by Peter Rabe
“It’s broken.”
“You’re right. It’s been broken for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Since I’ve been here. Before, probably.”
“Tell me, Martha — ”
“I know. I came to Rome to get married, but he had left.”
So she wasn’t too young.
“Why don’t you go back, wherever that is?”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but then she laughed, not pleasantly.
“He left me without marrying,” she said.
Perhaps the guy had good reason. Charley couldn’t tell. Perhaps he should have left her on the bridge, in the Tiber maybe. She had already told him more than most women would, but he only knew less about her. It sounded simple, almost as simple as if he had asked her “how many lire” and she had told him.
“How many lire?” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She turned to him and when he looked at her face he saw that she had understood. He could not imagine what she would do next.
“You said how many lire.”
“My mistake.”
“You are right. And you said it because you are sick, perhaps.”
“That’s right, Martha.”
She turned front but wasn’t through.
“You lie again,” she said.
Charley turned the car through a square. “What else did I lie about, kid?”
“My name is Martha,” she said and wouldn’t talk more.
He felt nettled. He thought it was good to feel this way because that way it would be easier later. “What else did I lie about, Martha?”
“You think I’m a prostitute.”
“Does it insult you?”
“No. Because you are wrong. And I try to remember that you are sick. A fever maybe.”
He didn’t think she was a whore. She had tried nothing. She hadn’t even opened her ragged wool jacket which she kept buttoned over her dress. But he didn’t think she had led a very sheltered life since coming to Rome. Or maybe she had. There was nothing weak about her, the way she had decided to help him, the way she had thrown his insult back in his face.
“Turn here,” she said. “When you come to the boulevard go two blocks. The apothecary there is open all night. I will get your pills, and then you go. I go home alone.”
• • •
He swung out of the narrow street and took the boulevard. It had lights in the middle, and dark office buildings on either side. The lighted apothecary was ahead, at the corner where a streetcar crossed the boulevard, and all Charley had to do was make a U-turn, head back into the maze of dark streets, and get his business done. He still knew nothing about her watching him from that bridge. She may well be the kind who would never say anything, no matter what she had seen. It would not be anything new to him. He had relied on it himself often enough, that a peasant wouldn’t talk who had seen him unload stolen goods in the hills somewhere; or the time when he jumped the carabinière, slugged him unconscious, and the old woman who had seen it from the balcony had turned her head and just kept stroking her cat.
But then he didn’t have to decide. Before he had time to think more he suddenly jammed on the brake and stopped. Martha flew forward, but Charley didn’t. His head was already down on the steering wheel and his color was green.
“Charley,” she started, “what has — ”
“Wait.” She could barely hear him.
“Charley!”
“Wait,” he said again. His hand crept over, held her arm like a vise.
He needn’t have held her. She sat still watching him breathe and then how the color came back to his face.
“Martha. Here in my pocket. Money.”
“My arm,” she said.
He let go and she reached into his jacket. That’s when she felt the blood where his wound had opened.
“Get the money,” he said.
“You are badly — ”
“I know. Buy bandages, big ones. Get iodine, adhesive, and a bottle of aspirin. And a small box.”
“What, Charley?”
“Small box of aspirin. I like to carry a small box of — ” he kept his head down on the wheel and waved her off.
It was better when she came back. He could sit up without feeling dizzy and the pain was just dull. Martha was running.
“Here,” she said. “Open your shirt.”
“Never mind. Sit still.”
He took the aspirin box and put it in his pocket Then he opened the bottle and shook pills into his hand. He put them under his tongue.
“And take this,” she said. There was a short tube in her hand and when she broke it she held it to his face. The strong odor stung up his nose.
“Hold still,” she said. He had to inhale it
“Now open your shirt.”
He pushed her hand away, started the car.
“You can come to my room,” she said. “Drive slowly and it may stop bleeding.”
He drove off, in the wrong direction.
“Martha, listen. I’ve been shot. I can’t stay here. In Rome, in the outskirts, maybe, just out of town — “
“Drive carefully, Charley,” she said, so there was nothing more to discuss. He headed for the inland highway to Naples and just out of town he turned off. He kept sniffing the aromatic she had brought along because it cleared his eyes, kept his brain from reeling off. But the alertness was only behind his eyes or on the top of his head. His body felt like in a shroud, with vague movements that never quite made it.
When he thought of the girl, Martha, he felt himself get confused, even though she had made it all so simple. She had said, I’ll come along if you want help; she had told him how she came to be alone, and that she wasn’t selling a thing. Somehow she had also told him that she was not afraid, because she probably didn’t have anything that was precious.
She had not told him what she had seen from the bridge.
“Stop here, Charley. You are passing the pensione.“
He hadn’t even seen it. He noticed later how she arranged for the room, for hot water, and how she kept the proprietor from asking questions. In the room she undressed him and cleaned the wound. She made it hurt with the iodine but paid no attention when he started to curse. She bandaged him and then went downstairs. He didn’t stop her. She same back with a glass of milk and he drank it.
