The Flight of the Falcon

  “Good-bye,” he said, “and good luck.”

  He climbed back into the car, and in a moment he had gone. The fisherman Marco was watching me with curiosity. He asked me what would I drink, and I told him a beer.

  “So you’re the Capitano’s young brother?” he asked me. “You’re not a scrap like him.”

  “Unfortunately,” I replied.

  “He’s a fine man,” he went on. “We fought in the hills side by side, we escaped from the same enemy. Now, when he needs a change from all his activities, he gets in touch with me and comes to sea.” He smiled, and handed me a cigarette. “The sea blows away the dust,” he said, “and all the cares and troubles of city life. You’ll find it does the same to you. Your brother looked a sick man when he came here last November. Five days afloat—it was winter, mind you—and he had recovered.”

  The attendant brought my beer. I raised the glass and wished my companion fortune.

  “Was that after his birthday?” I asked.

  “Birthday? He said nothing about a birthday. It was somewhere around the third week of the month. “I’ve had a shock, Marco,” he told me when he arrived. “Don’t ask me any questions. I’m with you to forget it.” Anyway, there was nothing wrong with him physically. He was as tough as in the old days, and worked like one of the crew. Something else had been worrying him, no doubt. Perhaps a woman.” He raised his glass in answer to my toast. “Good health to you,” he said, “and may you lose your troubles at sea also.”

  I drank my beer and thought of what Marco had said. It was evident that Aldo had sought him out after the birthday dinner and the quarrel with Marta. She must have railed at him, drunk, as Jacopo said, and outraged, like all peasants who are deeply religious and bound by a moral code. She must have taxed him with starting an affair with a married woman, and that woman the Rector’s wife. The quarrel would have angered my brother, which was the reason he sent Marta from the house. But why did he talk of a shock?

  Footsteps approached and another man stood before the table. Short and grizzled, he was burned even blacker by the sun than Marco.

  “This is Franco,” said Marco, “my mate and engineer.”

  Franco struck out a hand hairy as a monkey’s paw, and covered with grease.

  “Two hours’ work still to do,” he said to his skipper. “I thought it best to warn you, as it means delay in sailing.”

  Marco cursed and spat, then turned to me with a shrug of his shoulder.

  “I promised your brother we would be at sea by noon,” he said. “That was when he telephoned early this morning. Next, it seemed, there was difficulty in finding you. And now our engine has to give trouble. We shall be lucky if we are away by five.” He stood up and pointed along the canal to where the vessels were moored. “See the blue boat there, with the yellow mast and the center dog-house?” he said. “That’s our craft, the ‘Garibaldi.’ Franco and I will take your case and coat aboard and you can follow us later, within the hour. Will that suit you, or would you prefer to come with us right away?”

  “No,” I said, “no, I’ll stay here and finish my drink.”

  They walked off along the side of the canal and I sat outside the café, watching until they had climbed aboard. My quarters for the next few days did not tempt me. Marco was right when he told me I did not look like my brother. I was a seasoned traveler on land, but not on water. As a courier I had disgraced myself by being seasick in the Bay of Naples before my clients. The flat oil swell of the Adriatic looked equally repellent.

  I sat there, finishing my beer. It was the dead hour of the day. I wondered if the meeting in the via dei Sogni was over. Presently I got up and wandered aimlessly along the side of the canal, but instead of going directly to the boat turned left and strolled on to the beach. Already the sun-worshippers were stripped and lying with torsos naked to the sky. Children screamed and paddled at the water’s edge. The bathing-sheds, sticky with new paint, stood in rows, one behind the other, and in front of them, orange and brilliant red, the sun umbrellas spread canopies above the glaring sand. Despondency was heavy within me. I could not shake it off.

  A group of children in gray uniforms with hair cropped short, escorted by a nun, came clumping down the beach towards the sea. They pointed to the water, their small faces alight with stupendous surprise, and turning to the nun ran to her, begging permission to take off their shoes. She gave it, her eyes kindly behind her gold-rimmed spectacles.

