‘Yes,’ said the policemen.
‘Ah!’ breathed the abate. ‘I’ve prayed long and hard for a chance to speak to him face to face and God has answered my prayers. Thank God! Thank God and may He bless the Angel Pope!’ His vindicated smile was painful to see.
*
Four days later the Gazzetta di Bologna carried the following item:
Deplorable incident at Viterbo. Yesterday brought yet another example of the breakdown affecting the fabric of our society when a group of ex-volunteers obliged policemen to release a man whom they were taking through Viterbo in custody. Recognising the prisoner as their former army chaplain, the abate Alessandro Gavazzi, they bore him in triumph to the town’s Liberal Club where he delivered a fiery speech. His police escort – some of whom were former soldiers – are suspected of having connived in this lawlessness.
Twelve
14 November 1848
This morning Madame de Menou’s footman had found several slips of paper stuck in her front door. All said the same thing: the Civic Guard could not be trusted. Tomorrow, when the Chamber reconvened Count Rossi must surround himself with carabineers.
‘He won’t bring them inside‚’ she told Prospero. ‘It would offend the Democrats.’
All day, she had been receiving visits from politicians. ‘They can’t stop what they began!’ Twisting a wisp of handkerchief, she managed to smile and Prospero was reminded of the mother who had died at about her age. He recalled sitting somewhere, swinging short legs, while a maid unhooked her gown. A doomed sweetness from that time coloured this.
‘Read me the bits you’ve cut from the papers.’
‘They’re rubbish. Rhetoric!’
‘Read them.’
‘“Our minister”,’ he read, ‘“is employing tactics learned in France, but they will fail on the Tiber’s banks as surely as they did by the Seine.” That’s from Epoca.’
A ponentino with a sea-tang rose as the sun sank and rippled the cuttings.
Someone had sent a copy of a cartoon which was to appear in tomorrow’s edition of Don Pirlone. It portrayed a quixotic Rossi leaning on a pike. A chit detailed his salary. His neck was bare, but the rest of him was ironclad and surrounded by poppies. Prospero held it up. ‘What do poppies mean?’
‘Sleep?’ She rose. ‘Dream? He’s late.’ She moved to the window. ‘Or that reformers are dreamers? I suppose some are. In real life things age and rot. Reforms try to turn that around. Naturally, they would …’
‘… appeal to a man of sixty-one?’ The count had possibly been in the doorway for some time. ‘Sorry, children, I told Pietro not to announce me. He’s bringing up some grapes. I brought these myself‚’ They were roses. ‘A pastoral impulse.’ He kissed Madame de Menou. ‘I can see you’re worrying. Everyone is. Even the Pope whom I’ve just seen. Just remember I’m the cat with nine lives and so have an unwieldy past. Think of the obligations! They kept me late. Ah, you have the papers. May I?’ He began to scan them.
Madame de Menou – Prospero saw – could see no way to make good her gaffe. The count talked of security arrangements. Five hundred carabineers were to come into the city and he had to see Colonel Calderari again … Then he must polish his speech. ‘His Holiness, whimsically, complained only of its style! Too many biblical quotations. Does he feel I’m the devil citing scripture?’
Again he kissed her, begged Prospero to look after her – and left. They would not meet again until after tomorrow’s ceremony.
Madame de Menou put her face in her hands. ‘He’s hurt! That cartoon is right to dress him in iron. He’s hard and sensitive! An impossible mixture.’ She would not, she decided, go anywhere this evening. Prospero, though, must go into the city and see what echoes he might pick up. ‘Look after him, Prospero.’
‘He told me to look after you.’
‘Please.’
So he left, at first walking at random, then pausing in a café where, on taking off his coat, he found Rossi’s speech in a pocket. He must have picked it up with the newspaper cuttings. Sitting down, he skimmed the headings: confidence … hope … deficit of one million to be anticipated … trade, the sea … Romans were paid an average of three scudi per head, the French nine, the English ten. If production could be increased, then … Meanwhile the clergy’s gift must tide us over … For moments, the optimism astonished him. Then he felt its contagion.
