We heaved the crates out of the van and bore them into the new library. The decorators, Toni told me, had only been out of the place a week. High, light, with a raised gallery above lined with shelves throughout and a reading-room beyond, the building would offer many more facilities than the old banqueting hall in the ducal palace.
“Where did they raise the money?” I asked.
“The C and E intake. Where else?” Toni replied.
We dumped the crates, which were to be unpacked by the assistant staff under the supervision of one of Giuseppe Fossi’s colleagues, but not before the irrepressible Toni had gleaned further news of the women’s hostel break-in.
“They say Rizzio’s going to resign unless Professor Elia makes a public apology in the name of the C and E students,” he said eagerly, following me from the building. “This will be a fight to a finish, I warn you. I don’t think Elia will stand for it for a moment.”
“I was told I’d come to a dead city,” I replied. “Do you have this sort of excitement every day?”
“No such luck,” he said, “but I tell you what it is. With the Rector away Rizzio and Elia will seize the opportunity to cut each other’s throats. They detest one another, and this is their chance.”
As we were parking the van outside the ducal palace, at about a quarter to one, I saw Carla Raspa come out of the side entrance with a bevy of arts students. She saw me and waved her hand. I waved back. She sent the students ahead and waited for me to join her.
“Doing anything for lunch?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Go down to the restaurant where we first met,” she said quickly. “Book a table for two. I can’t stop now, I have to get my party home. No loitering allowed after what happened last night. You heard the news?”
“The break-in? Yes,” I answered.
“I’ll tell you more,” she said. “It’s unbelievable!”
She hurried after her flock, and I strolled off down the via Rossini. The restaurant, as before, was crowded, but I managed to get a table. There were no students. The place seemed to be the favorite rendezvous of those businessmen of Ruffano who did not go home to lunch. Carla Raspa arrived soon after. She snapped her fingers at the waiter and we ordered lunch, then she looked at me and smiled.
“Out with it,” I said. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“No secret this,” she answered, glancing, despite her words, over her shoulder. “It will be right through the university by now. Signorina Rizzio has been raped.”
I stared in disbelief.
“It’s true,” she insisted, leaning forward. “I had it from one of her staff. These lads, whoever they were, didn’t touch the girls. They locked the whole bunch in their rooms and set to work on the high and mighty one herself. Isn’t it glorious?”
She was choking with laughter. I was not so much amused. The plateful of pasta placed in front of me by the waiter turned the edge off appetite. It looked like entrails.
“That’s common assault,” I said abruptly. “A matter for the police. Whoever did it will get ten years.”
“No,” she said, “that’s it. They say the signorina’s in a state of high hysteria and wants it all hushed up.”
“Can’t be done,” I said, “the law won’t allow it.”
She attacked her own full plate with relish, covering the mashed-up brew with grated cheese. “The law can’t take any action if nobody complains,” she said. “The lads must have risked it, and guessed the reaction. Of course there’ll be a row about the break-in, a terrific row. But what happened to Signorina Rizzio is her own affair. If she refuses to bring in a charge of assault, and her brother supports her, there’s nothing anyone can do. Have you ordered wine?”
I had. I poured it out for her. She swallowed it down as though her throat was parched.
“It’s not as though she had been knocked about,” she continued. “I understand there was no question of that. No beating up. Just gently and persuasively shown what’s what.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Well, that’s the tale. What the girls say at the hostel. Now that they have recovered from the fright of the masked men, and are themselves intact—those that were already, anyway—they can hardly contain themselves. That it should happen to her, the signorina! You have to hand it to those C and E boys. Imagine the nerve!”
“I still don’t credit it,” I said.
“I do,” she answered, “and if the police are not summoned, and we’re told the signorina is indisposed, you can bet your life it’s true. Do you suppose she enjoyed it?”
Her eyes were gleaming. I felt slightly sick. Brutality in any form revolts me, and to commit violence upon the old or the very young was something I have never understood. I did not answer.
