Catastrophe

by Dino Buzzati

  Suddenly the simplest of solutions occurred to him. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before: to go back home, warn his son and hide him in some other apartment. There would certainly be friends who would be willing to shelter him. He looked at the clock—ten past one—and went toward the stairs.

  But he was stopped a few paces from the door. “Wherever are you going at this hour, dear maestro? And why that expression? Don’t you feel well?” It was Donna Clara, no less, who had broken away from the official group and was standing near the door with a young man.

  “Oh, Donna Clara,” said Cottes, recovering himself. “And where do you think I should be going at this hour? At my age? I’m going home, of course.”

  “Listen, maestro,” and Signora Passalacqua’s voice took on a confidential tone. “Take my advice: wait a little longer. It’s better not to go out. . . . There are things going on outside, do you realize?”

  “What, do you mean they’ve already begun?”

  “Don’t be alarmed, dear maestro. There’s no danger. Nanni, would you take the maestro to have a drink?”

  Nanni was the son of his old composer friend, Maestro Gibelli. While Donna Clara slipped away to prevent others leaving, the young man went with Cottes to the buffet, and told him what was happening. Frigerio, a well-informed barrister, and a close friend of the Prefect’s brother, had come hurrying to the Scala a few minutes earlier, and had warned them to let nobody leave. The Morzi were concentrated at various points on the edge of the city, and were about to move into the center. The Prefecture was already almost surrounded. Various police stations had been isolated and deprived of motor transport. The situation was in fact very serious. It was not advisable to leave the Scala, particularly in evening dress. Much better to wait there. The Morzi would certainly not try to invade it.

  This new piece of information passed very rapidly from one person to another, and had a tremendous effect on the guests. So it was no longer a joking matter. The chatter ceased, and only round Grossgemuth was there a certain buzz of conversation, as nobody could decide what was to be done with him. His wife was tired, and had gone to the hotel by car an hour ago. How could he be accompanied now, through streets which were probably in a state of tumult? Granted, he was an artist, an elderly man, a foreigner. Why should they want to harm him? But still it was a risk. The hotel was far off, opposite the station. Perhaps he ought to have a police escort? It would probably be worse.

  Hirsch had an idea: “Listen, Donna Clara. If we could find some Morzi V.I.P.? Aren’t there any here? . . . He would make an ideal safe-conduct.”

  “So he would,” agreed Donna Clara, and thought hard. “But you know that’s a splendid idea? . . . And we’re in luck . . . I saw one a little while ago. Not exactly a V.I.P., but a member of Parliament just the same. Lajanni, I mean. . . . Yes, yes, I’ll go and see about it straightaway.”

  The Honorable Member Lajanni was a pale and shabbily dressed man. That evening he was wearing an old-fashioned dinner jacket, a slightly grubby shirt, and his fingernails were rimmed with gray. He was generally involved in settling agricultural disputes, and seldom came to Milan, so that few people knew him by sight. Up to now, instead of frequenting the buffet, he had gone off on his own to visit the Opera Museum. He had returned to the foyer some moments earlier, and was sitting in a corner on a sofa, smoking a Nazionale.

  Donna Clara went straight up to him. He stood up.

  “Tell me the truth, onorevole,” said Signora Passalacqua without losing time on formalities, “are you here to guard us?”

  “Guard you? Whatever for?” exclaimed the member of Parliament, lifting his eyebrows in surprise.

  “Why ask me? You must know, since you belong to the Morzi!”

  “Oh, if it’s that . . . certainly I know something . . . and I knew it before, to be honest . . . yes, unfortunately I knew their plan of action.”

  Without noticing the “unfortunately,” Donna Clara went on in a decided way: “Listen, onorevole, I realize you may find it a little comical, but we are in a very embarrassing situation. Grossgemuth is tired and wants to go to bed, and we don’t know how to get him to his hotel. The streets are in an uproar . . . there’s no knowing . . . a misunderstanding . . . an incident . . . it can happen in a moment. . . . But on the other hand, how can we explain these things to him? It’s hardly tactful, as he’s a foreigner? And then . . .”