  “Quietly now, children, quietly,” she said, and as she bent to gather together their shoes her skirts and wimple billowed about her like a balloon. The children, suddenly released and free, ran with uplifted arms towards the sea.

  “They’re happy, anyway,” I said.

  “Their first visit to the sea,” answered the nun. “They all come from orphanages inland, and at Easter we have a camp for them here at Fano. There is another camp at Ancona.”

  The children were knee deep in the water, shouting and splashing one another. “I shouldn’t let them do that,” said the nun, “but I ask myself, what does it matter? They have so little joy.”

  One little fellow, having stubbed his toe, burst into tears and came running up the beach towards her. She took him in her arms and comforted him, found a plaster from within her ample robes and placed it on his toe, sending him back again to join the others.

  “This is the part of the work I like best,” she confided, “bringing the children to the sea. The Sisters of the various organizations take it in turns. I have not far to come. I’m from Ruffano.”

  The world was small. I thought of the bleak building near to the now resplendent Hotel Panorama.

  “The foundling hospital,” I said. “I know it. I’m from Ruffano too, but long ago. I never went inside the hospital.”

  “The building needs replanning,” she said, “and we may have to move. There is talk of building us new quarters at Ancona, where the former Superintendent of our hospital died.”

  We stood together, watching the children splashing in the sea.

  “Are they all orphans?” I asked, thinking of Cesare.

  “Yes, all,” she said, “either orphaned, or left on the hospital doorsteps within a few hours of their birth. Sometimes the mother is too weak to move far, and we find her, and look after her and her baby. Then she goes to work, leaving the baby with us. Sometimes, but very rarely, it is possible to find a home where both are taken in.” She raised her hand, and waved to the children not to venture in too far. “That is the happiest answer,” she said, “both for the mother and the child. But there are not many people who will offer their home to a foundling these days. Occasionally a young married couple will have lost their first child at birth and come to us to seek another to replace it quickly, so bringing the child up as their own.” She turned to me, smiling once more behind her spectacles. “But that,” she said, “requires great confidence between the bereaved parents and the superintendent of the foundling hospital. The record remains a secret forever afterwards. It’s better for everyone concerned.”

  “Yes,” I said, “yes, I suppose so.”

  She took a whistle from some capacious pocket within her skirt and blew it twice. The children turned their heads and stared, then rushed from the water up the beach towards her, scampering like little dogs.

  “You see?” she said, laughing. “I have them very well trained.”

  I looked at my watch. I was well trained as well. It would soon be four. Perhaps I should go and find my way on board the “Garibaldi” and settle in.

  “If you come from Ruffano too,” said the nun, “you should call in sometime and see the children there. Not these, of course, but those I look after at the foundling hospital.”

  “Thank you,” I lied politely, “perhaps I will,” and then, more from courtesy than from curiosity, I said, “Will you move to the new orphanage at Ancona if they decide to build there?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “my life is with the children. Some fifty years ago I
was a foundling too.”

  A kind of pity seized me. The plain, contented face had known no other existence, no other world. She, and hundreds like her, had been dumped upon a doorstep to find mercy.

  “At Ruffano?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “but it was harder for us in those days. The rules were strict, the life was spartan. No seaside holidays for orphans then, despite the kindness of our Superintendent, Luigi Speca.”

  The children had arrived and she gathered them round her in a semicircle and produced oranges and apples from a carrier bag.

  “Luigi Speca?” I repeated.

  “Yes,” she answered, “but he died many years ago, in 1929. He was buried in Ancona, as I told you.”

