4

 

Funeral

 

Black satin sashes round their lamps and bumpers, black ribbons on their handles, black rosettes at their windscreens, the cars crawled in a long line up the Via Dell’Arte della Lana and headed for the church of Orsan Michele.

Commander Comber had arrived early and was standing by the Church door. He had counted fifteen cars in the cortége. Let no man say how many relatives he possesses until he comes to die. When you were young, funerals were a bore. In your prime, they were a joke. As you grew older, every funeral became a rehearsal for your own. Here came another half-dozen cars! He had thought of the Zecchi family as an isolated unit of three people. He had overlooked the fact that they came of country stock on both sides. The Italian family was a complex and cohesive unit, a long-lived matriarchy spreading its roots sideways and downwards into the soil of the Campagna.

The women were predominant, erect, self-possessed, portentous, dressed in suits of weeds which had graced half a hundred such solemn occasions, attended by uncomfortable, brown-faced husbands and retinues of scrubbed children. It was a woman’s day.

In the leading carriage Annunziata and Tina sat alone. Annunziata had hardly stopped talking from the moment they had left the house. This flow of words was so unlike her that Tina was worried. She mistrusted the febrile mood. Something was bound to give way soon. She would have preferred silence, or even tears.

‘If we crawl like this,’ said her mother, ‘we shall be late at the Church, and the arrangements afterwards will be upset.’

‘We started late. It was because you insisted on locking everything up. Not only the house, the workshop too. Did you imagine that thieves would break in whilst we were at the funeral?’

‘Ordinary thieves, no.’ Annunziata’s mouth was set in a firm, hard line. Onlookers who noticed this, approved. Tears on such occasions, they considered, were for young widows and weaklings.

‘Who then?’

‘Who other than Dindoni? Three times already, he has tried to make his way into the house. Our house. Does he think, perhaps, now that Milo has gone, that he owns it?’

‘He has little sensibility,’ agreed Tina. ‘Did he say what he wanted?’

‘On the first occasion it was to offer condolences. Did I need his condolences? On the next, some story of accounts which had to be paid. I told him it was not time to think of money. The third time, he came sneaking into the house through the kitchen, when he thought I had gone out. Fortunately, I had changed my mind, and came back, and found him. Otherwise, who knows what his thieving fingers might not have lighted on. Since then, I have kept all doors locked, all the time.’

‘At least he can be up to no mischief now. He will be at the Church.’

‘Certainly he will be at the Church. I allotted him a place in the last carriage but one. Are all arrangements made for after the interment?’

‘For the tenth time, yes,’ said Tina. ‘The Professor himself has seen to everything. We go from the cemetery to the hotel. A room has been reserved, and a meal arranged.’

‘He was good to Milo during his life,’ said Annunziata, ‘and his kindness continues after his death.’

The Church was already crowded. The Guild of Carpenters and Picture Frame Makers, and the allied guilds of Carvers in Metal and Stone had sent full delegations. The townspeople seemed to have turned out in force. The Commander sensed something behind this, and it made him uncomfortable.

He could not put out of his mind a sentence he had read in the Giornale the day before. ‘Being knocked down by an English motorist and left to die.’ That was, of course, a flagrant prejudging of the case, and it would have got an English editor committed for contempt of Court on the spot; but Italian newspapers seemed to enjoy more freedom. There was an air of demonstration about the assembly in the Church, quiet but menacing.

The coffin had been placed on a black-draped erection of benches at the back of the Church. After the Requiem Mass it would be followed, in procession, to the cemetery and interred.

Here came the family. Heads were turning as they walked to their seats in the front row. Tina saw the Commander and gave him the ghost of a smile.

L’eterno riposo dona loro, Signore –

The church was hot and stuffy. The candles guttered on their sconces like souls about to take flight.

E splenda ad essi la luce perpetua –

Why did the Christian Church make such a sombre matter out of exchanging this life into what, according to their teaching, was a better and a happier one? The Etruscans had a sounder notion of it. They celebrated the departure with feasting and dancing, and sent the traveller on his way with food and drink, and his luggage packed for the journey.

In Sion Signore ti si addica la lode –

Hullo! Someone was going. It was Milo’s wife.

There was a disturbance in the front row, as Annunziata groped her way to her feet. With Tina’s strong right arm round her, she stumbled towards the small door in the transept. Heads turned in the congregation, but the priest continued unfalteringly with the office. His business was with the soul of the departed. The feelings of the living, the weaknesses of their flesh, were an irrelevance.

Commander Comber pushed his way out of the west door, circled the Church, and found Tina and Annunziata sitting on a tombstone. Annunziata was still white, but she had herself in hand again.

‘She wishes to go back into the Church,’ said Tina. ‘I have told her, no. If she does, in five minutes she will be as bad again.’

‘It’s pretty stuffy,’ said the Commander. ‘I shouldn’t risk it if I were you.’

‘I must go back,’ said Annunziata. But when she tried to get to her feet her legs gave way under her and she sat down again suddenly.

The Commander said to Tina, ‘You get back and show the flag. I can deal with this. My car’s just round the corner. As soon as your mother can move. I’ll get her home and make her lie down.’

‘Are you sure you can manage?’

‘Trust the Royal Navy.’

‘Then I will go. I will come away as quickly as I can. You will do what he tells you, and be sensible.’

‘Sensible,’ said Annunziata, crossly. ‘How can I be sensible when my legs feel as though they belong to someone else?’

‘All right if we take it slowly,’ said the Commander. ‘Put one arm round my shoulder, and put all your weight on me. That’s it.’

The car ride seemed to revive Annunziata. By the time they had reached her house, she was almost herself again. She was a lot more worried about the funeral ceremonies she had abandoned than she was about herself.

