The Death of Men

by Allan Massie

  ‘Credit?’

  I had left the wireless on; waiting. It was playing Rossini. I wondered at the programme that had continued unchanged.

  ‘You should see the police and army activity,’ she said. ‘There are road-blocks everywhere already. Have you managed to speak to my aunt or to any of my cousins?’

  ‘No, it’s impossible to put a call through.’

  She lay back. Now this is what seems extremely odd to me, though perhaps simply the product of unusually heightened emotional receptivity – yet if I were the sort of person to be disgusted by myself, I would be disgusted – now, at this moment, in these circumstances, with my poor brother in the hands of people I knew would kill him, I was standing in the middle of a mottled marble floor, with a bearskin rug at my feet, and my beautiful tawny niece, aged twenty-two, stretched out on a divan and wearing a black shirt and cream coloured jeans, and I was lusting after her, wishing the clothes off and her naked on the rug. Her lips were slightly open.

  Of course I in fact did nothing and we would anyway have been interrupted by her father, but that wasn’t, I’m sure, the reason why I turned away, and went through to the kitchen for a bottle of brandy and some mineral water. I put them on a tray. The glasses clinked together as I added them to the load. Bella was now leaning forward. The moment had passed. Ettore arrived red-faced, sweating and puffing.

  ‘We’ve got to do something,’ he exclaimed, waving aside my offer of brandy. ‘Let me tell you how I see things. There can be no doubt that very soon we shall receive a ransom demand.’

  I nodded. ‘The liberation of comrades either awaiting trial or already convicted. Other things too doubtless, but that certainly.’

  ‘And there is equally no doubt that the offer will be refused.’

  Bella sat up straight.

  ‘They couldn’t. They couldn’t possibly.’

  She looked at me, candid eyes searching: ‘They couldn’t, could they?’

  ‘Your father’s right, they almost certainly will.’

  And that was of course the case. There was doubtless an official policy, a decision long taken, in the abstract. Probably Corrado had approved it himself, though it would not have been in his nature to initiate the definitive and categorical negative. But the line would be: ‘In no circumstances will we submit to blackmail. We shall not parley under duress.’ How often had I heard the big words. Naturally there was reason behind them, naturally, the reason of logic and gesture. Othello’s reason: ‘Yet I must kill, else she’ll deceive more men.’ Not that the cases were strictly analogous. Desdemona after all was innocent, even though the play might have a sharper point were she to be played as one guilty. Yet it was the same specious logic.

  To it one could oppose another reason: the reason of the feeling heart. They would be deaf to that; oh, deaf.

  Later in the evening I was at last able to make contact with the villa. To my relief it was Nico I spoke to. Elena had gone to bed. ‘She’s distraught,’ he said, ‘desolate. Mind you she’s been expecting it. Or something like it. She’s been living on her nerves.’

  ‘And your grandmother?’ I said.

  ‘All she did was nod when she was told. She hasn’t spoken a word about it. She’s years away. Look, Uncle, I can’t now ask you about the hundred things we ought to discuss – I’m not of course going into the Bank tomorrow. But the complications … may Sandro and I come to see you in the morning, at eleven?’

  I agreed of course and am waiting for them now. And sitting at my typewriter while I wait because, quite simply, what else is there to do?

  Stacked against my desk, between the desk and the wall, are my notes and reference books for Augustus. Katrina is an inexpert duster. My indolence is all too clearly revealed. Only, indolence is the effect, not the cause, of lack of belief, of the inability which has governed my life, ever to commit myself wholeheartedly to any course of action; except, some might say, a new style of dress.

  Last night I sat alone after Ettore and Bella had gone, she kissing me as she left with what might have been impulsive desperation; who can tell? I held her body hard against mine a living instant. I don’t think Ettore noticed anything.

  I expect they have drugged Corrado. If he is still in Rome they must have drugged him.

  The police will want to interview even me, which is absurd; I ama person of no significance. I listened to the American’s typewriter, to the wireless, to an unending series of concerts, to moments of silence. Finally that was all that was left to me, an ever deepening and extending pool, the dark waters of which were rising with inexorable motion.