As he was leaving, Don Vigilio – he had met him with Rossi – waylaid him. The agent’s wrinkles had a prestidigitator’s deftness. Up they went, then down. It was as though he had switched masks. Ordering the arrest of popular men like Gavazzi was, he murmured, rash. His Excellency should …
Outside again, Prospero made for Rossi’s palazzo and delivered the copy of the speech. Then he looked into a wine shop where legionaries in panuntelle shouted and sang. His mind snatched at meanings. The pressure of Madame de Menou’s handclasp lingered on his skin.
Elsewhere there was talk of a doctor whose demonstrations in the Teatro Capranica showed – what? ‘Get it in the neck …’ he heard. His mind was aswim. Might the mummery turn real?
A man offered him a woman. Safe. Clean. The fellow had a revolutionary’s beard and long hair. No, said Prospero.
‘The carotid artery …’ These must be medical students.
‘She only does it sometimes‚’ argued the pimp. ‘She’s my sister.’ He told of exile and ill use. Prospero bought him a foglietta of wine and heard an apologia for pimping delivered in a preacher’s vocabulary. ‘Your health, sir.’ The pimp smoked and his words scurried between rapid puffs.
Prospero bought another foglietta.
Pimping was a social service, said the returned exile. Had the gentleman ever asked himself what men did who couldn’t find solace for their needs? Had he wondered to what they might be driven? On what weak flesh they wreaked their brutality?
The medical students were discussing knives.
‘I wouldn’t sully my lips telling you,’ said the pimp and spat for emphasis. ‘Nature foiled turns savage.’
Parish priests, he claimed, trained people to denounce their neighbours. If a man was seen going to a woman’s house, the PP had the police around to arrest her for stuprum before he could lace up his shoes. She’d as like as not get a whipping or a five-year sentence and even the man could be locked up.
How then, asked Prospero, did the pimp practise his trade?
‘We have our ways!’ Encouraged, he gave his name. Renzo. ‘She’s only twenty-three.’ He stood up and Prospero was aware of opportunity fizzing like a chemical held to the nose.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You’ll like her,’ said Renzo. ‘Bring wine. Not for yourself! Wine’s no help for a man going to a woman, but it softens her. Hard for soft is the bargain, eh?’
As they went out, someone said, ‘Tomorrow!’
Prospero had caught the city’s fever. A greed for freedom stung the air. Down the via Ripetta they walked, and over Ponte Sisto, into lanes where darkness was as thick as fur.
‘Better spring a leak.’ Renzo unbuttoned. ‘We drank a lot.’
‘How about your neighbours and the police?’ It was occurring to Prospero that he could be robbed. The optimism of drink began to wane.
‘They rarely bother gentlemen,’ said Renzo. ‘Besides, if anyone spots you, they’ll think you’re me. I’ll wait for you to come back out. They mustn’t see two of us at once.’
So up a reeking, pitch-black stairway Prospero groped, key in hand, and, only as he fumbled for a door, did he remember that Renzo hadn’t told him the girl’s name. Was this the door? Somewhere a dog yapped. What if …
It opened. A woman said, ‘Renzo!’ She held a lamp. ‘Is he in trouble?’
‘No.’
She let him in. She did not look like anyone’s idea of a whore. A picture of St Catherine and some dried olive twigs hung on a wall. Ridiculously, he said, ‘I’ll go and send Renzo up.’ She had a gold chain around her neck, and some
where under her thick cotton nightdress would be a holy medal. She saw the wine.
‘Ah!’ She sharpened with understanding. ‘So he’s below?’
‘St Catherine,’ prayed Prospero, ‘make it as if I never came!’
‘I’ll get glasses.’
She was back before he could bolt, having loosened her hair. It was probably her best feature: electric, frothy and thick as a bush. She poured wine and he thought of her in gaol in fear of a whipping, a Magdalen. She drew him to her and he felt softness through the shawl. Her breasts slid, reminding him of those games where you grope for prizes in a barrel of bran.
‘Come.’