‘You go in and sit down quietly,’ said the Commander. ‘No one’s going to think any the worse of you for missing it. I’ll bring Tina back as soon as it’s all over.’

‘You are kind,’ said Annunziata. She unlocked the front door and went in. The house was very quiet. It was so quiet, that when she heard the sound there was no mistaking it. There was someone in her kitchen.

Dindoni? Of course! He must have slipped from the Church and made his way back to the house. But how had he got in? She would soon find out.

She strode across the room, and jerked the kitchen door open. There were two men there. The stout man was standing close to the door. He kicked it shut as Annunziata came through. The tall man with the broken face was standing on a chair, doing something over the fireplace. He had a small metal box in his hand and was detaching a length of black wire from behind the wainscoting, coiling it up neatly as it came away from the wall.

‘What–’ said Annunziata.

The stout man picked a kitchen chair up in one podgy hand, pushed it behind her legs, and said, ‘Sit down and keep quiet.’

Annunziata said, ‘I will not sit down, and I will not keep quiet. You will leave at once.’

‘We’ll leave when we’ve finished.’

Annunziata glared at him, her faintness quite banished by the shock. She looked at the door. It was clear that she could not get out of it in time. Shouting was useless. The walls were too thick. She needed a weapon. There was a knife on the dresser, a heavy, sharp paring knife. She grabbed it.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘get away from that door.’

‘You’re being silly,’ said the stout man. The thin man had not even turned round. He was quietly finishing his job.

‘Stand away, or take the consequences,’ said Annunziata. She was a big, heavy woman and she held the knife resolutely.

The stout man allowed her to come within a pace of him. Then, instead of retreating, he leaned forward. The knife went up, but with no great resolution. The man’s hand followed it. He did not try to grab her wrist. He executed a chopping blow and the knife fell from Annunziata’s suddenly nerveless hand.

‘Enough of these heroics,’ said the man. ‘I told you to sit down and keep quiet. Do I have to tear your dress off your back to make you do as I ask? Well?’

Annunziata sat down. Even now she was more angry than frightened. She said, ‘I will do as you say, because there are two of you and you are stronger than I am. But you cannot stay here forever, and when you go, I will send for the Police. Then we shall see.’

‘What shall we see?’

‘You are criminals. You have broken in here. To – to–’

‘Well? What will you say to the Police? We have broken in. Prove it. To steal. To steal what?’

‘That black box. I know what it is. I have heard of such things. It is a listening machine.’

‘A listening machine! They will laugh at you. Why should anyone trouble to put such a thing in your kitchen. Are you a politician? An ambassador? A general?’

‘I am a householder,’ said Annunziata, with dignity. ‘This is my house. And you have broken into it. The Police shall draw their own conclusions.’

The tall man had finished his work. He had removed each of the tiny black staples which had held the wire in position, and had drawn in the loose end of the wire through the ventilator above the kitchen window. There was no sign that anything had been disturbed. Both men, she noticed, were wearing gloves.

‘I think it would be better for you if you said nothing at all to the Police.’

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ said Annunziata. ‘As soon as you have gone, I shall go straight to the Police. They have pictures of criminals such as you. I will point you out to them. You will not escape easily.’

The stout man examined Annunziata carefully. What she had said was true. This middle-aged, white haired, queenly woman was not afraid of him. He was something of a specialist in the inspiring of fear, and was unlikely to be mistaken about it.

He considered the problem, rubbing his round chin with his stubby fingers. Then he said, ‘I don’t think you have any idea of what you are doing. That we are in your house is unimportant. You have not been hurt. Nothing of yours has been damaged. But if you do – what you say – and go to the Police, then it will be different. Then you will be interfering with people more important than you. And you will suffer for it.’

‘You tell me,’ said Annunziata, her voice choked with anger and outrage, ‘that nothing of mine has been damaged. What of Milo? What of my husband, Milo?’

The two men looked at each other. The thin man, speaking for the first time, said, ‘He was knocked down by the Englishman, in his car. It was nothing to do with us.’

‘It was something to do with you. You knew that he was going out that night. You knew it because you had heard it, with that box of yours.’

‘This box is one thing you are going to forget about,’ said the thin man. It had disappeared into his pocket, with the coil of black wire and the little envelope of black staples.

‘I shall not forget about it, and I shall see that the Police do not forget about it.’

The thin man slid a hand inside his jacket, and pulled out a leather wallet. From it he took a newspaper cutting, creased and faded with much fingering, and unfolded it.

‘Read it,’ he said.

‘Why should I read it?’ Annunziata took it suspiciously.

‘What is it to do with me? What is it about?’

‘It is about a young girl who was found by the Police, in a street in Palermo.’ The thin man’s finger pointed to a paragraph. ‘There, you see. It describes how she had been injured. It does not tell you the whole truth. I saw the girl myself, afterwards. The left breast had to be removed, entirely.’

Annunziata was staring at the newspaper cutting. Her eyes flickered between the print and the man who was holding it. She said, in a whisper, ‘Why do you show me this?’

‘It was not the girl’s fault. It was her family. They had been stupid. They did not heed a warning – two warnings. Then this happened. It was sad for them because she was their only daughter.’ The thin man’s mouth opened, showing discoloured teeth. ‘You have a daughter yourself. Bear in mind that what happened in Palermo could happen, just as easily, in Florence.’

He folded the newspaper, put it back in the wallet, and put the wallet away. All his movements were neat and economical.

After the men had gone Annunziata sat for a long time, only her lips moving. Two hours later Tina found her, still sitting there. She saw the look in her eyes and ran to her, saying, ‘Mother, what is it? What is wrong?’

The old woman put an arm round her waist and said ‘Nothing is wrong, carissima, and nothing shall be wrong.’