“She asked for it, you know,” Carla Raspa continued, “treating her women students like novices taking their vows. No visits, even in the common room, from boys in the students’ hostel, doors locked by ten. I know, because so many of the girls attend my lectures. They’d reached a breaking point of exasperation. Of course one of the girls must have let the boys in, that’s obvious. Then listened at the keyhole and spread the tale!”
I thought of the stately, formidable figure I had met the day before, sipping with mild distaste her mineral water. Imagination balked.
Carla Raspa, facing the door of the restaurant, bent forward, touching my hand. “Don’t turn now,” she said. “Professor Elia has just come in. The Head of C and E himself. With a bunch of colleagues. What I ask myself is, will he have to resign?”
“Resign? Why should he?” I inquired. “How can anyone pin the break-in on his boys?”
“Because it’s obvious,” she said. “Signorina Rizzio has complained about the behavior of the C and E students time after time. It was reported in the university journal. Last night was their answer.”
I waited a moment for the party to settle at a table to the left of me, then half-turned in my seat to glance at them.
“The big man,” murmured my companion, “with the shock of hair. More pleased with himself than anyone in Ruffano, and more self-opinionated, but he gets things done. He’s a Milanese. He would be.”
Professor Elia, eyes screened by thick-rimmed spectacles, black hair en brosse, had the large frame of one who can never fit into any sort of suit. Creases abounded in the impeccable cloth. He was talking rapidly, hunched over the table, allowing no one else to interrupt. Suddenly he threw back his undoubtedly fine head and uttered a thunderclap of laughter.
“Five of them,” he said, “one after the other. That’s what I’m told. And not a squeak in protest. Not a whimper.”
The table rocked. His laughter filled the restaurant. Other people eating turned to stare. One of Professor Elia’s companions motioned him to silence. The big man looked about him with contempt and caught my eye.
“Nobody here,” he said. “They don’t know what I’m discussing. But I tell you this. If anything’s said officially against our crowd I’ll not only make the lady the laughingstock of Ruffano but…” he lowered his voice, and we could hear no more.
“You see,” murmured Carla Raspa, “the poor old Rizzios won’t get much change out of him. They’d be well advised to let it go, or, better still, clear out. Anyway, after this shock the signorina can never show her face again. If she does, she’ll only be greeted with the sort of guffaw we’ve heard at the next table.” She accepted a cigarette, finished her wine, and summoned the waiter. “My treat,” she said. “We both of us work for our living. You’ve still to take me out to dinner. When?”
“Not tonight,” I answered, remembering the Pasquales. “Perhaps tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow it is.”
We rose from the table and left the restaurant, resuming our walk together up the hill.
“Heard the latest?” whispered Toni from his ladder as I entered the library.
“What?” I asked guardedly.
“There’s t
alk of the women’s hostel being closed down and the students sent home,” he said. “They’ll have to take their examinations by post. They’re saying there was another break-in three months ago and all the girls are pregnant.”
Giuseppe Fossi, dictating letters to his secretary, looked up at the offender from his desk. “Would you please observe the rules?” he said icily, pointing to the notice SILENCE that hung upon the library walls.
Twice during the afternoon we drove to the new building with further crates. Each time we ran into fresh rumors. Students gossiped in droves, and Toni knew a dozen of them. The break-in was the subject of the day, the assault upon Signorina Rizzio common knowledge. Some said it had nothing to do with the C and E crowd at all, that there was, unknown to all save a favored few, a passage between the men’s and women’s hostels which had been in use for years. The signorina had entertained nights without number every professor in the university, with preference given to the more muscular. Others, defending the lady’s honor, declared that Professor Elia in person had led the masked band of marauders into her sanctum, and that he had in his possession a captured nightdress belonging to the signorina which would bear witness to his feat.
Laughter was paramount then, but later in the day the mood changed. Word spread that the Authorities—whoever they might be—definitely put the blame for the break-in upon C and E students, who, it was said, had returned from Sunday leave upon their vespas in a state of riot, and, circling beneath the windows of the women’s hostel with songs and catcalls, had fired the bolder among them to invasion.
