At Rome, as Fleurissoire hesitated outside the station with his suitcase in his hand, so tired, disoriented and bewildered that he felt robbed of his powers of decision and it was all he could do to brush off the hotel porters touting for business, he was lucky enough to come across a facchino who spoke French. Baptistin was a young Marseillais, bright-eyed and still smooth-chinned. Recognising a compatriot, he offered to act as his guide and carry his suitcase.
Fleurissoire had spent a large part of the long journey with his nose in his Baedeker. Almost straight away a kind of instinct, a foreboding, an inner alarm diverted his pious concerns from the Vatican itself, concentrating them instead on the Castel Sant’Angelo, the former mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian and renowned jail whose hidden dungeons had housed so many famous prisoners in the past and which was connected, so people said, to the Vatican by an underground passage.
He studied the map. ‘That is where I need to find somewhere to stay,’ he decided, pointing his forefinger at the Lungo Tevere Tor di Nona, facing the Castel Sant’Angelo on the other side of the river. And by a providential happenstance that was where Baptistin had intended to take him: not onto the Lungo Tevere itself, which is really only a roadway, but nearby, to Via dei Vecchiarelli (‘of the little old men’), the third street past the Ponte Umberto leading down to the embankment. He knew a quiet house there – if you leant out of its third-floor windows you could just see the Mausoleum – where some very kind ladies spoke every language, and one in particular spoke French.
‘If Monsieur is tired we might take a cab. It’s a long way … Yes, the air’s cooler this evening because it’s been raining. A bit of a walk’s good for you after a long journey … No, the suitcase isn’t too heavy, I can easily carry it that far … In Rome for the first time! Is Monsieur from Toulouse by any chance? … No, from Pau. I should have recognised the accent.’
Chatting, they made their way along Via del Viminale, then Via Agostino Depretis, which joins the Viminale to the Pincio, and then onto the Via Nazionale to get to the Corso, after which, having crossed it, they dived into a labyrinth of nameless alleys. The suitcase was not so heavy that it prevented the facchino from setting an athletic pace, which Fleurissoire had some trouble keeping up with. He jogged at Baptistin’s heels, dog-tired and dripping with perspiration.
‘Here we are,’ Baptistin announced, just as Fleurissoire was about to beg him to stop.
The street, or rather the alley, of the Vecchiarelli was narrow and dark, so dark that Fleurissoire hesitated to set foot in it. Baptistin, however, had already gone into the second house on the right, whose door opened only a few metres from the Lungo Tevere. At the same moment Fleurissoire saw a bersagliere emerge, and the smart uniform that he had already noticed at the frontier reassured him, because he had confidence in the army. He took a few steps more, and a woman appeared in the doorway who looked very much like the boarding house’s landlady. She smiled pleasantly at him. She was wearing a black satin apron, bangles and a sky-blue taffeta choker, and her jet-black hair, piled high on top of her head, sat heavily on an enormous tortoiseshell comb.
‘Your suitcase’s been taken up to the third, love,’ she said to Amédée, who was mildly taken aback to be addressed so familiarly and thought it must be an Italian custom, or perhaps an ignorance of spoken French.
‘Grazia!’ he said, smiling back at her. ‘Grazia!’ This was ‘thank you’, the only Italian word he knew, and one he felt it was polite to give a feminine ending to, when thanking a lady.
He climbed the stairs, catching his breath at each landing and trying to revive his flagging spirits at the same time, because he was worn out and the uninviting stairwell was doing its best to discourage him. There were landings every ten steps, where the stairs paused, twisted and continued three times before reaching the next floor. From the first landing’s ceiling, facing the front of the building, there hung a canary’s cage that could be seen from the street. On the second landing a mangy cat was about to gulp down a hake skin that it had dragged there. On the third was the toilet, whose door was wide open, showing the cubicles and, next to each seat, a yellow-coloured earthenware holder in the shape of a top hat, from whose brim the handle of a small brush stuck out. Here Amédée hurried on up without stopping.
On the first floor a gasoline lamp smoked next to a big glazed door on which the word Salone was inscribed in frosted letters, but the room in question was dark. Through the glass Amédée could just make out a mirror in a gilded frame that hung on the wall facing him.
He was about to reach the sixth or seventh of these landings when another soldier, a gunner this time, who had just emerged from one of the second-floor rooms, bumped into him as he took the stairs two at a time and then stepped round him, laughing and muttering some Italian excuse, having grasped Fleurissoire to make sure he stayed upright, because Fleurissoire had a drunken look about him and was so tired he could hardly stand. Reassured by the first uniform, he was more troubled by the second.
These soldiers are going to make a lot of noise, he thought, it’s lucky my bedroom is on the third. I prefer the idea of having them underneath me.
He had just left the second floor when a woman in a gaping dressing gown and with her hair undone came running towards him from the far end of the corridor. She called out to him.
‘She thinks I must be someone else,’ he said to himself, and hurried on up, averting his gaze so as not to embarrass her by having glimpsed her in a state of such undress.
