enough to hear the soft flap of the crop on the funeral horses, to hear their steady plod over the cobblestones, cracking the shattered streetlamps underfoot. They still had a long way to go.
There was the whoosh of a shell overhead and an explosion in the distance. Had anyone discussed what was to be done if the barrage began? Sarah looked to Maud, who continued at the same pace, refusing to meet her eyes. Sarah looked to the horses, as if they might make a choice. She looked to find someone in charge, but if anyone was in charge it was the dead man—whoever he was—and he had nothing to fear from the artillery.
Two dogs wobbled into the street, tongues spilling from their mouths. The mourners acted as if they didn’t notice, waiting, perhaps, for another explosion to scatter them. But even after the next shell hit, closer now, the dogs kept to a cheerful trot, and there was nothing the mourners could do; everyone knew a true Parisian could never hurt a dog.
Eventually, the boulevard narrowed, and the streets began to take on more life, even as the quality of the quartier deteriorated, garbage left in the gutters, shop awnings left to fade. The poor couldn’t make themselves as scarce. Three boys looked on from a doorway, angry with hunger. Sarah watched their eyes follow the procession in the reflection of an empty bakery window. Another shell hit, and the image rippled on the glass.
It seemed to her they must have taken a wrong turn. The street, lined with half-timbered houses, was so narrow that the carriage had trouble squeezing through. The shops on the street were apparently so old and familiar that they no longer required signs; it was impossible to tell what was what: cafés, laundries, cobblers. But each window was full of faces, watching them pass. A boy ran out from one of the storefronts, and his father caught him by the arm; but he was laughing at the boy, not angry or afraid, it seemed. There was no threat in any of it, only a queerness.
Then another shell hit. Sarah looked at her feet because she thought she might have lost a shoe; she felt her balance give. She looked up in time to see a white storm racing up the street. There was just time enough to hold her breath. To register the horses finally crying out in fear. To bow her head. And to wonder what else might be hidden in the dust. Her imagination moving faster than the explosion.
Her eyes were closed, but somehow she saw perfectly through the squall. The horses reared into the blast, which struck the hearse with such force that the coffin shot from the back and skipped once down the street. There was no slow motion at the time, so Sarah did not use the term, but I certainly imagine it that way. How else to imagine a dream in the waking world, the hollow knock of box to stone, the singe of white flowers on the coffin. Black gloves over everyone’s eyes. The coffin bouncing a second time, seeming to ride the explosion as though on a lip of surf, and, on the third bounce, breaking open and hurling out the body inside—a body whose eyes had blown open as well, who was riding that surf too, pushed by the momentum, still managing to land on his feet and to stay on his feet, nimbly running the first few steps, then slowing to a walk, as if he’d stepped off an arriving carriage too early, testing himself in the pointless way men do, especially if a woman is watching.
Well, she was watching. She could hear the tap of his shoes on the street, the pat of palm to shoulder on the beige summer suit as he tried to beat back the dust hurtling by. She saw his chest heave. He walked past her; she was close enough to reach out. He walked past, and paused, smiling shyly, his expression asking if they knew each other. Of course they did. But when she opened her mouth she began to cough and she realized that her face was just noise under the dust, that he couldn’t really see her at all. He smiled again as if to apologize for the misunderstanding.
And then the dust was gone, the body with it. Sarah came up coughing. She had lost her hat. Her hands were gray-white. There was a dry feeling in her mouth, the burned taste of a drilled tooth. She wasn’t alone. Everyone was coughing and wiping their eyes. The driver had a made a valiant effort to calm the horses. The dust stuck to Maud’s face where it was wet.
There were many rounds of are-you-all-right-yes-fine. What about the horses? Yes, fine. Several men came out of the café and inquired. They brought carafes of water and everyone drank. They brought a little carrot for the horses. And then it was time to continue on to Père Lachaise.
But first one of the men from the café—he had a badly groomed mustache, a sickly belly that wouldn’t have fit a uniform—touched Maud’s elbow.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “who is this procession for?”
* * *
The waiters put candles on the tables, little outposts in the falling darkness. The square had filled, as it often did in the early evenings, couples and friends out walking after work, the shop lights going on, seeping onto the stones. The moon rose low and big, like another shop opening for the evening. The hour of passagiato, of people going nowhere, their voices echoing across long shadows and off the old buildings. From far away, the sound of car engines.
Sarah leaned back in her chair. She twisted her mouth, then her napkin. And Paul and I waited, because it seemed there was still more to say.
“I’m not sure why I told you any of that,” she managed, eventually. “Saying all that out loud has only made me feel foolish.”
“How long before you told anyone about Lee?” I asked.
“Another day, maybe two. I had known for almost two weeks by then. I changed the date on the notice with a pen when I showed Maud. With a pen. You see, I’ve never told anyone that, and it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Maybe you wanted us to feel better,” Paul said.