In her bedroom was yet another holy picture: a polychrome Christ whose hand fondled a bleeding heart and whose lips smiled rosily. Prospero, too befuddled to manage buttons, was stripped of his frock coat and learned that his companion’s name was Cesca. She murmured invigorating praise, assuring him that Renzo never brought her anything but the best. This reversed things, turning them about as if she were Messaline, the lubricious Empress, and he a man procured for her night’s pleasure. Weren’t Messaline’s lovers drowned at dawn? In the Tiber? Disregarding omens, he remembered that he was to give hard for soft and found himself doing so, as she groped for her own bran-tub prize, then fell asleep and dreamed that Count Rossi was looking sadly at him from the bleeding, gilt-framed image of the Sacred Heart.
He was awoken by a row.
‘I froze stiff in that doorway.’ That was Renzo. ‘You should have sent him down long ago.’
His sister said the customer had been half cut and to send him out in that state would have been asking for trouble.
Well, we had trouble now, said Renzo. There he was slug-naked and the city full of police. How get him out? What if he was seen?
‘Say he was taken ill and you brought him home from charity.’
‘Ach!’ was Renzo’s response, followed by the sound of a spit.
The two withdrew and Prospero made a move to get up, but was overcome by dizziness and fell back into his stupor which felt like the bottom of a deep, shuddering well. Could Renzo, he wondered half lucidly, have put something in his wine?
When next he awoke, light was cutting his eyeballs and a policeman saying he’d have to take him to the Vicariato, which was the court where morals charges were heard. The pimp and whore were there already. Prospero tried out the story about being taken ill but was advised to save his breath. Renzo had a record as long as your arm and the girl had been in and out of stir. However, said the policeman, we were never keen to embarrass the sons of good families. Prospero, his wits returning, said his papers were at his lodgings and thumbed an empty wallet. The policeman had a twitchy, insinuating moustache. What time was it? Prospero, who should by now have been at the Cancelleria, began to tread a tremulous line between using and protecting Rossi’s name. In the end, he went home in a police carriage then, having bribed the policeman to release him, bribed him again to drive him to the Palazzo della Cancelleria. The streets around it, however, were so crowded that it proved quicker to get out and make his way on foot.
The square seethed. There must be 3,000 people here. Prospero craned his neck and contemplated anarchy. Damaged faces stared and gummy mouths revealed dark twists of gullet. These were the plebs! They had no mind of their own. Like the riderless horses which were raced down the Corso in carnival time, they took off when released, pooled panicked energy, then must somehow be halted and brought under control. The horses were stopped by a great curtain stretched for that purpose across the Corso. Was there a way of halting these?
He couldn’t advance. Bodies were packed so tight that if anyone were to faint – as some surely must – they would be trampled. Closer to the palazzo steps, the crowd looked different. It seemed to consist of legionaries, men back from the front with cold, savage eyes. Oddly, there were no regular troops in sight. No police either and not many Civic Guards.
An elbow caught him in the chest A youth in an oilskin was skewering his way through. ‘Here’s Beppino!’ he shouted. His face blazed.
*
The boy was dizzy with joy at seeing so many men from the legion which he had thought disbanded for good. Eagerly, he was shouting greetings even before he was able to get within earshot: celebratory yells and battle cries and his own name or, anyway, the one some might know him by. He felt drunk from relief at finding them all together again.
‘Beppino’s coming,’ he began announcing himself, when he was not half way across the square, for though he couldn’t see their faces, the sight of those massed panuntelle warmed his heart ‘Wait for Beppino, fellows! Don’t start without me!’
Beppino was how the military authority knew him, but he had been christened Mario because of having been born on one of the Virgin’s feast days and, perhaps for the same reason, was apprenticed to a legless cripple who made a living carving crucifixes. The man had taught him to paint the blood on the five wounds of Jesus, but, more importantly, Beppino had had to pull him around on a tray with wheels and perform a number of intimate services which turned his stomach. He had been thinking for a long time of running away, so when Father Gavazzi came to his town to recruit volunteers, he lied about his age and joined up. He was fourteen but said he was older and that his name was Beppino, short for Giuseppe, like General Garibaldi. He loved the Army. He had loved the war. Even retreats and bad food were a lark when you were with friends and could moan about it together. What shocked him was being disbanded. Told it was over. Where could he go now? Not back to the cripple – and his parents wouldn’t want him. They’d had six more kids after him.
