17

Why had the letter produced that effect upon Aldo? I could think of nothing else, either as I went to bed or when I awoke the following morning. I could not remember the letter line for line, but it spoke of “our young fellow’s” progress and his promise of good looks, and thanked Luigi Speca for his great kindness during a period of trouble which was happily over. As Luigi Speca had also signed the baptismal register in San Cipriano I judged him to be both godfather and the doctor who had attended Aldo’s birth—which, from the double entry, must have been difficult, with Aldo nearly losing his life, and perhaps our mother hers. This would be the “time of trouble” referred to in the letter. But why should Aldo mind? The letter had moved me, but not as deeply as all that. I had expected him to laugh, and even make some quip about having passed for dead. Instead, the hard immobile face, the swift departure.

I did not rush the next morning to arrive at the library on time. We should all be kept there until late, for in the afternoon students and their relatives were to be permitted to view the new library premises, due to be officially opened after the short Easter vacation. I breakfasted alone, my fellow lodgers having already left.

Just as I had finished the telephone rang. Signora Silvani answered it, and came to tell me it was for me.

“Someone of the name of Jacopo,” she said. “He wouldn’t give a message. He said you would know who it was.”

I went into the hall, my heart pounding. Something had happened to Aldo. Something had happened because of last night’s letter. I lifted the receiver.

“Yes?” I said.

“Signor Beo?”

Jacopo’s voice was steady, without anxiety. “I have a message for you from the Capitano,” he said. “The plans for the evening have been changed. The Rector, Professor Butali, and Signora Butali have returned from Rome.”

“I understand,” I said.

“The Capitano would like to see you here sometime this morning,” he went on.

“Thank you,” I replied, and before he rang off I said to him “Jacopo…”

“Signore?”

“Is Aldo all right? Is anything worrying him?”

There was a second’s pause. Then Jacopo said, “I think the Capitano did not expect Professor Butali back so soon. They arrived late last night. The luggage was being taken in when he passed the house on his return home just before eleven o’clock.”

“Thank you, Jacopo.”

I hung up. A letter written some forty years ago was now the least of my brother’s problems. The sick man had got his own way with the doctors and had returned, if not to take active charge at least to be on hand for consultation.

I heard Signora Silvani moving in the dining room, and left the house quickly before she could start a conversation. I must somehow see Signora Butali before Aldo did. I must urge her to use her influence to try to stop the Festival, how and with what excuse God only knew.

It was half-past nine. After the Butalis’ long journey yesterday the signora would probably be at home this morning—ten o’clock might be a good moment to call. I turned into the via San Martino and started walking uphill to the via dei Sogni. The sun was already hot, the sky cloudless. The day promised to be one of those I remembered well from childhood, when the distant slopes and valleys shimmered in a blue haze of heat and the city of Ruffano, set proudly on its two hills, dominated the world below.

I came to the gate set in the wall of our old garden, passed through it to the front door of the house and rang the bell. The door was opened by the girl I already knew, and she recognized me too.

“Is it possible to see the signora?” I asked.

The girl looked doubtful, and said something about the signora being engaged—she and Professor Butali had only returned from Rome late last night.

“I know,” I said, “but it is urgent.”

She disappeared upstairs, and as I stood there waiting I noticed that once more the atmosphere of the house had changed. The dull vacuum of Monday morning was no more. She was home. Not only were her gloves lying on the table, a coat flung loosely on a chair, but an indefinable scent clung to the hall, a reminder of her presence. Only this time she was not alone. The house, instead of containing her only, and by so doing becoming the more mysterious, the more tempting, so that anyone calling like myself on my first mission, and afterwards on the Sunday, was secretly disturbed and furtively attracted—the house now held her husband too. It was his home, and he was master. That stick placed in its stand was like a totem pole to tell the world. The overcoat, the hat, a suitcase still unpacked, parcels of books—there was a male smell about the house that had not been before.

The girl came running down the stairs and I heard, in her wake, the sound of voices, the sound of closing doors. “The signora will be down in a moment,” she said, “if you would please come in here.”

She showed me into the room on the left, the study that had been our dining room. Evidence of the husband’s presence was here too. A briefcase on the desk, more books, letters. And a faint but distinctive odor of cigar, smoked last night on arrival, not yet faded in the morning air.

