The Death of Men

by Allan Massie

  Joseph Farrell

  ONE

  Raimundo

  MAY 3 I am a dandy who can no longer be troubled to dress.

  Once I had my suits made in London, my shirts in Paris, and my shoes in Florence. It seems a long time ago, though it is in fact only a few years since I retired, early, fromthe Ministero dell’ Estero, and until then I always made a point of visiting London in September to call on my tailor. Now I slop about the apartment in flannels and a sweater, with casuals on my feet. At six o’clock when I go down to the osteria or to one of the caffès in Piazza Navona if the weather is fine, I sometimes put onan old suit, but I shall never have another made. They greet me with respect in the osteria, but the younger waiters in Navona are beginning to judge me by my clothes. They can tell last year’s suit at a glance, and as for one three or four years old … So they no longer hurry to serve me. It doesn’t matter. I have after all nothing to do but wait. For the rest of my life.

  Remarkable how things have, quite simply, gone. I’m left with just my books and my cat and, of course, what no Italian can entirely escape, the Family. I have no children of my own; my brothers’ fully compensate.

  My marriage finished long ago, when I was at the Washington Embassy for the first time. I always recommend an American trip to friends who wish to achieve that consummation. There is, for Italians, something liberating in a land where divorce is the norm. It is like being an adolescent all over again.

  Not that my adolescence was anything like my nephews’ now. We studied hard, kept close to the family bosom. The utmost dissipation was an August flirtation when we went to the seaside; oh those beach umbrellas and white flannels and girls with parasols. The nice girls we knew tried to cultivate an English pallor. Quite in vain of course.

  It accorded however with their fathers’ political stance at the time.

  I remember my own father in furious argument with a cousin who supported the Fascisti – this must have been in 1923 or 4, soon after Mussolini had come to power. He accused him of betraying our class; the Fascisti were nothing but shopkeepers and bully boys. That was the general attitude among people we knew. Mussolini’s supporters were frightful people from out of town.

  Of course we came from out of town ourselves. There are practically no true Romans. How could there be? I still think of myself as a Calabrian, though I haven’t seen my miserable native province in twenty years. My brother tells me it is less wretched now. I doubt it. Merely a different style of misery in my opinion. But he has to go back; it is after all his political base.

  The attitude to the Fascisti changed of course. They became the Establishment, as my brother Corrado is in his turn. And they made the Concordat; the nice people queued up to join them. Their adulation of Mussolini became so extreme and so abject that you might easily have foretold the contempt to which he would eventually be exposed. This eagerness to rush to extremes exhibits the despicable side of our national character. I wonder if Corrado ever reflects on this.

  It’s curious how little I exchange thoughts with him. Of course he knows that I have that certain scorn that elder brothers so often have for their juniors who have met with success. In our eyes it is a little vulgar. We regard them as deluded beings, who have failed to recognize the vanity of existence. It is a comfortable sentiment.

  Actually I have always stood at an oblique angle to things. Perhaps I am still a dandy after all, like Sasha, who has just jumped on to my writing table and is rubbing his face in mine while he holds his plumy tail aloft. He’s never been neutered, but he can’t now be bothered to go out on the tiles at night.

  May 4 My nephew Sandro telephoned this morning and said he would like to see me. I didn’t, to my credit, try to put him off. He suggested that he come to the apartment, but I said no to that. It wasn’t just the natural instinct to turn down any proposal (though I recognized that the feeling was there); it was rather that I don’t like anyone to come here. Is it perhaps that I’m ashamed of how I live? I don’t think so. Anyway I said that I would meet him at the Caffè Greco.

  Afterwards I couldn’t imagine why. The Greco was sure to be full of people I used to know. I thought of telephoning to change the meeting-place, but it seemed too much trouble. Besides it occurred to me that Elena might take the call and I would have to make some excuse. I supposed the boy wanted to borrow money, and his mother would certainly suppose that too; why else, she would think, could he want to see me?