On the third floor, completely out of breath, he found Baptistin. The boy was talking in Italian to a woman of indeterminate age who reminded him extraordinarily of Blafaphas’s cook, in a slimmer version.
‘Your suitcase is in number 16, third door. Be careful of the bucket in the corridor as you go past.’
‘I put it outside because it was leaking,’ the woman explained in French.
The door to number 16 was open. A candle on the table lit the room and threw a faint glow into the corridor, where, outside the door of number 15, a metal slop-bucket stood in the middle of a shining puddle of liquid on the tiles. Fleurissoire skirted it gingerly. A sharp smell emanated from it. His suitcase was visible on a chair. As soon as he walked into the room its stuffy atmosphere started to make him feel dizzy, and, throwing his umbrella, shawl and hat down on the bed, he flopped into an armchair. His forehead was running with perspiration and he thought he was about to pass out.
‘This is Madame Carola, the one who speaks French,’ Baptistin said.
They had both come into the room.
‘Open the window a bit, will you,’ Fleurissoire moaned, unable to get up.
‘Oh! He’s so hot,’ Madame Carola said, dabbing his pale, sweating face with a little perfumed handkerchief that she plucked from her cleavage.
‘Let’s push him a bit nearer the window.’
Each taking one side of the armchair, they lifted Amédée, unresisting and semi-conscious, to where he could breathe in the varied stenches of the street instead of the corridor’s stale reek. The cooler air brought him round. Fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, he pulled out the rolled-up five-lire note he had got ready for Baptistin.
‘I’m very grateful to you. You can leave me now.’
The facchino left.
‘You shouldn’t have given him that much, love,’ Carola said.
Amédée thought it must be an Italian custom to be so familiar. All he wanted to do at that moment was go to sleep, but Carola did not seem at all anxious to leave, and so, politeness getting the better of him, he started a conversation.
‘You speak French as well as a French person.’
‘That’s not surprising, I come from Paris. What about you?’
‘I guessed that. As soon as I saw you I said to myself: That gentleman must be from the provinces. Is it your first time in Italy?’
‘My first.’
‘You’re here on business.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a gorgeous city, Rome. Lots to see.’
‘Yes … Though tonight I’m a bit tired, if you don’t mind,’ he said, adding by way of explanation, ‘I’ve been travelling for three days.’
‘That’s a long time to get here.’
‘And I haven’t slept for three nights.’
At these words Madame Carola, with that sudden Italian familiarity that Amédée still could not help being startled by, pinched his chin.
‘You scallywag!’
Her reaction brought some blood back to Amédée’s cheeks. Anxious to rebut the unwelcome insinuation immediately, he began to talk at length about bedbugs, fleas and mosquitoes.
‘You won’t get any of that here. You can see for yourself how clean it is.’
‘Yes. I hope I shall sleep very well.’
She still did not leave. He levered himself awkwardly out of the armchair and started to undo the top buttons of his waistcoat, saying hesitantly, ‘I think I’ll go to bed now.’
Madame Carola realised his embarrassment.
‘You want me to leave you alone for a bit, I can see,’ she said tactfully.
As soon as she had left the room Fleurissoire turned the key in the lock, pulled his nightshirt out of his suitcase and got into bed. But evidently the lock’s bolt had not gone home, because he had not snuffed out his candle before Carola’s face reappeared around the half-open door, behind the bed, close to the bed, smiling …
An hour later, when he came to again, Carola was lying beside him, in his arms, completely naked.
He extracted his left arm, which was beginning to go numb, from underneath her and pulled away. She was asleep. A feeble glow from the street below filled the room, and Carola’s regular breathing was the only sound. After a moment, feeling an unfamiliar sensation of languor that had spread all the way through his body and into his soul, Amédée Fleurissoire swung his thin legs out of bed and, sitting on the edge of the mattress, wept.
As his sweat had done an hour or two before, his tears bathed his face and mingled with the grime of the railway carriage. They flowed without a sound and without stopping, in a slow stream from deep down inside, as though from a hidden spring. He thought about Arnica and Blafaphas. If they could see him now … Never again would he dare take his place at their side. Then he thought about his honourable mission, for ever compromised. Half to himself he wailed, ‘It’s all over! I’m not worthy any more … It’s all over, finished!’
The strange sound of his sobbing and wailing woke Carola up. By this time he was on his knees at the foot of the bed, hammering on his frail chest with little blows of his fists, and Carola, amazed at what she saw, heard his teeth chattering and him repeating between sobs, ‘Every man for himself! The Church is collapsing …’
Eventually, unable to restrain herself, she said, ‘What’s got into you, lovey? Have you lost your marbles?’
He turned to her.
‘I beg you, Madame Carola, please go away … I absolutely must be left alone. I’ll see you in the morning.’
Then as, after all, he did not blame anyone except himself, he kissed her softly on the shoulder.
‘What we did, what we’ve done here, you can’t have any idea how awful it is. No, no, you can’t! You can’t ever have any idea.’