I must have waited there ten minutes or more, biting my knuckles, before I heard her footsteps on the stairs. Then panic seized me. I did not know what I was going to say. She came into the room. At sight of me her face, though ravaged, tired—for she seemed in some way to have aged within four days—but also expectant and alive, fell in disappointment and surprise.

“Beo!” she exclaimed. “I thought Anna said Aldo…” Then, swiftly recovering, she crossed the room and gave me her hand. “You must forgive me,” she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing. The silly girl said, ‘The signore who was here for dinner on Sunday night,’ and in my stupidity and rush…” She did not bother to finish her sentence. I understood. In her stupidity and rush the signore who came to dinner on Sunday could signify one man only. And it was not me.

“There’s nothing to forgive, signora,” I said. “I have to apologize to you. I heard, through Jacopo, that you and your husband were home, that you arrived late last night, and I would not dream of disturbing you so early and on your first morning home if I didn’t think the matter was urgent.”

“Urgent?” she repeated.

The telephone rang in the music room above. She exclaimed in annoyance, and was turning to leave the room with a murmured, “Excuse me,” when we heard slow footsteps overhead. Then the ringing stopped and a male voice murmured indistinctly.

“Exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” she said to me. “If my husband once starts answering the telephone, and talking first to this one, then the other…” She broke off, straining her ears to listen, but the murmur was too faint. “It’s no use,” she said, shrugging. “He’s answered it, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

I was wretchedly aware of the trouble I was causing. I could not have called at a worse time. There were hollows under her eyes that told of fatigue and strain. They had not been there on the Sunday night. On Sunday night the world about her could have died.

“How is the Rector?” I asked.

She sighed. “As well as he could be, under the circumstances,” she said. “What happened earlier in the week was a great shock to him. But you know already…” She flushed, the color appearing on her naturally pale face like a sudden stain. “I believe it was you I spoke to on Tuesday night,” she said. “Aldo told me. He telephoned me later.”

“I have to apologize for that as well,” I said, “I mean, for hanging up. I did not want to embarrass you.”

She moved the letters on the desk, so that her back was turned to me. The gesture was one of withdrawal, a warning that to probe would be unwelcome. My mission became more difficult than ever.

“You were saying,” she said, “that you had something urgent to tell me?” Even as she spoke, the voice overhead grew louder. We could distinguish nothing, but prolonged discussion had obviously begun.

“Perhaps I should go up,” she said, anxiously. “So much seems to have gone wrong these last few days. Professor Elia…”

“So you’ve heard?” I asked.

She gestured, her hands outspread, and began to pace quickly up and down the room.

“The first telephone call this morning was to give my husband an exaggerated account of something that happened on Tuesday night,” she answered. “Not from Professor Elia himself, or from Professor Rizzio, but from one of the busybodies in whom this place abounds. In any event, the damage has been done. My husband is greatly distressed. Your brother is to come here later to explain things and to soothe him down.”

“Signora,” I said, “it is about Aldo that I’ve come to see you.”

She stiffened, and her face became a mask. Only the eyes betrayed awareness. “What about him?” she asked.

“The Festival,” I began. “I’ve heard him speak to the students about the Festival. It’s become as real to them as it has to him, and therefore dangerous. I think it should be canceled.”

The anxiety behind her eyes vanished. She broke into a smile. “But that is the whole idea,” she said. “It is always the same. Your brother makes the story—whatever it is they act—so vivid and so real that everybody taking part feels himself a character out of history. I know we all did last year. And the result was magnificent. Anyone will tell you.”

“I wasn’t here last year,” I said. “All I know is that this year will be different. It won’t take place in the ducal palace, for one thing, but in the streets. The students will be fighting in the streets.”

She looked at me, still smiling. Her relief that I had not touched upon her relationship with Aldo was manifest.

“We went in procession in the streets last year as well,” she told me, “or rather my husband did, as Pope Clement, with his very lifelike entourage. I was with the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, awaiting his arrival in the palace quadrangle. I promise you there will be nothing to fear, the police are used to it, it will be most orderly.”

“How can an insurrection be orderly?” I asked. “How can students, told to be armed with any sort of weapon, keep themselves in check?”

She gestured with her hands. “They were armed last year,” she replied, “and surely if any of the students get out of hand it will be easy enough to stop them? Don’t think me unsympathetic Beo, but we have been running these Festivals in Ruffano for the past three years. Or rather my husband has, with your brother to help him. They know how to handle these affairs.”