  Lajanni broke in: “In short, if I am not mistaken, you want me to escort him, give him my official protection, is that it? Ah! ah! . . .” He broke out laughing so loudly that Donna Clara stared at him dumbfounded. As he guffawed, he made signs with his right hand, as if to say he knew it was bad manners to laugh like this, he was very sorry about it, but it was all too amusing. At last he stopped for breath, and explained himself.

  “But, dear lady, I’m the last person!” he said in his affected way, still shaking with laughter. “I am the very last person in the whole of the Scala who can protect Grossgemuth, including even the ushers and waiters. . . . My official position? Magnificent! But don’t you know who the Morzi would get rid of before anyone else here? Don’t you know?” And he waited for the answer.

  “I’ve no idea . . . ,” said Donna Clara.

  “Your humble servant, dear lady! They would settle their accounts with me by giving me precedence over all others.”

  “You mean you’ve been disgraced, as it were?” said she, who never beat about the bush.

  “I mean just that.”

  “All of a sudden? This very evening?”

  “Yes. That’s how things happen. To be precise, between the second and third acts, during a short discussion. But I think they’d been planning it for months.”

  “Well, at least you haven’t lost your composure.”

  “Oh, us!” he said bitterly. “We are always prepared for the worst. It’s a habit by now . . . Heaven help us, if not . . .”

  “Ah, well. The deputation has failed, it seems. Forgive me . . . and best wishes, if that’s possible . . . ,” added Donna Clara, looking back at him over her shoulder. “No hope,” she announced to the Sovrintendente. “Our M.P. doesn’t count for anything anymore. . . . Don’t worry . . . I will look after Grossgemuth . . .”

  The guests had followed the conversation at a discreet distance, almost in silence, and grasped some of the sentences. Nobody’s eyes opened wider than Cottes’s, for the man whose name was said to be Lajanni was none other than the mysterious man who had talked to him about Arduino.

  Much comment was roused by Donna Clara’s unembarrassed talk with the Morzi deputy, not to mention that it was she who escorted Grossgemuth across the city. So there was truth in the old rumor that Donna Clara was on good terms with the Morzi. She appeared to steer clear of politics so as to keep in with both sides. After all, it was to be expected, considering the sort of woman she was. Wasn’t it obvious that Donna Clara would have thought of everything, and have made enough friends among the Morzi to make sure she stayed in power? Many of the ladies were indignant. The men, on the other hand, were inclined to pity her.

  Grossgemuth’s departure with Signora Passalacqua marked the end of the reception, but increased the general agitation. Every social pretext for staying had fallen to the ground. The fiction was at an end. Silks, décolletés, tailcoats, jewels, all the social armor of the occasion, suddenly acquired the dreary sadness of masks at the end of a carnival ball as the weight of everyday life reasserts itself. But this time it was not Lent which was looming up with the approach of morning, but something much more terrible.

  One group went out on the terrace to look. The piazza was deserted, the abandoned cars seemed asleep and blacker than ever. And the drivers? Were they invisibly asleep on the back seats? Or had they too fled to join the revolt? The streetlights glowed as usual, everything was asleep, people strained their ears to catch the approach of a distant rumble, the sound of riots or shooting or the rattle of gun carriages. “Are we mad?” somebody shouted. “What
if they see all this light? It’ll draw them like a mirror!” They came in again, and closed the shutters, while somebody went to search for an electrician. Soon the huge lights in the foyer went out. The ushers brought a dozen candles and put them on the ground. This too bore down on their spirits like a presage of evil.

  In their weariness, men and women alike began to sit down on the floor because of the shortage of sofas, first spreading out their coats so as not to get dirty. A queue formed in front of a small booth near the Museum, where there was a telephone. Cottes waited his turn, to make sure that Arduino was at least aware of the danger. Nobody near him was joking anymore: they had forgotten all about the Strage and Grossgemuth.