“That’s possible.”
“But who was the funeral for?” Paul asked. “Surely not Lee.”
Sarah smiled. “Claude Debussy.”
“Claude Debussy, my god, really?”
The waiter appeared and began to ask us to pay the bill before breaking off mid-sentence and crossing the square. Only then did I notice the swell of panic in the voices at the tables around us, the chair legs scraping cobblestone, the whimpering of shushed children, suddenly afraid. But soon enough the frothing of engines wiped away the other sounds. And the song reached us, the melody surprisingly mellifluous, though there was nothing pleasant in the words or in the timbre of hundreds of voices singing, “All’armi! All’armi! All’armi o Fascisti.”
Headlights seared the piazza, scattering families and lovers. At the same time, more people poured in, emerging from the twist of streets, looking for room to run. But we didn’t run, not at first. Gunshots popped. You could always tell by the whistle of a shell if it would fall close enough to hurt you, but you couldn’t tell whether a bullet had struck its target from the sound.
The first of the Fiats followed the burrow of headlights and spit into the square, the back loaded with men, pistols pointed at the moon. There was none of the military order of daylight. Rather, they slunk from the back of the lorries like wolves, which I suppose was part of the idea.
My first feeling was closer to regret than fear. They were nineteen, twenty maybe, and the uniforms did nothing to age them. Some were handsome, some homely; they had acne scars
and crooked teeth, cheekbones from statues, noses from antique coins. They seemed confused about where to go. They were looking for the telegraph office. There were accusations and recriminations.
“What should we do?” Paul asked.
We continued to do nothing—imagining, I suppose, that remaining at a café table would spare us—until a boy peeled off from the squad and began to smash the tables with his cudgel, toppling ashtrays, wineglasses, and the money left in the little silver clips.
His grim gratification was something to watch. You could almost smell the countryside on him, the thatch of his old roof, the boredom of life in a town with no square and one tavern he wasn’t allowed in. You could almost see the beauty of the stars through his childlike eyes, then the greater beauty of the headlights blazing into his valley, a distinguished-looking man in the black uniform of the Arditi stepping out and offering him a piece of the new country. His paper doll come to life. I was reminded of the bear with the white eye who had charged Sarah and me in the tent in Bar-le-Duc. I’d been far more afraid in that moment, but this boy probably wasn’t as well-trained as the bear; he was probably less capable of restraint.
“We should get off the street,” I said.
The crowd in the piazza churned and twisted as if wrung out like a rag, and, still, panicked faces flooded from narrow streets, as the Blackshirts swung cudgels to clear enough space to light fires.
Sarah and I were separated from Paul in the crush of the crowd. I heard him calling our names, but there was no time—it felt like that, anyway—to turn my head, to stop. I pulled Sarah through the frenzy, out of the piazza and onto Via Ugo Bassi.
“Where’s Paul?” Sarah said. We didn’t see him. We saw high school boys pressed against one of the old towers, watching boys not much older throwing punches at college students. We saw three old women in black shawls at a window like a row of tombstones.
Every street had its own fire. We saw two Blackshirts trying to light a pile of bicycles. Cobblestones pried up and hurled at roofs, roof tiles hurled down in the streets. Typewriters splashing into fountains. We saw boys in their black hats, eagle feathers protruding. The glow of fires on their night-dweller faces.
We kept running, past the post office on Via dell’Indipendenza. We saw hatboxes smoldering, a rocking horse kicked on its side, still half-wrapped in brown paper. A Blackshirt confetti-ing letters from a sack. We saw flames scratching out windows.
We kept running, turned another corner—I had no idea which—and found ourselves in an unfamiliar courtyard where two Blackshirts stood amid a shambles of gurneys and operating lights. A metal basin came hurtling out a second-story window, and scalpels clattered on the stones. The boys had taken off their belts and were whipping a withered and naked old man, who lay facedown on the ground. He didn’t cry out, so the only sound was the lash on the frail shoulders, the boys’ laughter as they reared back, turn by turn.
I took Sarah’s arm and began to pull her away. “Basta,” Sarah said. Then, louder, “Basta.” It took me a moment to realize she wasn’t talking to me.
They did stop. They couldn’t see us at first, coming from the shadows as we were. Sarah stepped into the light. The boys exchanged shy, shamed smiles, full of peasant teeth.
The old man didn’t move or make a sound.
“You’ve killed him,” she said in Italian.
They shook their heads emphatically.
“No,” one of them said. “No, signora.”
She knelt down, touched the old man’s shoulder and immediately drew back her hand.
“Can we help him?” I asked.
Her back was to me. She got to her feet, turned, and looked one of the boys in the eyes. As he watched, she nudged the old man with her foot. The body rolled over to reveal eyeless sockets and an open incision across the abdomen.
“It’s a cadaver,” she said to no one in particular.
