“Anyway,” I said, “when Professor Butali hears about tonight…”
“He won’t,” interrupted Aldo. “What do you suppose Rizzio and Elia and I were discussing until midnight?”
“He may not hear officially,” I said, “but don’t tell me someone won’t pass the word.”
My brother shrugged. “That’s a risk we have to take,” he said.
I moved towards the door. I had achieved precisely nothing by coming to the via dei Sogni and waiting for Aldo, except confirmation of the suspicion nagging me. And to let him know I knew.
“If the Rector does come back,” I asked, “what will he do?”
“He won’t do anything,” said Aldo, “there isn’t time.”
“Time?”
Aldo smiled. “Rectors are also vulnerable,” he said, “they can lose face like other mortals. Beo…”
“Yes?”
He picked up a newspaper that was lying on the chair by the door. “Did you see this?”
He showed me the passage I had read at breakfast. The events of the day had put it completely from my mind.
“They’ve caught the murderer,” I said. “Thank God for that.”
“They’ve caught the thief,” he interposed, “which apparently isn’t the same thing. I had a call from the commissioner of police this morning. The fellow who took the ten thousand lire sticks to his story. He insists that Marta was already dead when he took the note from her, and the police have a hunch he’s telling the truth.”
“Already dead?” I exclaimed. “But then…”
“They’re still looking for the murderer,” he said, “which, for anyone hanging about the via Sicilia between midnight and the small hours last Tuesday night, might be unhealthy, or at least inconvenient.” He put his hand on my head and rumpled my hair. “Don’t worry, my Beato,” he said, “they won’t catch you. And if they did they’d soon acquit you. Innocence shines from your eyes.”
What he had just told me knocked my composure sideways. The whole sick horror of the murder was with me still. I had thought it buried.
“What shall I do?” I asked desperately. “Shall I go to the police?”
“No,” he said, “forget the whole thing. Come to my meeting tomorrow night and become one of the elite. Here’s your pass.” He felt in his pocket and brought out a small disk, bearing upon its face a falcon’s head. “The boys will let you in with this,” he said. “Entrance to the throne room at nine o’clock. And come alone. I don’t propose entertaining Signorina Raspa or your playmates from 24, via San Michele. Sleep well.”
He pushed me from the door and out into the street. It was after one, and everywhere was dark and still. I met no one between Aldo’s house and the via San Michele. No. 24 was as quiet as the other shuttered houses. The door was unlocked and I went to my room without disturbing anyone, but judging from the sound of voices from Paolo Pasquale’s room the whole company of students had gathered there, and were engaged in furious discussion. Tomorrow I might hear if they had been near the piazza del Duca Carlo.
I awoke about five a.m., not with any dream or nightmare, not with the vivid picture of the Head of the Department of Commerce and Economics seated in ignominious nudity beneath the marble pedestal bearing the bronze statue of Duke Carlo, but with the sudden recollection of where it was that I had read the name Luigi Speca—the problem which had puzzled me in the library during the afternoon. Luigi Speca had signed his name alongside my father’s at Aldo’s baptism. I had seen it written in the book of records kept at the sacristy of San Cipriano.
15
At eight o’clock there was a knock on my door, and before I could answer Paolo burst in, closely followed by Caterina.
“I’m sorry,” he said, seeing I was in the midst of shaving, “but we want to know if you’re coming with us. The whole of C and E are cutting lectures, and we’re going to demonstrate outside the house of Professor Elia.”
“What about?” I asked.
“You know. We saw you,” broke in Caterina. “You were in a car, with the Raspa woman. We saw you leave the hotel and drive up to the piazza del Duca Carlo. You were in the thick of it.”
“That’s right,” chimed in Gino, whose head appeared over Caterina’s, “and later we saw the same car parked by the municipal gardens. You must have seen what happened. You were much nearer than any of us.”
