The Death of Men

by Allan Massie

  Outside, ‘It’s so peaceful,’ she said, and leant back against a tree, drawing one of her legs up behind her and keeping face-on to him; she knew she looked her best that way … She looked him straight in the eyes. If she couldn’t make him sense her body, she didn’t know where to begin. She wanted very much to begin.

  ‘He’s a funny one, your friend,’ she said. ‘He’s very intense. I could never be that intense about things. In fact, I always reckon intensity’s a drag.’

  He didn’t reply, looked up at the moon.

  ‘You should see the moons we get over the Pacific,’ she said.

  ‘I’m thinking of spending next year in Rome, did I tell you? I’m an actress you know. I want to get into films. All I’ve done so far is some TV work back home and a rep season in San Diego. I’m told Cinecittà’s still the best place in Europe to find work. I’ve a friend who says he can get me some TV commercial work too. Do you know anyone in the film business?’

  He made a tired gesture. He would have liked to say it was all meaningless, that sort of thing; but Bernardo had already gone far enough; too far perhaps, even with innocents like this one. Innocent? It wasn’t perhaps the right word. It was wrong to confuse ignorance, wilful blind ignorance, with innocence. He knew something about innocence. The peasant children he used to play with had been possessed of it. Thinking of them, he could feel no pity for Kim. Bernardo was right; family was the deepest, most corroding corruption of all. If he’d been another sort of man, he might now have raped this American girl, in her insulting shorts, and that would be it.

  He said, ‘No, I’ve no friends in that business.’

  She said, ‘You’re shy, aren’t you. I hadn’t reckoned you would be shy. Do you know, Tom, you’re one of the reasons I came to Italy?’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘No? It’s easy. You see, a few years back, when Mom decided she wanted to mend relations with her family and wrote to our aunts in Rome, they sent her some photographs. It must have been about the time you were first a student and staying there. And there was one of you. I kind of took a fancy to it. You won’t maybe believe it, but you were one of my pin-ups. Between Bobby Darin and Dustin Hoffman – I still think he’s great. Of course my girl-friends thought it was great me having an Italian cousin … it was sort of glamorous, you know.’

  It was like opening a gate to a garden and finding yourself abroad. He was momentarily lost.

  ‘So, you see,’ she said, ‘I think I’ve a right to do this,’ and put her arm round him, and kissed him.

  ‘My,’ she said again, ‘you are shy. It’s kind of funny finding an Italian boy who’s shy. I hadn’t reckoned they existed. The way my ass got pinched black and blue in Florence, I wouldn’t have believed it possible.’

  She kept her arm there. She smelt all fresh, of deodorants and flowers.

  ‘Are you still awake?’

  Ruthie padded about the bedroom that was not quite dark. Moonlight slanted through the shutters that Kim, fearful perhaps of bats, had closed. She tossed her jeans into the corner. There was a heavy clang as the buckle struck the tiles. Ruthie’s breathing came hot and urgent to Kim who didn’t answer her, but lay in the bed, one leg drawn up, sweating slightly under a heavy bedspread.

  ‘He’s kinda funny, your cousin, how did you make out?’

  Kim could hear Ruthie scrubbing her teeth vigorously, and then splash some water out of the jug into the basin and rinse her face. When they’d started out as room-mates Ruthie had had no sort of notion of personal hygiene. Kim often wondered how she had been brought up, really …

  ‘I can hear you’re awake, you know. I can always tell. You know I can.’

  She clambered into bed like an urgent little animal. The bed heaved. Kim lay still, still saying nothing.

  ‘Yeah, he’s kinda funny. Not really like an Italian, is he? Maybe it’s being a marquis, that’s what it means, marchese doesn’t it? Not that I know just what a marquis is either, honey. Some kinda duke, I reckon.’

  She put her hand on Kim. It was always sweaty, her hand, hot Jewish hand, but Kim mustn’t think of it that way.

  ‘I guess you struck him dumb, honey.’