  I went to bed and did not sleep, but lay in the dark. Corrado suffered from nightmares as a child. We shared a room and I have often been woken by his screams. He would find himself in an empty ruined temple in the half-death of summer noon, in a colonnade untrodden by sandalled feet; but somewhere in a place he could not identify, he would hear a shuffling. And the shuffling would creep round him, louder and closer.

  The sea stretched away, boatless, in the distance.

  May 14 I haven’t written in my diary in three days. Three days of activity and hopelessness. There is still no news.

  Sandro and Nico came round. Nico was holding himself in control, his quattrocento face frozen. Poor Sandro couldn’t stop trembling. There had been no sign of Bernardo, nor word from him.

  ‘We must be worried,’ Nico said. ‘It’s unthinkable that he could have anything to do with the kidnapping. It must be sheer coincidence, because anything else is unthinkable. Only … I can’t help thinking it.’

  Sandro shook his head.

  ‘As for mother,’ Nico said, ‘the doctor wanted to give her a sedative, but she refused. She’s determined to be fully aware when anything happens. But nothing will happen just yet, will it? They’ll stretch our nerves a bit first.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘delay plays on the nerves.’

  They asked me if I would go to Party Headquarters with them. They feared that if they went by themselves they would be brushed aside. I would know the ropes. I had a certain gravitas. Moreover, my experience meant that … and so on. They flattered me. What they said wasn’t true. And Nico probably knew this. Still, how could I oppose them? Certainly if they went by themselves they would be received with sympathy but little more; they would be shunted off to a ward of consolation. They would see nobody who mattered; nobody like Schicchi or Donati.

  At first it seemed as if I would have no more success. My telephone calls were vain. I met with wooden clerkly insolence. Corrado’s case was, they said, reserved. That was that. Besides, identification would be necessary before there could be any discussion even on the telephone; I had no idea how many cranks telephoned every half-hour. I repeated that all I sought was the making of an appointment with Signor Schicchi. The Honourable Schicchi was giving no interviews.

  ‘This is not an interview, you dolt,’ I said. ‘I am Dr Raimundo Dusa, brother to Corrado and formerly First Secretary in the Washington Embassy …’

  ‘One moment I will transfer you …’

  But not of course to the top … oh no, that came later, after long silences, silences as profound as that of the morgue, three transfers to dusty offices and the eventual mediation of Carlo Poggi, old friend of the family and protégé of Corrado, to whom I had been denied access half an hour previously …

  ‘It will be difficult, dottore,’ he said. ‘You can hardly imagine how little weight I carry here today, with Corrado gone. My consequence has shrunk. I have already lost one secretary. I tell you, it is macabre. Even I who know the intimacies of the maze, am astonished at how quickly I am made to feel my altered position, my impotence. Nevertheless …’

  At last our combined persistence achieved the promise of ten minutes with Gianni Schicchi at half-past four.

  Before then, however, we had a visit from the Security Branch. The officer was suave, affecting surprise at finding Nico and Sandro there. He commiserated first about Corrado. That wasn’
t the purpose of his visit. He realized that in the circumstances it was assuredly embarrassing and painful; nevertheless duty was duty. He was conducting enquiries into Bernardo’s disappearance. Naturally he realized that Bernardo had friends who were more likely than I … nevertheless there was always the possibility, besides which of course there were those among his friends whom they would be anxious to lay hands on also; I would understand that, and also the intricacies and delicacies of such an inquiry …

  As he spoke, one of his men examined my bookshelves, while the other, a Sardinian, and probably illiterate, picked his nose.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘Bernardo has never confided in me. It is in the highest degree unlikely that I should be able to assist you.’

  ‘Quite so. Still you must agree the coincidence is alarming.’

  ‘Coincidence is merely coincidence, nothing more unless you can provide connection.’

