The Black House

Isabella was so exhilarated she went that afternoon to see her friend Margherita, who lived off the Via Veneto. Margherita asked her if she had found a new lover. Isabella laughed.

  “No, but I think Filippo has,” Isabella replied.

  Filippo also noticed, by Thursday afternoon, that she was in a merry mood. Filippo was home Thursday evening after their dinner out at a restaurant where they had been two at a table of twenty. Isabella took off her shoes and waltzed in the living room. Filippo was aware of his early date with the real estate agents, and cursed it. It was already after midnight.

  The next morning Elisabetta awakened them with the breakfast tray at 8:30, and Isabella complained of a headache.

  “No use in my going if you’re not going,” Filippo said.

  “You can at least tell if the house is possible—or houses,” she replied sleepily. “Don’t let them down or they won’t make a date with us again.”

  Filippo got dressed.

  Isabella heard the faint ring of the street-door bell. Filippo went out. By this time he was in the living room or the kitchen in quest of more coffee. It was two minutes to nine. Isabella at once got up, flung on a blouse, slacks and sandals, ready to meet the real estate agents who she supposed would be twenty minutes late, at least.

  They were. Elisabetta announced them. Two gentlemen. The porter had let them into the court. All seemed to be going well, which was to say Filippo was not in view.

  “But I thought my husband had already left with you!” She explained that her husband had left the house half an hour ago. “I’m afraid I must ask you to excuse me. I have a migraine today.”

  The agency men expressed disappointment, but left in good humor finally, because the Ghiardinis were potentially good clients, and Isabella promised to telephone them in the near future.

  Isabella went out for a pre-lunch cinzano, and felt reassured by the absence of Ugo. She was about to answer a letter from Susanna which had come that morning when the telephone rang. It was Filippo’s colleague Vincenzo, and where was Filippo? Filippo was supposed to have arrived at noon at Vincenzo’s office for a talk before they went out to lunch with a man who Vincenzo said was “important.”

  “This morning was a little strange,” Isabella said casually, with a smile in her voice, “because Filippo went off with some estate agents at nine, I thought, then—”

  “Then?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him since,” Isabella replied, thinking she had said quite enough. “I don’t know anything about his appointments today.”

  Isabella went out to mail her letter to Susanna around four. Susanna had fallen from her horse taking a low jump, in which the horse had fallen too. A miracle Susanna hadn’t broken a bone! Susanna needed not only new riding breeches but a book of photographs of German cathedrals which the class was going to visit this summer, so Isabella had sent her a check on their Swiss bank. As soon as Isabella had got back home and closed her door, the telephone rang.

  “Signora Ghiardini—” It sounded like Ugo speaking through a handkerchief. “We have your husband. Do not try to find out where he is. One hundred million lire we want. Do you understand?”

  “Where is he?” Isabella demanded, putting on an act as if Elisabetta or someone else were listening; but no one was, unless Luigi had picked up the living room extension phone. It was Elisabetta’s afternoon off.

  “Get the money by tomorrow noon. Do not inform the police. This evening at seven a messenger will tell you where to deliver the money.” Ugo hung up.

  That sounded all right! Just what Isabella had expected. Now she had to get busy, especially with Caccia-Lunghi, Filippo’s boss, higher than Vincenzo in the Bureau of Public Welfare and Environment. But first she went into her bathroom, where she was sure Ugo would not be peering in, washed her face and made herself up again to give herself confidence. She would soon be putting a lot of money into Ugo’s pocket and the pocket of his friend—whoever was helping him.

  Isabella now envisaged Ugo her slave for a long time to come. She would have the power of betraying him if he got out of hand, and if Ugo chose to betray her, she would simply deny it, and between the two of them she had no doubt which one the police would choose to believe: her.

  “Vincenzo!” Isabella said in a hectic voice into the telephone (she had decided after all to ring Vincenzo first). “Filippo has been kidnapped! That’s why he didn’t turn up this morning! I’ve just had a message from the kidnappers. They’re asking for a hundred million lire by tomorrow noon!”