  Kim turned over on her side, away from her. The hand followed.

  ‘Aw honey.’

  ‘I’m sleepy.’

  Silence crept up between them. In the distance sounded the sharp bray of a donkey. Dogs set up a barking. Ruthie’s fingers worked restlessly, like a mouse in the wainscot.

  ‘Kinda funny,’ she breathed. ‘I’d say he wasn’t that pleased to see us. Wasn’t pleased at all, baby. But it’s funny here, it’s nice. I like it you know. I’ve been wondering if it sets up some sort of race memory in me … your cheeks are wet …’

  ‘It’s just my cream, oh well …’

  ‘That’s better, baby … that’s better.’

  They were alone, yet both, their perceptions heightened and quickened by the experiences of the day, kept a sense of the house brooding above and around them, and of themselves being sojourners in a strange land. It was not a feeling that had come to them elsewhere in Italy.

  ‘I don’t know’, said Kim finally, ‘why I …’

  ‘Oh baby, you’re so physical, honey. Imean you’re a very sensuous girl.’

  Kim relaxed, reassured in her nature. ‘He’s cute, Tom,’ she said.

  ‘Kinda funny.’

  ‘I think it’s just that he’s shy. Anyway,’ she said, ‘what about you? It’s hours since I came to bed. What have you been doing all the time?’

  ‘Oh, just talking. Talking and listening.’

  ‘Christ, what about? More politics? More of that shit?’ Kim stretched herself and nestled her head in Ruthie’s shoulder.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘rather you than me. He’s a real crapartist, that one.’

  ‘But you know,’ Ruthie said at last, ‘it’s funny him being up here. He doesn’t strike me as the country type. He’s very extreme, you know. I asked him what he was doing here and he said he’d had some sort of overstrain working for his exams and was taking a rest. I don’t know why, I didn’t believe him. It’s a thing about being Jewish, honey, you get to not believing people’s explanations. He talked more about that politician they’ve kidnapped. It would be really something if they had something to do with that and he was hiding here, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Like I said, he’s very extreme, you know, and there were things he said. He obviously sympathizes with the terrorists.’

  ‘He’s just a friend of my cousin’s.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well then, surely it’s obvious.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so. He’s a bit wet, your cousin. Pretty but …’

  ‘Oh Ruthie … Ruthie …’

  ‘You like it baby, don’t you? You like your Ruthie …’

  Tomaso’s sleep was troubled by bad dreams and he woke early and unrested. He could rationalize the pursuit dreams; they were an inescapable fact of his chosen life. But dreams where limbs twisted, bodies offered themselves, and his tongue swelled and filled his mouth, afflicted him. He would have liked to disembarrass himself of his body, to enter into abstraction. The transformation refused to happen. And tonight, voices had argued with him, songs had sung themselves to reluctant ears, fruit had fallen from the trees into his mouth. He woke shivering.

  He rose and dressed himself in the same dark suit he had worn yesterday, and went out into the courtyard. A girl, wearing the local costume of scarlet and black, her head decently scarfed, was drawing water from the well. She filled the two panniers and slung them across the back of the waiting donkey. It flicked its ears as it felt the weight settle. Tomaso waved to her, a half-moon gesture with his right hand, but she lowered her eyes, struck the donkey’s hindquarters with a switch of gathered twigs, and, together, girl and ass, they made their way out of the yard. He could hear its hooves clip-clopping up the steps just beyond the wall. Would all that be chan
ged? Or would it be possible somehow to translate that decency, that order, that respect for rhythm, into a new life?

  Tomaso went into the great vaulted kitchen where his mother was already at work, kneading the flour and eggs and water for the fettuccine. She abandoned her task to give him a cup of coffee.

  ‘Did you speak to your cousin?’ she said.

  ‘I told her … that’s to say, I told her something about how people here lived and dressed. Their standards. I spoke of the differences. I hope I said enough.’

