Death in Florence

by George Alec Effinger

  In practical situations, however, there was less unity of mind. No guidelines had been set up; there were only suggestions by the governing board of Utopia 3. The board explained the aims of the project in such a way that many shopkeepers, merchants, and private citizens were persuaded to leave behind their possessions, regardless of personal loss, for the enrichment of the future dwellers of Utopia 3. Indeed, the majority of people who once resided in the vast block that became Utopia 3 did this. It was only the small percentage of frightened, confused people that chose to carry their belongings and merchandise with them to their new homes. These folk were belittled. In a generous spirit entirely new among European nations, the people who left their homes to make room for Utopia 3 were welcomed and resettled, each and every one. Thus Utopia 3 had an additional, unlooked-for consequence: In addition to the development of grace and kindliness among the utopiates, there was a parallel development among all the European peoples who were personally touched by the occasion.

  The happy evacuation of Zurich took almost a week. After it was completed the city sat quietly. It was waiting at the northwestern tip of the Zuricher See, waiting for the utopiates to discover the charm of its hilly, cobbled streets. The first of the lonely wanderers to do so was Eileen Brant, taking a vacation from her splendid Florentine base. Brant had learned well from her experiences in the vacant cities of Europe. Her initial errand in Zurich was to find an English-language guidebook to instruct her in the sights and specialties of the city. This she accomplished with no difficulty and spent the rest of the autumn day walking about the narrow streets of the Old Town. She found the peaceful scene of the Limmat River very pleasant, nearly as rewarding as the prospect of the Arno which she liked best. The guidebook explained that Zurich was known for products and merchandise quite different from most other cities she had visited; consequently she went out of her way to sample the best of the world-famous Swiss chocolate. She was pleased by the flavor and texture of Lindt's Napolitains, although their exposure to several months of warm, humid air had discolored them and somewhat spoiled their subtle taste.

  While she was shopping for one of the renowned Swiss watches she heard suspicious noises from outside the store. She replaced a gorgeous platinum and ruby instrument in its silk-lined casket and looked around her for a weapon. While the firm offered watches and jewelry of a beauty and intrinsic value that stunned Brant, the store displayed little that she could seize upon to defend herself. She decided at last on a thin but heavy metal rod, used by the proprietors in years past to close up the sliding gates that protected a row of counters. She held the rod awkwardly, hoping that she looked threatening, and went to the door. The sky was dark and occasionally split by bright veins of lightning. As the first large drops of rain spatted.on the sidewalk, Brant caught a glimpse of movement down the block. She leaned close to the building and waited.

  After a few moments she saw that it was the man who had joined their busload of proto-utopiates at the French entrance. She knew that his name was Staefler, although she couldn't recall his first name. She had said very little to him during their stay at the lodge. She was mildly relieved, though, to see someone familiar. Still, she didn't put down the metal rod.

  "Hello," she called, when Staefler and the Arab kid had approached within fifty yards.

  "Hello," called Staefler. Brant saw that he was carrying a bottle of wine and a small package. Behind him, the boy was dragging a battered gray suitcase.

  "Imagine meeting you here," said Brant.

  "Yeah," said Staefler, "I guess so."

  Brant gestured, inviting Staefler to follow her across the street to a small restaurant. He shrugged, but followed her. Inside the cafe Brant left the metal rod by the door, and they took a table near the window. "How do you like Zurich?" asked Brant.

  "It's okay," said Staefler. "Do you come here a lot?"

  "No," she said. "It's only my second day. I'm staying in Firenze, mostly."

  "Italy?"

  "Yes. Florence, Italy."

  "Where they have the floods?"

  "Not any more," said Brant. "Where I have floods."

  "Right. Want some wine?" Staefler pointed toward the bar in the rear of the restaurant, and the Arab kid hurried to find three glasses. When he returned, Staefler poured them all some wine. Brant took a sip and grimaced, but she didn't say anything. After all, in a few minutes she would be alone again.