  She and Filippo, of course, had not that much money in the bank, she went on, and wasn’t it the responsibility of the government, since Filippo was a government employee, an official?

  Vincenzo sighed audibly. “The government has had enough of such things. You’d better try Filippo’s father, Isabella.”

  “But he’s so stubborn!—The kidnapper said something about throwing Filippo in a river!”

  “They all say that. Try the father, my dear.”

  So Isabella did. It was nearly 6 P.M. before she could reach him, because he had been “in conference.” Isabella first asked, “Has Filippo spoken to you today?” He had not. Then she explained that Filippo had been kidnapped, and that his captors wanted a hundred million lire by tomorrow noon.

  “What? Kidnapped—and they want it from me? Why me?” the old man spluttered. “The government—Filippo’s in the government!”

  “I’ve asked Vincenzo Carda.” Isabella told him about her rejection in a tearful voice, prolonging her story so that Filippo’s predicament would have time to sink in.

  “Va bene, va bene.” Pietro Ghiardini sounded defeated. “I can contribute seventy-five million, not more. What a business! You’d think Italy . . .” He went on, though he sounded on the brink of a heart attack.

  Isabella expressed gratitude, but she was disappointed. She would have to come up with the rest out of their bank account—unless of course she could make a deal with Ugo. Old Pietro promised that the money would be delivered by 10:30 the following morning.

  If she and Filippo were due to go anywhere tonight, Isabella didn’t give a damn, and she told Luigi to turn away people who might arrive at the door with the excuse that there was a crisis tonight—and they could interpret that as they wished, Isabella thought. Luigi was understanding, and most concerned, as was Elisabetta.

  Ugo was prompt with another telephone call at seven, and though Isabella was alone in her bedroom, she played her part as though someone were listening, though no one could have been unless Luigi had picked up the living room telephone. Isabella’s voice betrayed anxiety, anger, and fear of what might happen to her husband. Ugo spoke briefly. She was to meet him in a tiny square which Isabella had never heard of—she scribbled the name down—at noon tomorrow, with a hundred million lire in old bills in twenty-thousand and fifty-thousand denominations in a shopping bag or basket, and then Filippo would be released at once on the edge of Rome. Ugo did not say where.

  “Come alone. Filippo is well,” Ugo said. “Good-bye, signora.”

  Vincenzo telephoned just afterward. Isabella told Vincenzo what she had to do, said that Filippo’s father had come up with seventy-five million and could the government provide the rest? Vincenzo said no, and wished Isabella and Filippo the best of luck.

  And that was that. So early the next morning Isabella went to their bank and withdrew twenty-five million lire from their savings, which left so little that she had to sign a check on their Swiss bank for a transfer when she got home. At half past ten a chauffeur in uniform and puttees, with a bulge under his tunic that must have been a gun, arrived with a briefcase under each arm. Isabella took him into the bedroom for the transfer of money from the briefcases into the shopping bag—a black plastic bag belonging to Elisabetta. Isabella didn’t feel like counting through all the soiled banknotes. br />
  “You’re sure it’s exact?” she asked.

  The calm and polite chauffeur said it was. He loaded the shopping bag for her, then took his leave with the briefcases.

  Isabella ordered a taxi for 11:15, because she had no idea how long it might take her to get to the little square, especially if they ran into a traffic jam somewhere. Elisabetta was worried, and asked for the tenth time, “Can’t I come with you—just sit in the taxi, signora?”

  “They will think you are a man in disguise with a gun,” Isabella replied, though she intended to get out of the taxi a couple of streets away from the square, and dismiss the taxi.

  The taxi arrived. Isabella said she should be back before one o’clock. She had looked up the square on her map of Rome, and had the map with her in case the taxi driver was vague.

  “What a place!” said the driver. “I don’t know it at all. Evidently you don’t either.”

  “The mother of an old servant of mine lives there. I’m taking her some clothing,” Isabella said by way of explaining the bulging but not very heavy shopping bag.

