7
I brushed past the group of students who were hovering, chatting, before No. 24, via San Michele, the Pasquale brother and sister among them, and went straight upstairs to my room. I sat down on the bed, staring in front of me. It was an illusion, of course, a trick of the light. Unconscious association with our home. Aldo had been shot down in flames in ’43, my mother had received the telegram. I remembered it coming, and when it arrived she stared down at the envelope—for it must contain bad news of some kind—and then she went into the kitchen and called Marta, and they stayed in there together, the door closed.
Children have an instinct for knowing when news is bad. I sat on the stair and waited. Presently my mother came out again. She was not crying; she had the bruised, stunned look that adults wear when deeply moved or shocked. She said, “Aldo’s dead. Killed flying. The Allies shot him down,” and went upstairs to her room. I crept into the kitchen and Marta was sitting there, her hands in her lap. Unlike my mother she was not mute in her grief; the tears were flowing freely down her cheeks, and she held out her arms. I burst into tears instantly and ran to her, and the pair of us rocked together, crying, mourning our dead.
“My little Beato,” she said, “my lamb, my Beato. You loved him so, you loved your brother.”
“It isn’t true,” I kept saying between sobs, “it isn’t true. They can’t kill Aldo. Nobody can kill Aldo.”
“Yes, it is true,” she said, holding me close, “he has gone as he would have wished. He had to fly, he had to fall. Aldo, your Aldo.”
Memory is merciful. There came a blank in time after that first day, and I had no further feeling. The weeks must have passed, and I must have gone daily to school with my companions, and worn a mourning armband, and have said to them, even with pride, “Yes, my brother’s dead. Shot down in flames,” as though to go thus added to his glory. I played. I ran up and down the stairs. It was around then that I kicked the ball into the tree. Incidents, isolated at the time, merged into others of wider implication: the surrender, the Armistice, which I did not understand, the arrival in Ruffano of the Germans, and the Commandant. Life, as I had known it, had come to an end.
Now, sitting on the bed in the Pensione Silvani, I lived those first moments once again, and told myself that he whom I had just seen was indeed a living person, but wrongly identified with a man long dead. This was hallucination. This was what had happened to the disciples when they looked, as they thought, upon their Lord, the risen Christ…
There was a sudden knocking on the door. Startled, I called out, “Who’s there?” I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps the phantom stranger. My shout was taken for permission to enter the room. The door opened and the Pasquale brother and sister stood there, their faces concerned.
“Excuse us,” said the girl, Caterina, “but you looked so ill when you came in just now. We wondered if anything was wrong.”
I sat up on the bed. Made the supreme effort to appear at ease.
“It’s nothing,” I said, “absolutely nothing. I walked rather fast, that’s all.”
My poor reply was met by silence. I could see curiosity struggle with courtesy in their expressions.
“Why did you walk so fast?” asked Paolo.
I thought his question odd. It was as if he guessed… but how could he guess? I was a stranger. We were all strangers.
“I happened to do so,” I said. “I made a tour round the ducal palace and the neighboring streets and so back here. It turned out to be further than I had thought.”
They exchanged glances. Again, it was as though they guessed, they knew.
“Don’t think we want to pry,” said Paolo, “but were you by any chance followed?”
“Followed?” I echoed. “Why… no. Who would follow me?”
I felt as if I were on the defensive. What could these children know about the past, about my home? What could they know of my dead brother Aldo?
“It’s like this,” said Caterina, and she spoke softly, shutting the door. “People do get followed, from time to time, if they prowl round the palace at night. There are all sorts of rumors. It never happens if you go in a group. Only to individuals.”
I remembered then the running boy. The figure at the top of the steps. The softly closing door.
“It could have been,” I said, half to myself and half to them, “it could have been that I was followed.”
“Why, what happened?” asked Caterina quickly.
