The Marshal Makes His Report

by Magdalen Nabb

  ‘Oh yes, yes, certainly, but God never gives us greater suffering than we can bear. I do believe that’s true, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure of it. Besides which, you know, everyone else has problems, too. I have bad health but I also have a great many expert doctors looking after me. I often think of all the sick people in the world who have no one, no means . . . you understand?’

  The Marshal could only gaze at him, perplexed. This strange overgrown child had no guile in him, no hypocrisy, no arrogance. How, in heaven’s name had the Marchesa Ulderighi produced such an innocent soul? Was he a throwback to some distant ancestor— the visionary in the fresco?

  ‘I would have liked to show you my collection but Father Benigni . . . it’s lonely, you see, sometimes.’

  ‘You never go out?’

  ‘Go out?’ The idea seemed to take him aback. ‘I— my mother takes me to the country in the summer. The heat here is bad for me, they say. But here I very rarely go out. There’s so much noise, the traffic and so on, that for someone with delicate nerves it can be a problem. But people are very kind—for instance, the dealer who sells me most of my coins quite often brings things to show me and I think that’s so thoughtful of him since it’s out of working hours, don’t you?’

  The Marshal thought it was very enterprising of him and no doubt very profitable, but he kept his opinion to himself.

  ‘Is it a family collection you’re adding to or did you begin it?’ The things he would really like to ask Neri! Here he was asking inane questions about a coin collection because he had been summoned to appear before this young man and the shadow of the chief public prosecutor lay over them.

  ‘It was begun by my great-grandfather. The family did have one or two quite important things before then but they were just there, if you understand me. It wasn’t in any conscious way a collection.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘One or two things were sold . . . unfortunately . . . because . . . well, now they’re in the Bargello Museum. That’s a very fine collection, very fine, so . . . Ah, tea.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Neri’s more accustomed ear had caught a noise which meant nothing to the Marshal until a concealed service door as in the rooms on the courtyard opened to reveal Grillo struggling with a tray.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? Tea for two. Little party.’ He banged the tray down on a small marble table and shook his fist at Neri. ‘Eat something!’

  ‘I’ll try . . .’

  ‘You’ll do better than that or I’ll want to know why. I haven’t climbed three hundred stairs with that lot for nothing, or have I?’

  He was slapping cups and plates to right and left, hopping from one foot to the other as he did so. It was impossible to know whether he were truly angry or acting. Neri seemed to take him very seriously and to accept his rudeness as normal.

  ‘The steps are hard for you, I know.’

  ‘Ha!’ He did a little grotesque dance. ‘The Marshal doesn’t think so. The Marshal probably thinks I should be in a circus.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Now the truth is—’ he pawed Neri’s big shoulder and wagged his other hand towards his face—‘if I had your legs and you had my energy there’d be a normal human being there somewhere.’

  ‘It’s true.’ Neri seemed delighted. ‘But what about brains, Grillo, who’s got the brains?’

  ‘You have. But I’ve got my wits and that’s another matter. If you had your wits about you, you wouldn’t be entertaining this fellow.’

  The smile faded from Neri’s face. ‘Leave us alone now.’

  ‘I’ll leave you alone!’ He scuttled back to the hidden door. ‘On your own is what you’ll be but never left in peace!’

  He was gone. The Marshal stared with his big eyes at Neri, longing to ask something, anything, that would elicit an explanation of their relationship which was a mystery to him. He didn’t, of course, ask anything, but Neri was quick to understand his look.

  ‘You mustn’t mind him. I’m afraid he must have given you a difficult time if you’ve had to question him.’

  ‘He was a bit strange.’

  ‘But you didn’t feel sorry for him?’

