by Allan Massie
I had not been to see poor Guido since before the event. I ought to go. I set off, calling a taxi. It was a summer morning of rare delicacy, after that light rain of the dawn hours; it gave everything a freshness, tender as a Renoir. (Oh those long-haired girls cradling baskets of flowers beneath the cherry-blossoms.) The taxi stopped in a jam of traffic, hung over by a wealth of flowers. The air suddenly filled with the scent of roses.
I could not continue; for the first time ever, I was unable to descend to Guido’s shadowy world.
It was a relief to walk, down the hill, away from the asylum. Everything seemed to beckon, to invite the spirits to rise. A little boy ran across the road with a golden spaniel at his heels and with a quick leap landed on the rim of a little fountain and splashed water on his face, while the dog yelped below. Two girls in white frocks sauntered out of my imagination and down the steps of an apartment block with slim baskets dangling from their wrists, indolently towards flower stalls and fruit stalls and vegetable stalls at the bottom of the hill. Their voices came to me, clear and liquid with laughter, as they conversed of trivial and wholly alive and real details. How absurd it was to pretend that great questions of public policy had a reality that the price of bread or the efficacy of a brand of hair lacquer somehow lacked; in truth it was the other way round. So much for Hegel.
I heard a voice calling my name behind me and there was Bella waving from the window of a little yellow car, a man I didn’t recognize beside her in the driving-seat. She was a girl for that sort of morning. These other girls I had been watching with an ache that contained nothing of identifiable sexual lust but certainly a longing, a nostalgia, for that world of immediate primary sensation, and for a life where all the questions could be answered (perhaps even in the pages of the glossy magazines) belonged so clearly and certainly to Bella’s world, that they might have been acting as her precursors, so delighting my imagination that it had developed a force capable of conjuring Bella herself into my presence, as if on a magic carpet. Certainly all three could immediately (on a more prosaic level) have found themselves engaged in a warm and animated conversation, which they would have found perfectly satisfactory, and they would have found it absolutely unnecessary to bring in any extraneous references to Renoir to give it reality; all would have come naturally to them.
‘Where have you come from?’ I asked.
Bella said, without a blush, ‘I’ve been trying to see Uncle Guido, but they say he’s not well enough to be seen. Is he often like that?’ she asked, unaware of the shadow passing over the sun.
We talked of the asylum, my answers as evasive as I was sure the Director’s had been, and then we consulted watches and, deciding it would soon be lunch-time, proposed and agreed that we should all go for lunch together, somewhere where we could sit outside, and one of us, Bella, I imagine, offered the suggestion of a restaurant not too far from there, a restaurant therefore in a quarter I would never have been accustomed to frequent; but of course she had friends, boys and girls of her own age, who lived in their solid bourgeois apartments with their parents in all the respectable areas of Rome which were merely designations on the map for me; and of course you found many good solid restaurants there which catered for the inhabitants of the quarter, and in fact served more authentic and worthy food than most of those in the Centre, so many of which were corrupted by serving principally tourists.
We were sitting at a table outside, but under the awning, so that the sun came to us, its rays diffused in a general atmosphere of warmth, which I could imagine being given off by Bella’s perfectly rounded and bronzed arms, and we had ordered our pasta before I realized that I had seen Bella’s companion before. She had introduced him as an English friend, Christopher Burke (avoiding saying, what I learned as the meal progressed, that he was a journalist, doubtless in case I should somehow suspect that she had taken him to poor Guido’s asylum at least partly in that capacity; for who these days can trust journalists with anything?). He tilted his wine-glass and I realized that I had seen him in that bar in Parioli, the day I had talked with Enzo Fuscolo. And when he looked sideways at Bella, it came to me that they were lovers.
I was jealous, of course I was jealous, and when Bella said, ‘It was Christopher Nico gave Uncle Corrado’s letter to. It was his magazine published it,’ all I could reply was,
‘Good of you, Mr Burke.’
‘But you don’t think it was worth doing?’ he said.
‘Perhaps.’
