Damnation of Adam Blessing

by Packer, Vin

  There in Civitavecchia was the very building from the pictures Ernesto had shown Adam. Adam’s heart had missed some beats at the sign: Cucci’s … it was just remodeled, the waiter assured Adam, and Adam had sat out on the terrace waiting for his whisky, thinking of how often in his imagination he had sat on this same terrace, entertaining Luther Schneider, and Billy and Chary, laughing and talking on this same terrace…. Less than a week before he had come here to Civitavecchia, on one of Ernesto’s and his walks through the Villa Borghese, Ernesto had told him that the terrace had been widened, that Adamo’s would have the finest view of the sea in all Italy.

  “You make me feel so happy, Ernesto,” Adam had told him.

  “Not lèi, Adam.” Ernesto had seized Adam’s wrist and pressed it with his palm. “Tu. We are friends. No longer lèi, but tu.”

  When the waiter brought Adam the whisky on the terrace at Cucci’s, Adam had remembered Ernesto’s touching invitation to Adam to use the familiar form of address. He had left the whisky and run off, and since then at odd times, Adam would find his eyes filling up, as they had a moment before coming to the trattoría, when he was leaving the questura with Dorothy.

  Adam poured his wine and began to eat his mussels.

  When he finished lunch he would visit Ernesto’s wife in the hospital. He would reason with her. It would do her no good if Ernesto were to go to prison again.

  Adam remembered what the waiter at Cucci’s had said: “I come from these parts, Signore. There has never been a family named Leogrande, nor one named Gelsi who run the pensione you ask about. That name, both of them, I can tell you is not of anyone around here.”

  And in Adam’s mind had come the retort: “Not yet, but wait!”

  For there was still time, still some money left.

  “Tu. We are friends,” Ernesto had said, and Adam felt forgiveness was the only obstacle in their way now. Adam would forgive him all, just as Ernesto had tacitly forgiven Adam for a crime he would not even allow Adam to confess to him.

  18

  August 5

  Dear Billy and Chary,

  I am writing this after a visit to a friend’s wife. I am upset because she is dead, and it will cause my friend a great deal of trouble. There is no point in going into it all, since we are so out of touch, and no longer seem to know the same people. However, I think of you often, even though we are not as close as we once were.

  I am sorry that you did not like the baby’s bib. I wish you had enclosed a note telling me what was wrong with it, as I want to exchange it for something you might like better. You are certainly hard people to buy gifts for! I never seem to get you something that pleases you.

  Tonight from America a friend of Dorothy’s is arriving named Shirley Spriggs. She is on her honeymoon with her husband Norman. This will keep us busy, but we always think of you two. I cannot tell you how happy I am that you are still married and everything is going well. I trust it is, or I would have heard otherwise. It is all right that you don’t write because I know you are busy with the baby. Is it a boy, and if so, what did you name him? I am not fishing for compliments by that statement, because I can understand perfectly if you named him after either one of your fathers.

  My best to both of you and continued good wishes for a happy marriage. My best also to Mrs. Cadwallader when you see her.

  Yours,

  Adam.

  August 6

  Tonia tells me you are bother at the hospital and everyplace, come even here to the questura. No money is owe you if you think that, and if you try to say there is money owe you, how do you prove? Stay away from my life.

  Vittorio Gelsi.

  August 8

  Dear Billy and Chary,

  I am writing this to you about Adam. He has started drinking again. He is very upset because a man who posed as his friend has turned out to be a crook, and now it seems, even a murderer. I do not want to bother you with this. I know you dislike Adam, and I can appreciate the reasons. It is just that lately I am worried about him to a point where I will do anything I can to help him. I believe he has practically exhausted his money from the sale of the Stammbuch, and I am not disinclined to think this crook also got some of that money. Adam mentioned once that he was in a hospital. This is what I am writing you about. I know he writes to you, and I know Billy talked with him a bit while you were both in Rome. Did he mention the hospital, or the doctor? Either or both would help me. Last night he called some florist in New York long distance and begged to have a charge account reinstated. I don’t know what any of this means, but as you can see, things here are not so good. If you know anything that might help me find out the name of the hospital, I would be grateful. Here at Fellow’s we are set up to handle mental illness as well as other problems, but Adam will have nothing to do with the organization. I used to think he was simply an alcoholic, but sometimes I wonder. My best to you both, and forgive this intrusion, but it’s necessary.