There was only one bed. He lay under the blanket watching her unbutton the jacket. Then she took off her dress. She looked light brown in the light from the oil lamp, and very firm. Her breasts made round shadows. She walked across the room as if he weren’t there. She lay down next to him, doing it carefully.
“No,” she said. “Go to sleep.”
He did. He just remembered that she was soft to the touch. Then he slept.
Chapter 9
After two days Charley felt better. She could tell by the way he watched her when she got out of the bed in the morning. She dressed quickly and when she looked shapeless again she sat down on the bed.
“You feel better, Charley.”
“Worse. Three nights in bed like this can kill a man.”
She laughed and folded her arms. “It gave you your strength back.”
“It’s started to make my ears pop. Come here,” and he reached for her.
She got up, out of the way, and the mood changed. He got out of bed and dressed.
“Three nights,” he said, “and I don’t know you at all.” He left his shirt off and went to the washstand. The air felt cold in the room. “Martha,” he said and smiled. “How many lire, Martha?”
She didn’t smile back. She watched him wash and said, “Three nights and you still don’t know.”
He flipped some water at her but it didn’t help the mood. She wiped her cheek and looked past him.
“How many lire, Martha?”
She shrugged.
“What’s it take, Martha. Love?”
“When you e
xcite me. That is a good start.”
He stopped trying to joke with her and shaved.
After breakfast in the dark ristorante downstairs he told her he was going to Rome. He didn’t have to tell her to come because he knew she was going back. He wasn’t sick any more, so she was leaving. He hadn’t excited her, so she was leaving.
They stepped out into the sun that glared back at them from the white houses. Only the shadows were black, and the cypresses on the dry hills. And Martha’s hair. He realized he had never seen her by sunlight, her small face, the eyes that seemed to turn blacker in the light, and how she walked like the women who carry baskets on their heads. Only her clothes looked shabby. In the light they had no color at all.
They got into the car. They still hadn’t said anything else. He put two aspirins under his tongue and drove.
“Are you in pain?” she asked.
“No.”
“Because of those pills. You always eat those pills.”
“Just a habit,” he said. “Like smoking. You smoke, Martha?”
“Sometimes.”
“What else do you do, Martha? Besides standing on bridges and so forth?”
“I work in a bakery.”
“What else?”
“The way you smile always I don’t know if you are just talking or whether you want to know.”
“Just a habit.”
“I think so. Your smile and your aspirin, they are both like habits.”
At the Rome highway he turned right. Maybe half an hour to Rome. After two days and three nights, half an hour was left to find out what he had to know. As soon as he would stop in Rome she would get out of the car and leave. Half an hour to decide what to do with her. When he thought about it and remembered what he had started to do — to kill her — his smile was suddenly gone. If she were still the monster on the bridge, it might be easy. So why hadn’t he done it then, before she turned into a woman, before she had gone with him as if it was the natural thing to do. Three nights in bed with her and nothing. Natural!
“Martha.”
“Yes?”
“We’ll be in Rome soon. Maybe half an hour.”
“I know.”
“When we get there — I want to buy you some clothes.”
She looked at him. Her eyebrows were up and half her mouth was smiling.
“How many lire, Charley?” But this time he didn’t think it was funny and when she saw it she stopped smiling and said, “Why, Charley?”
He knew why, and the reason was very simple. None of the complicated reasons were behind it.
“Because I want you to look good.”
This time she really smiled. She looked at her knit jacket with the drooping pockets at the side. She had ugly shoes on, very heavy, and she rubbed them together.
“What else, Charley?”
“You know. Might get you excited.”
She looked at him but not at the face. She looked where his bandage was under the shirt.
“Those three nights,” she said. “I knew they would bother you.”
“You’re damn right,” he said.
She moved so her knee touched his but then she took it away again. It had happened by chance.
“Charley,” she said, “it does not excite me to get clothes from you.”
“You’d be a queer duck if that’s all it took.”
“But I would like to have them.”
“Sure.”
“I like to look good to you.”
“That’s no problem.”
“In clothes, too.”
“That’ll be no problem. If I pick ‘em.”
They were going faster, and Martha held the handle on the dashboard in front of her. She held it with one hand and it made her turn half his way.
“I too thought they were three strange nights.”
“Strange. I didn’t mean strange, kid.”
“I did. You didn’t excite me then.”
She held the handle in one hand and stroked the leather of the seat with the other. The leather had a smell like hot skin. It felt hot under her hand.
“What about your job? The bakery?”
“I can get another.”
“After staying away a week?”
“It’s only been two days.”
“Plus another three nights makes almost a week.”
“One night, Charley. I don’t know yet about afterwards.”
“You gotta give me more odds, kid. After all, I’m not a well man.”