  ‘Quite so. He’s a silly young man. But we find unfortunately that so many, often of good backgrounds, are in the same condition. You may not be aware of it, but one of those we arrested after the May Day riots was a close confederate of your nephew’s.’

  Friends become confederates when they enter official records.

  The officer moved fat well-manicured hands softly about as he spoke. He sat down in a Directoire chair and folded them on his soft lap. There was a long noon-time silence. Sasha came and jumped on my knees and I ran my finger under the line of his jaw.

  ‘Confederates,’ the officer purred. ‘In the end, you understand, police work – and I’m not ashamed to confess that my work is essentially police work – police work is really a matter of establishing connections’ – the Bari accent gave a softening lisp to his sibilants – ‘just that. For example, dottore, you are accustomed to drink in the Osteria del Lupo, isn’t that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well then, would you be so kind as to take a look at these photographs? Tell me if you recognize any of them …’

  I felt myself standing on the edge of a marsh, with a keen breeze blowing the methanic vapours towards me. All my life I have preferred to remain on the sidelines, the detached observer, resistant to any commitment; an attitude long expressed in my clothes. But I glanced down at the grey cardigan I was wearing, with a cigarette burn in the right-hand pocket, and at the flannel trousers baggy at the knee. I was still in carpet slippers. I said to Sandro, ‘Be a dear boy, go to my desk and bring me a cigar.’

  The third photograph showed me the Caravaggio Christ.

  I shuffled through them.

  ‘I’ve never had a memory for faces,’ I said. ‘I recognize no one. It’s unfortunate, but that’s how it is. Actually, I’ve often been accused even of cutting old friends if I should meet them unexpectedly in the street.’ I don’t understand why I replied in that way. Eventually, whether persuaded or not, they departed. I couldn’t feel happy about the interview. I couldn’t feel happy. We sat down to wait. The telephone remained silent.

  I have known Gianni Schicchi since we were students. He was then a slight and fiery boy, with deep brown eyes, big eyes of a visionary, and a lock of hair that fell over the side of his face. He was full of passion, the only son of a mother who adored him. What had happened to the father? I don’t remember but I have a faint iridescent impression, like one of those English water-colours of the Norwich School, indeterminate but evocative, persistent in the memory like the fusty smell of an attic explored in childhood, that he had been in some way disreputable. Certainly Gianni never spoke of him. Gianni’s mother had hoped the boy would become a priest and for a long time he had thought of himself as having a vocation. He had been disappointed of that, but had later associated himself with an order of lay brothers, concerned with what would now be called social work. When he first entered politics many distrusted him because of this; he was regarded as a cryptosocialist. That was never the case; his devotion to his mother, which was, I’m sure, genuine, made such a development impossible. And in those days socialism was still generally atheistic, while Gianni’s religious devotion amounted to zeal. He came from Florence; I have never been easy with Florentines.

  Corrado once called Gianni the evil genius of the Party. Of course that was in a private conversation, he knew I wouldn’t repeat it, and indeed this is the first time I have done so. Gianni had moved a long way to the Right over the years. He is a Cold War man. Yet I’ve never heard it suggested that he takes money from the CIA like so many of our politicians. Something harder even than money has corrupted Gianni. He has lost faith in humanity, and with this, his ideal of service has rotted. Gianni likes the feel of power. I remember in Washington once, when he was Foreign Secretary, seeing him stamp on a wasp. I remember the upward tilt of the corners of his mouth as the insect squelched under his heel.

  He received us in the office of the Party Secretary, though he has never held that position.

  ‘I am desolate, Raimundo,’ he said.

  Something had happened to his voice. Gianni had made his name first as an orator, a little man with a baritone voice of liquid purity. It had been an astonishing voice, but what came across the Louis Seize desk to me, isolated in a carved chair on an ocean of marble, some five feet back from the desk, was a cancerous rasp. Yet Gianni had put on flesh and colour. It was a comedy, his proclamation of desolation.

  ‘I will serve you however I can. I have already conveyed my commiserations, sentiments that spring from the heart, I need hardly say, to your revered mother.’ He widened his hawk’s eye in Nico’s direction.