I told them about the boy and his headlong, breathless flight. I told them about the shadowed figure and the withdrawal inside the palace door. I did not tell them about my return down the via dei Sogni, and how I stood outside my home. Once more they looked at each other, nodding.
“That’s it,” said Paolo decisively, “they were out.”
“Who?” I asked.
“You’re new to Ruffano, you wouldn’t know,” said Caterina. “It’s a secret society within the university. We none of us know who the members are. They could be Arts, Education, C and E, Law, or a mixture of them all, but it’s part of the oath they take, never to split on one another.”
I handed them cigarettes. Already I was feeling more at ease. The past receded, and I was back in the world of university pranks.
“Don’t smile,” said Paolo. “It isn’t amusing. We thought as you did, at first, that it was just ragging. It isn’t so. Students have been hurt, and not only students but kids from the town. Seized and blindfolded… and, so rumor has it, even tortured. But nobody knows, that’s the point. The victims don’t tell. Something will slip out days later, a student will say he’s sick, not turn up at lectures, and then the rumor spreads, they’ve got at him.”
Brother and sister sat down on the bed on either side of me, their faces serious, yet eager. I felt it a compliment that they trusted me.
“Can’t the authorities do something?” I asked. “Surely it’s up to the university to stamp it out?”
“They can’t,” said Caterina. “You don’t understand the power of these people. It’s not like an ordinary society within the university, with its members known. This thing is secret. And it’s evil too.”
“For all we know,” broke in Paolo, “it may include professors as well as students. And although all of us C and E students feel it’s directed against us, we can’t be sure—we have heard there are members of our own group acting as spies for the society.”
“So you see,” said Caterina, “that’s why we were worried, when you came in. I said to Paolo—it’s them.”
I patted each upon the shoulder and got up from the bed. “No,” I said, “if they were out, they weren’t after me.” I crossed to the window and opened the shutters. The car had gone from No. 5. “Sometimes,” I said, addressing both brother and sister, “one can suffer from hallucinations. I’ve done so myself. You think you see something which is, frankly, out of this world, and then, later, it has an ordinary explanation. Your society may exist, it obviously does, but its importance could have been worked up in your minds, so that it appears more threatening than it is.”
“Exactly,” said Paolo, also rising to his feet. “That’s what all the scoffers say. But it isn’t so. You wait and see. Come on, Caterina.”
His sister shrugged, and followed her brother to the door. “I know it sounds foolish,” she said to me, “like a trick to scare children. But I’m sure of one thing. I would never walk about Ruffano by night without at least half a dozen others. It’s all right round here, and in the piazza della Vita. Not up the hill, not by the palace.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I accept the warning.”
I finished my cigarette, undressed, and went to bed. The tale of the “secret society” had proved an antidote to shock. Common sense told me that the encounter on the steps, the withdrawal of the figure to the open door of the ducal palace, had stimulated imagination already tensed because of the past, and when I came to my old home the natural consequence of this was to conjure, out of darkness into li
ght, a living Aldo. The experience was, I now believed, the second of two. The first had been to confuse the murdered woman in the via Sicilia in Rome with Marta. No proof, hallucination. The second experience, the vision of my brother. Appeased, and in a strange way self-absolved, I fell asleep.
When I awoke in the morning, clearheaded, hungry, full of energy for the day ahead, I told myself that it was time to kill all phantoms, and put a final end to the shadows that had haunted me. I would search out the cross-eyed cobbler and ask him if Marta lived. I would even boldly ring the bell of my old home in the via dei Sogni and ask the Rector’s lady, Signora Butali, the identity of her late-night caller. This last would, in all probability, produce a well-deserved rebuff, a complaint to the university Registrar, and an end to my temporary job. No matter if it did. My ghosts would then be truly laid, and I at liberty.
My young friends the Pasquales and the other students had dispersed to their various lectures before I left the house at a quarter to nine and walked up the via Rossini to the ducal palace. Ruffano wore her shining morning face, and the noise and bustle of the day were all about me. No shadowy figures now to lurk in doorways and scare the passersby. I wondered how much truth there was in the students’ story, whether the half of it was not a myth born of mass hysteria. Rumor, like infection, spreads rapidly.