  ‘Sorry for him? I—maybe I should have in all conscience but I must confess he got on my nerves so much that—’

  ‘That’s why he does it, you see. I have a great deal of time to think about things, and so . . . Grillo has looked after me all my life. Even when I was so small that I had a nanny he was always there, rather like a guard dog. Nanny, who was English and never did manage to follow a thick Tuscan accent, hated him. He tormented the life out of her and she would end up by chasing him, but he could always outrun her and it delighted me. I think now that he did it partly to amuse me because I was so often sick. I think I can honestly say, Marshal, that I have never laughed in my life except at his instigation. I’m grateful to him for it.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘Can you?’ Neri looked at him hard, as though it mattered a great deal to him that the Marshal should understand. ‘Yes. Yes, you look like a man who understands things. At the funeral . . . But we were talking of Grillo. The fact is, you see, that someone as small as he is, the height, say, of a child of eight, is automatically treated like a child of eight. It’s a natural reaction and there’s no unkindness meant, but how would you feel if you were habitually treated like an eight-year-old?’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be wearing that uniform for a start. The job you did would be entirely conditioned by your height. You’d be ignored a lot. People would talk over your head, literally and metaphorically, and if they noticed you at all it would be to feel sorry for you. Now, you may find Grillo’s behaviour strange, as you say, and unpleasant, disconcerting. Even so, I rather imagine that you haven’t treated him like an eight-year-old and that you haven’t tried to talk over his head. You’ve felt angry with him, perhaps, irritated, but you haven’t felt sorry for him.’

  ‘That’s right. That’s very true, I hadn’t thought.’ You never see him on the stairs.

  That’s who it was, of course. Grillo. The tenants were convinced that he spied on them, that he knew everything that went on on every floor, though no one ever saw him on the stairs. They were almost certainly right. He had his own stairs, and the service doors, to the studios for example, might be locked but they were flimsy and good for listening in. At this thought the Marshal’s heart began beating faster and his face felt hot. How much had been said between himself and William Yorke that time when the dwarf had been lurking? He couldn’t even remember. Whatever he’d said had been enough to precipitate the release of the body, the funeral . . . they had certainly talked about the porter’s son, but had he mentioned his intention to pick up Corsi’s clothing? He couldn’t remember—of course, that would have got back in some way whether the dwarf . . .

  ‘Is something wrong? You don’t look well? Some tea?’

  The Marshal took it and held it without registering what it was. The dwarf was probably out there now! And where had that priest gone? How many of the Ulderighi family knew he was here and why? He didn’t know himself why but he was being watched, invisibly from all over the building.

  Don’t take me back to that house!

  ‘You’re distressed. You’re angry with me perhaps for taking up so much of your time. Father Benigni—’

  ‘No, no. I was thinking . . . I was thinking about your father, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘Of course, yes.’ Neri’s head began to make tiny agitated movements. ‘I am wasting your time and we should be talking about my father. My father . . . I will tell you everything. You understand that it’s not easy for me. You see, it’s so often difficult to confess not the serious things one has done but the petty things, the shameful, squalid little things. It isn’t just me, you see. I know very little of the world, but Father Benigni assures me that a man w
ould often find it easier to confess to a murder, say, than to some little socially unacceptable . . . than to . . .’

  His breath seemed to fail him and the Marshal, alarmed by not knowing in what his illness or weakness consisted and distressed by his suffering, reached a fatherly hand to touch his shoulder.

  ‘Steady, now. You don’t have to confess anything to me. I’m not a priest, remember.’

  ‘But you’re something very like a priest in the sense that you are familiar with things that . . . you are used to things and can understand. Besides, Father Benigni agreed that it was right to tell you. He’s worried about my health, I know that because my—nevertheless, it’s the right thing to do and would be so even were I in perfect health. You’ve been making an inquiry, they told me that, and you see, you’re wasting your time because I know. I know everything, so it’s only right. I’ve been weak and cowardly but there were other reasons, other people—I don’t want you to think too badly of me. It matters to me quite a lot and yet I don’t know you. Isn’t that strange? I’ve watched you very often. You walk very slowly and sometimes you stop and stand quite still for a moment as though you were saying something to yourself. Then you go on. You’ve often seemed so troubled. You may think it strange, but though I can’t see people’s faces from up here I can often judge their mood. For instance, I can tell by the way he opens the gate when Mori the porter has been quarrelling with his wife . . .’