  I walked down from my broker’s in Parioli, not once solicited on the Via Veneto. I rarely am nowadays. Do I wear my dead heart so obviously on my sleeve? (But it is not hearts they buy and sell on the street, after all.)

  Sandro, to my amazement, was already in the caffè. He had taken what he knows used to be my favourite table, just below the portrait of Major Alfred Burke and opposite Colonel Cody. He was very elegantly dressed in a white linen suit. It’s perhaps for his taste in clothes that he is my favourite nephew. But there is a softness, an amiability about him too that is attractive; and he is very decorative. Certainly an English pederast at the next table couldn’t take his eyes off him.

  He stood up when I arrived and leant over to embrace me.

  ‘It’s very good of you to come, Uncle.’

  ‘My dear boy, I’m always delighted to see you. Out of the family circle at any rate. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Let’s have some chocolate, shall we? Or do you prefer coffee?’

  ‘No, chocolate will be admirable.’

  When I used to bring my nephews and nieces here for rare treats, we always had chocolate, as well as ice creams. Old habits die hard. Perhaps Sandro merely wanted to recall these afternoons to me. On the other hand I wouldn’t be surprised if he still has a taste for chocolate. And I’ve recently re-acquired mine, lost for many years.

  What’s the matter, I nearly said again, but I decided he could approach it himself, in his own way.

  ‘How’s your father?’ I said instead.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I suppose he’s all right. We don’t as you know see very much of him. I’m sure he’s overworking, but there’s no alternative. They still say he’s the key to the crisis. Do you think that’s true?’

  What answer could I give? I saw no way out of my poor country’s political inferno, certainly not by my younger brother’s agency. (And why do I write that carping ‘certainly’? There is after all no politician who merits the same respect as Corrado does.) But how can you tell a boy of eighteen that his world is crumbling? That the barbarians are mining the citadel and he’d better start preparing for a Brave New World, where, as it happens, his particular qualities are not going to be much in demand.

  I said therefore, ‘It won’t be resolved without him.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s true.’ Sandro gave me a quick, warm, grateful smile. ‘That’s why it seems to me so terrible that he shouldn’t be getting every assistance within his own family.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s Bernardo,’ he said.

  I didn’t care for Bernardo, a humourless, earnest child.

  ‘Bernardo’s joined the PRR.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘these initials, they proliferate so.’

  ‘Popolo Romano Rosso.’

  ‘And who are they?’

  ‘You mean you haven’t heard of them?’

  I smiled. ‘You’re forgetting, my dear, I seldom read the newspapers, and never watch television. I’m out of touch – an old fogey. But I take it they’re a group of extremists. On the Left obviously. In favour of extra-Parliamentary protest et cetera. Yes? How boring.’

  ‘More than boring for Papa. They’re committed to violence, you see. And there he is in charge of the Ministry that has to deal … you see how difficult …’

  Indeed I did, but I couldn’t imagine what Sandro thought I could do about it … I gave a little shrug and spread my hands.

  ‘I thought perhaps you could talk to Bernardo.’

&nbs
p; I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I’ve tried,’ he said mournfully.

  The last time I had had serious conversation with Bernardo had been sometime the previous year. Then he had talked to me. He had, with outrageous impertinence, told me to leave Sandro alone. ‘We all know why you had to leave the Service,’ he had erroneously asserted. I told him he was talking nonsense, on both counts.

  Now I said, ‘If Bernardo wants to make a fool of himself … have you considered that he may be deliberately embarrassing your father?’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s terrible,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if Papa has paid much attention to it yet, you know how calm and self-controlled Papa always is, but it’s making Mamma very unhappy. You see, apart from anything else, he consorts with such awful types.’