I laid down my razor and reached for a towel. “I saw nothing,” I said, “except a crowd of professors around the statue. There was a lot of movement and excited talk, and then they carried someone or something, away. Perhaps it was a bomb.”
“A bomb!” everyone shouted.
“That’s the best yet,” said Caterina, “and do you know, he could be right. They could have tied Elia to a bomb timed to explode within a certain number of minutes.”
“Well, what happened to it?”
“What sort of bomb?”
“The point is, was he wounded or cut about? No one will tell us.”
The passionate discussion that must have been going on half the night promised resumption once again, and in my bedroom.
“Look here,” I said, “clear out, the lot of you. Go and demonstrate if you want to. I’m not a student. I’m an employee.”
“A spy?” suggested Gino. “You haven’t been here a week, and look what’s happened!”
The laughter from the rest was not spontaneous. It held an element of doubt. Caterina turned impatiently, pushing the others from the room.
“Ah, leave him alone,” she said. “What’s the use? He doesn’t care.” Then, to give me a final chance, she said to me over her shoulder. “The idea is to demonstrate in a body outside Professor Elia’s house and get him to appear. If we’re satisfied he’s all right, and unhurt, that’s good enough, we’ll turn up for the morning sessions.”
A few minutes later I heard them leave the house. The inevitable splutter of vespas followed, belonging, I thought, to Gino and Gerardo. I stood by the window and watched them disappear down the street. Then I looked across at the first floor of No. 5. The shutters were thrown back, the windows open. Carla Raspa had begun her day.
Signor Silvani was finishing breakfast when I descended for coffee, and he immediately asked me if I knew anything of the events of the night before. I told him I had been near the piazza del Duca Carlo and had seen the crowd.
“We only know what our young people here told us,” he said, “but I don’t like the sound of it. We’ve had ragging before, you get it in every university, but this sounds vicious. Is it true they tarred and feathered Professor Elia?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t see.”
“I shall hear the truth at the prefettura,” he said. “If anything serious was done last night, it will mean drafting extra police into Ruffano for the next few days. It’s chaotic enough anyway on Festival day, without adding demonstrations to all our problems.”
I looked about for a morning paper, but saw none. Perhaps it was in the kitchen, or had not arrived. I finished my coffee and walked up to the piazza della Vita to buy one. Unrest stirred in the air. The piazza was crowded with morning shoppers, and with the inevitable group of workless individuals who, idle not from choice but from necessity, came to the city center to stand and stare. Students were everywhere, arguing, loquacious, most of them streaming out of the piazza up the northern hill to the piazza del Duca Carlo. Rumor, floating from one hill to the other, and then converging from all corners to the piazza della Vita, emerged in the small space like smoke from a steaming cauldron.
There was a Communist plot to blow up the university… There was a Fascist plot to take over the municipality… Guests at the dinner-party at the Hotel Panorama had been poisoned… The private residences of the Heads of Departments had been burgled… A maniac from Rome, having murdered one of Ruffano’s inhabitants, poor Marta Zampini, in the capital, was now loose in Ruffano itself, and had made an attempt on the life of Professor Elia…
I boug
ht a paper. There was nothing in it about last night’s event, and only a brief statement about the murder. The police still held the thief in Rome pending further inquiries elsewhere. Elsewhere. Did this mean Ruffano?
There was a sudden movement in the crowd from the direction of the via dei Martiri. People fell back on either side to allow the passage of a priest and acolyte, and behind them four men bearing a coffin covered with a pall. In the rear came the mourners, a man with cross-eyes and a woman, heavily veiled, upon his arm. They made their way across the piazza to the church of San Cipriano. The gaping crowd closed in upon them. I followed, as in a dream, and stood within the precincts of the church in the midst of staring townsfolk, who participated out of curiosity. I listened for the opening words: “Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis.” Then I turned, and left the church.