“Naturalmente, signora. Cosa hai pensato?” one of the boys asked.
* * *
I’d hoped we’d find refuge at Santo Stefano, but the doors were barred. We caught our breath in the strangely deserted square.
“We’d better go to my hotel,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“I didn’t mean . . .”
“We’d better go to mine. The police certainly won’t be protecting yours.”
She was right: two men in uniform leaned on rifles under her awning. Soon we were in her room with the door swinging closed.
The shutters were closed. I sat on a sofa of soft leather. She mixed drinks in bare feet. She left the lights out, except for one in the attached bath, giving the room a late-sunset quality. My drink tasted of formaldehyde. We could hear rain on the roof. Sarah peeked out at the street, then closed the shutter again.
“Anything?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Do you see anything?”
“It’s raining.”
“That’s lucky.”
“It’s disheartening.”
“It’s good for the fires.”
“Obviously I don’t mean the rain.”
It would be nice to think that she or I might have read the tangled medieval streets below like lines on a palm. Later I would learn that the Chamber of Labor was torched, the post office torched, the town hall firebombed. I learned that communists were rounded up, tied to the statue of Neptune in the piazza, and flogged. That the old man who tended bar in Bianchi’s café was burned to death.
Later still I learned—everyone learned—that the Blackshirts broke the strike in the Po Valley. That they marched on Rome, took the government, dissolved Parliament, and declared the death of liberal Italy. Later still, in the closing days of World War II, Mussolini was shot by partisans and hung by his feet outside a petrol station in Piazzale Loreto. But not before his brutally incoherent brand of politics captured the minds of any number of influential admirers. In retrospect, a good deal of the future became visible that night, particularly in the faces—orange and sweating beside the fires—of boys who had come of age just a few years too late to understand what they were doing.
But at the time I saw only her silhouette against the storm shutters.
“I’m sure he’s all right,” I said.
“Paul? I hope so.”
“Your husband, I mean.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her feet.
“I’ve hardly thought of him tonight,” she said. “I think you’re the only person I could admit that to.”
The drink was helping despite the taste. My heart had finally slowed, then it was at a sad gallop again.
“It’s no admission,” I said. “You were running for your life.” She crossed the room, a shadow changing into a robe.
“I know. But it feels like, somehow, now that you’re here, I’m supposed to admit something.”
“You’re not supposed to do anything. Nothing you don’t want to.”
“If you think that, women must not make a bit of sense to you.”
“They don’t. You, most of all.”
“I’m sure. You’ve been quite a good friend, considering.”
I actually laughed. Perhaps it did say something that we were still friends. Romantic love can endure nearly any degree of shame. But friendship is a far more fragile thing.
“Does that sound insipid?” she said, a little defensively. “What else can I say?”
“It’s just, I’m afraid I can’t return the compliment,” I said.
“No. Obviously not.”
The darkness, the rain, her silhouette. It all seems romantic when I look back, but it didn’t feel that way then. There was none of the energy you’d expect between former lovers alone in a room. None of that crackling of what might happen were the world only to tilt a certain way. Indeed, it could not have been more clear that no matter which way the world tilted, nothing would bring her to my arms. That was difficult to accept.
And ye
t. Somehow, as I looked at her back, as she took a cigarette, she knew, clearly, what I would have liked to ask.
“Sometimes I’m quite sure about him—about Lee,” she said.
* * *
Jacketed waiters poured coffee in the lobby, but, outside, along Via Ugo Bassi, I passed the remnants of uncountable fires. Chairs and tables interrupted mid-burn; lamps, typewriters, and telephones in varying degrees of smash. By midmorning the bodies—twenty-seven in all, which, sad to say, seemed like very few—had been cleared away, and the business of getting on with it had begun. Shopkeepers picking the teeth of glass from their front windows, vendors sweeping up bruised vegetables, lawyers sorting through documents, drenched and black. Two young boys called for a lost cat. A girl threw her younger brother into a pile of ash and ran away, laughing.
I hoped to find Paul at our hotel on Cartoleria, but in the lobby I found Bianchi instead. His eyes looked as if they’d been boiled. I invited him up to my room, but he told me his schedule wouldn’t permit it. He sipped a coffee. He didn’t say anything right away.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“The hospital is fine. Even the Fascists have very little interest in the insane.”
“And you?”
“I am fine.” But he didn’t look it. “Last night was very instructive, in fact,” he said.
“For me too. But you already knew everything I learned.”
“What these men are capable of? Yes, I knew. But did you see the police last night? In the cities I thought the police would finally act. Did you see them act?”
“No.”
“That makes me afraid.” He tried to summon his boyish smile, but what arrived was the brave smile of the terminally ill. “Regardless, that is not the reason I have come. I was awake during the night. I had much time to think. There is another treatment we might attempt with Mr. Fairbanks. There is some risk, but it has proved useful with other negativists.”
