She looked up. His face was indistinct. He peered closer at her. “I saw you this afternoon,” he said. “The girl in the tram, isn’t it?”
She murmured assent. “And you sang Mozart to me.” He did not look at all like his father.
“A bit of a lark,” Evan bumbled. “Didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“You did.”
Evan hung his head, sheepish. “But what are you doing out here, at this time of night?” He forced a laugh. “Not waiting for me, surely.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Waiting for you.”
“That’s terribly flattering. But if I may say so, you aren’t the sort of young lady who . . . I mean, are you? I mean, dash it, why should you be waiting for me? Not because you liked my singing voice.”
“Because you are his son,” she said.
He did not, he realized, have to ask for explanation: wouldn’t have to stammer, how did you meet my father, how did you know I was here, that I would be released? It was as if what he’d said to the Gaucho, back in their cell, had been like confession; an acknowledgment of weakness; as if the Gaucho’s silence in turn had served as absolution, redeeming the weakness, propelling him suddenly into the trembling planes of a new kind of manhood. He felt that belief in Vheissu gave him no right any more to doubt as arrogantly as he had before, that perhaps wherever he went from now on he would perform like penance a ready acceptance of miracles or visions such as this meeting at the crossroads seemed to him to be. They began to walk. She tucked her hands around his bicep.
From his slight elevation he noted an ornate ivory comb, sunk to the armpits in her hair. Faces, helmets, arms linked: crucified? He blinked closer at the faces. All looked drawn-down by the weight of the bodies beneath: but seemed to grimace more by convention—with an Eastern idea of patience—than with any more explicit or Caucasian pain. What a curious girl it was beside him. He was about to use the comb for a conversational opening when she spoke.
“How strange tonight, this city. As if something trembled below its surface, waiting to burst through.”
“Oh I’ve felt it. I think to myself: we are not, any of us, in the Renaissance at all. Despite the Fra Angelicos, the Titians, Botticellis; Brunelleschi church, ghosts of the Medici. It is another time. Like radium, I expect: they say radium changes, bit by bit, over unimaginable spaces of time, to lead. A glow about old Firenze seems to be missing, seems more a leaden gray.”
“Perhaps the only radiance left is in Vheissu.”
He looked down at her. “How odd you are,” he said. “I almost feel you know more than I about the place.”
She pursed her lips. “Do you know how I felt when I spoke with him? As if he’d told me the same stories he told you when you were a boy, and I had forgotten them, but needed only to see him, hear his voice, for all the memories to come rushing back undecayed.”
He smiled. “That would make us brother and sister.”
She didn’t answer. They turned into Via Porta Rosa. Tourists were thick in the streets. Three rambling musicians, guitar, violin and kazoo, stood on a corner, playing sentimental airs.
“Perhaps we are in limbo,” he said. “Or like the place we met: some still point between hell and purgatory. Strange there’s no Via del Paradiso anywhere in Florence.”
“Perhaps nowhere in the world.”
For that moment at least they seemed to give up external plans, theories and codes, even the inescapable romantic curiosity about one another, to indulge in being simply and purely young, to share that sense of the world’s affliction, that outgoing sorrow at the spectacle of Our Human Condition which anyone this age regards as reward or gratuity for having survived adolescence. For them the music was sweet and painful, the strolling chains of tourists like a Dance of Death. They stood on the curb, gazing at one another, jostled against by hawkers and sightseers, lost as much perhaps in that bond of youth as in the depths of the eyes each contemplated.
He broke it first. “You haven’t told me your name.”
She told him.
“Victoria,” he said. She felt a kind of triumph. It was the way he’d said it.
He patted her hand. “Come,” he said feeling protective, almost fatherly. “I am to meet him, at Scheissvogel’s.”
“Of course,” she said. They turned left, away from the Arno, toward Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele.
The Figli di Machiavelli had taken over for their garrison an abandoned tobacco warehouse off Via Cavour. It was deserted at the moment except for an aristocratic-looking man named Borracho, who was performing his nightly duty of checking the rifles. There was a sudden pounding at the door. “Dígame,” yelled Borracho.