  I said good-bye to her and thanked her. I don’t know what I thanked her for. Perhaps it was for illumination from God. Perhaps the shaft of sunlight that fell upon my face as I turned west and walked up the beach beyond the bathing-huts was like the blinding stroke that hit Saul upon the Damascus road. Suddenly I perceived. Suddenly I knew. My father’s letter and the double baptismal entry were made plain. Aldo had been a foundling too. Their son had died, Luigi Speca had given them Aldo. The secret, held for nearly forty years, had been betrayed by Marta last November. Aldo, proud of his lineage, proud of his heritage, proud of all he held most dear, had learned the truth and kept it to himself these past five months. It was Aldo who had been stripped and violated, Aldo who had lost face, not to the friends who did not know, but in his own eyes. The hoaxer had been hoaxed. He who had wanted to unmask hypocrisy had been himself unmasked.

  I walked along the canal side in the opposite direction from the boat, and so into the town. My few belongings were on board the “Garibaldi,” but they meant nothing. I had only one thought in mind, and that was to go to Aldo. Somewhere in Fano there must be a train, a bus, that would take me back to Ruffano. Tomorrow was the Festival, and I had to be with Aldo when the Falcon fell.

  21

  When I reached the bus station I realized that I only had two thousand lire in my pocketbook. I was to have gone to the Registrar’s office at the university that morning to receive my salary, but owing to my visit to Signora Butali, and because of hiding in Carla Raspa’s apartment, I had never gone. I remembered too that I owed Signora Silvani for my lodging. Perhaps Aldo would have thought of that.

  A car to Ruffano would cost more than two thousand lire. I inquired at the bus depot and was told that the last bus for Ruffano had left at half-past three. One was about to leave for Pesaro along the coast, and since Pesaro was some ten kilometers nearer to my destination than Fano I boarded it at once. As the road traversed the canal I looked right, towards the port, and thought of the partisan Marco and his mate Franco working on the engine, waiting for me to join them. When I did not turn up they would go into the town and look for me, inquire in the bars and cafés. Then Marco would telephone Aldo and tell him that I had vanished.

  I looked out of the window, trying to make plans. If Aldo had killed Marta he had done so, not because she threatened to betray his possible liaison with Signora Butali, but because she intended to expose the secret of his birth. The Director of the Arts Council was not Donati’s son but a foundling, the least of Ruffano’s citizens, and this to Aldo meant unendurable humility and shame. What I wanted to do was to tell Aldo that I understood. That I did not care. That he was as much my brother now as always, that everything of mine was his. As a boy he had cherished and tormented me in turn, as a man he did so still. But I knew now what I had never known before, that he was vulnerable. Because of this, at long last, we should meet on equal terms.

  The twelve kilometers to Pesaro were soon covered. I got down from the bus and studied the timetable to Ruffano. There was a bus at half-past five. I had just an hour to wait. I began to wander down the street, full of pedestrians, many of them tourists as aimless as myself, staring in shopwindows or bound for the attractions of the beach beyond the town. Prolonged hooting sounded in my ear, two vespas swerved close to the pavement beside me and a girl’s voice called, “Armino!” There were whistles and shouts. I turned, and there were Caterina and Paolo Pasquale on a vespa, she riding pillion, and behind them the two students Gino and Mario from the Silvani pensione.

  “Caught you,” called Caterina. “You can’t escape. We know all about you, and how you sneaked upstairs and fetched your things, and went off without paying Signora Silvani what you owed her.”

  They all four dismounted and surrounded me. Passersby turned to stare.

  “Listen,” I said, “I can explain…”

  “You’d better explain,” interrupted Paolo. “You can’t treat the Silvanis that way; we won’t allow it. Hand over the money now, or we’ll turn you in to the police.”

  “I haven’t got the money,” I said. “I’ve got less than two thousand lire on me.”

  We were blocking the route. Someone in a passing car shouted at the students. Paolo jerked his head at Caterina.

  “Follow us to the café Rossini,” he said. “Armino shall ride behind me on the vespa. We’ll get some sense out of him there. Gino and Mario, follow along behind; see he doesn’t try any tricks.”