  "How have you enjoyed your freedom so far?" she asked.

  "Terrific," said Staefler. "Just terrific."

  "Lonely?"

  Staefler looked at her closely, over the rim of his glass. At the lodge she seemed to him to be a cold woman. He didn't know what kind of response she wanted. "Sort of," he said at last.

  "You'll get over it," she said. "Well, I have some shopping to do. Maybe I'll see you again before I leave." She stood up and stretched. "I want to get going before the heavy rain starts. Thanks for the wine." She left him sitting in the cafe with the boy.

  "The warmth of human contact," said Staefler to Brant's diminishing figure.

  Meanwhile Brant, trying to decide whether to return to the jeweler's showroom or find a local palace or villa, found her thoughts turning reluctantly to Staefler and his boy. "I remember my collegiate studies," she thought. "I remember an anguished passage from Theognis the Pederast. 'Woe is me! I love a smooth-skinned lad who shames me to all my friends, nor am I loath; I will bear with many things that are against my liking, and make it no secret; for 'tis no uncomely lad I am seen to be fond of.' It's good that Staefler has found an outside interest for himself. I'm sure that meticulous Swiss watches would hold little fascination for him." Brant laughed out loud as she walked along the dark street, beneath which were buried the vaults of the Swiss banks, some still filled with gold and official secrets.

  * * *

  Staefler finished eating and gulped down the last of the blood-red wine. "All right," he said to himself, "I'm back on the circuit. There's a game in town, and damned if I'm going to let some ex-typist beat me at it." Brant had been walking slowly toward Zurich's commercial heart; Staefler estimated that the heavy rain would slow her, though, while she waited out the cloudbursts under awnings and in doorways. "Have you finished yet?" he asked.

  The Arab kid only stared at him without expression. Staefler shook his head and started for the door. The boy followed just behind him, carrying the suitcase in both arms. When they got to the sidewalk the older man flattened himself against the front of the building and motioned for the Arab kid to be quiet. Far down the block they could see a small form moving across the street. It had to be Brant. The man squatted down and put one arm around the boy's shoulders. "Look," said Staefler, "do you see that?" There was only the very smallest possible flicker of acknowledgment from the boy. "All right, then. We're going to follow her. We're going to trail her from Zurich to wherever she's hanging out. If she stays here for a few days, one or the other of us will be watching her at all hours, get it?" This time there was not even that slight reply. Staefler grunted.

  "We ought to stock up on provisions," said Staefler. "This may be a continent-wide, reckless, desperate search. And we ought to chuck in that cycle, too. It's a shame, but that's just too bad. We're going to have to be dedicated and efficient. There has to be another sharp set of wheels in this town." Before they began the hunting of Eileen Brant, the man and the boy brought the motorcycle and chained it up securely in a camera and photo supply shop. They walked back toward the restaurant. Staefler was afraid that they would meet Brant face-to-face somewhere along the way. They didn't, though at several times the man's pulse quickened at what turned out to be only banners of newspapers blowing across the dirty street, or tree limbs bending in the wind. At last he realized that if she did come into view, the Arab kid would react quicker than he. He decided to relax until the boy showed that it was time to move in.

  Outside an expensive men's clothing shop they found a black Mercedes. Staefler immediately fell in love with i
t, its glossy shine like patent leather, its interior with luxurious extras that meant that it had been a custom-made automobile. "Do you drive?" asked Staefler, as he opened the trunk to stow the suitcase.

  The Arab kid only shrugged. In the front seat of the car was a chauffeur's uniform, but it was so large on the boy that Staefler shook his head, disappointed. He sat in the comfortable rear seat, opened the built-in bar and made himself a drink, slipped a cartridge into the tape player, and closed his eyes. The boy turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb. He was so small that he could barely see out through the windshield of the automobile, but that didn't seem to affect his confidence or his competence. After three quarters of an hour of touring the streets of Zurich, the Arab kid signaled to Staefler that he had seen Brant. The car pulled over to the curb and waited. Soon Brant entered the lobby of the once-magnificent Bolder Grand hotel. Staefler sat in the back seat, helpless with indecision. Finally he told the boy to turn off the engine. They would wait until she came out at last, even if it took days and they had to watch in alternating shifts.