Toni, looking over his shoulder, pointed out the first batch of angry C and E boys and girls emerging from the lecture rooms allotted to them across the via dell’8 Settembre, not far from where we stood.
“Watch out,” he called to me, “there’s going to be trouble.”
Somebody threw a stone. It shattered the windscreen of our van and the glass splintered. Another stone caught Toni on the side of the head. A shout went up from the small group of Arts students and others who were walking up the hill from the university proper. Some of them started running towards their supposed antagonists. In a moment there was shouting, yelling, more stones, more running, and two more boys, riding vespas, swerved into the midst of all of them, scattering students right and left.
“Come on,” I said to Toni, “out of it. It’s not our battle.”
I pulled him into the van and started the engine. He did not say anything. He was mopping the side of his head, the blood flowing. We roared across the street, and avoiding the skirmish which students were running to join from all directions drove downhill past the university to the ducal palace.
I parked in our usual place and switched off the engine. “So much for university politics,” I said.
Toni looked very white. I examined the cut. Not deep, but deep enough.
“Got a doctor you know?” I asked. He nodded. “Well, get along and see him. I’ll make your excuses.”
We climbed together from the van. He walked slowly to his vespa and straddled it, one hand still dabbing at his wound.
“You saw that fellow who threw the stone?” he said. “No ragging there, he did it deliberately, to start a fight. I’ll get him later. Or my pals will.”
He coasted slowly down the hill. I went into the library and reported the incident briefly to Giuseppe Fossi. He went off like a rocket.
“You had no business, either of you, to hang about the university buildings when the students are coming out of the lecture rooms,” he exploded. “On a day like this, with rumors flying, it is asking for trouble. Now I shall have to put in a claim for the van, the matter will be reported back at the Registrar’s office, Professor Rizzio may himself see the report…”
“Of a bust windscreen?” I interrupted. “Look, Signor Fossi, I’ll get it seen to at some garage down the hill.”
“There will be talk,” he flustered. “Everyone knows the van, someone will have seen the incident. Trust Toni to tell all Ruffano.”
I let him exhaust himself, then, when he quieted down, resumed my work. This was his problem, not mine. I had something else to think about. The feeling of disquiet that had nagged at me all day had increased. If students cared to break in at the women’s hostel it was their affair, and what they did there too. They would be either rounded up and punished, or permitted to go free. It was none of my business. But the timing bothered me. And my own translation from the German volumes.
“… The citizens… finally rose at the instigation of the leading citizen, whose… wife had been profaned.”
I was not the only one to handle the books and to read German. Aldo had shown them to one of his Arts students, a German scholar. The pages had been marked. Once again I heard my brother say, “We must have the excitement first. The profanation of the leading citizen’s wife.”
In retrospect I left the Butalis’ house again, looked down from the street to the valley roads below, heard the throb of the returning vespas. Was it coincidence? Had the attack been planned?
It was difficult to keep my mind on sorting the more tedious works of German and English philosophers, and when the time came to close up for the evening I was the first to leave. Outside, I found the piazza Maggiore full of students. They were parading up and down in groups, some of them linking arms and all belligerent. What Faculties they represented I neither knew nor cared, but I realized they were stopping and challenging the casual passersby. I hoped to escape notice, and had reached the steps of the Duomo when one big fellow happened to turn his head in my direction and swooped upon me.
“Hold on, shrimp,” he cried, twisting my arm behind me. “Where are you sneaking off to?”
“Via San Michele,” I said. “I lodge there.”
“You lodge there, do you? And where do you work?”
“I’m an employee in the library.”
“An employee in the library!” He mimicked my tone. “Well, that’s a pretty dirty job, isn’t it? Hands and face smothered in dust all day.” He shouted down to others below the steps. “Here’s a little Arts boy needs a wash. Shall we give him the water-treatment? What about dousing him in the fountain?”