‘There’s been some response, you know,’ he said. I was pleased to detect the self-justifying note in his voice. ‘An affair like this of course has so many complications … You know about Mastagni’s initiative …’
‘I know it’s rumoured he is about tomake one. I must tell you I don’t set much store by it …’
‘He still has influence,’ he said. There was a petulant look to him, like an adolescent who feels he is not sufficiently appreciated. I recalled his appearance in the Parioli bar and again in the little bar by the Messagero offices, and I wondered if only that was at the root of his dissatisfaction.
‘Mastagni,’ I said. ‘Who could believe in someone like that? A windbag. It’s true,’ I said, ‘that this morning an American journalist friend telephoned me in great excitement about him, but I had understood, Mr Burke, that you have lived here a long time. You can’t surely be deceived by that sort of empty rhetorician, can you? We can be quite certain of one thing; no one has ever achieved anything by putting his faith in Giuseppe Mastagni.’
‘Was your American journalist Ed Mangan?’ he said.
‘You know Ed too?’
‘Oh yes. And of course I agree with you about Mastagni. It’s only that one wonders in a crisis like this whether …’ His voice tailed away.
I said to Bella, ‘How’s your father?’
It was a sort of reminder, my question. I was sure Ettore could not approve of her liaison with this journalist who gave off a whiff of bad cheques and broken promises.
‘This veal is very good,’ I said. ‘Clever of you to know this restaurant, my dear.’
Burke suggested we have another litre of wine.
‘Not for me,’ I said, ‘but go ahead.’
When Bella, after we had finished eating, went over to another table, where she had seen friends of hers sitting, friends to whom she had already waved on their entry to the restaurant, where they were evidently well known, Burke leant over the table towards me, and speaking in a lowered tone, so that his voice was hard to hear, muttered, ‘Ed Mangan’s not the only guy we have in common. I believe you know one Enzo Fuscolo …’
‘Oh,’ I said, and glanced at the wine-flask which he had lowered considerably.
‘He called on me the other night. He said he knew you. I hadn’t met him before …’
‘Was it,’ I said, keeping my voice level and dead, ‘connected with this business of my brother ..?’
‘Everything is, these days,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t trust Enzo Fuscolo in anything …’
‘He doesn’t exactly inspire trust,’ he said, ‘but he might have information…’
‘Anything he gave you would be tainted. In your own interest I would advise you to have nothing to do with him …’
Why did I say that? Was it so that I could see his eyes glaze over and his jaw set?
‘I don’t want to hear anything he put to you,’ I said. ‘I regard Fuscolo with a mixture of contempt and distrust, and I advise you to do the same.’
‘So you are not interested in his information?’
‘No, because I cannot believe that his motive could be good. I …’ I paused. ‘He’s a dangerous man, Fuscolo,’ I said. ‘And he has always had unpleasant associates …’
One thing I was sure of: Fuscolo would be too much for such a one as this Christopher Burke. His corruption was the fruit of an old wisdom, and he had a capacity for self-denial, self-abnegation, which would find easymastery over the callow egoism I saw before me. For
myself, Enzo Fuscolo’s reappearance in my life resembled the terror of empty places that should be holy; he was a Black Mass of a man.
‘You’re very certain that he has nothing to offer.’
‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, that’s all.’
‘So if he said he knew one of those responsible for, at least one of those involved in, if responsible is perhaps too big a word, involved in your brother’s capture, that’s to say … you still wouldn’t be interested …?’
‘My answer would still be the same … but I might suggest to you you call in the police. I’m sure, Mr Burke, you have some friends who could help you there …’
* * *
I was arrogant of course, as well as jealous and distrustful. I insisted on paying for the lunch – a point I carried without meeting any strong opposition – and, refusing a lift in the little Volkswagen, set off on foot. After a bit I hailed a taxi and directed the driver to the Borghese Gardens and sat on a bench there.
It seemed to me as if I was willing my brother’s death.
I could take no action except what I knew would prove ineffective, and I felt this overpowering reluctance to follow either of the possible leads I had been given.