  About an hour later Staefler was awakened by the boy's urgent shaking. Brant had come out of the hotel and was walking slowly away from them. The Arab kid began to turn the key in the ignition, but Staefler stopped him. "We'll have to wait," said Staefler. "We can't let her know we're following her." They watched her climb into a silver Audi and head toward the downtown center of the city. Some seconds later the Mercedes left the curb, keeping a cautious distance. Brant drove into the Paradeplatz and stopped outside the Grieder store; half an hour later, from a vantage point three blocks away, Staefler saw her run from the store wearing a gigantic, cascading blond wig. Staefler grimaced and waited for her next move.

  She did not stop again until they arrived in Florence, just as the sun was coming up over the Apennines. The Arab kid gave no evidence of fatigue, but Staefler was exhausted. "This is her town, isn't it?" he said. The boy did not answer. "Well, we'll find out where she stays. Then we'll sack out ourselves."

  There were only pigeons in the streets and pigeons bathing in the stagnant water of the fountains. The silver Audi and its black Mercedes shadow cruised past the ancient monuments of the city until Brant stopped near the Pitti Palace. The Arab kid turned off the engine and the Mercedes coasted slowly and quietly to a stop. The woman slammed the door of her car and ran into her headquarters.

  "You don't think she's spotted us, do you?" asked Staefler. "You had the headlights off all the way, right? You stayed far enough back, right? I don't think she knows we're here. You don't, do you?" There were several seconds of silence. Staefler chewed the side of his thumb. "That looks just like the kind of place she'd pick, for God's sake," he said. "Look at it. Who does she think she is, Cleopatra? She's going to need a lot of work." He told the boy to wait until Brant had gone to her apartment in the palace, and the Mercedes's engine noise would not give them away. Then they drove off to find themselves a place to stay while they watched Brant's daily routines. Staefler settled them in at a moderately chic hotel, the Lungarno, on the river just a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. While they were turning down the twin beds in their suite, they did not yet know that Brant had merely slipped into her palace to throw some clothes and belongings together in preparation for still another journey. Before Staefler had even pulled the stiff sheets over him, Brant was already on the road north.

  * * *

  The village of Pilessio, about thirty miles northwest of Florence, grew up around a large stone well that dated back before the first of the barbarian invasions. Only pigeons gathered there now, since the old women of Pilessio had happily taken homes elsewhere. The children who used to play around the well had gone with them, leaving the pigeons sole possession of the well and, in fact, the entire town.

  Brant arrived at the end of October to dispute that tyranny of birds. The town was just what she had hoped to find—small, provincial, totally and forever empty, with no hope of an English-language guidebook to the place. She had parked her silver Audi on the crumbling stairs of Pilessio's largest house. "This is a gesture of all-pervading discontent," she said to the pigeons, all of which had fled screaming into the gray-and-black sky.

  "I suppose that a thing like Utopia 3 would attract a certain odd type of person," she thought. She walked from her car across the bare rectangle of dirt that had been the town square of Pilessio. The well was located in the center of this plot of dirt; in earlier times, cattle had grazed there in communal herds, watered from the same source that supplied the townsfolk themselves. Now Brant seated herself on the wide rim of the well, on stones worn smooth by centuries of idle old men and chattering old women. "I wonder what that has to say about me," she said, continuing her thoughts about her fellow utopiates. "Moore is sure strange enough. Either he's really that naive and helpless, or else he's going to some tremendous lengths just to meet some women. Either way, I ought to be careful. And that guy Staefler, I don't know what to say about him. I don't think I will, just now."