“The lion and the fox,” came the answer. Borracho unlatched the door and was nearly bowled over by a thick-set mestizo called Tito, who earned his living selling obscene photographs to the Fourth Army Corps. He appeared highly excited.
“They’re marching,” he began to babble, “tonight, half a battalion, they have rifles, and fixed bayonets—”
“What in God’s name is this,” Borracho growled, “has Italy declared war? Qué pasa?”
“The Consulate. The Consulate of Venezuela. They are to guard it. They expect us. Someone has betrayed the Figli di Machiavelli.”
“Calm down,” Borracho said. “Perhaps the moment which the Gaucho promised us has arrived at last. We must expect him, then. Quickly. Alert the others. Put them on standby. Send a messenger into town to find Cuernacabrón. He will likely be at the beer garden.”
Tito saluted, wheeled, ran to the door on the double, unlocked it. A thought occurred to him. “Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps the Gaucho himself is the traitor.” He opened the door. The Gaucho stood there, glowering. Tito gaped. Without a word the Gaucho brought his closed fist down on the mestizo’s head. Tito toppled and crashed to the floor.
“Idiot,” the Gaucho said. “What’s happened? Is everyone insane?”
Borracho told him about the army.
The Gaucho rubbed his hands. “Bravissimo. A major action. And yet we’ve not heard from Caracas. No matter. We move tonight. Alert the troops. We must be there at midnight.”
“Not much time, commendatore.”
“We will be there at midnight. Vada.”
“Sì, commendatore.” Borracho saluted and left, stepping carefully over Tito on his way out.
The Gaucho took a deep breath, crossed his arms, flung them wide, crossed them again. “So,” he cried to the empty warehouse. “The night of the lion has come again to Florence!”
X
Scheissvogel’s Biergarten und Rathskeller was a nighttime favorite not only with the German travelers in Florence but also, it seemed, with those of the other touring nations. An Italian caffè (it was conceded) being fine for the afternoon, when the city lazed in contemplation of its art treasures. But the hours after sundown demanded a conviviality, a boisterousness which the easygoing—perhaps even a bit cliquish—caffès did not supply. English, American, Dutch, Spanish, they seemed to seek some Hofbräuhaus of the spirit like a grail, hold a krug of Munich beer like a chalice. Here at Scheissvogel’s were all the desired elements: blond barmaids, with thick braids wound round the back of the head, who could carry eight foaming krüge at a time, a pavilion with a small brass band out in the garden, an accordionist inside, confidences roared across a table, much smoke, group singing.
Old Godolphin and Rafael Mantissa sat out in back in the garden, at a small table, while the wind from the river played chilly about their mouths and the wheeze of the band frolicked about their ears, more absolutely alone, it seemed to them, than anyone else in the city.
“Am I not your friend?” Signor Mantissa pleaded. “You must tell me. Perhaps, as you say, you have wandered outside the world’s communion. But haven’t I as well? Have I not been ripped up by the roots
, screaming like the mandrake, transplanted from country to country only to find the soil arid, or the sun unfriendly, the air tainted? Whom should you tell this terrible secret to if not to your brother?”
“Perhaps to my son,” said Godolphin.
“I never had a son. But isn’t it true that we spend our lives seeking for something valuable, some truth to tell to a son, to give to him with love? Most of us aren’t as lucky as you, perhaps we have to be torn away from the rest of men before we can have such words to give to a son. But it has been all these years. You can wait a few minutes more. He will take your gift and use it for himself, for his own life. I do not malign him. It is the way a younger generation acts: that, simply. You, as a boy, probably bore away some such gift from your own father, not realizing that it was still as valuable to him as it would be to you. But when the English speak of ‘passing down’ something from one generation to another, it is only that. A son passes nothing back up. Perhaps this is a sad thing, and not Christian, but it has been that way since time out of mind, and will never change. Giving, and giving back, can be only between you and one of your own generation. Between you and Mantissa, your dear friend.”
