“I may ask for your life tomorrow, at the Festival,” he told her, “so remember that you’ve promised it to me. I may need you at the ducal palace. You will get your instructions sometime this evening on the telephone.”
“I’ll do whatever you want, now, and forever,” she said.
He pushed her towards the door. “One thing’s very certain,” he said, “if you want to die, you won’t have to die alone.”
As she went into the hall she looked back over her shoulder at me. “Shall I see you again, Armino?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered, “but thank you for giving me sanctuary.”
She glanced inquiringly at Aldo. He gave her no indication of my future, and she passed out through the front door to the double entrance and the street. Through the open window of the room where we were standing came the thin high sound of San Donato striking two.
“I must go,” said Aldo, “I’m already fifteen minutes late. I’ve just telephoned Cesare telling him you are here. He and Giorgio have been looking for you all the morning.”
His manner was abrupt, evasive. Whether because of the trouble I had caused him or for some other reason I could not tell. It was as though he did not care to be alone with me.
“When Cesare comes, I want you to do whatever he tells you,” he said. “Do you understand?”
“No,” I replied, “not immediately. But perhaps I shall when Cesare appears.” Then, hesitant, I added, “I don’t know if the signora told you. I called at her house this morning.”
“No,” he said, “she didn’t tell me.”
“I met her husband,” I went on, “and when she was out of the room we had a few minutes’ conversation. During the course of it he mentioned—I won’t bother with the details now—that he had been receiving anonymous telephone calls while he was in hospital in Rome. The caller was a woman, the allusions to you.”
“Thank you,” said Aldo. His voice remained unaltered. His expression did not change.
“I thought,” I said awkwardly, “it was best to warn you.”
“Thank you,” he said again, and turned towards the door.
“Aldo,” I said, “I apologize for what happened just now—the unfortunate clash between Signora Butali and Carla Raspa.”
“Why unfortunate?” he asked, pausing, his hand on the door.
I gestured. “They’re so different,” I said, “no common ground between them.”
He looked at me. The eyes were cryptic, hard. “That’s where you are wrong,” he said. “They both wanted one thing only. Carla Raspa happened to be more honest about it.”
He left the room. I heard the front door slam. The uncertainty of what was yet to come closed in upon me with his presence gone.
20
I did not want to be alone. I sought out Jacopo, who was about to leave for his own quarters across the double entrance. “May I come with you?” I asked him diffidently.
He looked surprised, then pleased, and waved me on. “By all means, Signor Beo,” he said. “I’m cleaning the silver. Come and keep me company.”
We passed through to his domain. He led me to his own kitchen—kitchen and living room in one, the window facing the via dei Sogni. It was cheerful, snug, a canary in its cage singing to the strains of a transistor radio which Jacopo, out of possible deference to me, switched off. The walls were covered with pictures of aircraft, torn from the pages of magazines and framed. Pieces of silver, knives and forks and spoons, dishes and jugs, stood on the center of the kitchen table in various stages of his cleaning process, some covered with a pink paste, others already polished.
I recognized most of them. I picked up a small round porringer and smiled. “That’s mine,” I said, “it was a christening present. Marta never would let me use it. She said it was too good.”
“The Capitano keeps it for sugar,” said Jacopo, “he always uses it with his morning coffee. His own is too big.”
He showed me a larger bowl that he had not yet cleaned.
“I remember that too,” I told Jacopo. “It stood in the dining room, and my mother put flowers in it.”
Both bowls, Aldo’s and mine, were inscribed with our initials, A.D.
“The Capitano is very particular about all the family things,” said Jacopo. “If any of the china gets broken, which isn’t often, he is very upset, or if anything is lost. He will throw away nothing that belongs to the old days, and to his father.”
I put the porringer back. Jacopo took it from me and began to clean it.
“It’s strange,” I said, “that he should be like that, and respect tradition.”
“Strange?” repeated Jacopo, astonished. “I assure you it is not, Signor Beo. He’s been that way as long as I’ve known him.”
