William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice

by Styron, William

  Luciano di Lieto: a liquid, resourceful name, one fit for a trapeze artist, or a writer of sonnets, or an explorer of the Antilles, a name certainly deserving more in the way of talents than those of the person who bore it. By turns hod carrier, road worker, peddler of erotic trinkets at the local ruins, a pickpocket so inept as to earn from the police the nickname “Fessacchiotto”—the Stumblebum—the man di Lieto was a triumph of stunted endowments. One day at the age of twelve he poked a meddlesome hand around in the engine of an automobile, and was shorn of two fingers, clipped off neatly by the fan. A few years later, plunged into some adolescent daydream, he wandered in front of a Naples streetcar, breaking both legs and leaving one elbow impaired forever. Only months after this, barely out of his casts, experimenting with fireworks at a seaside festa, he bent his dark, crazy regard down upon the muzzle of a Roman candle, and blew out his right eye. When I slammed into him he was twenty-three and in the fever of early manhood. All of these facts were revealed to me before the ambulance came, and perhaps no more than an hour past that moment when di Lieto came roaring out of a side road on a sputtering Lambretta and into my path, legs akimbo, poised tautly forward like a jockey, hair wild and rampant over his blasted vision, mouth and jaws working with hoots of joy even as I braked frantically on squealing rubber and plowed into him. It seemed as if those joyful cries were one and a part of the collision itself, preceding it for a chilling second before I even saw him and going on and on after the moment of rackety impact, when I sent the motorscooter flying forty feet up the road and kept skidding helplessly on, watching the blur of gray denim overalls and tousled black hair, still hooting, bounce up over the front of the car. Clawing at space, he seemed to suspend there for a moment in mid-air, before gliding with white floundering legs and arms across the hood of the car toward me, shattering the windshield in an icy explosion of glass. Like a collapsed puppet dangling on strings, he floated away past me and was gone. I finally came to a stop on the other side of the road in a shower of flip-flopping tennis balls, the radio undone by the impact and alive with deafening crackles and peeps.

  When I recovered, I brushed the glass from my lap and stole shakily out of the car. I found myself alone with di Lieto, who lay face-up in the road, blood trickling gently from nose and ears, and with a sort of lopsided, dreamy expression on his features, part agony, part a smile, as if in this mindless repose he were being borne yearningly, at last, through the floodgates of his destiny. I gazed down at him, numb with shock and horror. He was still breathing but rather tentatively; one eye socket was pink and sunken (I thought this my doing), and with a grisly feeling I glanced around me for the missing eye. For a long while, or so it seemed, no one was around and no one came: it was a country crossroad, high noon in the sultry summertime, with insects humming and the smell of weeds, and with hawks that looked like buzzards circling high over the blazing fields. For what felt like an endless time I kept trampling around the prostrate di Lieto, reeling with shock and heaving shudders of anguish.

  What followed immediately afterward seemed to be only a grotesque fantasia of events lacking sequence or order, in which I am able to pick out mostly random impressions, as of scenes from a movie film dimly remembered. I do recall finally a car moving out of the horizon, a dusty rattletrap weaving leisurely, which I hailed, and then two Pompeian matrons, profoundly emancipated, fuddled with wine, in rustles and flounces of shiny black silk, who debarked unsteadily from the heap and blinked in the dazzling sunlight, uncomprehending. “What is this here?” they murmured, stooping over di Lieto, and then spied the blood, clutched their hands to their breasts, and commenced sending up boozy entreaties to the Pompeian Madonna. “Santa Maria del Rosario! Povero ragazzo!” What happened to him? they cried. One, with an incomprehension that added brutal fire to the hellishness of the moment, asked me if he had fallen from a tree; immediately they wanted to pour water on him, turn him over, move him. I tried to tell them he must not be touched; only when my voice had risen to a hoarse cracked shout did they stop their outcry and clatter back to town for help.