It was useless. My mission had been in vain. Nothing I was likely to say would convince her, unless I betrayed Aldo direct. Told her what I had heard from his lips the night before. And this loyalty forbade.

“I find Aldo changed,” I said, trying a different line, “more moody, cynical. He will switch from laughter and chaffing to sudden silence.”

“You had not seen him for twenty-two years,” she reminded me. “You must make allowances.”

“Take last night,” I pursued, “take last night in particular. I showed him an old letter of our father’s that I’d discovered by accident in one of the library books. A letter to Aldo’s godfather, a doctor, I believe, saying what a fine fellow was his son. I thought Aldo would be amused. I read it to him. He didn’t say a word, but drove away.”

Her patient, rather pitying smile was maddening. “Perhaps he was too much touched,” she said, “and didn’t want you to know it. He was devoted to your father, wasn’t he, and your father very proud of him? Or so I’ve always understood. Yes, I think I can understand, why he forgot to say good night. He may seem cynical to you, Beo, but it’s on the surface only. In reality…”

She broke off, emotion suddenly breaking to the surface, giving the lie to frigidity, to reserve. That was how she must have looked, I thought, on Sunday night, in the music room above, when Aldo returned to her after bidding me good night, and the vespas spluttered and roared, encircling the city, and the masked students broke into the women’s hostel to fake their assault on Signorina Rizzio. “The wife of the leading citizen had been profaned.” The question was, which one? I had no doubt about the answer.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’ve taken up too much of your time. Please say nothing to Aldo about my visit when he sees you. But warn him to be careful.”

“I’ll do that certainly,” she replied, “and anyway my husband will want to hear all the details of the Festival program, though he may not be well enough to attend himself. Listen…”

The conversation above had ceased. The footsteps moved across the floor to the door and on to the landing. They began to descend the stairs.

“He’s coming down,” she said quickly. “He’s not supposed to walk up and down the stairs.” She went swiftly to the door, then turned. “He doesn’t know who you are,” she said, the telltale spot of color in her cheeks, “I mean, your relationship to Aldo. I told him someone had called on business, that I was not sure who it was.”

Her guilt communicated itself to me. I followed her to the door. “I’ll go,” I said.

“No,” she answered, “there isn’t time.”

We went into the hall. The Rector was already halfway down the stairs. He was a man who might have been any age between fifty-five and sixty-five, broad-shouldered, of medium height, gray-haired, with the fine eyes and regular features of one who had been handsome in his youth and was so still, though the gray texture of his skin gave proof of his recent illness. He had the air of authority and distinction of one who must immediately command liking and respect, even affection. My guilt increased.

“This is Signor Fabbio,” said his wife as he paused at sight of me. “He came with a message about the library, where he is working as assistant. He was just going.”

I realized that she was anxious for me to disappear. I bowed. The Rector inclined his head, wishing me good morning.

“Please don’t let me rush you away, Signor Fabbio,” he said. “I should like to hear about the new library, if you can spare a few minutes for me too.”

I bowed again, the instinctive courier manner taking hold. Signora Butali shook her head.

“The doctors said you were not to come downstairs, Gaspare,” she remonstrated. “I heard you answer the telephone. You should have called me.”

He descended the stairs and stood between us in the hall. He shook my hand, his fine eyes searching me, then turned to his wife. “I should have had to take the call anyway,” he said. “I’m afraid it was bad news.”

I tried to efface myself, but he put out his hand. “Don’t go,” he said. “It is not personal. An unfortunate and very unhappy accident to one of the students, who was found dead this morning at the bottom of the theater steps.”

Signora Butali exclaimed in horror.

“It was the Commissioner of Police on the telephone,” he continued. “He has only just heard of my return, and very properly informed me what had happened. It seems,” he turned to me, “there was a curfew last night, because of certain incidents earlier this week, and all students, except those with late passes, were warned to be in their hostels or lodgings by nine o’clock. This lad, and possibly others, defied the order. He must have taken fright, hearing a patrol, and run, taking the shortest route, which happened to be those infernal steps. He stumbled and fell the whole length, breaking his neck. His body was found early this morning.” The Rector put out his hand for his stick, which Signora Butali gave him. He made his way slowly into the room we had just left. We followed him.