  It was tiresome to be reminded of the American girls, so early in a morning that he had felt belonged to him.

  ‘It is curious to have a niece like that,’ said his mother.

  ‘I suppose you are certain she is actually my cousin?’ The words stumbled from his mouth.

  ‘Of course, yes, it would be ridiculous to suppose otherwise. Anyway, I knew about her, naturally.’

  ‘Well then, yes, but, as you say, it is curious.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I have to go out for a little. Being Americans they will probably sleep all the morning. That is what Americans do.’

  He went upstairs to check that Bernardo was still asleep also. The door was locked. No answer to his gentle tap. Bernardo slept heavy. As long as he also slept alone … Tomaso hadn’t liked those two heads nodding together under the little pool of light over the table. He had almost interrupted, but unable to think of anything convincing, had shrunk from doing so. Downstairs again, he got his Vespa from a shed, unwrapping the tarpaulin in which he had swathed it at the end of his last visit.

  The streets were never quite silent or empty in the early morning. He roared past a long line of peasants, mounted on donkeys, going out to tend their fields. His greeting was shy. He had no right to be on a scooter, no right to be their landlord, no right … It was good to leave his native village with its accumulated guilt, and free himself for the cleansing savagery of action. The road curved down through the olive groves, the trees as twisted as the civilization that had grown from them. Tomaso let the east wind, blowing up the valleys from the Adriatic, fan his face. He passed a shrine and an old woman kneeling there. He passed a flock of sheep and their black-toothed shepherd, a boy of twelve or thirteen; soon they would be off up to the higher mountain pastures for the summer. The road swung down to the plain. Little Fiat vans and cars now shared it with him, and the occasional big lorry or bus carrying workers to the local factories. Italy was on its way to labour for its masters.

  Tomaso stopped his scooter in the main piazza and parked it among a number of others under the statue of Ovid, a native of nearby Sulmona. Well, it was better to offer statues to poets, even dissolute ones, than to generals. He went into the biggest caffè and ordered a cappuccino and a pile of tokens for the telephone. Two labourers in blue overalls were drinking grappa along the bar. A small fat man in a striped suit, who had the air of a local lawyer, a small town man of importance, was eating a pink sticky cake. There was no one else in the bar, apart from the barman, a thin, feverish youth. Tomaso set himself to wait till the lawyer left. He sipped his coffee.

  The lawyer finished his cake and took a paper napkin from the stand and wiped his fingers. The labourers watched him. Tomaso read suspicion in their look. The lawyer picked up his newspaper. As he did so, Tomaso caught a glimpse of the headlines. Good; he had of course known that the letter would be there, but it was always possible that something might have gone wrong. He smiled to himself. He hadn’t bought a newspaper, because, here in the Abruzzi, he had no interest in public affairs. He waited, looking out on the piazza where life was certainly slow enough this morning.

  The lawyer’s voice, calling his name, startled him from his reverie.

  ‘Forgive me for addressing you in this way. I was surprised to see you. Ah, I see, you are wondering who I am and why I am taking the liberty of addressing you. Here is my card. I was honoured to do a spot of business on behalf of your lady mother and therefore in fact yourself, signore, a few months ago.’

  Tomaso found himself turning over the piece of pasteboard the little man had given him. A name, letters, honorifics.

  ‘You are surprised that I recognized you. I make a point of memorizing faces, even of those whom I have not yet met, but with whom I have the honour of being acquainted indirectly or by repute. The camera is a wonderful invention, I always say. I am its most diligent student; indeed it is, signore, a great aid to such as I, who have a multitude of diverse business and clients. And how do you find life now in Rome? Fevered? You are better just now back in your native province …’

  He tapped his newspaper with pale soft fingers.

  ‘I see you have no newspaper. Perhaps then you have not yet heard of this shocking development in the Dusa case?’

  Tomaso stared at him, his mouth a little open.