  In the long space that followed I sensed the heights of Vesuvius looming oppressive at my back. I sat on the bumper of the car and gazed toward di Lieto, who kept pluckily breathing, twitching a little and awaiting our rescue: it came at last and in a deluge. Cars began to stop, and trucks and carts; as if summoned there by hungry intuition a small village full of people appeared at the spot, trooping from all four directions toward the crossroad, galloping in clouds of dust across the fields. It was as if in an instant the desolate scene had been transformed into one of bustling life, every soul for miles gathered to the place with the instinct of a flock of homing, weather-wise birds. I remember only sitting head in hands on the bumper while they milled about, bending over di Lieto, pressing their ears to his chest for the heartbeat and making solemn pronouncements. “It’s just a concussion,” one said. “No,” said another, an old stripped-to-the-waist farmer with skin burnt brown as a mummy, “his spine is broken. That’s why we mustn’t move him. Look, see how he twitches in the legs. That’s always the sign of a broken spine.” The crowd shuffled, jabbered away in a spirit both grave and somehow enraptured; many had brought parts of their interrupted lunches; they stood there looking on contentedly, munching on bread and cheese and passing around bottles of wine. A man asked me gently how I felt and if I was hurt; someone else gave me a shot of brandy, which quickly set me to retching. “Fessacchiotto,” I heard a glum voice say through the spinning blue as I heaved, “the Stumblebum finally caught it.” Then I saw two motorcycle cops, helmeted like spacemen, brake to a stop at the crossroad. They shooed the crowd toward the ditches like a swarm of buzzing flies and forthwith set up camp, making lordly measurements of my skid marks, stalking around the car and unearthing all sorts of data.

  “Please. You going these machine?” one said deferentially.

  “I speak your language,” I told him.

  “Allora, va bene.” When the collision occurred, was the Lambretta approaching the highway from the right or from the left? He was a conscientious-looking man in wringing poplin, very polite, and he began jotting down information in a notebook the size of a ledger.

  “He was coming from the left,” I said, “which I think you’ll be able to tell easily from the position of the Lambretta. I couldn’t help hitting him. It’s not my fault, anyway. In the meanwhile the man lies there dying. Would you be kind enough to tell me where the ambulance is?”

  “Nome?” he asked genially, ignoring the question.

  “Peter Charles Leverett,” I said, spelling it out.

  “Nato dove e quando?”

  “In Port Warwick, Virginia, 14 April 1925.”

  “Dove Port Warwick, Virginia? Inghilterra?”

  “The U.S.A.”I said.

  “Ah, bene. Allora, vostro padre? Nome?”

  “Alfred Leverett.”

  “Nato dove e quando?”

  “In Suffolk, Virginia, U.S.A. I don’t know when, exactly. Make it 1886.”

  “Vostra madre?”

  “Oh, for Christ sake,” I said.

  “Che?”

  “Flora Margaret McKee. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. Put down 1900. Listen, could you tell me when the ambulance is coming if it is and, if not, whether it would be possible to put him in one of those cars or trucks and drive him to Naples? I think he’s in a grave condition.”

  To try to get anything across to him was like casting notes in bottles upon the limitless deep. In his kindly, bland, unruffled fashion he kept scribbling in his ledger, examining my passport and papers while the fierce sun beat down on us and the crowd shuffled and stirred upon the margin of the crossroad like murmurous watchers at some heathen ritual. At its focus, flat on his back, asprawl in sacrificial repose, di Lieto lay with his tangled sweet look of liberation and racking ecstasy, eyes half-closed and dreaming, attracting flies. Speaking of California, the cop went on cheerfully, his wife’s uncle lived there, or so he believe
d, in a place called Vilks Bari, where he earned a good living as a worker of mines. Was I aware of that place? And was it near Hollywood? Now in regard to the man in the road, he continued, trying to allay my distress, I would be in severe legal trouble indeed, as I no doubt already knew, had the Lambretta approached from the right instead of from the left, which, from the evidence at hand—the skid marks, the position of the victim and of the Lambretta itself —it no doubt had; as it was, I was free to go at any time, provided I could put my car into operation, provided too I supply him with my next address in Italy (a detail, since I most certainly would not have to go to court, the indications of blame being so overwhelmingly in my favor); as for the man himself, di Lieto—“Fessacchiotto”—he had been spoiling for such a disaster for ten years (had I not been told by someone already about this thieving simpleton—his fingers, his streetcar accident, his eye?) and he had no one but himself to reproach if he should die on the spot, though it is true he was not an evil man, and death is bitter, in verità, even for imbeciles.