I checked in at the palace library as the Duomo struck the hour, and so beat my superior by about three minutes. Giuseppe Fossi looked, I thought, subdued, and it could be that his activities of the preceding night had, in more ways than one, deflated him. He wished me and the others a brief good morning, and I was put at once to sorting and separating those volumes written in German and belonging to the university which had, by error, become mixed up with the palace possessions. The task, because it was so different from checking itineraries and figures, absorbed me, particularly so as one work in four volumes called The History of the Dukes of Ruffano, written in the early part of the nineteenth century by a German scholar, was, according to Giuseppe Fossi, extremely rare.
“There is a dispute between the Arts Council and ourselves as to its ownership,” he told me. “Better put the books aside for the time being and not pack them with the rest. I shall have to check with the Rector.”
I decided to stack the volumes carefully on a shelf by themselves. The leaves stuck together when I opened them. I doubt if they had ever been read. The Archbishop of Ruffano, who must have possessed them before the Risorgimento, either spoke no German or was too shocked by their contents to turn the pages.
“Claudio Malebranche, first Duke of Ruffano, was known as the Falcon,” I read. “His brief life is shrouded in mystery, for contemporary authorities do not enable us to pronounce with certainty on the enormous vices wherewith tradition and innuendo have blackened his memory. A youth of outstanding promise, he became intoxicated by good fortune, and casting off his early discipline he surrounded himself by a small band of dissolute disciples, and dismayed the good citizens of Ruffano by licentious outrages and revolting cruelties. No one could walk by night for fear of the Falcon’s sudden descent into the city, when, aided by his followers, he would seize and ravage…”
“Signor Fabbio, a hand with these entries, if you please.” My superior’s voice, a little tired, a little testy, summoned me from the fascinating disclosures promised by the German scholar. “If you want to read the books in the library,” he said, “you must do so in your own time, not in ours.”
I apologized. He brushed the matter aside, and we concentrated upon the ledgers. Either the signorina’s cooking, or her demands, had proved excessive. I ignored the byplay of Toni, who, behind our superior’s back, cradled his head upon his hands in mock exhaustion, but I was not surprised when Giuseppe Fossi, shortly before noon, pronounced himself unwell.
“I must have eaten something last night,” he said, “that disagreed with me. I shall have to go home and lie down. I’ll return later in the afternoon if I feel better. In the meantime, I should be extremely obliged if you would carry on.”
He left hurriedly, his handkerchief to his mouth. Signorina Catti remarked that it was well known that Signor Fossi suffered from his stomach. Also he was overworked. He never spared himself. Once again the irrepressible Toni gestured, once again I ignored the pantomime, this time more obvious, of an athlete at play. The telephone rang, and being closest to it I answered. A woman’s voice, soft and pleasing, asked for Signor Fossi.
“I’m sorry,” I replied, “Signor Fossi is not here. Can I help you?”
She asked how long he would be absent, and I said I was not sure. He had felt unwell, and had gone home. The inquirer was not Carla Raspa—the voice was pitched too low.
“Who am I speaking to?” came next.
“Armino Fabbio, temporary assistant to Signor Fossi,” I replied. “May I ask who it is inquiring after him?”
“Signora Butali,” she answered. “I have a message for him from the Rector about some books.”
My interest quickened. The Rector’s lady in person, speaking from my home. My courier’s well-trained courtesy took over.
“If there is anything I can do, signora, you have only to ask,” I said smoothly. “Signor Fossi left the library in the charge of Signorina Catti and myself. Would you perhaps entrust your message to me?”