“Perhaps,” I answered, “but he was a rebel as a boy.”
“Ah, boys,” shrugged Jacopo, “we are all of us different when we are boys. The Capitano will be forty in November.”
“Yes,” I said.
The canary started singing again. The song was artless, happy.
“I’m concerned about my brother, Jacopo,” I said.
“No need,” answered Jacopo shortly. “The Capitano always knows what he’s about.”
I picked up a leather and began polishing my own small porringer. “Has he not changed at all during the past years?” I asked.
Jacopo considered, frowning a little, as he warmed to his task. “He’s more thoughtful, perhaps,” he said, after a moment. “He has his moods, as I have mine. It doesn’t do to disturb him when he’s alone across the way, thinking.”
“What does he think about?”
“If I knew that,” replied Jacopo, “I wouldn’t be here in my kitchen polishing the silver. I’d be like him, a member of the Arts Council, telling other people what to do.”
I laughed and let it go. Jacopo had a certain rugged wisdom.
“We suit each other very well, the Capitano and I,” he said. “We understand one another. I have never pried into his concerns, as Marta did.”
“Marta?” I asked, surprised.
“It wasn’t just the drinking, Signor Beo. She became possessive through the years. Her age, no doubt. She wanted to know everything. What the Capitano was doing, where he was going, who were his friends, what were his intentions. Oh yes, that, and a lot else besides. I told your brother, ‘If I ever become like that, fire me immediately, I’ll know the reason why.’ He promised to do so. But he needn’t worry. I shan’t.”
My porringer was clean. My initials shone with brilliance. Jacopo handed me Aldo’s porringer and I started to polish that in turn.
“What happened finally?” I asked. “Did he turn her out of the house?”
“It was last November,” said Jacopo, “just after his birthday. He had a small celebration for some of the students from the university, and one lady to act as hostess, Signora Butali.” He paused a moment, then added, thinking perhaps to explain something that might seem surprising, even shocking, “Professor Butali was at a conference in Padua at the time. And no doubt it would seem to the signora that, as the guests were all students at her husband’s university, there would be nothing improper about her acting as hostess to them. Marta cooked the dinner and I served. The evening was a great success. The students brought their guitars and there was singing, and later the Capitano took the signora home. Marta had been drinking and she wouldn’t go to bed—she insisted on staying up until he returned. What happened I don’t know, but there was some violent discussion between them, and next morning she packed her things and left and went to live with the Ghigis.”
“And Aldo?” I asked.
“It upset him very much,” admitted Jacopo. “He took the car and went off alone for about five days. He said he went to the sea. When he came back he told me briefly that he didn’t want to discuss Marta or what had happened, and that was that. He continued to keep her, though—he paid for her board and lodging, the Ghigis told me. Marta never told them what
had happened either. Even when she was drinking, and that was most of the time after she left here, she told them nothing. She did not as much as mention the Capitano’s name. But you know, Signor Beo, it was jealousy, nothing more nor less than common jealousy. That’s women for you.” He whistled up at the canary, who, swaying on its perch, feathers rumpled, was nearly bursting its small heart in song. “They’re all the same,” he said, “whether they’re women of quality like the signora or peasants like Marta. They try to squeeze a man dry. They come between a man and his work.”
I held Aldo’s porringer to the light. Through the scrolled initials my own face was reflected back at me. I wondered what they were discussing at 8, via dei Sogni, and whether, when the Heads of the Departments left, the Rector would speak to my brother alone, and if he would mention, deliberately or casually, the anonymous telephone calls.
Then suddenly I knew. The woman who had made the anonymous telephone calls had been Marta. That was why Marta had gone to Rome, Marta, dismissed by Aldo after the birthday dinner in November, had pondered and brooded during the ensuing weeks and months, had guessed perhaps that when Professor Butali fell ill in Rome after Christmas Aldo had grown closer to the signora, seen her more often, perhaps become her lover. Marta, her love and loyalty spurned, her mind disintegrating through drink and despair, had sought revenge upon Aldo by betraying him to the Rector.