  ‘I imagine that happens fairly often.’ A silly enough remark, and the Marshal knew he was only trying to delay what he didn’t want to hear without having the remotest idea of what that was.

  ‘They do quarrel a lot.’

  ‘And when you’re not observing the people in the courtyard or arranging your coin collection, you play music.’

  ‘Yes. You knew that? I play the flute. I’ve studied very little because it was felt that sustained study would be too much wear on the nerves. But I do play. I often wish . . .’

  What he wished for he didn’t say. The Marshal imagined that there must be a lot to wish for in his life. Why should he feel for him, though, in just the same way he’d felt for the dead father—or the dream version of the dead father? As if he were the only one to care? Surely this young man was surrounded by care and attention? With a bluntness that he couldn’t help though it sounded so unkind, the Marshal said, ‘Why me? I understand the chief public prosecutor is a good friend of the family. I’d have thought you’d tell him anything you had to tell.’ Was he just being used again? Was this a trap to make him somehow compromise himself, the reprimand and the sudden transfer waiting round the corner.

  ‘Gianpiero . . . Yes, but I couldn’t. You’re right, of course, he’s a very dear friend of my—of ours, but that’s just why I couldn’t tell him—I mean about her, not about my father—and it would be even worse to have to admit that I . . . that I . . . It’s you I want to tell. It’s not easy for me to explain, but I have so much time to watch people, to know them. I’ve been watching you ever since it happened and at the funeral I became quite sure that you were the one person to whom I could unburden myself.’

  The Marshal could well believe it. Story of his life. Other people’s problems, other people’s guilt, other people’s burdens and even their neglected dead. And because he knew that this was what his job was about he didn’t protest.

  ‘Tell me whatever you want to tell me if you think it will make you feel better.’ And since he had already understood the ‘shameful, squalid little thing’ that blocked his recounting of the more important one, he helped him.

  ‘You know, I first heard about you and your coin collection from William Yorke. His sister seems to be very fond of you. She told him how you sat for hours together sorting your collection at your desk by this window.’ He got up as he said this and went and stood with his back to the window in the space where the desk must once have stood.

  ‘I was looking down myself when I was waiting for you just now. Gave me a bit of a shock. Must have been a trial to you. I mean, after all, we’re only human.’

  It was a bull’s eye all right, but what the relevance of it was to anything remained to be seen.

  ‘I moved my desk.’ His face was deep red and lowered towards his tightly clasped hands. His body rocked slightly like an old woman saying her rosary. ‘I moved it as soon as I’d confessed to Father Benigni.’

  ‘I see.’ But the Marshal also saw from his unshriven face that he had gone on looking after that. ‘And what did Father Benigni advise?’

  ‘Oh, he was very kind. He explained that it was only a venial sin, that in a sense I was a special case because, you see, if I’d been well enough my mother would have had me marry before now. You do understand?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes, I do.’ He needs to get married. Lorenzini’s voice but the Grillo’s words. ‘I understand perfectly.’

  ‘But you realize that it’s not just . . . he doesn’t just paint them, that he . . .’

  Only then did the Marshal think of the portrait of Bianca Ulderighi and remember that where the other tenants called her the Marchesa, or even That Bloody Woman, Hugh Fido . . .

  ‘He was tormenting me, you see. Look for yourself. You can only see from here, only from my window. It was aimed at me all along, although at first I didn’t understand that. I only realized it one day when he was arranging a model and he made her lie facing the window, he made her . . . And then he came right to the window himself and looked up. He looked straight up at me. And, God forgive me, God forgive me, even then I went on watching, I couldn’t help it! I was shamed to the depths of my soul and I went on looking. I couldn’t stop myself. Who else could have helped me except Father Benigni!’