  He waited at least three-quarters of an hour. When he was alone in the booth (lit, as there was no window), he twice formed the number wrongly because his hands were trembling. At last he had a clear line. It sounded friendly, the reassuring voice of home. But why didn’t anyone answer? Hadn’t Arduino come back? Yet it was past two o’clock. And what if the Morzi had gotten him already? He tried to control his anguish. My God, why didn’t anybody answer? Ah, at last.

  “Hello, hello.” It was Arduino’s sleepy voice. “Who on earth is it at this hour of night?”

  “Hello, hello,” said his father. But he regretted it at once. It would have been so much better to have kept quiet: he suddenly realized the line might be tapped. What should he say now? Advise him to escape? Tell him what was happening? But what if they were listening?

  He hunted for a plausible explanation. Ask him, for instance, to come to the Scala straightaway to give a concert of his music. No, that would mean Arduino had to come out. What about something quite trivial? That he had forgotten his wallet, and was worried about it? That would be even worse. His son would not realize what was happening, and the Morzi, who were most certainly listening, would suspect something.

  “Listen, my boy . . .” he said to gain time. Perhaps the only thing was to tell him he had forgotten the keys of the main door: the only plausible and innocent explanation of such a late call.

  “Listen,” he repeated, “I have forgotten my keys. I shall be outside the house in twenty minutes.” A wave of terror swept through him. And what if Arduino came down to wait for him, and went out into the street? Perhaps there would be someone waiting in the street below with orders to kidnap him.

  “No, no,” he corrected himself, “don’t come down till I arrive. You’ll hear me whistle.” What an idiot I am, he thought again, that’s the easiest way of showing the Morzi how to catch him.

  “Listen carefully,” he said, “. . . don’t come down till you hear me whistling the theme of the Roman Carnival Overture. You know it, don’t you. . . . All right. Mind you, remember.”

  He put down the receiver to avoid dangerous questions. What sort of mess had he made now? Arduino still knew nothing about the danger, he had put the Morzi on their guard. Perhaps some musician among their number knew the Overture. Perhaps when he arrived, he would find the Morzi already in wait. He could not have been more stupid. Ought he to telephone again, and tell him the truth? But just then the door half opened, and the frightened face of a young girl appeared. Cottes came out, mopping his brow.

  He came back into the dim light of the foyer to find the atmosphere of general collapse even more evident. Ladies paralyzed with cold were sitting tightly side by side on the sofas. Many had removed their most showy jewels and had put them in their bags, while others, by dint of rearranging their hair in the mirrors, had reduced their hairstyles to less provocative proportions; others had arranged their capes and veils in strange ways, so as to seem like penitents.

  “But this waiting is terrible, anything is better than this.”

  “We could certainly have done without this . . . and I was sure something was going to happen . . . we should have left for Tremezzo today, then Giorgio said it was a pity to miss the prima of Grossgemuth, and I said they were expecting us, but it doesn’t matter, he said, we can arrange everything by telephone, no, I didn’t feel like coming, now I’ve got a migraine too, oh, my poor head . . .”

  “Oh, stop worrying, dear, they will leave you in peace, you haven’t been compromised . . .”

  “. . . Do you know, my gardener Francesco says he has seen their blacklists with his own eyes? . . . He belongs to the Morzi . . . says there are more than forty thousand names in Milan alone.”

  “Good Heavens, how is it possible, it’s too dreadful . . .”

  “Is there any news? . . .”

  “. . . No, nobody knows anything.”

  “Has anybody arrived?”

  “No, I said nobody knew anything.”

  Some people were praying with their hands clasped as if by accident, others were whispering ceaselessly into a friend’s ear, as if in the grip of a frenzy. The men were stretched out on the ground, many with their shoes off and their white ties hanging loose from unfastened collars: some were smoking, yawning or snoring, others were arguing in a low voice, or writing who-knows-what with gold pencils on the backs of programs. Four or five had their eyes glued to the slats of the shutters, and were acting as sentinels, ready to give news from the street. Looking rather pale and bent, the Honorable Member Lajanni was sitting wide-eyed in a corner, smoking Nazionale cigarettes.