A roar of laughter greeted the remark, some of it good-natured, but not all. “Hand him over! Clean him up!”
The fountain in the center of the piazza was surrounded. Some of the students had already climbed the basin and were balancing, laughing and singing, upon the edge. There were many of them, fifty, a hundred. I felt very small, and very much alone. Suddenly a car, hooting high and long, swung into view from the direction of the university. The students fell back on either side of the piazza to let it pass. One fellow, losing his balance, stumbled into the fountain basin. There was a yell of laughter from the crowd, and as my captor, joining in the mirth, loosened his hold on me I ducked and slipped out of his hands. The car moved slowly on. It was the Alfa-Romeo, with Aldo at the wheel. Sitting beside him, waving his hand and smiling to the scattering students, who shouted and cheered at sight of him, was the Head of the Department of Commerce and Economics, Professor Elia.
I cut through the crowd of students to the passage leading from the via Rossini to the via dei Sogni. Here all was quiet. It might have been another world. No one roamed the street except for one lone cat that leapt onto the garden wall at sight of me. I opened the gate, walked up the pathway to the house and rang the bell. It was opened, after a while, by the girl who had brought in the dinner the night before.
“Signora Butali?” I inquired.
“I’m sorry, signore,” she said, “the signora isn’t at home. She left for Rome early this morning.”
I stared at her blankly. “Left for Rome? I didn’t think she was going until later in the week?”
“No, signore, nor did I. I found her gone when I came first thing this morning. She left a note for me, saying she had decided to go suddenly. She must have been away by seven.”
“Is Professor Butali worse, then?”
&
nbsp; “I know nothing about that, signore. She didn’t say.”
I looked past her to the empty house. Already, because of the signora’s absence, it lacked warmth and charm.
“Thank you,” I said, “there is no message.”
I walked the long way down to the pensione, avoiding the piazza della Vita. This way the streets were free of students, and the people I met were ordinary citizens going about their business. When I came to the via San Michele I saw that the entrance to No. 24 was blocked by Gino, Mario, and one or two others, and with them Paolo Pasquale and his sister. At sight of me she ran forward, and, glancing up to me took hold of me by the hand.
“Have you heard the news?” she asked.
I sighed. It was with me once again. There was no escaping it. “I’ve heard nothing else all day,” I said, “even the books on the library shelves were full of it. There’s been a break-in at the women’s hostel. All the girls are pregnant.”
“Oh, that,” she said impatiently. “Who cares about that? I hope Signorina Rizzio has twins… No, the Director of the Arts Council has invited as many of the C and E students as care to do so to take part in the Festival, as a gesture to show his faith in all of us and that we were not responsible for last night’s affair. Professor Elia has accepted on our behalf, and there’s to be a meeting this evening, held in the old theater above the piazza del Mercato. We’re all going from here, and you must come with us.”
She looked at me, smiling. Her brother joined her. “Do come,” he said. “Nobody knows who you are. It’s an experience nobody should miss. We’re all mad to know what Professor Donati is going to say.”
I had an intuition that I already knew.
13
The doors of the theater were to be opened at nine. We had dinner first with the Silvanis, and set out at a quarter to the hour. The piazza della Vita was already crammed with students, converging upon the square from their various lodgings up and down the city, and now turning in a body down the narrow via del Teatro to the theater itself. I soon lost sight of Gino and his companions, but the Pasquales held on to me firmly, one on either side, and I felt like a puppet, almost swung from my feet. The theater in my father’s day had never been much used. Concerts and oratorios were given at certain times, and occasionally there was a recitation by a visiting literary celebrity; otherwise it remained an edifice of architectural splendor, little known to the passing tourist or indeed to the citizens of Ruffano themselves. Today, so the Pasquales told me, all was changed. Thanks to the Rector of the university and the Director of the Arts Council, the theater was in use throughout the year. Lectures, plays, concerts, films, exhibitions, even dances, all took place within its august walls.