“This is terrible,” she said, “at this moment of all moments, just before the Festival. Has the news been given out?”

“It will have been by mid-morning,” her husband answered. “You can’t hush up these things. The Commissioner will be here directly to discuss it.”

Signora Butali pulled forward the chair by the desk. He sat down. The gray pallor of his face seemed to have increased.

“I shall have to summon a meeting of the university Council,” he said. “I’m sorry, Livia. You will have to do a lot of telephoning.” He patted his wife’s hand, which was upon his shoulder.

“Of course,” she said, and gestured hopelessly at me.

“I can’t believe the curfew was necessary,” said the Rector. “I’m afraid the Council acted out of panic, with the inevitable result that certain students rebelled, and so came this fatality. Was there much disturbance?”

He looked at me. I did not know how best to answer him.

“The various groups were lively,” I said. “There seemed to be much rivalry among them, especially between the C and E students and the Arts and Education. The sudden curfew caused a lot of dissatisfaction. There was talk of nothing else in the canteen last night.”

“Exactly,” said the Rector, “and the more high-spirited among them were determined to send authority to blazes. I should have done the same when I was a student myself.” He turned to his wife. “It was Marelli’s boy who died,” he said. “You remember Marelli, we stayed at one of his hotels a year or two ago. I don’t know much about the boy, a third-year student, but Elia will tell me. What a tragedy for the parents. An only son.”

My throat was dry. Whatever Signora Butali said in sympathy I echoed huskily. She was no longer so anxious for me to go. Perhaps my presence made some sort of a diversion for her husband.

“What time is the doctor coming?” he asked.

“He said half-past ten,” she answered. “He might be here at any moment now.”

“If the Commissioner of Police arrives first the doctor must wait,” her husband said. “See if you can reach him, dear, at his home. If he’s not at home he’ll probably be at the hospital, and he can walk down from there. It’s only two minutes away.”

She paused a moment before leaving the room, flashing me a look of warning. It could have meant that I was not to tire him. It could have meant that I was not to talk of Aldo. All I wanted was to leave the house before the Commissioner arrived. But first I would have my say.

“This accident, professor,” I said, “will it mean a cancellation of the Festival?”

He had taken up a small cigar and was busy lighting it. It was a moment or two before he answered. “Hardly that,” he said. “There are something like five thousand students in the university of Ruffano, and to cancel one of their great days of the year because of a regrettable and unhappy accident to one of them would verge on hysteria. It would not be a good thing to do.” He drew on his cigar and frowned. “No,” he repeated, “you can rest assured that we shan’t cancel the Festival. Why, are you taking part?”

The question took me by surprise. The gimlet eyes pierced me. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Professor Donati might want me for some minor role.”

“Good,” he replied, “the more who take part the better. He is due here presently. I shall hear all about it. His choice of this year’s subject rather surprised me, but he is sure to handle it superbly. He always does. Where are you from?”

“Where am I from?” I repeated.

“Your home, your university. I take it you are with us on a temporary basis?”

“Yes.” I said, my throat tightening again. “I come from Turin. I needed a job to fill in time. I have a degree in modern languages.”

“Good. And what do you think of our new library?”

“I’ve been very much impressed.”

“And how long have you been working here?”

“A week.”

“A week only?” He removed his cigar and stared. He looked surprised. “Forgive me,” he said. “I happened to hear the maid say to my wife that the gentleman who had been to dinner on Sunday wanted to see her. I had not realized she had been giving a large party for the members of the university staff.”

I swallowed. “Quite a small party,” I said. “It was my good fortune to bring some books from the library for Signora Butali, and she was kind enough to play for me. The invitation to dinner came about after that.”

“I see,” he said.

He looked at me again. The look was somehow different. Appraising. The look of a husband who suddenly wonders why his beautiful wife should take it into her head to play the piano to a stranger and then invite him to dinner. It was evidently not a usual thing for her to do.

“You are fond of music?” he asked.

“Passionately,” I answered, hoping to assuage his interest.

“Good,” he said again. Then, abruptly, he fired another question. “How many were there at this party?” he asked.

I felt myself trapped. If I answered half a dozen it would be a lie, easily detected later when he might come to question her, and the answer would trap her too.

“You misunderstand me, professor,” I said rapidly. “The party was on the Sunday morning.”

“Then you didn’t come to dinner?”