  “Basta, Sergente!” I said, almost sobbing. “L’ambulanza!”

  Just then we turned our eyes toward one edge of the crossroad, where there was a sudden commotion. A rickety truck drew to a halt beneath a tree. Down from its sides clambered a mob of men and boys, led by a cruelly gnarled old hag who struggled like a wounded bird across the sunlit space of ground, fell at di Lieto’s side, and there on her knees began to howl noisily and piteously.

  “Luciano! Luciano!” she wailed. “Luciano-o-o! Che t’hanno fatto? Povero figlio mio! Luciano-o-o! Come back, my sweet, come back, come back! Again the monsters have tried to finish thee! Look up into mamma’s eyes, Luciano. Just once, Luciano! Don’t let the monsters finish thee, angel. Show mamma once again thy dear sweet eyes!”

  “È mezza matta,” the sergeant whispered. “She’s always been a little cuckoo. She’s his grandmother but she brought him up as a son.” He seemed awed by the show, and a little uneasy. “All those other people are his brothers.”

  Infected by this awful grief, the crowd became hushed, stood transfixed at the roadside. For a moment the woman knelt silently, fumbling with her chin. A curious breeze came up, instantly chilling, and a gritty whirlpool of dust and leaves churned past us, billowing up, blossoming, flushing out of the weeds a flock of starlings which exploded from the meadow full-tilt and in raucous outcry, windmilling around us on the dusty blast. In white tatters the old woman’s hair came flying loose, her black shawl went adrift from her shoulders, and a piece of newspaper came tumbling end over end through the arena, where, alone now, she and her grandson seemed like actors storm-swept by some diminutive and marvelous tempest; then the wind died, the old woman recovered her shawl, and the birds fled chattering across the fields.

  “Luciano, angelo mio,” she moaned softly, “perchè non dici niente, perchè non mi guardi? Speak, child. Look at mamma. Luciano, I see thy legs twitching. Rise up on them and walk, angel; don’t lie here like this in the road …”

  Suddenly she seemed to falter; kneeling there, she raised her eyes from di Lieto and gazed slowly around the crowd, examining each face with a sudden, haunted, tigerish, homicidal look which, even before it lit upon me, caused my insides to squirm in panic. In some way I felt the first breath of her fury before it actually struck: at that moment when in seersuckers and in tourist’s espadrilles, sun-glassed, crew-cut, and with an aspect of northern barbarity like an autograph upon my face, I tried vainly to squeeze behind the sergeant—when she spied me, scrambled to her feet with unbelievable nimbleness, and charged across the road toward me in a black floundering onslaught of execration and doom.

  “Svedese! Farabutto!” she yelled. “You’ve done this to my boy! You ran him down with your machine, you wicked monster! May you burn in hell!” A quick apologetic breath went upward from her lips—“Dio mi perdonir—but she bore relentlessly down, gathering new wind, new imprecations, lunged past the flustered sergeant, and thrust a palsied, castigating finger like a gnarled twiglet beneath my nose. “Swede!” she cried. “Evil man! I know you and your kind. Don’t try to hide your face from me. Look at him!” she said, with a gesture for the crowd. “Look at the man! Look how he shivers and shakes with fear. Ha! Now he knows he can’t hide his crime. Speeding through our town, running down innocent people with his machine!” She turned back to me, her whole face—sunken eyes, moles, wrinkled cheeks, wild white hair—all aquiver and ablaze with terrifying wrath. “I know your kind! It was one of your kind who ran down the wife of poor Luigi Lucatuorto in Portici four years ago last Easter. In the springtime of life, too, a strong handsome girl with a sick father and four hungry children to feed. A lovely girl, big, healthy, minding her own way, struck down like a dog by a monster. You know about this? Tell me! You know? Not one lira did she collect, either, though her collarbone was broken and her back weakened for life!” She paused, turning toward di Lieto, and began weeping again. “Look there. What are you going to do about him now? What are you going to do about Luciano? Bleeding there, dying. An innocent boy who never once in his life caused anyone a moment’s trouble or harm.” Wheeling to me, she renewed the assault in a black outburst of fury. “A young innocent boy, I tell you! All of his life suffering at the hands of monsters! Don’t stand there looking like a big fool! What are you going to do about him? What are you going to do about Luciano?”