  The driver let her out. Isabella had said she was uncertain of the house number, but could find out by asking neighbors. Now she was on her own, with a fortune in her right hand.

  There was the little square, and there was Ugo, five minutes early, like herself, reading a newspaper on a bench. Isabella entered the little square slowly. It had a few ill-tended trees, a ground of square stones laid like a pavement. One old woman sat knitting on the only sunlit bench. It was a working-class neighborhood, or one mainly of old people, it seemed. Ugo got up and walked toward her.

  “Giorno, signora,” he said casually, with a polite nod, as if greeting an old acquaintance, and by his own walking led her toward the street pavement. “You’re all right?”

  “Yes. And—”

  “He’s quite all right.—Thank you for this.” He glanced at her shopping bag. “Soon as we see everything’s in order, we’ll let Filippo—loose.” His smile was reassuring.

  “Where are we—”

  “Just here,” Ugo interrupted, pushing her to the left, toward the street, and a parked car’s door suddenly swung open beside her. The push had not been a hard one, only rude and sudden enough to fluster Isabella for a moment. The man in the driver’s seat had turned half around and had a pistol pointed at her, held low on the back of the front seat.

  “Just be quiet, Signora Isabella, and there will be no trouble at all—nobody hurt at all,” the man with the gun said.

  Ugo got in beside her in the back and slammed the door shut. The car started off.

  It had not even occurred to Isabella to scream, she realized. She had a glimpse of a man with a briefcase under his arm, walking only two meters away on the pavement, his eyes straight ahead. They were soon out in the country. There were a few houses, but mostly it was fields and trees. The man driving the car wore a hat.

  “Isn’t it necessary that I join Filippo, Ugo?” she asked.

  Ugo laughed, then asked the man driving to pull in at a roadside bar-restaurant. Here Ugo got out, saying he would be just a minute. He had looked into the shopping bag long enough to see that it contained money and was not partly stuffed with newspaper. The man driving turned around in his seat.

  “The signora will please be quiet,” he said. “Everything is all right.” He had the horrible accent of a Milan tough, attempting to be soothing to an unpredictable woman who might go off in a scream louder than a police siren. In his nervousness he was chewing gum.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Ugo was coming back.

  Isabella soon found out. They pulled in at a farmhouse whose occupants had evidently recently left—there were clothes on the line, dishes in the sink—but the only people now in the house seemed to be Isabella, Ugo, and his driver chum whom Ugo called Eddie. Isabella looked at an ashtray, recognizing Filippo’s Turkish cigarette stubs, noticed also the pack empty and uncrumpled on the floor.

  “Filippo has been released, signora,” Ugo said. “He has money for a taxi and soon you should be able to phone him at home.—Sit down. Would you like a coffee?”

  “Take me back to Rome!” Isabella shouted. But she knew. They had kidnapped her. “If you think there is any more money coming, you are quite mistaken, Ugo—and you!” she added to the smiling driver, an old slob now helping himself to whiskey.

  “There is always more money,” Ugo said calmly.

  “Swine!” Isabella said. “I should have known from the time you first stared into my bathroom! That’s your real occupation, you creep!” A fear of assault crossed her mind, but only swiftly. Her rage was stronger just now. “After I tried to—to give you a break, turn a little money your way! Look at all that money!”

  Eddie was now sitting on the floor counting it, like a child with an absorbing new toy or game, except that a big cigar stuck out of his mouth.

  “Sit down, signora. All will be well when we telephone your husband.”

  Isabella sat down on a sagging sofa. There was mud on the heels of her shoes from the filthy courtyard she had just walked across. Ugo brought some warmed-over coffee. Isabella learned that still another chum of Ugo’s had driven Filippo in another car and dropped him somewhere to make his own way home.

  “He is quite all right, signora,” Ugo assured her, bringing a plate of awful-looking sliced lamb and hunks of cheese. The other man was on his feet, and brought a basket of bread and a bottle of inferior wine. The men were hungry. Isabella took nothing, refusing even whiskey and wine. When the men had finished eating, Ugo sent Eddie off in the car to telephone Filippo from somewhere. The farmhouse had no telephone. How Isabella wished she had brought her tear-gas gun! But she had thought she would be among friends today.

