“IF IT WASN’T FOR THAT whole business I’d be Mr. Nobody now, Mr. Becker. But look at how they greet me, see? Look, look at the respect.”
It’s true that they’re looking at us. At the tables around us everything stopped when Perugia and I walked in. The tiles of the domino players froze in midair, people who were talking stopped in mid-sentence. Even the birds quieted down. The domino players inclined their heads slightly, in deference; some of them touched a finger to their hats. Two or three said, “Ciao, Vincenzo, how are you?” Now everyone has gone back to what they were doing, and Perugia takes a swig from his glass of wine. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, his hand on his pants under the table.
“You’re not a Jew, by any chance?”
“Well, yes. Why?”
“Nothing, just asking. It doesn’t matter to me; everyone respects me here. But some others would have problems if they were seen talking to a Jew, you know?”
“No, why?”
“Come on, Boss—don’t pretend like you don’t know.”
Vincenzo Perugia is wearing a straw hat that used to be white with a new red ribbon, a cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and black suspenders. He looks around him and doesn’t seem as calm as he says he is. He speaks in a low voice:
“With a Jew, of course, but it would happen with other foreigners, too. You said you were American?”
The café in the main square of Dumenza is a perfect oasis: six mismatched tables under the heavens between the Roman door of the small church and the whitewashed façade of the town hall with its little Italian flags. There is a fountain, abandoned by water and time, paving stones, and the smell of tobacco and lavender.
Perugia goes on in a loud voice, speaking for everyone there:
“We’re not the same as before, when we were embarrassed by what we were. Il Duce has made us proud to be Italians again! Now other countries look at us with respect, especially those queers, the French, who treated us like we were their slaves!”
Perugia is about fifty but looks older. He takes off his hat and mops the sweat on his head with a dirty kerchief. He has a very narrow forehead, his hairline low and close to his eyebrows, which are thick and tangled. At last I have him in front of me and I don’t know how to begin to talk to him. I had put in months of effort, telegrams, unanswered letters, before finally deciding to travel here to his village in Lombardy. Vincenzo Perugia was the best known of all the people involved in the theft of the Mona Lisa—the only one to have been in the public eye—and he had also turned out to be the most difficult.
“That’s why they respect me here, because I was one of the first ones to give those Frenchies what they deserve.”
I had taken the train from Turin that morning, getting off at Dumenza and asking at the post office where I could find him. They told me to go to his shop, a paint and building supplies store, and pointed out the way, which led to a new house at the edge of the village. It looked like many others there. His shop took up the ground floor, and Perugia and his wife lived above. They hadn’t had any children, I was told—“No, you know, they married late, for company.”
The shop didn’t look very well outfitted or cared for. “He says he started it with the money he got from the war,” a woman from the market told me, “from his soldier’s pay. I guess he made sergeant. He was at Caporetto. But who knows where the money came from. Now I’m not judging him, mind you; I don’t like to judge anyone. To me he’s a good Italian, a patriot.”
Perugia was yawning as he came out to attend to me. I asked him in French how business was.
“Fine, why not?” he said and then was silent. His nose was red.
“I’m Charles Becker, a reporter from America—”
“How did you find me?” he interrupted. He was clearly very tense.
“It’s easy, Perugia. You live in the same village you were born in, and your name used to be in all the papers. I need to talk to you. Is that possible?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think I want to. I don’t talk to reporters now.”
“You get a lot of them?”
“No, they don’t really come now. But there was a time when everyone wanted to talk to me.”
“I’m sure. That was a while ago.”
“Twenty years; nineteen—who knows? I can tell you I don’t miss them—no, sir!”
When I told him I’d come all the way from America to see him he took another look at me. It was more or less true, and it seemed to impress him.
“From America? New York?”
Only the Italians say “New York” like that—with that mixture of admiration and scorn. I told him yes, and that I’d spent a lot of money to come and see him and I didn’t mind if I spent a little more.
“How much more?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
The negotiation took only a few minutes. In the end—I’m ashamed to say it—the amount in dollars was a pittance. He told me to wait for him in the café at six that evening. He arrived at 6:30 and began his patriotic sermonizing. I let him go on, to get him comfortable.
Now, having calmed down somewhat, he asks me if it’s true that I’m writing a book about La Joconde. I tell him it is.
“And you want me to tell you what really happened—the truth.”
I look at him in silence. Perugia corrects himself:
“I mean, to tell you different things, new things.”
“Well, sure—the truth, as you said.”
“Yeah, sure, of course. But I mean, you’ve read all the papers from then, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, it’s all there, mister. How I returned the painting to Italy, how I was betrayed. It was all politics, you know. With Il Duce now that wouldn’t happen.”
Perugia takes another swig of wine and looks around him. In the doorway, the local priest is talking to a woman dressed in mourning. Beyond them, five young men in black shirts surround a peasant who is leading a heavily loaded donkey. The sun is going down behind the hills.
“It’s all there, you know. There’s not much more I can tell you.”
“Perugia, please. You’re the main character in this story, you can tell me a lot.”
“The main character? Yeah, I suppose, but it’s been a long time.”
Perugia wavers some more and I tell him that I’d be willing to double my offer. The amount still seems pitifully low. He tells me he’ll think about it, that maybe we’ll meet here again the next day. He gets up, drinks down the rest of his wine, and puts his hat on at a slight angle. He spends longer adjusting it than I would have expected. I’m on my way out when he grabs my arm:
“Do you know who the Signore was?”
His hand is squeezing me too hard.
“Yes, but I’m not supposed to tell you yet.”
“You want me to tell you everything and you’re going to tell me nothing?”
“No—I said not yet.”
“Look, mister, think it over till tomorrow. I’ll answer all your questions if you tell me who the Signore was.”