  Dorothy Schackleford.

  The carabiniere smiled at Adam. “All right, Signore. He has consent. You wait and in a moment, you can see him.”

  Adam went and sat on a straw-bottomed chair opposite the police officer’s desk. He had not had a drink in twenty-four hours, not since the fight with Dorothy over the fact he had found her letter to Billy and Chary, opened it and destroyed it after he read it. Well, he had expected Dorothy to turn on him; it was just a matter of time. He supposed Shirley and Norman had triggered it, and as he waited to see Ernesto, he promised himself he would not return to the Via Po until they were out of Rome for good. Dorothy had made reservations down the street at the pensione for them, and for the past four days, the pair were forever intruding on Adam. Norman had even tried to talk to Adam “man-to-man", as Norman put it, about Adam’s drinking. The whole apartment had taken on the atmosphere of The Salvation Army, and Adam was tired of it. Last night Adam had suggested Norman take Shirley dancing, which was the occasion for a crying jag on Shirley’s part, intermixed with sniffling memories of Ginger Klein’s demise, and a threat to punch Adam in the nose from Norman.

  Norman had even had the gall to ask Adam what his intentions were toward Dorothy.

  “What are hers toward me?” Adam had answered him. “To betray me to my best friends?”

  The carabiniere signaled to Adam to follow him, while another officer took his place at the desk. Adam went behind the carabiniere up a dirty, badly-lighted staircase. At a dark passage, down a narrow corridor, the carabiniere took a key from a chain attached to his uniform, and unlocked a door. In this room, in front of another closed door, sat a young policeman with his cap perched sideways on his mass of black curly hair.

  “Signor Gelsi,” said the carabiniere.

  He turned to Adam with another of his cryptic smiles. “Any time you want to sign a denuncio,” he shrugged, “it might make you feel better, Signore.” He tipped his hand to his cap, and walked out of the room. The policeman with the black curly hair pointed at a doorway, and Adam went inside. He sat on a bench and waited.

  Friends come first, Adam thought, and he felt himself begin to choke up. When he saw Ernesto, he would say nothing about his shock at the knowledge that the woman in green from the whorehouse, was Ernesto’s wife … nothing about Tonia, either, the brunette whore whom Adam had spent his time with, nothing about her angry denials that she had taken a thousand dollars from Ernesto to keep quiet about Adam. Another of Ernesto’s lies, Tonia had insisted at the hospital, and Adam realized that one thing Ernesto had told him was true. All of his family did speak English; Tonia told him in very plain English that Ernesto had first intended to blackmail him. The meaning of her words, anyway, was very plain.

  “You were afraid you say something to me, no? You didn’t not say anything, but Vittorio know you afraid. He would have blackmail you, but you give him the money without he do it!”

  Adam was able to figure it out, trace the whole thing from the day he handed Ernesto the thousand to keep the brunette quiet;
in the next breath he had mentioned going into business with Ernesto. Then Ernesto had dropped the subject of the brunette and what she knew. If it had not been the club at Civitavecchia, it would simply have been more blackmail. Adam sucked hard on the Gauloise to keep himself from feeling very sad. Outside the room he heard the police officer exchange words with another policeman, then in the doorway, Ernesto stood.

  “Ernesto!” Adam walked across to him smiling, while the policeman with the curly hair shut the door, staring at them through the wire window.

  “Don’t call me that. You know that is not my name.” Ernesto was sober-faced, and Adam thought he even looked angry.

  “I want to help you,” said Adam.

  Ernesto rubbed at his hook nose, and let his hand drop to his side again. “I come to tell you leave me alone, and leave my sister alone! Leave Tonia alone!”

  “I only told her what I told you. I want to help you!”

  “She does not want me to be helped!”

  “Then forget her, Ernesto. We’ll figure a way out!”

  “There is no way. The best way is you go. Leave us all alone. I come to tell you that.”

  “I don’t want the money back. You think that?”

  Ernesto glared at him, arms akimbo, rocking on his heels. “What money?”

  “You don’t trust me. You think I care about the money. I don’t!”

  “You are crazy!”