  As he said this, his high, fine, unfashionable cheek-bones took on a dewiness, as if lit up from behind, and his voice quivered. I felt very sorry for him; to be so out of tune with his generation must be painful. There could be no doubt that Bernardo would be happier, for all that he opposed a savage misanthropy to Sandro’s natural blitheness. Doubtless he would have put it differently, claiming that he set social conscience or social justice at a higher premium than bourgeois selfishness; that was the sort of language he would be talking, and it’s true of course that every action, every attitude, can be read in a variety of ways.

  ‘I don’t know what to do about it at all,’ Sandro said. ‘It’s making me edgy. My tennis game’s gone to pieces and I’d hoped to play in senior tournaments this year, but I simply can’t concentrate. Look, Uncle, can’t you perhaps come to lunch on Sunday – yes, I’ll tell Mamma you’re coming – and see things for yourself? We’re all at odds and ends with each other. There are terrible strains.’

  He gave me a winning smile – I was aware of the English pederast freezing in the action of raising his coffee-cup. I weakly assented.

  I suppose a sense of family duty survives even curiosity; and it would be a pity if Sandro were not able to play in his senior tournaments. He is a very elegant player. Though I don’t suppose he will ever go beyond the point which you can reach on natural ability alone – a lack of killer instinct – that is no reason why he should be denied the chance of disporting himself, and others the pleasure of seeing him do so ….

  May 5 It is extraordinary that one continues to accept obligations.

  May 6 I approached Corrado’s with misgivings, deliberately travelling out on the Cassia by bus; a mute protest. I dislike presenting my credentials to the guards at the lodge of the villa, and having to wait while they are checked not only on a list of expected callers, but with the house, by telephone. It is not how one ought to visit one’s younger brother.

  But it is a sign of the times. We have passed the nineteenth-century afternoon of our civilization. The sun is extinguished; we relive the experience of the Dark Ages. So our leaders, like the robber barons of the tenth century, have retreated within their castelli and pulled up the draw-bridges. They exist there, protected by armed retainers, who are at present paid for by the State or the Party. How long, I wonder, before they are simply personally recruited, personally maintained? How long before rival gangs club each other to death in the streets? Or doesn’t it, in some degree, happen already? Last month three policemen were shot, and four terrorists. It’s become fashionable, in perfectly respectable circles, to equate the deaths. And, reluctantly, one sees why.

  The oleanders were in flower in the garden. Three or four Doberman Pinschers lay chained beneath them.

  A Filipino servant showed me into the saloon. Except for Maria, who was our nurse and comes from our family village of Cropolati, all Corrado’s house staff are now Filipinos. But the Roman Emperors found foreign slaves ultimately no more reliable than Italian domestics; gold knows no frontiers, no other loyalties. And the same goes for ideology.

  Elena’s salon always takes me back in time. With its purple hangings, ormolu, and heavy black carved furniture, it reminds me of my grandmother’s apartment in the Via Giulia. Elena has always declined to be up to date. When Corrado dies she will certainly wear black for the rest of her life, which is now done by nobody but peasants. She advanced towards me heavy and big-bosomed and stately, and extended a cheek yellow with disapproval.

  ‘A long time,’ she said.

  She would dislike me no less if I came every Sunday, but she would prefer it if I did. After all, that would be the right thing….

  ‘How’s Mamma?’ I said.

  ‘She is very well. She has wonderful vitality.’

  The words were correct and quite without expression.

  ‘Will she lunch downstairs?’

  ‘She always does on Sundays.’

  I nodded.

  ‘We all appreciate how well you care for her,’ I said.

  She inclined her head in turn.

  ‘And the children?’ I said.

  She gestured towards the group giggling in the window. ‘They are all well. As you see.’

  ‘You are fortunate in your children,’ I said. ‘And I in my nephews and nieces.’

  We have talked like this for over thirty years. The first time I saw Elena, Corrado didn’t introduce us. Indeed he cut me. I was with my mistress, a dancer of mixed origin, partly and stridently Hungarian; her name was Mishka and she was a tempestuous but obvious creature. Corrado explained later that it would have embarrassed Elena to meet Mishka, so he had pretended not to see me. I could understand that, but I thought it rather shabby that he hadn’t replied to my raised eyebrow, even by a wink. Surely, I thought, he could have risked a wink.