The pine trees stood out black against a cloudless azure sky. Over to my left the honey colour of the Villa Medici flickered through the trees. Two young mothers pushed prams past my bench, cooing to their babies. In the distance, over in the Piazza di Siena, a band was playing; the Grand March from Aïda. Verdi had had an idea of Italy as, I suppose, an Imperial power; it had been merely rhetorical. For Mazzini, on the other hand, Italy’s mission had been spiritual. We were to assert true values against the two denaturing forces of the nineteenth century – capitalism and socialism. But who had ever really learned from Mazzini, anything except fervour? How did Corrado’s captors stand on the Mazzinian ideology? How did I stand myself? And how did Corrado?
In a curious way Corrado might claim to be his heir, the closest Mazzini had to an heir in real politics. But in this, as in so much, he was alone. For the rest of his Party, talk of spiritual values was nothing but rhetoric. Theirs was the politics of the percentage, the cut, the fast buck. They were mafiosi, camorriste.
Just the faintest zephyr brushed my cheek, bringing with it the tender aroma of honeysuckle. The sound of traffic was stilled here. If I lifted my eyes to see through the tree-ops the undulating blue of the Alban Hills, I could fancy myself in another time.
And would that have been any better?
Had we lost a chance, twenty years back, when the wind from the West was fresher, purer, and stronger? Had we? Surely not? What was vital and valuable in America could never be transported back to Europe. What was America after all but the repository for the hopes of those who had failed in, been rejected by, Europe? And for all the rhetoric of freedom all they had really learned there was how to gratify the greed which circumstances, culture, history had suppressed in Europe. They had destroyed the America of 1776, and so all the attempts to Americanize Europe, which had been so busily pursued since the war, came to little more, in the end, than a spiritual debasement; against which, precisely, the kidnapping of Corrado, rightly (whatever his own reservations) seen as one of the authors of this Italian Miracle, was certainly a protest. Only, I feared, even its authors would only offer more of the same. What else could Mass Society be persuaded to accept? We had gone so far beyond any other human experience.
I heard a voice say, ‘Well, if that doesn’t beat anything …’
The speaker was an American boy, in shorts and T-shirt. I followed the direction of his gaze.
A man was approaching along the broad walk. He moved with a certain stately deliberation, as if he was wearing high heels to which he was hardly accustomed, or perhaps even as if he was taking a rather pompous part in some historical pageant, and, like an unskilled actor, overplaying his part. His plump and fleshy chin was tilted upwards as if supporting this impression, which was however impaired by the cigarette-holder that he was gripping between his teeth. He looked neither to right nor left, and yet irradiated his consciousness of being an object of attention; the progress was hieratic. He lacked only attendant acolytes to be a bishop in procession. Yet acolyte there was, and it was indeed it which ensured attention. Behind him, in identical posture and attitude, even to the cigarette-holder with lighted cigarette and smirk, paraded, on its hind legs, a grey poodle dog. It kept its distance, perhaps a metre behind its master, and walked no less self-admiringly, entirely conscious that it was making a memorable spectacle.
The American boy said, ‘I’ve seen monkeys but that’s the frozen limit. That really sends you like.’
He watched open-mouthed as the pair, master and dog, proceeded past us. He watched them as, still without deviation or acknowledgement of the interest they were arousing (in this reticence of course emphasizing that the ecclesiastical comparison was the correct one), they passed us by and continued up the avenue, the crowd, admittedly a thin one, stepping aside in awe or wonder to let them by. And they disappeared from sight to a point where I supposed the master would snap his fingers and the dog, abruptly descending to its natural level, would trot up, muzzling his hand in search of the titbit with which it would surely be rewarded for its performance …
The American boy shook his head in long amazed silence, crumpled up the paper bag that had contained his lunch and dropped it in a bin that advertised Coca-Cola on its side …
Descending the Via Veneto I stopped where I almost never stop, at the Cafe de Paris for an ice and a cup of coffee. What I liked about it, for that moment on this afternoon, was its denationalized irresponsibility. There, for a few instants, anybody was allowed to be what he fancied, so long as he could pay for what he ordered.
Certainly in a sense everything this caffè offered, the pink table-cloths, the shade from the sun, the trees, the scurrying waiters, the heavy metal ice-cream holders, the high babble of vain conversation, mingling with the cigarette smoke as it rose to lose itself in the broad leaves above, everything belonged, one way of looking at it, to a world of illusion; we had all come here to play, at just that game, not being ourselves. For the waiters, perhaps, the situation was worse – which could be the real world for a waiter – his customers’ or his family’s?