  But during Cottes’s absence, the state of the besieged had crystallized in an unexpected way. Just before he had gone off to telephone, an engineer called Clementi, owner of the hydraulic plant, had been seen talking to the Sovrintendente Hirsch, and to have drawn him aside. In the course of conversation, they had moved toward the Opera Museum, and had stayed there several minutes in darkness. Then Hirsch had come back into the foyer, murmured something to four people in succession, and these had followed him: they were the writer Clissi, the soprano Borri, a textile manufacturer called Prosdocimi and young Count Martoni. The little group had joined the engineer Clementi, who was still in darkness, and had formed a kind of secret society. Without a word of explanation, an usher had come and picked up one of the candlesticks in the foyer, and had taken it to the room in the Museum where they had gone.

  This proceeding, which at first went unnoticed, had aroused curiosity and even alarm: in that state of mind, little was needed to provoke suspicion. Some had gone off to look at them as if by chance, and not all had returned to the foyer. According to the face which showed itself at the door, Hirsch and Clementi either broke off their conversation or issued an invitation in a way that allowed of no refusal. In a short while the group of secessionists had grown to thirty.

  It was not difficult to understand what was going on, knowing the people concerned. Clementi, Hirsch and the rest were trying to form a separate faction, already predisposed in favor of the Morzi, and clearly quite independent of all the depraved rich class out there in the foyer. It was common knowledge that on previous occasions, some of them had shown themselves, softhearted or indulgent toward the ruling sect, seemingly motivated more by fear than by sincere conviction. Nobody was surprised that Clementi, for all his despotic, masterful ways, had a degenerate son in a high post of command in the Morzi ranks. A little earlier his father had been seen entering the telephone booth, and people waiting outside had to cool their heels for a quarter of an hour or more; presumably, realizing the danger, he had telephoned his son for help. His son had not wanted to expose himself personally, and so had advised him to act at once on his own account by forming a clique in favor of the Morzi which would virtually be a Scala faction. On arrival the Morzi would afford tacit recognition to the group and, more important, leave it unharmed. After all, as someone commented, blood was thicker than water.

  But it was the presence of certain others in the group which was really astonishing. They were typical of the class most detested by the Morzi; they, or people like them, were responsible for many of the troubles which gave the Morzi easy pretexts for propaganda or attack. Yet here they were suddenly banding together on the side of the enemy, disclaiming their entir
e past with the exception of what they had said a few moments before. It was obvious that regardless of cost they had long been intriguing in the enemy camp, so as to ensure an escape route at the right moment; but clandestinely, through a third person, so as not to lose face in the elegant world which they frequented. In the hour of danger, they had hastened to reveal themselves without bothering to keep up appearances: a fig for noble connections and social position, now it was a question of survival.

  Although the maneuver began quietly, it was soon seen that an open stand was preferable because it would define the respective positions of the two groups. The electric lights had been switched on again in the Museum, and the window opened wide so that it was plainly visible from outside. When the Morzi arrived in the piazza, they would realize straightaway that they had friends on whom they could rely.

  When Maestro Cottes came back into the foyer, he could see that a change had taken place, from the white reflection of the Museum light in the mirrors and the echo of the talk going on there. But he did not understand the reason. Why had the lights been put on in the Museum and not in the foyer? What was happening?

  “And what are those doing over there?” he finally asked out loud.

  “What are they doing?” exclaimed Liselore Bini in her pleasant voice, from her sitting position on the floor, as she leaned her back against her husband’s side. “Blessed are the innocent, dear maestro! . . . They have founded the Scala faction, those little Machiavellis. They haven’t wasted any time. Hurry up, maestro, the subscription list is still open. They’re incredible, aren’t they . . . they’ve told us they’ll do everything possible to save us . . . now they’re busy dividing the spoils, and making laws, they’ve given us permission to put the lights on again . . . have a good look at them, maestro, it’s worth it . . . they’re really incredible . . . great fat horrible pigs!” She raised her voice: “. . . I swear if nothing happens . . .”