Beautiful Antonio (29 page)

“My friends, I was brought up in times very different from yours. In my day political ardour did not prevent us from recognizing good qualities even in an adversary.”

“Hell, that lot aren't adversaries,” shouted Edoardo, “they're a bunch of thugs out to treat us like slaves! I'm not prepared to recognize any good qualities in any one of that crew. I refuse to believe there's a decent sort to be found among them!”

A burst of applause drowned Edoardo's last words, and he was in danger of being embraced a third time by the reformed bandit.

When silence was restored Avvocato Bonaccorsi, his face very pale, turned to Edoardo and declared: “That is because you are still a Fascist at heart.”

It was as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown over the only log burning in the grate, and the frost of old had taken possession of the room once more.

Edoardo rose and went to get his hat. “If that's how you feel,” he muttered between set lips, “I shall take my leave at once.”

Everyone leapt to their feet and rushed after him. Avvocato
Bonaccorsi himself attempted to detain him by grasping his arm. “No, no, no,” he cried, “Avvocato Lentini, listen… What I meant to say…”

But Edoardo, politely but resolutely, removed his host's hand and left the apartment.

“What I meant to say,” persisted Avvocato Bonaccorsi, craning over the banisters towards where Edoardo's hurrying steps had reached the last flight, “was that you and I have been brought up in different times… naturally you cannot feel as I do… and I may well be mistaken… indeed, I am most certainly mistaken…”

But his last words fell into an empty stairwell, with the result that Avvocato Bonaccorsi, with his friends on his heels, dashed to a window overlooking the street.

“Forgive me!” cried the good man to the swiftly receding figure of Edoardo. “I beg you to forgive me!”

All the regulars were thrown into consternation. The young man who had shot round the corner of the house opposite would never again return to put new heart into them…

But as luck would have it, two days later Ermenegildo Fasanaro paid a visit to Bonaccorsi. They seated themselves in a circle about him.

“A veteran anti-Fascist, what? Tried and proven!” said Avvocato Bonaccorsi, identifying the gentleman to his friends by a thump on the back.

“No longer either Fascist or anti-Fascist,” replied Ermenegildo.

“What-what-what? Everyone's
bound
to be one or the other!”

“Show me the law that says so.”

“There isn't any law, but… Excuse me, but what party
do
you belong to?”

“I belong to the party of the worms who will shortly be eating the meat off my bones; or, if you prefer, it's my fleshless skull that thinks that way, and I'm certain
it
will stay intact
until a time when Fascism and anti-Fascism no longer mean anything to anyone.”

The company pulled long faces. Their political hatred had by now become an unassailable hide-out wherein happiness could not hope to discover them – but no more could the thought of death. Ermenegildo's words had rudely intruded on them.

They at once changed the subject by imploring their guest to intercede with Edoardo and use all his authority to persuade him that Avvocato Bonaccorsi was not one to offend anyone, least of all Edoardo, whom he esteemed, respected, admired, and so on.

Ermenegildo promised he would try and see the ex-mayor of Catania the next day. The promise was kept, and Edoardo was obliged to meet one of Antonio's relations, something which up until then he had taken good care to avoid.

Naturally, the main subject of conversation was not the incident at Bonaccorsi's – dealt with in a few words and declared forgiven and forgotten – but Antonio's disaster.

“Why have you never looked in on him?” asked Ermenegildo.

Edoardo lowered his eyes. Then he said, “I don't feel up to it.”

“Why not?”

“The moment I saw him I'd burst into tears – like setting eyes on a corpse – and that certainly wouldn't do much to pep him up.”

“To be sure, it would not! But couldn't you avoid bursting into tears?”

“Look!” said Edoardo, pointing to a tear running down his cheek. “If this happens just from thinking about it, imagine seeing him! You know we love each other like brothers.”

“All the more reason. One doesn't leave one's brother in the lurch when he's in trouble. Come on, take the plunge and come and see him… When will you come? This evening? Tomorrow morning? Tomorrow afternoon?”

“Make it this evening!”

And indeed that same evening Edoardo was there at the Magnanos.