As I pushed through the door I saw a man standing near the table where they sold candles. He was watching the crowd, and his eyes fell upon me. I thought I recognized him, and, from the momentary question in his eye, that he knew me too. It was one of the police agents who had been in the room taking notes when the English tourists made their statement at the police station in Rome. Today he wore plain clothes.
I ran down the steps and plunged into the piazza della Vita. Then darted along the via del Teatro and climbed the long ascending slope under the walls of the ducal palace. Instinct had made me run. Instinct had told me to take this devious way. If the agent had recognized me as the courier in Rome who had volunteered the statement about the murdered woman, he would remember that this same courier had been en route for Naples with his touring party, and he would ask himself, what was the courier doing in Ruffano? A word on the telephone to Sunshine Tours, a quick check-up with either the Rome or the Genoa office, would tell the agent that Armino Fabbio had asked to be released from the Naples tour and had gone north with a Herr Turtmann and his wife. Little doubt that further news would be elicited that the courier had deserted Herr Turtmann in Ruffano, and nothing had been heard of him since.
I looked about me. The agent could not have followed me. Or, if he had, I had thrown him off. Strollers, shopper, students, were walking past the piazza Maggiore on their lawful business. I went into the Duomo by the side entrance, crossed the chancel and emerged at the further side, immediately opposite the ducal palace. In a moment I was inside the walls, and crossing the quadrangle to the library. It was only then, as I paused a moment to recover my breath, that I realized I had acted in foolish panic. It might not have been the police agent. If it had, there was no reason to suppose he had recognized me. My action, in fact, had been a classic example of the behavior of a guilty man. I stood mopping my forehead, and at that moment the library doors opened and Toni and the other assistant staggered forth, bearing a crate of books.
“Hullo! Who’s been chasing you?” asked Toni.
The question was apt. Stung by his inquiry, I thrust my handkerchief into my pocket.
“No one,” I said. “I got held up in the town.”
“What’s happening, then? Have they gone on strike? Are they demonstrating?” they asked simultaneously.
I was so preoccupied with my own endeavors in eluding the possible police agent that I was slow to seize their meaning.
“On strike? Who?” I said.
Toni raised despairing eyes to heaven. “Do you live in this world?” he inquired. “Don’t you know that all Ruffano is in a ferment because of what happened last night in the piazza del Duca Carlo?”
“They say the Communists got hold of Professor Elia,” said his companion, “and tried to bash his head in. Fossi’s given orders to shift everything we can from here to the new building in case an attempt is made to set fire to the ducal palace.”
They staggered off along the quadrangle with the crate. I went into the library to find chaos. Books were piled high upon the floor, and Giuseppe Fossi, with Signorina Catti at his side, was lumping volume after volume pell-mell into another groaning crate. He raised his perspiring face at sight of me and burst into a torrent of reproaches. Then, sending the secretary off to the other end of the library with a pile of books, he whispered in my ear, “You have heard what they did to Professor Elia?”
“No,” I replied.
“Emasculated!” he hissed. “I had it firsthand from one of the guests at last night’s dinner. They say the doctors were with him throughout the night to save his life. There may be other victims.”
“Signor Fossi,” I began, “I’m sure nothing of the sort…”
He frowned me to silence, jerking his head towards the secretary. “They’ll stop at nothing, nothing,” he said. “Anyone in a position of authority may be threatened.”
I murmured something about police protection.
“Police?” he almost screamed. “Useless! They’ll be looking after the senior members of the staff. The backbone of the university, the men who do all the work, will have to fend for themselves.”
Attempts to calm him were wasted. Green with fatigue after his sleepless night, he sat on one of the empty crates and watched me pack the books into another. I wondered which of us was the greater coward—he, who had turned to jelly through false rumor, or myself, because of the encounter in San Cipriano.
We did not break for lunch. Toni brought us sandwiches and coffee from the university canteen. The news was reassuring. The C and E students had called off the strike and attended the late morning sessions. Professor Elia had admitted a deputation to his house and received them in his dressing gown. He had assured them that all was well. He had not been hurt. He refused to make any other comment, but implored the students, for his sake, to attend their lectures as usual. They must not think of taking revenge upon other students in the university.