The old man shook his head, half-smiling; “It isn’t so much, Raf, I’ve grown used to it. Perhaps you will find it not so much.”
“Perhaps. It is difficult to understand how an English explorer thinks. Was it the Antarctic? What sends the English into these terrible places?”
Godolphin stared at nothing. “I think it is the opposite of what sends English reeling all over the globe in the mad dances called Cook’s tours. They want only the skin of a place, the explorer wants its heart. It is perhaps a little like being in love. I had never penetrated to the heart of any of those wild places, Raf. Until Vheissu. It was not till the Southern Expedition last year that I saw what was beneath her skin.”
“What did you see?” asked Signor Mantissa, leaning forward.
“Nothing,” Godolphin whispered. “It was Nothing I saw.” Signor Mantissa reached out a hand to the old man’s shoulder. “Understand,” Godolphin said, bowed and motionless, “I had been tortured by Vheissu for fifteen years. I dreamed of it, half the time I lived in it. It wouldn’t leave me. Colors, music, fragrances. No matter where I got assigned, I was pursued by memories. Now I am pursued by agents. That feral and lunatic dominion cannot afford to let me escape.
“Raf, you will be ridden by it longer than I. I haven’t much time left. You must never tell anyone, I won’t ask for your promise; I take that for granted. I have done what no man has done. I have been at the Pole.”
“The Pole. My friend. Then why have we not—”
“Seen it in the press. Because I made it that way. They found me, you remember, at the last depot, half dead and snowed in by a blizzard. Everyone assumed I had tried for the Pole and failed. But I was on my way back. I let them tell it their way. Do you see? I had thrown away a sure knighthood, rejected glory for the first time in my career, something my son has been doing since he was born. Evan is rebellious, his was no sudden decision. But mine was, sudden and necessary, because of what I found waiting for me at the Pole.”
Two carabinieri and their girls arose from a table and weaved arm-in-arm out of the garden. The band began to play a sad waltz. Sounds of carousing in the beer hall floated out to the two men. The wind blew steady, there was no moon. The leaves of trees whipped to and fro like tiny automata.
“It was a foolish thing,” Godolphin said, “what I did. There was nearly a mutiny. After all, one man, trying for the Pole, in the dead of winter. They thought I was insane. Possibly I was, by that time. But I had to reach it. I had begun to think that there, at one of the only two motionless places on this gyrating world, I might have peace to solve Vheissu’s riddle. Do you understand? I wanted to stand in the dead center of the carousel, if only for a moment; try to catch my bearings. And sure enough: waiting for me was my answer. I’d begun to dig a cache nearby, after planting the flag. The barrenness of that place howled around me, like a country the demiurge had forgotten. There could have been no more entirely lifeless and empty place anywhere on earth. Two or three feet down I struck clear ice. A strange light, which seemed to move inside it, caught my attention. I cleared a space away. Staring up at me through the ice, perfectly preserved, its fur still rainbow-colored, was the corpse of one of their spider monkeys. It was quite real; not like the vague hints they had given me before. I say ‘they had given.’ I think they left it there for me. Why? Perhaps for some alien, not-quite-human reason that I can never comprehend. Perhaps only to see what I would do. A mockery, you see: a mockery of life, planted where everything but Hugh Godolphin was inanimate. With of course the implication . . . It did tell me the truth about them. If Eden was the creation of God, God only knows what evil created Vheissu. The skin which had wrinkled through my nightmares was all there had ever been. Vheissu itself, a gaudy dream. Of what the Antarctic in this world is closest to: a dream of annihilation.”
Signor Mantissa looked disappointed. “Are you sure, Hugh? I have heard that in the polar regions men, after long exposure, see things which—”
“Does it make any difference?” Godolphin said. “If it were only a hallucination, it was not what I saw or believed I saw that in the end is important. It is what I thought. What truth I came to.”
Signor Mantissa shrugged helplessly. “And now? Those who are after you?”