  ‘Calm yourself now. Steady.’ The Marshal went back to him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You trust Father Benigni, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do, absolutely.’

  ‘Then remember what he told you. It was only a venial sin.’

  ‘I do trust him . . . But such a terrible chain of events! How could it be that such a small guilt should become so great? I’m sorry. I must keep calm and not waste your time and tell you all the truth that I’m sure of.’

  The Marshal could just hear the little priest saying it and he didn’t much care for that ‘all the truth that I’m sure of’ but he made no comment.

  Neri’s hands were clasped now as though he were praying inside himself as he spoke, which may well have been the case.

  ‘I confessed. I confessed but didn’t repent. I moved my desk as I’d promised. Miss Yorke came up that very day, I remember . . . She used to say I should call her Catherine and she was always very kindly, very gentle. She asked me why—why I’d moved my desk to where I wouldn’t be able to see properly. That’s how kind she was, that she thought of my eyes. They’re not very strong. She brought me a box she’d found, a document box which had three coins in it under all the papers. They weren’t terribly valuable but she thought of me, and she thought of my eyes, and I didn’t know how to answer when she asked me why. She’s so far removed from anything like that. I always think she’s like an angel from a fresco, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I haven’t met her yet.’

  ‘Or perhaps from even longer ago . . . “A jar of wine from the Alban hills, more than nine years old . . . est in horto, Phylli, nectendis apium coronis; est hederoe vis multa, qua crines religata fulges.” Such long hair, of the same clear gold as the Alban wine . . . “and in my garden there is parsley, Phyllis, to plait a wreath for you; with trails of ivy I will bind your shining hair . . .” Such beautiful hair, like spun gold . . . “with trails of ivy I will bind your shining hair.” . . . I wish I could have studied more but my eyes, you see—and she thought of that, so kind—’ He broke off abruptly, as though remembering something, a painful memory that flooded his mind and set his hands, which had reposed a moment at the thought of Catherine Yorke, clutching again at each other for comfort.

  ‘Father Benigni said . . .’

  T
he Marshal, for the moment, made no attempt to keep him to the point, if there really was a point to all this. He contented himself with sitting down again and observing Neri Ulderighi, perhaps the most extraordinary person he had ever come across. His body was so decadent, oversized, puny, the head too heavy for the sloping shoulders, the hair and skin that of an old man. Years of inbreeding had produced his body and its weak but desperate urge to reproduce itself. And out of all this shone a soul purer than a child’s—or it would have been had the priests not got at it and burdened it with guilt.

  ‘Father Benigni, you see, is concerned for my health as well as my soul. He’s cared for me all my life. I had to tell him that even after my confession I’d gone on . . . gone on—but I was punished, terribly punished—’ He was crying as he had at the funeral, his head lolling and then jerking upright.

  ‘Your mother?’ asked the Marshal very gently.

  The head was stilled. ‘You know?’

  ‘I guessed. The portrait and one or two other things suggested . . . an intimacy.’

  ‘You understand that I didn’t know what to do?’

  ‘Why should you have done anything? It must have been upsetting for you to think that your own mother—’

  ‘Not to think, Marshal, to see. To see. It was a punishment in itself but I had to confess my own wrongdoing, you must see that. I didn’t intend to say more. I swear to you I had no thought of mentioning my—of who was concerned. It’s true, you know, what Father Benigni said. It’s only our own sins we have to confess. The sacrament doesn’t require us to recount the sins of others, and though I hadn’t thought of that for myself—I was too upset to think clearly—I nevertheless only intended to confess my own sin. You do believe me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of all things you must believe that. But I was very distraught, I think almost hysterical, and somehow it just came out.’

  ‘I see.’ The Marshal decided to take over in the hope of avoiding any hysteria now. ‘And Father Benigni told your father, is that it?’

  ‘Oh no, not—the secret of the confessional, you see, meant that he—’