  “Sit down, Ernesto. I have an idea. Listen, we could still build the place in Civitavecchia. I was there, Ernesto. I saw the place, and we could still — ”

  “Don’t call me that! You are crazy.” He turned and said something to the policeman at the window of the door. Adam did not understand more than the word “open".

  “I have so much to tell you,” said Adam, “Please. We can talk. I could open the place in Civitavecchia and we could run it together when you are free. We could — ”

  Ernesto spat on the floor. The Italian policeman shouted something at him and began opening the door.

  “I have never been to Civitavecchia,” said Ernesto, “and I will never go now. I have seen pictures though,” he laughed, a laugh of derision. “I have a friend who is a brick-layer. He just finished a place called Cucci’s, a do-over job. Did you see Cucci’s?”

  “Why do you want to hurt me, Ernesto?”

  Ernesto said something to the guard who stood in the doorway, and the guard returned the remark with another, and an obscene gesture. Both Ernesto and the guard laughed.

  “I remember when you told me the things about man’s inhumanity to man,” Adam said. “I don’t believe you want to be cruel.”

  Ernesto started walking toward the door. “I don’t care what you believe. I have my life not to care. I have my life what is left to sit in a cell and do nothing but not to care what you believe!”

  “Are you blaming me? Is that it?” Adam pulled at his arm. “Are you blaming me?”

  “Without you, and your money there would have been no need to fight her.”

  Adam’s eyes were filled with tears. “But I only wanted to — ” He could not think any longer what it was he had wanted to do.

  “To have your fancy club, ah?” said Ernesto.

  “But it isn’t my fault! I came here to help you!”

  “Help yourself to a jump in the Tiber!” Ernesto said. He was in the entranceway of the room when Adam caught his arm a second time and held on to it. “Remember the day in the Borghese? Remember, you said I should say tu. Not lèi, you said. We are friends.”

  Ernesto shook his arm free. “Let go! Crazy!”

  “Tu,” said Adam. “Ernesto, let me help you. Not lèi, you said, but tu.” The tears were starting down his cheeks. “Wait, Ernesto, there’s so much more I want to say!”

  Ernesto stopped and looked back over his shoulder at Adam.

  There was a crooked grin on his face, and the silver medal around his neck gleamed against the dim light of the low-watt bulb overhead.

  “At least I am not you,” said Ernesto; “I am a man at least!”

  He spat a second time and made the same obscene gesture which the policeman had made a moment ago. Then he turned his back on Adam.

  19

  “… and this afternoon I am going to visit the grave of your wife. Do not be unhopeful about the future. In order to make it easier for Dorothy, who is entertaining friends from America, I will be at this hotel for a while. You may write me here, but if you don’t I will understand that it is because they probably don’t allow it. I know you did not intend to hurt my feelings during our visit. It is not an easy position you are in …”

  A LETTER FROM ADAM BLESSING TO VITTORIO GELSI

  The hotel was on the Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, not far from the Mediterraneo. Adam was paying eight thousand lire for a double with bath, a deluxe rate, but he was glad to be away from the Via Po apartment. He posted the letter to Ernesto at the desk and walked out into a warm sunny day, not badly hung-over, not at all depressed. As he strolled along he looked for the familiar yellow sign with the telephone on it. There was one above a bar sign on the corner, and Adam ordered a whisky and asked the cashier for a gettone to make a call. He took his drink with him, dialed Dorothy’s office number, and when she answered, Adam pressed the button to let the slug drop into the box.

  “Where are you, Adam?”

  “In a bar.”

  “Where are you staying, Adam?”

  “The Holy Father has asked me to share his quarters in the Vatican.”

  “I don’t appreciate that, Adam. I don’t appreciate any of it.”

  “Did I get any mail?”

  She let out a sarcastic little laugh. “Stacks of it, Adam, from all your friends. The florist in New York, the bartender in New York, Ernesto, Billy, Chary — I can’t count all your mail.”

  “You’re still mad, is that it?”

  “Adam, I have to pay my phone bill. You called all over the world the other night. If Norman hadn’t stopped you — ”

  “He’s still around?”

  “Of course he’s still around. What do you think? Adam, he’s a better friend than you know. They were supposed to go to Capri this week, and he’s only staying because he’s worried about you.”

  “I must be the most exciting thing that ever happened to Norman. Even more exciting than Shirley.” Adam took a gulp from the whisky glass.