  Actually of course Corrado has never hazarded such a thing. You never know who might be watching.

  We were interrupted, Elena and I, in our animated colloquy by the surging arrival of my youngest brother, Ettore, his wife Anna-Maria, and their daughter, Bella. Ettore planted two smacking kisses on Elena’s chaste cheeks, and began pumping my hand.

  ‘Ah-hah, ah-hah, and how goes it? How goes Augustus?’

  I am engaged in writing a study of the Emperor Augustus, sanest of our race. I have been so engaged for a long time, and have no intention of disengaging myself. There is no alibi like history.

  Ettore put his arm round my shoulders and led me to the far corner of the room, full of brotherly solicitation, about my health, my happiness and so on. Why did I never come to see them? There was always a place for me at their board. Besides, he wanted to help me, there were all sorts of good things he could put me on to …

  ‘Only, you never come to see us and when I try to speak to you on the telephone, whew! you are so cold I think I have maybe somehow offended you. I haven’t offended you, have I, Raimundo?’

  ‘No, Ettore, of course not. How could you have offended me?’

  He began to tell me of some complicated deal in which he was involved. I didn’t listen. Ettore is a financier, a contractor, I don’t know exactly what. Like many stupid people, without much sensibility, he has a feeling for money. There, where that is concerned, he is as sensitive as a truffle hound. Of course, it helps to have a brother who is a minister. People think that obliging Ettore will stand them good with Corrado. Ettore naturally doesn’t disillusion them. It occurs to me that he may even share the illusion himself. How odd if he did. Surely not? After all, he and Corrado frequently don’t see eye to eye. And never have.

  Now I didn’t listen to what he was saying, but gave only the occasional encouraging murmur. Instead I watched Sandro approach his cousin Bella, and saw her face momentarily alight. Bella is all her name suggests, so simply suggests, a creature so entirely captivating that I can never quite believe she is the product of the union of Ettore and Anna-Maria. She has a mouth made for kissing and pouting, and when she moves I have a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sandro is too lightweight for her; too lightweight, as the English say, by half.

  I looked round the room and couldn’t see Bernardo. He would certainly despise a family Sunday lunch. I didn’t doubt
though that he would appear. Our revolutionaries have their respectable domestic side. Few of them quite escape from Mamma. Prince Radziwill, whom I meet regularly in the wineshop, tells me of his doctor’s grandson, who has served a short prison sentence for crimes against the State; the boy always lunches at home on the day his mother makes her tortellini. And to think it’s over sixty years since Marinetti denounced pasta.

  The door opened and Corrado came in, greeting even his family with the certain arrogant embarrassment of a lecturer who has kept the class waiting. He slipped in, grey-faced and grey-suited, as if perversely hoping we would think he had been there all the time; suggesting we should have spotted him previously.

  ‘Is lunch ready, my dear?’

  ‘We are waiting for your mother.’

  ‘Mamma says she will come down for coffee. Maria will feed her upstairs.’

  ‘Then we may go in.’

  But first, as if correcting the implied impression that he had been there all the time, Corrado had to go round the circle, greeting us all individually. It occurs to me that it may be the only time in the week he sees some of the children.

  As we went through to the cavernous dining-room Bernardo joined us. He was asserting his ideology by a polo-neck jersey made of some synthetic material. He had grown a beard too since I last saw him. It didn’t, even with the help of an enveloping moustache, disguise the greedy and pudgy mouth. Bernardo has always been inclined to cover you with spittle as he speaks. One of the children – I forget which, Nico the ironist probably – used to say that Bernardo shouldn’t be allowed to travel on buses, since he could neither keep silent nor avoid contravening the injunction not to spit. A childish gibe, but the kind that fixes character in the mind.