“I came to dinner too,” I said. “I was brought by Professor Donati.”

“Ah,” he said.

I began to sweat. There was nothing else I could say. He could always question the maid, if not his wife.

“It was a musical evening,” I explained. “The idea in coming was to listen to Signora Butali playing. She played to us until we left. It was a memorable evening.”

“I am sure it was,” he said.

Somehow I must have made a gaffe. Signora Butali, when she arrived at the hospital in Rome the following day, could have told a very different story. She could have said that she had dined alone on the Sunday night, and then, seized with anxiety about her husband, had left early the next morning for Rome to be at his bedside. I did not know.

“In Rome,” he said, following a line of thought, “I became very out of touch with life in Ruffano.”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s understandable.”

“Although,” he continued, “well-meaning friends did their best to keep me informed of everything that went on. Some of them perhaps not so well-meaning.”

I smiled. A forced smile. The direct eyes were searching me again.

“You say you have only been here a week?” he reiterated.

“A week today,” I said. “That’s correct. I arrived last Thursday.”

“From Turin?”

“No, from Rome.” I could feel the sweat beginning to break out on my forehead.

“Had you been working in one of the libraries in Rome?”

“No, professor. I was passing through. It just happened that I took it into my head to visit Ruffano. I needed a holiday.”

My story, even to my own ears, sounded false. It must have sounded doubly false to him. My nervousness was all too obvious. For a moment he said nothing; his ears were cocked to the sound of Signora Butali’s voice on the telephone overhead, just as ours had been to the sound of his some minutes earlier.

“I apologize, Signor Fabbio,” he said, after the pause, “for asking you such a string of questions. It’s only that while I was in Rome I was bothered with anonymous telephone calls with certain allusions to Professor Donati. I tried to have the calls traced, but could only discover that they were made locally. The strange thing was that the caller—who was a woman, for I heard her whispering instructions—did not speak to me direct but through a third person, a man. It just occurred to me—and forgive me if I am wrong—that you might have been the man, and could tell me something about these calls.”

This time my look of profound astonishment must have reassured him.

“I know nothing about any calls, Professor,” I said. “I think it is best to tell you at once that I am a travel agent. I work with a firm in Genoa, and I was traveling for this firm with a coach-party from Genoa to Naples, via Rome. I certainly made no calls to you. I had never heard your name until after I arrived in Ruffano.”

He put out his hand to me. “That’s enough,” he said. “Please think no more of it. Put it right from your mind. And don’t mention the matter to anyone, above all my wife. The calls, like anonymous letters, were unpleasant, but there have been none now for more than a week.”

The front-door bell sounded its alarming peal. “That will be the Commissioner of Police,” he said, “or the doctor. I apologize again, Signor Fabbio.”

“Please, professor,” I murmured.

I bowed, and turned to the door. I could hear the girl going to answer the bell and Signora Butali descending the stairs at the same time. I went out into the hall and effaced myself as the front door opened. The sight of the Commissioner in his uniform made me retreat still further towards the kitchen regions. Signora Butali’s figure hid me from view as she showed him into the study. Then she turned to say good-bye to me. The girl who had opened the door still hovered within earshot; I could not warn Signora Butali of the conversation that had taken place between her husband and myself.

“We shall be seeing you again, I hope,” she said, reverting to the formal manner of a hostess speeding the departing guest.

“I hope so too, signora,” I replied, and then her husband called her into the room and she waved her hand at me and vanished.

I walked down the paved path and into the street, where the Commissioner’s car was waiting, a uniformed police driver at the wheel. I turned left, so as not to pass him, and walked rapidly downhill. It did not matter where I went as long as I put some distance between myself and the police car. I decided to return to my room, stay there awhile, and then walk back to my brother’s house. The news of Stefano Marelli’s death had profoundly shocked me, but I was equally disturbed by what the Rector had said about anonymous telephone calls.

When I reached the via San Michele and started to walk towards the Pensione Silvani I saw that a man was standing before the door, talking to the signora. The figure, the bared head, the face in profile, were instantly recognizable. It was the police agent from Rome, the agent in plain clothes whom I had seen in church on Tuesday.

I was opposite No. 5, and instinctively I ducked inside the open door and climbed to the first floor. I knocked at the door of Carla Raspa’s apartment. There was no answer. I turned the handle and found it open. I went in, and closed the door behind me.