Antonio, a silk handkerchief knotted at the neck, was in the dining-room, sitting at the long table (already laid) on which he had rested a book.

The two friends sat facing one another for several minutes in silence. Then Edoardo stretched across the table and firmly grasped his cousin's hand, already in the act of sliding towards him.

“Edoardo!” came a shout at this juncture. “Edoardo, come here!”

It was Signor Alfio calling from the bedroom, where for the last week he had been laid up with a temperature.

Edoardo made his way down the corridor, followed by Antonio, but when Edoardo entered his father's bedroom he stayed outside, propped against the wall.

Once in the room redolent of pipe-smoke, Edoardo was hugged hard and silently by Signora Rosaria and then impelled by Signor Alfio's red-hot hand to take a seat at the bedside.

“Can you believe it,” the old man started in at once, “Nello Capàno's son has the nerve to insult us, taking advantage of the fact that they've stuck that Secretary's bauble on his head. Who does he think he is? What's he think he's doing? Where does he keep his brains? Alfio Magnano, just as soon as he can unstick his old bones from this bed, will go and winkle him out, even if he's hiding under God-the-Father-Almighty's nightcap, and ram these two fingers right in his eyes!”

“Do go gently,” urged his wife. “If you don't keep calm your temperature will never go down.”

“You must do me a favour,” continued Signor Alfio, addressing Edoardo. “You must persuade Antonio to write to Count K and tell him to rid us of the son of that cess-pit that Nello Capàno always was. Here, take my pen and pass it over to your cousin. Off you go, and come back with that letter. If you don't, sure as God is my witness, I'll throw off the sheets
and walk to and fro stark naked at the window. Here's the pen, get along now!”

Edoardo took the pen and dashed back to Antonio who, yielding to his cousin's urgings and his own wish to do something to please his old man, wrote a long letter to Count K.

Signor Alfio had it read aloud to him and heaved a sigh of relief. “If the count comes to meet me on this,” he said, “I'll be a well man again in two shakes of a lamb's tail.”

But Antonio's letter reached Rome two days after the news of his fall from grace, and was greeted by a universal shout of laughter.

“I've always said, and even committed it to writing,” declared Party Deputy-Secretary Vincenzo Calderara, “that Antonio Magnano never had the stuff of a true Fascist.” And addressing Count K, who was reflectively prodding his nose with a thumb, he added, “Has he never confided in you, Your Excellency?”

“Why on earth should he confide in
me
?” demanded the count huffily.

“He always boasted of being a friend of yours.”

“We met in the Rs' drawing-room… he came to my house three times… no, only twice… On one occasion I asked him to lunch… I hardly think that constitutes a friendship.”

“If we are to believe his father, it seems that with you, Your Excellency, he shared…”

The count sprang irritably to his feet, leaving Calderara with the rest of his sentence still on his lips. But the next day he dictated to his secretary the following letter in reply to Antonio's: “Dear Comrade, His Excellency Count K has instructed me to remind you that the rank-and-file of the Party may present their grievances against their superiors only through the official channels. Fascist greetings…”

At the same time local Secretary Pietro Capàno received orders to publish the following communiqué in bold type in the Catania newspaper:
“ACTS OF THE F.N.F… I have imposed on Comrade Edoardo Lentini the withdrawal
of his Party Card, on account of his lack of Fascist sentiments. He is therefore relieved of his post as mayor.”

All wind of this was kept from Signor Alfio to give him a chance to get better. But when he was quite recovered and able to leave the house, after a mere half-hour the streets hurled him back home again as white and limp as a rag. He had been told the lot, and in the worst possible manner. On his way upstairs, feeling on his last legs, he had furthermore learnt from Avvocato Ardizzone that the Duca Di Bronte, thanks to the backing of a powerful big shot in the Party who was close friends with a highly influential big shot in the Vatican, would very soon obtain the annulment of Barbara's marriage.