“Think I will tell. Know I have guessed the meaning of their clue, and fear I will try to publish it. But dear Christ, how could I? Am I mistaken, Raf? I think it must send the world mad. Your eyes are puzzled. I know. You can’t see it yet. But you will. You are strong. It will hurt you no more—” he laughed—“than it has hurt me.” He looked up, over Signor Mantissa’s shoulder. “Here is my son. The girl is with him.”
Evan stood over them. “Father,” he said.
“Son.” They shook hands. Signor Mantissa yelled for Cesare and drew up a chair for Victoria.
“Could you all excuse me for a moment. I must deliver a message. For a Señor Cuernacabrón.”
“He is a friend of the Gaucho,” Cesare said, coming up behind them.
“You have seen the Gaucho?” asked Signor Mantissa.
“Half an hour ago.”
“Where is he?”
“Out at Via Cavour. He is coming here later, he said he had to meet friends on another matter.”
“Aha!” Signor Mantissa glanced at his watch. “We haven’t much time. Cesare, go and inform the barge of our rendezvous. Then to the Ponte Vecchio for the trees. The cabman can help. Hurry.” Cesare ambled off. Signor Mantissa waylaid a waitress, who set down four liters of beer on the table. “To our enterprise,” he said.
Three tables away Moffit watched, smiling.
XI
That march from Via Cavour was the most splendid the Gaucho could remember. Somehow, miraculously, Borracho, Tito and a few friends had managed in a surprise raid to make off with a hundred horses from the cavalry. The theft was discovered quickly, but not before Figli di Machiavelli, hollering and singing, were mounted and galloping toward the center of town. The Gaucho rode in front, wearing a red shirt and a wide grin. “Avanti, i miei fratelli,” they sang, “Figli di Machiavelli, avanti alla donna Libertà!” Close behind came the army, pursuing in ragged, furious files, half of them on foot, a few in carriages. Halfway into town the renegades met Cuernacabrón in a gig: the Gaucho wheeled, swooped, gathered him up bodily, turned again to rejoin the Figli. “My comrade,” he roared to his bewildered second-in-command, “isn’t it a glorious evening.”
They reached the Consulate at a few minutes to midnight and dismounted, still singing and yelling. Those who worked at the Mercato Centrale had provided enough rotten fruit and vegetables to set up a heavy and sustained barrage against the Consulate. The army arrived. Salazar and Ratón watched cringing from
the second-floor window. Fistfights broke out. So far no shots had been fired. The square had erupted suddenly into a great whirling confusion. Passersby fled bawling to what shelter they could find.
The Gaucho caught sight of Cesare and Signor Mantissa, with two Judas trees, shuffling impatiently near the Posta Centrale. “Good God,” he said. “Two trees? Cuernacabrón, I have to leave for a while. You are now commendatore. Take charge.” Cuernacabrón saluted and dived into the melee. The Gaucho, making his way over to Signor Mantissa, saw Evan, the father, and the girl waiting nearby. “Buona sera once again, Gadrulfi,” he called, flipping a salute in Evan’s direction. “Mantissa, are we ready?” He unclipped a large grenade from one of the ammunition belts crisscrossing his chest. Signor Mantissa and Cesare picked up the hollow tree.
“Guard the other one,” Signor Mantissa called back to Godolphin. “Don’t let anyone know it’s there until we return.”
“Evan,” the girl whispered, moving closer to him. “Will there be shooting?”
He did not hear her eagerness, only her fear. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, aching to shelter her.
Old Godolphin had been looking at them, shuffling his feet, embarrassed. “Son,” he finally began, conscious of being a fool, “I suppose this is hardly the time to mention it. But I must leave Florence. Tonight. I would—I wish you would come with me.” He couldn’t look at his son. The boy smiled wistfully, his arm round Victoria’s shoulders.
“But Papa,” he said, “I would be leaving my only true love behind.”
Victoria stood on tiptoe to kiss his neck. “We will meet again,” she whispered sadly, playing the game.
The old man turned away from them, trembling, not understanding, feeling betrayed once again. “I am terribly sorry,” he said.
V. Page 23