  “Oh, Adam, you can’t even stop drinking while you make a phone call. I can hear the glass.”

  “It’s just wine.”

  “Norman was going to ask the police to help find you, if you didn’t call today.”

  “The police have nothing on me,” said Adam.

  “Of course they haven’t got anything on you! What kind of a way is that to talk! You were talking that way the other night! I don’t know what you mean half the time any more! Adam, we’re all very worried about you, that’s all.”

  “I’m fine, Dorothy. Really. I really feel great!” He meant that. He felt tears in his eyes.

  “Why don’t you come back to the apartment?” “When they go. Not before.”

  “Adam, I’ll ask them not to stop by any more. Will you come back then?”

  “It’s the nagging I can’t take,” said Adam. “I haven’t done such bad things.” More tears. He turned his back on the bar so the old man behind it would not see his eyes.

  “Where are you staying without luggage?” “I have a new suitcase I bought.” “Oh, Adam, come back to the apartment.” “Yes,” said Adam. “I want to. I want to pack everything.” “Pack?”

  “I may have to go to Venice,” said Adam. “Billy sounded worried the other night on the phone.”

  “Adam, he was worried about you.”

  “I know. I ought to reassure him.”

  “Come home, Adam, and we’ll talk about it.”

  “You see, Dorothy,” said Adam, “they could be having trouble with their marriage. They are some things you don’t know, you see?”

 
“Adam … Just come home, will you?”

  “I have to go to the Piazza Verano this afternoon. After that, maybe.”

  “The cemetery? Not the cemetery?”

  “Ernesto’s wife is there, Dorothy.”

  “What time are you going there?”

  “Oh, after lunch, I suppose.”

  “All right, Adam.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” said Adam. “I just hate Norman.”

  “All right, Adam. I’ll see you later then.”

  “Yes,” Adam smiled. “Good-bye.” He put the phone’s arm back. There was a residue of tears in his eyes, which he brushed away with his fingertips. He swallowed the rest of his whisky and set off for the narrow old street north of Piazza Navona, the Via de Coronari.

  The choice was between a silver salt cellar and an eighteenth century wood punch-ladle, with a worm handle and silver mounts. Adam stood in the antique shop trying to make up his mind. His book on silver was with the rest of his belongings on the Via Po, and while he was almost positive he would buy Luther Schneider the punch-ladle, he had some reservations. The punch-ladle was the more expensive gift, but the silver salt cellar was larger and looked less skimpy. Still, Schneider was more likely to have a salt cellar in his collection. Adam picked up one, then the other, ultimately choosing the punch-ladle. He left instructions for mailing, and enclosed the note he had written last night at the hotel. He had had to rewrite it this morning, for his hand had looked strangely unlike him, even though he allowed for the fact he was quite tight. It was a bewildering curiosity — last evening’s handwriting sample. There were those odd breaks in the lower sections of his a’s and o’s. He had smiled to imagine such ominous traits in himself, and he had redone it with great care: “Greetings from The Eternal City with thanks for your faith in me.” It was the first time he had ever put a message in with a gift for Schneider. He left it unsigned, but he felt a certain warm satisfaction at the thought that he had finally made a direct communication, as though somehow it gave more stature to his bond with Schneider. The clerk was smiling at Adam, bowing to him, being so very kind that Adam left the place with his eyes filled. There was a lot of good in the world, and as Adam crossed the street and headed toward the Piazza Navona, he realized he wanted to dine outdoors in the sun, where he could watch people, toast them with his wine in a secret sacrament, embracing absolute strangers and Billy, Chary, Ernesto … his friends…. He thought suddenly of the nice clerk from the Gracie Branch Post Office back in New York City, the one to whom he had handed over the change-of-address slip, and to whom he had told the fib about Chary’s moving. The clerk had such a friendly face. When Adam had gone back to the post office to reroute Chary’s mail the second time, he had looked for that clerk in vain. Adam wished he knew his name. He would have liked to send him a post card, even though the clerk would probably not know who it was from. He would simply have liked to send him greetings from Rome. Tears again. Adam blinked them away. He turned onto the Via Guiseppe Zanardelli, where he saw Passetto’s, with the large summer terrace. He looked forward to a very happy luncheon there, and he had to stop a few feet from the entrance to get control of himself, to wipe his eyes.