I put down the silver porringer and went and stood by the window under the canary’s cage. The calls had ceased now for more than a week, the Rector had told me. They had ceased for one good reason: the caller was dead. Now, for the first time in the ten days since it had happened, I was glad that she was dead. The Marta who had died was not the Marta I remembered. Alcohol, like poison, had turned her warm blood sour. Her last act, like that of a sick animal, had been to bite her master’s hand, and in taking that final journey she had found death waiting for her at the end of it.
In a sense, it was retribution. The slanderer had been silenced, the serpent had died in its own venom… Why did I suddenly remember the crazy maxims of the Falcon, quoted by the German scholar in his lives of the Dukes of Ruffano? “The proud shall be stripped… the haughty violated… the slanderer silenced, the serpent die in its own venom…”
The canary’s song finished in one last passionate trill. I looked up at it. The small throat quivered and was still.
“Jacopo,” I said slowly, “when was my brother last in Rome?”
Jacopo was setting the silver he had cleaned and polished upon a tray to take it across the way to Aldo’s house.
“In Rome, Signor Beo?” he replied. “Let me see, it was the Sunday before last—it will be two weeks this coming Sunday, Palm Sunday. He went to Rome on the Friday to consult some manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nazionale, and then he drove back to Ruffano through the Tuesday night. He likes to drive through the night. He was here for breakfast on Wednesday morning.”
Jacopo went through into Aldo’s house, carrying the tray, leaving the doors open. I sat down on one of his kitchen chairs, staring in front of me. Aldo could have killed Marta. Aldo could have driven past the church even as the touring coach had done and recognized the humped figure lying inside the porch. He could have got out of the car and gone to speak to her. She could have told him then, drunk and in despair, what she had been trying to do. He could have killed her. I remembered the knife that had slipped so suddenly from his sleeve last night at the ducal palace when he cut the bonds that bound Marelli’s hands. Aldo could have carried the knife in Rome. Aldo could have murdered Marta.
I heard footsteps passing the window outside the kitchen. They paused by the double entrance, then turned in at Jacopo’s door. A young voice said, “Armino?”
It was the student Cesare. He was wearing my light overcoat and hat and carried my suitcase.
“I’ve brought your things from the via San Michele,” he said. “Giorgio and Domenico kept Signora Silvani engaged in the sitting room, pestering her for a contribution for the university funds. She did not know that I went upstairs and packed for you. I was there less than five minutes. I’ve come to take you out of Ruffano.”
I looked at him dully. His words were meaningless. Why should I have to leave Ruffano now? My thoughts of the last few minutes had left me numb.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “those are Aldo’s orders. He arranged everything this morning. If we could have found you we should have got you away sooner.”
“I thought,” I said, “I was supposed to play the Falcon in the Festival?”
“Not now,” he answered. “I’m to drive you to Fano and put you on board a fishing-boat. It’s all been fixed. Aldo gave no reason.”
My brother had worked quickly. Whether he had taken his decision last night when we parted so abruptly, or later, I could not tell, nor apparently did Cesare know. Perhaps it did not matter. Perhaps nothing mattered. Except that Aldo wanted to be rid of me.
“Very well,” I said, “I’m ready.”
I stood up, and he gave me my coat and hat. I followed him out of the kitchen. Jacopo came through to the double entrance carrying the empty tray. He nodded when he saw Cesare, and said good day.
“I have to leave, Jacopo,” I told him. “I’ve had my orders.”
His face remained inscrutable. “We shall miss you, Signor Beo,” he said.
I shook hands with him, and he disappeared back into his own domain. The Alfa-Romeo was parked outside. Cesare opened the door and threw my suitcase into the back. I climbed into the passenger seat, and drove out of the city and on to the Fano road.