It was all quite enough to send the old fellow back to his bed; and indeed he immediately suffered another attack of fever and delirium, during which it was necessary to keep untrust-worthy people out of his room, and even to replace his doctor, who was a Fascist official, with an old Freemason. For at the height of the fever Signor Alfio seethed with foul oaths at the expense of Capàno, Calderara, Count K and the regime in general – for to them he attributed all his misfortunes. The result was that on the evening he first began to feel better he found seated in his room, with hats in hand and walking-sticks on their knees, all the friends of Avvocato Bonaccorsi – the ex-bandit Compagnoni, Pasqualino Cannavò, Cacciola the pharmacist, Professor Rapisardi, Marletti the engineer, Speranza the navvy, and Avvocato Bonaccorsi in person.

Several of these had sat with him on the City Council, in the happy times when a man could spit on the ground while a city Prefect was passing, and he would lift up Antonio's little frock and proudly display to all and sundry that there was a manchild beneath it. In order to back up this son, who had made friendships of all kinds with the new powers-that-be, he had drifted away from his own real friends… And lo, that evening, with tears in his eyes, Signor Alfio insisted on kissing them every one. He had them repeat the names of each of the younger generation, the first time listening with scrupulous
care, and the second – after a pause – commenting on it, with a “Good! Excellent! Good lad!”

To Compagnoni he said, “And do you, Don Luigi, still have the unfortunate habit of leaving your fly-buttons undone?”

The good bandit glanced at Signora Rosaria and blushed like a schoolboy; then he turned his back and ran his fingers over the buttons which that evening too, the devil knows how, had indeed remained oblivious of their buttonholes.

“And how is your son?” enquired Bonaccorsi.

Signor Alfio braced his head firmly on his shoulders and met his old friend's gaze. “So-so… as God disposes… Raimondo,” he added tremulously, “do you know what has happened to my son?”

The Avvocato joined the fingers and thumb of his right hand as if grasping something, then flicked it back over his shoulder, in a gesture of discarding a worthless trifle; intending in this way to divest the business of Antonio of all gravity and importance.

“No,” insisted Signor Alfio, “no, it's not that way at all, alas!”

The Avvocato repeated his gesture, accompanying it with an expression of contempt for all those who attached importance and gravity to such matters.

“No,” insisted Signor Alfio a second time. “Alas not, Raimondo!”

The Avvocato repeated his throwaway gesture a third time, accompanying it with such a shrug of the shoulders that for a minute his neck was swallowed up in his jacket.

“Really?” queried Signor Alfio, perking up a bit.

“No doubt about it!” asserted the lawyer.

Old Alfio asked him to step up to the bedside because he wanted to give him another kiss.

At the end of the corridor furthest from the bedroom, Antonio and Edoardo sat secluded in the dining-room.

“Please do come and meet my friends,” urged Edoardo, in an attempt to drag his cousin to Signor Alfio's room. “I assure
you they're people of quite another stamp. They look at things from a very exalted viewpoint. Avvocato Bonaccorsi has read three hundred books of philosophy and goodness knows how many poets; Professor Rapisardi has at his fingertips all the pictures in all the museums in Rome, Florence and Paris; Engineer Marletti knows Bach and Beethoven like the coins in his pocket… They never poke their noses into other people's business. How can I put it? All that matters to them is a person's moral qualities… They're exceptional men – they don't make them like that any more. You can read in their faces that their mothers were pure, strong women liable to blush at the slightest thing.”

“What about our
own
mothers then?” muttered Antonio irritably.

“Oh, our own mothers are saints. Who ever would imagine we were their sons?”

Antonio cut him short: “I won't come, Edoardo. You're simply wasting your breath.”

“All right. Have it your own way.”

All evening long the two cousins sat in the dark, near the window. Every now and again, just to fill the room with any sound whatever, Antonio would cough, and Edoardo, almost in reply it seemed, would clear his throat.

In this way many an evening passed. Lacking the courage to speak open-heartedly about the terrible thing that had happened to one of them, they spoke not at all. Any other subject of conversation would have aggravated the magnitude of the one they were avoiding. So that the immense events of that September, the order to black-out the cities, Hitler's bellowings filling the darkened streets from loudspeakers positioned in the windows, the call-up of recruits, Munich – all failed to cohere into a single word on those two pairs of lips twisted with bitterness.