“The lads agreed,” murmured Toni in my ear, “just to keep him quiet. But it’s not blown over. They’re seething, every one of them.”
Giuseppe Fossi left during the afternoon to attend a meeting of the university Council called for three o’clock, and I went up with Toni to the new building to help supervise the unpacking of the crates at that end.
It was as well for Giuseppe Fossi’s reputation that I did so. The books had been stowed into the boxes with a total disregard for order, which meant double work not only for ourselves but for the clerks in the new library. I put Toni in charge of the van (in action again with a new windscreen), and stayed myself in the new library directing operations. One of the clerks, more thorough than the rest, soon had every volume dusted, sorted, and put in its allotted place in the bookshelves, while I busied myself with the catalogue.
The blowing and shaking of the dust by the energetic clerk brought various items to light which, after consultation with me, he disposed of in the wastepaper bin. Faded flowers, loose nameplates, forgotten letters, bills. It was almost time to knock off, and still no sign of Giuseppe Fossi, when the clerk brought me another letter to dispose of.
“Found this in a book of poems,” he said, “but as it’s signed by the Director of Arts, Professor Donati, perhaps it shouldn’t be thrown away?”
He handed me the letter. I glanced at the signature. Aldo Donati. It was not my brother’s handwriting, but my father’s. “All right,” I said, “I’ll take care of it.”
As the clerk went back to his sorting I called, “Where did you say you found the letter?”
“In a collected edition of Leopardi,” he replied, “belonging to someone called Luigi Speca. Or that at least was the name on the bookplate.”
The letter was brief. The heading at the top of the page said 8, via dei Sogni, Ruffano. The date, November 30th, 1925. The faded black ink, the gray writing-paper, and my father’s handwriting moved me strangely. The letter must have lain between the pages of Leopardi’s poems for nearly forty years.
“Dear Speca,
“All is well. We are remarkably proud of our young fellow. He is putting on weight fast and has a terrific appetite. He also promises to be extremely ha
ndsome! My wife and I can never thank you enough for your great kindness, sympathy and friendship in our moment of trouble, now happily behind us. We both of us look to the future with confidence. Please drop in on us and see the boy when you can spare the time.
“Your sincere friend,
“Aldo Donati.
“PS.—Marta proves to be not only a devoted nurse but an excellent cook. She sends her respects.”
I read the letter three times, then put it in my pocket. The handwriting might be faded, but the message was as fresh as if it had been written yesterday. I could hear my father’s voice, strong and clear, full of pride in his young son, now apparently restored to health after a dangerous illness. The baptismal entry was now plain. Luigi Speca must have been the doctor who attended him, a predecessor of our Doctor Mauri. Even the postscript about Marta was somehow poignant. She had entered our parents’ service at this time and remained faithful to the end. The end… I had seen this morning in the church of San Cipriano. Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine.
The doors of the new library opened and Giuseppe Fossi entered, followed by Toni looking sullen. My superior had lost his haunted look, he was assured once more, and rubbing his hands briskly.
“All in order? Everything sorted?” he demanded. “What are those crates doing there? Ah, I see, all empty. Good.” He cleared his throat, drew himself up, and bustled to the desk I had just quitted. “There will be no further trouble tonight,” he announced. “The university Council has ordered a nine o’clock curfew for all the students. Any of them seen on the streets after that time will be reported and automatically expelled. This applies equally to employees on the university staff who may live in lodgings. Instead of expulsion they will lose their jobs.” He looked pointedly at Toni, the other assistants and myself. “Special passes for those engaged on essential business can be obtained from the Registrar on application,” he added, “and it will be easy enough for the authorities to check up, should they be abused. In any event, it will hurt nobody to spend an evening withindoors. Naturally, the regulations will be relaxed tomorrow, the eve of the Festival.”