A girl was watching me from the corner of the newsstand. She had twice tried to catch my eye. I could sense her attempt, even though I had not raised or turned my head to look at her, and though the corner of my eye had registered nothing beyond the fact of girl. She was looking at me as she would look at others throughout the day, week after week; picking on me, presumably, simply because I was alone. Perhaps my air of dandy in decay suggested something; not, certainly and obviously, attraction; just availability and a willingness that she might presume.
At last her will prevailed. I looked at her. She was, to my astonishment, beautiful. Very young, with a bronzed skin and a magazine face, regularly featured, with rich curving lips and big eyes. Her short hair was red-gold and she stood with one leg drawn up, the sole flat against the news-stand behind her, in a gold dress like a legionary’s tunic, her eyes fixed on me. The smile she offered could almost have been called ingenuous.
Equally astonishingly, nobody else was looking at her. She might have been my own private mirage.
My blotchy hands shook as I took out some notes to leave on my plate beside my bill.
I got up and walked away. I was trembling.
I had walked perhaps two hundred yards, fast, downhill, when I stopped, leaning for a moment against the trunk of one of the big plane trees.
Later, I said to her, ‘Let me give you dinner.’
Her smile had all the knowing charm of a spoiled child, irresistible to me in its admission of human imperfection.
‘My boy wouldn’t like it,’ she said.
‘No?’
‘It’s not the same,’ she said, ‘business is one thing…’
She put her foot up on the chair to
buckle it, letting me see her lovely line of long leg, reviving in me for an instant the belly-catching desire, as painful as it was sweet (the two sensations being in fact hopelessly commingled) which had, an hour or so back, caused me to turn and march up the Via Veneto again. I had found her gone from the news-stand, and then, my heart pounding at the realization of what my cowardly prudence, my moment’s failure of nerve, had seemingly denied me, I had caught sight of her going away from me along the Via Ludovisi. With no regard for anything, I had given chase.
The cheap hotel was shaded and breathless.
She said, ‘He’s jealous. You know, we talk often enough, he and I, of a film contract, but he’s terrified if he thinks I meet a producer.’
‘How long have you been doing this, Renata?’
‘Six months …’
‘And how old are you?’
‘Do you really want to know? It might embarrass you.’ Her smile had not yet been quite corrupted – the coquetry might have been offered across a village fountain.
‘Well, you’re a man of the world, a gentleman. That’s why I selected you. A girl has to be careful. I’m sixteen …’
She sat down on the bed beside me.
‘That’s why I go there in the afternoon, I wouldn’t dare in the evening. Not because of the men, you understand. I choose them carefully enough. No, it’s the other whores. They won’t stand for a girl like me, only a semi-pro. One of them scratched my dress off the only time I tried it, and I had to run through the street in my knickers and boots, clutching it to me.’
She laughed at the memory. I put my hand on hers.
‘Tell me about yourself.’
Her story was simple enough and hackneyed; no doubt suitably doctored, but not, I think, excessively. The claim to pity was hardly blatant. The family came from the South, her grandfather arriving in Rome from Cosenza. She was vague about dates but I suppose this was sometime during the ’twenties. He had been a skilled artisan and apprenticed to an uncle, who had himself married the daughter of an old Roman family of artisans. They had lived in the Via dei Cappellari, that narrow and pestiferous street, reeking of history, just next to the old prison. But the trade had been overtaken by modern methods of mass production; the little workshop had failed to last her grandfather’s time. The property had been developed; restoration, that so often sounded the death-knell of living Rome. The family had been moved out to one of the borgate, the gaunt, ghastly barracks where we now house our superfluous proletariat, well out of sight of the tourists. Her father, talented but easily discouraged, had been a drifter. Renata was vague about him; perhaps affection kept her so. But he had clearly lived at least on the edge of criminality. Her mother, like all Italian mothers, was pious – how could any of us tell a life-story that omitted that insistent detail?