I was quitting, for the second time in twenty years, my birthplace and my home. Not, as then, waving an enemy flag, but still a fugitive, flying from a crime I had not committed, acting, perhaps—God knows—as my brother’s surrogate. Hence my banishment, hence the flight to Fano. I was laying a false trail, away from Ruffano, away from Aldo.
I watched the road ahead, Ruffano behind us now forever, hidden by the encircling hills, and the brown earth to the left, stubbled with the fast-growing shoots of corn, was saffron-colored like the Falcon’s robe. The road turned and twisted, and later the river ran to keep us company, soon to empty itself, blue-green and limpid, onto the Adriatic shores, already burning under the April sun. The nearer we drew to Fano the more despairing I became, the more angry, the more lost.
“Cesare,” I said, “why do you follow Aldo? What makes you believe in him?”
“We have no one else we can follow,” said Cesare, “Giorgio, Romano, Domenico, and the rest. He speaks in a language we understand. Nobody ever has before. We were orphans, and he found us.”
“How did he find you?”
“By inquiries, through his old comrades who were partisans. Then he arranged for grants for us with the university Council. There are others who have graduated and left—they owe everything to him.”
My brother had done this for me. He had done it because he thought me dead. Now, knowing that I lived, he was sending me away.
“But if he has worked all these years for the university and for students like yourselves who can’t afford the fees,” I persisted, “why does he want to destroy it now, setting one group of students against another, staging these elaborate hoaxes, the last of which ended in Marelli’s death?”
“Do you call them hoaxes?” asked Cesare. “We don’t. Nor would Rizzio and Elia. They’ve learned humility. As for Marelli, he died because he ran. Didn’t the priests teach you as a child? He that seeks to save his life shall lose it?”
“Yes,” I replied, “but that’s different.”
“Is it?” said Cesare. “We don’t think so. Nor does Aldo.”
We were approaching the outskirts of Fano, the houses bleak and impersonal like biscuit tins splayed out upon the landscape. I was filled with a terrible despair.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
“To the port,” he answered, “to a fisherman, an ex-partisan called Marco. You’re to go on board his b
oat and he’ll land you, in a day or so, further up the coast, perhaps at Venice. You don’t have to think of anything. He’ll wait for further instructions from Aldo.”
Depending, I supposed, on what transpired with the police, and whether or not the trail was lost. Whether an absent courier, Armino Fabbio, had disappeared without a trace, successfully.
The rounded bay lay blue and still and the great beach, white like an inverted oyster-shell, was already dotted with the black figures of early tourists. Line upon line of bathing-sheds were being painted for the season. Easter was only another week away. The soft air stank of the humid sea. To the right lay the canal.
“Here we are,” said Cesare.
He had drawn up before a café in the via Squero at the canal’s edge, near where the fishing-boats were moored. A man in faded jeans, his skin burned black by sea and sun, was sitting at a table smoking a cigarette, a drink in front of him. At sight of the Alfa-Romeo he sprang to his feet and came over to us. Cesare and I got out and Cesare handed me my suitcase and my hat and coat.
“This is Armino,” he said. “The Capitano sends his regards.” The fisherman Marco put out a great hand and shook mine. “You are very welcome,” he said. “I shall be pleased to have you on board my boat. Let me take your case and your coat. We will embark very shortly. I was only waiting for you and for my engineer. In the meantime, have a drink.”
Never, not even as a child, had I felt more completely in the hands of a fate that was not mine to command. I was like a package dumped upon a quayside before being swung by a crane into a ship’s hold. I think Cesare pitied me.
“You’ll be all right,” he said, “once you’re at sea. Have you a message to send Aldo?”
What message could I send beyond what he must already know—that what I was doing now I did for him?
“Tell him,” I said, “that before the proud were stripped and the haughty violated, the slanderer was silenced and the viper died in its own venom.”
The words meant nothing to Cesare. It was his comrade Federico who had translated the German history. The manuscripts my brother had consulted in Rome would have borne Duke Claudio’s maxims too.