He’d been begging. That was what he’d been reduced to. Then he’d run into a fellow who said things might be starting again and there was some action planned for today. What sort of action?
‘Just you be there,’ said his mate. ‘All our lot will be.’
He couldn’t see anyone he knew though. Not a soul though he was close enough to see faces. Never mind. They were legionaries and so was he.
‘We’ve been betrayed,’ his mate had said. ‘And we’re not going to let the traitors get away with it!’
That was the stuff. We were still we! That was what Beppino liked to hear. And of course we’d been betrayed. Right from the start, men had said it, when the ammunition didn’t come or there was nothing to eat. Well, it stood to reason, didn’t it? That was why we’d been defeated and why we must stick together. Maybe, here in Rome, we would have a chance to pay out some of the bigwigs who’d been behind it all. The deputies. The politicians. There had been talk about doing that around many a camp fire and on many a sodden march. You talked, but never thought it would happen. Yet here Beppino was, in the heart of Rome, squirming his way up the Chancellery steps. Panting, he turned to look down on the square which was jam-packed with people who must have come to petition the deputies for something or other. Climbing higher, he kept hoping to recognise companions from his too short war. A shambles was what the end of it had been. Girls jeered at our ‘oily bread’ oilskins and the Pope had found nothing better to say than that, though he’d never meant us to cross the Po, we should, once we did, have fought better. Well, whose fault was it if we hadn’t? Who’d mucked us?
In the courtyard a carriage horse lowered then jerked up its head and whinnied. The boy quivered. For moments the vibrating black lips seemed to be insulting him. Steady on, Beppino!
A bearded fellow asked, Weren’t you at Vicenza?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come,’ said the man and winked.
Beppino followed him to where a crowd of veterans were waving drawn swords and shouting. Meanwhile, a man in a dark suit got out of a carriage and began to climb the stairs. A voice yelled from above, ‘Is it him?’
The bearded felloow cupped his hands and called up, ‘No.’
‘Carogna!’ yelled the voice. ‘The bugger mustn’t be coming. He’s too afraid.’
The politican walked carefully, not hurrying but lookin
g deliberately from side to side. For a moment his gaze locked with Beppino’s and Beppino thought, He’s putting on a brave face. He felt elated to be part of the gang threatening this man with the gold watch chain and top hat. Belatedly, the Civic Guards started clearing a way for him.
‘Who is he?’ he asked the bearded man.
‘Nobody we need worry about. We’re waiting for the top man.’
Beppino felt it would be stupid to ask who that was. He hadn’t been following what was happening and since being discharged had been drifting miserably. He had no money to sit in wine shops or pick up the news. The officers had told him to go home. But it stood to reason: the top man was the one to blame. ‘How will we know him?’ he asked.
But the other man had gone stiff. ‘Here we are‚’ he whispered to himself with a small private grin.
Another carriage had drawn up. A servant opened its door and lowered the step and another soberly dressed gentleman got out. His smile was thin-lipped and haughty. He began to climb the stairs.
There was a hush as though the crowd had drawn breath. Then with a rush of sound, voices swelled and echoed.
‘It’s him! Kill him! Ammazzalo!’
A sibilant hiss rose. The Civic Guards who were trying to hold back the crowd were shoved forward and Beppino, pushed from behind, surged ahead with the rest.
‘Get him!’ he roared, then his breath failed with surprise for he had not meant to yell. Yet excitement pounded through him. Pressed back, then forward, he was almost lifted off his feet. Again he shouted, this time with more conviction, and his blood charged through his veins as though he was part of a great train and being whirled along by its sparking, blazing engine.
The haughty man walked up the first steps and Beppino saw that, unlike the one before, he was ignoring the crowd. People were still hissing and whistling but it was only when someone hit the man on his right side that he turned slightly towards his assailant and exposed the left side of his neck. As he did, another veteran stabbed him there.
The Judas Cloth Page 25