There was a moment’s hesitation before she replied. “The Rector is in hospital in Rome, as you know,” she said, “and during a conversation on the telephone I had with him this morning he asked me to request Signor Fossi for the loan of some rather valuable books about which there is a trifling dispute between the university and the Arts Council. He would like to examine the books himself, with Signor Fossi’s approval, and I could take them with me to Rome on my next visit.”
“Of course, signora,” I said. “I am quite certain Signor Fossi would raise no objection. What books are they?”
“The History of the Dukes of Ruffano, in German,” she answered.
The secretary was making signs to me. I explained, my hand over the mouthpiece, that I was speaking to the Rector’s lady. Her sour disapproval vanished. She rushed forward and snatched the receiver from me.
“Good morning, signora,” she exclaimed, her voice all sugar. “I had no idea you were back from Rome. How is the Rector?” She smiled and nodded, hushing me to silence. “Naturally anything the Rector asks for he shall be given,” she continued. “I will see that the books are delivered to you at the house today. Either I, or one of our assistants, will hand them to you personally.”
Further assurances followed, with an added explanation that Signor Fossi was, as usual, overworked. More smiles. More nods. Then, apparently thanked and dismissed, she replaced the receiver.
Quickly I said, “I’ll deliver the books to Signora Butali this afternoon.”
Signorina Catti stared, her sourness returned. “There is no need to go yourself,” she said. “If you will wrap the books for me I can take them. It won’t be out of my way, and the signora knows me.”
“Signor Fossi gave me instructions,” I said, “not to let these books out of my sight. Also, I am more easily spared from the library than you.”
Furious, but acknowledging defeat, she returned to her desk. A falsetto cough from the high ladder told me that Toni had been listening. I smiled, and went on with my work. Entry had been secured to my home in the via dei Sogni. For the moment this was all that mattered.
I did not return to the pensione for lunch. I found a small restaurant in the via Rossini which, though filled with students, sufficed for my hasty meal. I went back to the library while the other assistants were still lunching, and packed up the books for the Rector’s lady. It intrigued me that the very volumes that had caught my fancy should be those demanded by the Rector from his sickbed. There was no time to linger over the life history of the Falcon. This I regretted. His madness I remembered, and his death. The intervening details had been glossed over by my father. Certainly they were not mentioned in the Ruffano g
uidebooks, nor in the printed pamphlets issued to tourists in the ducal palace.
“… The excesses were of so singular a nature that only the Devil could have inspired them. When accusations were made against him by the outraged citizens of Ruffano, Duke Claudio retaliated by declaring that he had been divinely appointed to mete out to his subjects the punishment they deserved. The proud would be stripped, the haughty violated, the slanderer silenced, the viper die in his own venom. The scales of heavenly justice would thus be balanced.”
And so on for several pages. The picture of “The Temptation” in the ducal bedchamber above the library took on new meaning for me.
“Duke Claudio was undoubtedly insane. Excuses were thus made for him, after his appalling death, by the good and gentle brother who succeeded him, the great Duke Carlo. No such consideration can be afforded to the Falcon’s followers. This small band of debauchees did not believe themselves to hold divine appointment. Their mission was to sully and destroy. So great was the hatred and fear which they inspired among the populace of Ruffano that when the final massacre took place, and the Falcon and his band were slaughtered, it is said that the corridors and state rooms of the ducal palace ran with blood, and that atrocities, impossible to name, were committed upon the fallen victims.”
These pages would certainly while away the Rector’s hours of leisure in a hospital bed.
I packed the books and left the library as soon as the second assistant returned from lunch. Then I set forth for the via dei Sogni. My excitement increased as I approached the garden wall. No hovering in the shadows today. I was going home. As I drew near I could hear, as yesterday, the sound of piano playing. It was a Chopin Impromptu. The notes rang out, up and down the scale, with almost savage intensity. It was like an argument, passionate and fierce, that would brook no interference but must sweep everything before it, then rippled, suddenly, to melting protestation. No music for a sickbed. But, of course, the Rector was some hundred and fifty miles away in Rome.