  Ugo sipped coffee, smoked a cigarette, and tried to assuage Isabella’s anger. “By tonight, by tomorrow morning you will be back home, signora. No harm done! A room to yourself here! Even though the bed may not be as comfortable as the one you’re used to.”

  Isabella refused to answer him, and bit her lip, thinking that she had got herself into an awful mess, had cost herself and Filippo twenty-five million lire, and might cost them another fifty million (or whatever she was worth) because Filippo’s father might decide not to come up with the money to ransom her.

  Eddie came back with an air of disappointment and reported in his disgusting slang that Signor Ghiardini had told him to go stuff himself.

  “What?” Ugo jumped up from his chair. “We’ll try again. We’ll threaten—didn’t you threaten—”

  Eddie nodded. “He said . . .” Again the revolting phrase.

  “We’ll see how it goes tonight—around seven or so,” said Ugo.

  “How much are you asking?” Isabella was unable to repress the question any longer. Her voice had gone shrill.

  “Fifty million, signora,” replied Ugo.

  “We simply haven’t got it—not after this!” Isabella gestured toward the shopping bag, now in a corner of the room.

  “Ha, ha,” Ugo laughed softly. “The Ghiardinis haven’t got another fifty million? Or the government? Or Papa Ghiardini?”

  The other man announced that he was going to take a nap in the other room. Ugo turned on the radio to some pop music. Isabella remained seated on the uncomfortable sofa. She had declined to remove her coat. Ugo paced about, thinking, talking a little to himself, half drunk with the realization of all the money in the corner of the room. The gun lay on the center table near the radio. She looked at it with an idea of grabbing it and turning it on Ugo, but she knew she could probably not keep both men at bay if Eddie woke up.

  When Eddie did wake up and returned to the room, Ugo announced that he was going to try to telephone Filippo, while Eddie kept watch on Isabella. “No funny business,” said Ugo like an army officer, before go
ing out.

  It was just after six.

  Eddie tried to engage her in a conversation about revolutionary tactics, about Ugo’s having been a journalist once, a photographer also (Isabella could imagine what kind of photographer). Isabella was angry and bored, and hated herself for replying even slightly to Eddie’s moronic ramblings. He was talking about making a down payment on a house with the money he had gained from Filippo’s abduction. Ugo would also start leading a more decent life, which was what he deserved, said Eddie.

  “He deserves to be behind bars for the protection of the public!” Isabella shot back.

  The car had returned. Ugo entered with his slack mouth even slacker, a look of puzzlement on his brow. “Gotta let her go, he may have traced the call,” Ugo said to Eddie, and snapped his fingers for action.

  Eddie at once went for the shopping bag and carried it out to the car.

  “Your husband says you can go to hell,” said Ugo. “He will not pay one lira.”

  It suddenly sank into Isabella. She stood up, feeling scared, feeling naked somehow, even though she still wore her coat over her dress. “He is joking. He’ll—” But somehow she knew Filippo wouldn’t. “Where’re you taking me now?”

  Ugo laughed. He laughed heartily, rocking back as he always did, laughing at Isabella and also at himself. “So I have lost fifty million! A pity, eh? Big pity. But the joke is on you! Hah! Ha, ha, ha!—Come on, Signora Isabella, what’ve you got in your purse? Let’s see.” He took her purse rudely from her hands.

  Isabella knew she had about twenty thousand in her billfold. This Ugo laid with a large gesture on the center table, then turned off the radio.

  “Let’s go,” he said, indicating the door, smiling. Eddie had started the car. Ugo’s happy mood seemed to be contagious. Eddie began laughing too at Ugo’s comments. The lady was worth nothing! That was the idea. La donna niente, they sang.

  “You won’t get away with this for long, you piece of filth!” Isabella said to Ugo.

  More laughter.

  “Here! Fine!” yelled Ugo who was with Isabella in the back seat again, and Eddie pulled the car over to the edge of the road.