  ‘All we can do is wait.’ His hand folded on a lump of carved marble that rested on the top of some files of papers. ‘And,’ he gave a little cough, ‘pray. Pray fervently. His Holiness,’ he crossed himself, ‘has intimated that he will celebrate a special Mass of Intercession.’

  In the prolonged silence only a twitch in his left cheek disturbed the holy effulgence of his expression.

  ‘What we would like,’ I said, ‘to be assured of is that no definite decisions have yet been taken. In particular we are anxious that any existent policy, such for example as one which might be held to preclude parley with terrorists or the discussion in the fullest and frankest terms of any ransom demands, be at the very least held in abeyance and considered open to revision.’

  I had summoned up official memories, striving to attain the bland tone which was necessary, I felt certain, if our request was to be taken seriously. I had explained this to Nico and Sandro. There was no hope of success if we could not discuss matters in that dead tone which would permit further discussion.

  ‘One breath of human sympathy,’ I said, ‘and they will take fright.’

  If I could have appealed to the spirit of the Resistance! But Gianni had spent the war years working inthe Vatican Library and, as for me, from1943–5 I had written a novel. It was set in Naples in the 1790s and told of the coming of the French and the Bourbon reaction. It constituted my personal elaboration of liberal values and provided no basis of shared experience from which I might appeal to Gianni’s sentiment.

  The room was too hot. The electric fan had broken down. Some Party Secretary had installed it perhaps as an illustration of modernity. Certainly it hung oddly amidst the Baroque splendours, though itself outmoded of course when compared to air conditioning. Gianni passed a dark-blue handkerchief across his brow. He had always sweated freely, unlike Corrado and myself, accustomed in boyhood to the grilling heat of the Mezzogiorno.

  So, having no other choice, I spoke in official accents.

  Gianni smiled, a pike’s grin. I was aware of Sandro tensing himself, horrified by the realization that Gianni could still smile. But why not? Others’ problems offer us opportunities.

  Gianni said, ‘Raimundo, you must not think I do not feel for you and for the family. And, even more, I know what Corrado has meant for the Party. Three men made this great Party of ours: de Gasperi,’ (he crossed himself) ‘Corrado,’ (was he on the point of repeating the action?) ‘and myself.
Do you think I don’t at this moment feel my isolation, and feel that it is awful? But it is nevertheless our duty to appraise the situation.’

  ‘I would be grateful if you could let me have any information which has not been released. Do you, for example, yet know just who is responsible?’

  ‘There can be no doubt. It is the PRR.’

  He smiled again; the smile of a pastrycook who takes his tarts from the oven and sees that they have risen to exactly the right degree.

  ‘I do not’, he said, ‘have to elaborate to you the complications and embarrassments that may ensue from that fact. Do you know, six months ago, I advised your brother to send the young man to New York. There was an opening there, a delegation to which he could have been quite harmlessly attached. And who knows, the experience might have had a beneficial effect in itself. If only he had taken my advice. But of course this knowledge only discloses to us a deeper and more pertinent question. Who, ultimately, backs the PRR? Whence do they derive? Are they in reality of the Left or are they rather, as some would have us believe, of the extreme Right? Are they self-conscious or deluded? Myself, I have my opinions. But we must wait. We must temporize, since the correct answer to the query is of an importance quite incalculable.’

  ‘And the ransom demand? When it comes? What response will be offered?’

  ‘When it comes, we must consider it in all its implications, with sympathy and resolution, and then act with the dignity that is in accordance with the necessity imposed by the correct political strategy.’

  He rose and walked – fat-bottomed these days – to the window. He stood a moment with his back to us, looking on the piazza. Over his shoulder I could see a bus-load of tourists debouch and troop, with their aquarium look, into the Jesuit Church.

  ‘God does not grant us all the opportunity of martyrdom,’ said Gianni Schicchi.

  Sandro leapt to his feet. ‘But we are not,’ he cried, ‘talking of martyrdom, we are talking of humanity.’