  There was nothing for it but to do as he said. To have argued further would have meant more trouble. Shrugging, I climbed behind him on the vespa and we shot off in the midst of the traffic to the piazza del Popolo, coming to a stop beside the colonnade beneath Pesaro’s ducal palace. Here both vespas were parked, and with Paolo leading the way, and Gino and Mario on either side of me, I was marched to a small café-bar a few yards off. We went in, and Paolo pointed to a table near the window.

  “This will do,” he said. “Caterina will join us directly.”

  He ordered beer for all, including me, and when the waiter had disappeared he turned and faced me, his arms folded on the table.

  “Now then,” he asked, “what have you got to say?”

  “I’m wanted by the police,” I said. “I had to run.”

  The three students exchanged glances. “That’s what Signora Silvani thought,” Gino burst in. “Someone was inquiring for you this morning, but he didn’t say why. He looked like a police agent in plain clothes.”

  “I know,” I said, “I spotted him. That’s why I ran. That’s why I didn’t pick up what was due to me from the Registrar’s office, and why I couldn’t pay Signora Silvani. If you were in my shoes you’d have done the same.”

  The three of them stared at me. The waiter arrived with our drinks, set them down and went away.

  “What have you done?” asked Paolo.

  “Nothing,” I replied, “but the evidence is strong against me. In point of fact I believe I’m taking the rap for somebody else. If that’s the case, I’ll go on doing so. The other fellow happens to be my brother.”

  Caterina arrived, disheveled and out of breath. She dragged forward a chair and sat between Paolo and me.

  “What’s happened?” she asked.

  Paolo explained briefly. Caterina looked at me in turn.

  “I believe him,” she said, after a moment. “We’ve known him for a week. He’s not the sort to run without good reason. Is it something to do with the tourist agency where you worked before coming to Ruffano?”

  “Yes,” I said. Which in a backhanded way was true.

  Mario, who had remained silent up to now, leaned forward. “Why Pesaro?” he asked. “With only two thousand lire. How do you plan to get away from here?”

  They were no longer truculent or mistrustful. Gino handed me a cigarette. I looked at them, and thought how they were of the same generation as Cesare, Giorgio and Domenico. They were all young. They were all untried. However much they differed in their outlook, in their aims, fundamentally they were all eager for adventure and for life.

  I said, “I’ve had time to think, the past few hours. I realize now it was a mistake to leave Ruffano. I want to go back. I was going to take the bus at half-past five.”

  They watched me silently, drin
king their beer. I think they were puzzled.

  “Why go back?” asked Paolo. “Won’t the police get you?”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But I’m no longer afraid. Don’t ask me why.”

  They did not laugh or mock. They treated my admission seriously, just as Cesare or Domenico would have done.

  “This isn’t a thing that I can discuss with you in detail,” I told them, “but my brother is in Ruffano, using another name. What’s happened between us, if he’s done what I think he’s done, is because of family pride. I’ve got to straighten it out. I’ve got to talk to him.”

  This they understood. They pressed no questions. A live interest showed in all four faces. Caterina, impulsive, touched my arm.

  “That makes sense,” she said, “at any rate to me. If I was suspected of something I believed Paolo had done, even though I might take the blame for it I should want to know his reason. There must be honesty between people tied by blood. Paolo and I are twins. Perhaps that makes us closer.”

  “It’s not just ties of family,” said Gino, “it’s ties of friendship too. I might take the blame for something Mario did, but first I should have to know why.”

  “Is that how you feel about your brother?” asked Caterina.

  “Yes,” I said, “it is.”

  They drank their beer and then Paolo said, “We’ll see Signora Silvani gets her money. That’s a small point now. The immediate thing is to get you to Ruffano, and at the same time dodge the police. We’ll help you. But we’ve got to make a plan.”

  Their generosity moved me. Why did they have faith in me? There was no reason for it. Any more than there had been reason for Carla Raspa to let me hide in her apartment. I might have been a murderer, yet she believed in me. I could be a common swindler, yet the students trusted me.

  “But of course,” said Caterina suddenly, “the Festival. We just disguise Armino as one of us in the insurrection, and I defy any police agent to pick him out from among two thousand others.”