  Brant went into a small trattoria across the square. The tables and chairs were all in perfect arrangement, as though someone had come in a few minutes before to set up for the evening meal. There was a service bar at one end of the main room. Brant supposed that little liquor had ever been sold. She thought the restaurant had more commonly supplied its customers with cheap wine, to ease the passage and digestion of the heavy food it served up. She passed through the dining room into the kitchen, but was disappointed to find little that she could bear to eat. She settled for a jar of olives and a can of anchovies. Brant decided to put off searching for a more substantial meal until after she had chosen a place to sleep.

  "I embrace solitude," she thought, as she searched through the private residences that bordered the central square of the town. "I love solitude; I love loneliness and peace. I won't listen to Moore's nonsense that Utopia 3 is not meant for that kind of thing. I'm weary of running into Moore or Staefler at every corner of every city. I'm sure that even Dr. Waters, whoever he is, would approve, little that I care. I wouldn't even want to run into Dr. Waters right now. I just wish there was something good on television." Brant relaxed on the fresh-smelling bed of a Signore and Signora Giangiacomo, never wondering at all where that couple might be at that moment, or what they were like, or how it had felt to live unaware of what was to happen to their slumberous village of Pilessio.

  "Isolation is nice," thought Brant as she drifted closer to sleep. "It's a shame you can't share it with anybody."

  * * *

  For no reason other than a pretty cloud formation in the south, Norman Moore turned off the highway and headed toward Milan. He was driving a white Triumph Spitfire that he had picked up two days before in Munich. He had the convertible top down, and the cold November air stung his face. About sixty miles outside of Milan he thought he saw the red taillights of another car ahead. He hit his horn, but the other car didn't stop. In a short while the taillights disappeared. Moore was disappointed. He kept driving, hoping that he would catch sight of the other car, until he arrived in Milan.

  The city was dark and uninviting. He paused there only long enough to locate some canned food and another automobile with a tankful of gasoline; he siphoned the fuel into a metal tub. While the gas was filling the tub, Moore ate a cold plate of Campbell's beans and franks. He smiled ruefully when he thought about the great meals Milan could have produced for him if he had visited the city years before. It was still a fair trade, he knew: forsaking restaurant food and hotel service for the establishment of a world of peace. He finished eating and transferred the gasoline to the Triumph. He tossed two cans of Franco-American brand spaghetti with meat-flavored sauce onto the passenger's seat. He started off again, northward, back the way he had come.

  The sun rose, and Moore was still driving determinedly. About noon, after eight hours on the road, after driving through Italy, Switzerland, and into France, he decided to stop. He was passing through a small French vil
lage called Truxeuil, near the northwestern corner of Utopia 3. He pulled up in front of an old inn and cut the engine. Moore saw a black Mercedes parked beside the inn. He got out of the Triumph and slammed the door loudly, hoping to attract the attention of anyone nearby; Moore did not hesitate to admit his loneliness. He walked around to the side entrance of the inn, then pushed open the wooden door and entered. "Hello?" he called. There was no answer, but soon he heard heavy footsteps on the stairway across the tiny parlor.

  "Do you have a reservation?" asked a man. Moore was startled, but when the other man smiled he knew it was only a pleasant joke.

  "I suppose we all do now," said Moore, offering his hand to the other man.

  "My name's Staefler," said the stranger. "I remember seeing you at the lodge."

  "That's right. My name is Norman Moore. How have you been?"

  "Fine," said Staefler, "just fine. What brings you to Truxeuil?"

  "A Triumph Spitfire," said Moore, "and a yen to see this part of the world."

  "I would have thought you'd be poking around the dusty old museums. I came here to see the small towns, the simple, honest things."

  "You get tired of museums," said Moore.

  "I know," said Staefler. "Let's have some wine." He shouted to the Arab kid to fetch a bottle of imported Scotch. "I changed my mind," he explained. "I'm keeping two bottles of wine cool in a stream in the back. We'll have them later today, with supper." Moore agreed and sat back comfortably on a musty couch while the boy served them both. After a few ounces of the warm liquor, Moore began to feel sleepy.