“Who knows how you will be after one night?” she said and they laughed about it.
• • •
In the outskirts of Rome traffic slowed them down. Charley drove and Martha sat back in her seat. There was nothing to say, so he had to start thinking of the other thing again, the unsettled business. Joe Lenken would have done it the other way around. First the business, then the excitement. But Joe was such a hot planner none of this would have happened to him in the first place. And if it had and he stuck to business first — what would be left after?
The thought felt ugly and he couldn’t look at Martha next to him on the seat. He chewed his lip, got the little box out of his pocket. He put the two pills under his tongue automatically. He stopped for a light, started again with the gears meshing wrong. She probably hadn’t seen a thing; too dark on that bridge. If she had she wouldn’t have acted like she did for two days. She would have given herself away. Or perhaps not, what did he know of her?
Enough, he figured. She’d just shown him. Tramp off with a stranger, to hell with the job, and if he buys her some duds let him roll her in bed for a night. He figured that was the neat way to look at it and that’s how he’d keep her around. Till he got her straight — and if she was straight maybe keep her a while longer.
Charley stopped a few houses away from Alivar’s bookstore. He pulled some lire notes out of his pocket, folded them, put them in Martha’s hand.
“Remember the store we passed two blocks down? Buy yourself something. From the skin out.”
“And you?” She was putting the notes into her pocket without having counted them.
“When you’re through, meet me up ahead, in the bookstore. Where it says Alivar. How long will you be?”
“An hour? But I also want to go back to my room. I have — ”
“Forget it. Whatever you need, buy it and come back here. Okay?”
She nodded and said she would. He watched her walk off, wondering how she would look when she came back. He was that sure of her.
The business with Alivar didn’t take long. Alivar recognized him immediately. Charley browsed along the stalls and toward the rear. Then he browsed right along through a curtain and into a small room in back. Alivar was there and Charley showed him the papers. They talked about what was to be changed, how long it would take, and the job would be five hundred thousand lire. Charley paid half in advance and said he’d be back next evening. Then he browsed some more.
When the neat-looking girl walked toward him he had to give her a double take before he was sure. Martha was something. Black hair blacker against the white shirt, and the shirt making a fine thrust in front, tucked into a belt that held her waist so the hips flared out. The skirt was straight and lighter than the tone of her legs. The whole thing looked simple and ended up making her twice as feminine. Either she had an instinct for it or somebody who knew about clothes had done the job for her.
“Christ,” he said.
She just turned and patted herself.
“Let’s go,” he said, and she walked out of the store ahead of him.
There were more boxes in the car so he put them into the trunk. Then they took off. But before he left Rome he swung up the Via Veneto again where the sidewalk cafés made a confusion along both sides. He parked and took her to a café with boxhedges around the tables, and they sat under the frosted glass roof which slanted over the sidewalk. She had never been in a place like this. He knew that because she had told him so but she s
at down, not feeling wrong about it, and ordered Monte Bianco.
“I love sweets,” she said. “In the bakery I always eat sweets when nobody is looking.” Then she started spooning and didn’t talk for a while.
He wondered how she stayed so trim eating Italian sweets all the time. He wondered how anybody could eat more than maybe a spoonful of Monte Bianco. He sucked his aspirin and drank black coffee.
They left Rome, going south. He took the coastal highway this time and he listened to her describe the view. She talked about it as if she thought he were blind. He hadn’t said much and when he passed the sign that said Nettuno and Anzio, giving less than ten kilometers, he took the first crossroad inland and didn’t talk any more at all. Martha stopped talking too.
He could have stopped several times, when they passed a town, or just by the road where shady growths climbed along hillsides. He started to go faster, mostly uphill, snapping around turns and gunning the motor when the road made a short dip. The sun was back of them now and Martha held the thick hair away from her neck. Charley started to feel the way his car sounded; the on-and-off racing of the big engine straining uphill, getting just so high and stopping because the pull was over. And then another small hill, one after the other, but never high enough to give the engine a full roar.
“Charley,” she said, “where are you going?”
He kept looking ahead.
“You know where I’m going.”
“Yes, I know. When, Charley?”
“What’s the matter, can’t wait?”
She flinched but he didn’t see it. He thought there was nothing that he could do to really offend her. That’s how he wanted to feel about her.
“Answer me.”
She reached into the leather bag she had bought and pulled out a cigarette. Then she smoked.
“Would you like one?” she asked.
“You know I don’t smoke.”
“Yes, you told me. How is your pain?”
“I don’t eat aspirin for pain. Just pleasure. And how’s yours?”
“What?”
“How do you feel, I said. How’s it now? Still excited?”
“It is very exciting the way you drive,” she said. She smoked with deep, even drags.
“Ya. I’m a hot driver, huh? You didn’t think I was such a hot driver. Or could be, when I came crawling out from under that bridge.”