  ‘Allow me then to have the honour of enlightening you. There is a letter published this morning, an appalling letter in which the unfortunate Dr Dusa castigates – there is no other word I can use – castigates,’ he dwelt on it lovingly, ‘yes, absolutely castigates his colleagues in the DC for their failure to liberate him. Now this is a shocking and disgraceful development, isn’t it?’

  Tomaso said nothing.

  ‘You understand, it can only either weaken the resolve of the Party hierarchy, than which nothing could be more disastrous, for you will agree with me that it is imperative that they stand firm. Firm and resolute. It is meet that one man be sacrificed for the nation. Meet indeed.’ The little lawyer rubbed his stomach and ordered two cognacs. ‘Or,’ he said, ‘alternatively, the accusations that Dusa now casts at his Party, which go far beyond this charge of abandonment, will serve to discredit the Party among the electorate, just at the moment when it is more than ever vital that it retain the support of all the best men. So, signore, you appreciate the deplorable nature of this development. Either Dusa has been pusillanimous or these devils have worked appallingly on him. Drugs and torture distort the personality in ways you would hardly believe …’

  ‘You have no doubt then as to the genuineness of the letter?’

  ‘None at all. Doubt is untenable. The letter has been accepted as genuine … but how it was obtained … what dark means were employed … there I am in the dark … There are naturally various possible means. For instance …’

  It was perhaps twenty minutes before Tomaso was relieved of his company, the lawyer having meanwhile given him a variety of speculations.

  Tomaso went to the telephone and called a Rome number.

  ‘Is that the dry-cleaners?’

  ‘Sorry. Wrong number.’

  ‘My mistake.’

  He hung up the receiver but remained by the telephone, looking through a small address book as though seeking another number. In exactly ninety seconds, the telephone rang. He answered it at the first ring, and it was probable that neither the barman nor the two labourers realized that this had happened and that he hadn’t placed the call. None of them, certainly, would have been prepared to swear to it one way or the other.

  ‘Vlad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. How does it go?’

  ‘All well, I think, though it’s time our friend here had a change of air, the mountains don’t suit his condition.’

  ‘I was wondering if that mightn’t be the case. We’ll see to it.’

  ‘Directly?’

  ‘Yes, Carlo will handle it. Understood?’

  ‘Understood. What about yours?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Does he need a move?’

  ‘No, he’s fine where he is. He’s a home bird.’

  ‘I’m relieved. I had a letter from him. It was good.’

  ‘Oh he’s writing a lot of letters now.’

  ‘In the same style?’

  ‘Absolutely. You know where to find Carlo?’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s a complication by the way.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve had a visit from an Am
erican cousin and her girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a long pause. ‘Well, be natural. Do whatever is natural.’

  ‘You know what girls are.’

  ‘Indeed I do.’

  And, thought Tomaso, indeed Stefano did. But as for himself, he wasn’t so sure …

  There was a change in mood. Ruthie realized this almost at once. The boys had accepted their presence without argument. It had seemed natural that they should accompany them on this little trip. She fancied Tomaso didn’t like it; but he didn’t argue, and anyway, as she had already decided, he was a funny one. Ruthie had no doubt of her ability to pick funny ones. She had an inherited talent. Kim of course was an innocent – she couldn’t help but be fascinated by Kim’s inability ever to see anything. She really meant that: to see anything. How you could go through life like that? It was a mystery. The answer of course was that Kim was a swan, a real swan, and swans could afford to know nothing. Or seem to afford it. Seem, that was the operative word. Seem. It made Ruthie feel protective of course. Kim needed to be looked after. That degree of innocence made you vulnerable. Maybe any innocence did.

  Bernardo was restless, nibbling his fingernails and glancing out of the car’s window, though it didn’t seem likely that he was the sort to take pleasure in scenery. To Ruthie it seemed as if he was sulking. When she spoke, trying to revive last night’s conversation, he answered in monosyllables; once he even turned the back of his head to her, a rapid movement, a non-verbal snap.