  “I don’t know, signora,” I began, “I’m terribly sorry—”

  “Shut your mouth, Swede monster!”

  The sergeant put a gentle, placating hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Senta, nonna. Non è svedese. È americano.”

  “Quiet, too, Bruno Ferragamo!” she cried. “I know you! They’re all Swedes! They came here during the war, when Luciano was only a child. Remember those bombs? Do you have so short a memory? Remember how they came, raping and bombing and destroying? You remember as well as I, Sergeant Ferragamo,” she sneered, “or you should, you Communist! How Luciano lay there in the road after the bombing, his poor legs broken beneath him and bleeding, all crumpled and torn there and crying his eyes out, with his poor arm beneath him, which he has never recovered from. Oh what a sad day!” For a brief moment her voice sank down, cracked and reminiscent. As we watched her and fidgeted, there was a trumpeting noise far down the road, and the dim sound of tires sizzling, as of some vehicle moving at great speed. “Oh what a dark day. With the bombardments and the smoke all around and the bricks toppling all around us. Oh what a terrible day. I remember how I was cooking when the first bombs came. I wouldn’t get out. I wouldn’t get out, I tell you. Though they begged me and pleaded with me. I wouldn’t go. I stayed there cooking. And then the bombs. With the bricks falling all around and the smoke coming up and Anna Teresa there screaming. Oh what a day! Then I ran out into the road. There was Luciano lying there, the poor child all crumpled up and bleeding. His legs broken! His arm beneath him! Crying and moaning! Crying, ’Nonna, nonna, I hurt! My legs hurt me so!’”

  “Listen, signora,” the sergeant put in gently, “it was a streetcar. … And I’m not a Communist,” he said in an aside to me.

  The old woman came alive from her reverie like someone startled out of sleep. “What streetcar? Shut up, Bruno Ferragamo! Shut your antichrist Communist mouth! I’ll not have you policemen lying about Luciano and putting the poor innocent boy in jail! While you allow these monsters to run over innocent people in the road. Like this one here! Have you forgotten the bombs so soon? How they came up from Salerno shooting and sacking the towns and raping, when we were living in Torre del Greco. Have you forgotten so soon? Filthy cabbage-eaters! Drinkers of beer! Remember that one, the English one, who took poor Lucatuorto’s wife in the ruins and ravened her there and left her there bleeding and dying, her with four hungry children to feed and a sick father to care for, he so sick and all. What has happened to your memory, Sergeant Ferragamo? Luciano, who has never hurt a soul in his life. Luciano, the tenderest of boys, the kindest, who once took a sparrow whose win
g was broken—a sparrow, mind you—and nursed him till he was well and grown. Now you would leave Luciano to suffer at the hands of monsters like these!” She rose up on tiptoe, bristling with fury, and set both of her hands to shaking an inch from my chin. “You! Have you too forgotten the bombs? Have you too forgotten the oath I swore that day when I picked up poor Luciano from the road! ’As the Blessed Virgin stands as my witness in heaven,’ I said, ’they shall suffer and be punished for their sins before God!’ Bombing and sacking our home in Torre del Greco! Raping! Stealing! Taking poor Lucatuorto’s wife in the ruins and ravening her, her with a sick father and four hungry children to feed! Invasato! Mascalzone! Wicked monster! Swede! May you burn in hell! God forgive me.”

  Then I found myself too shouting, abruptly and uproariously and on the verge of tears, my Italian deserting me, uttering strange sounds which I just dimly realized were in my native language: “I’m sorry, lady! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! But I didn’t bomb your house! I didn’t bomb your house!”