Clara Callan (23 page)

But the policeman placed a hand on L.M.’s arm. “You come.”

L.M. shook off the hand. “Like hell!”

I noticed that the shopkeeper had disappeared, and he must have telephoned because a few minutes later a car arrived with two policemen. More heavy, sullen faces. We were told to get in the car, with L.M. protesting all the way. “You can’t do this to us. We’re American citizens.” And so on. The three of us were squeezed into the back where
the smell of L.M.’s shoe, caked and soiled, filled the little car. They took us to a police station on Via Septembre. I saw the words on the side of a building, September Street, and I wondered what time it was in Whitfield; by my reckoning, early morning and Mrs. Bryden would be in her garden. What preposterous things transpire in this world while we go about our ordinary business! At the police station, they thought at first we were English, which, of course, infuriated L.M. The English are presently not among Italy’s favourite tourists due in part to England’s opposition to the recent war in Ethiopia. The Italians still seem resentful
about that. Once they learned that we were not English, they were more civil to us. Nora and I were seated on a long bench while L.M. was escorted into another room. A few minutes later the little man arrived and was hurried through to the same room. Around us, policemen were coming and going, heavy revolvers strapped to their belts. A woman was seated at a typewriter in one corner, and from time to time would look over at us with evident dislike. Now and then, from the other room, we could hear L.M.’s voice and the little man’s and then a torrent of Italian. Nora looked bludgeoned by the whole experience, and I’m sure that I too was bedraggled. Yet in a perverse way I was enjoying myself. I saw it all as an adventure. I couldn’t imagine that we would go to prison or anything. Then they brought in a young man. He was wearing only trousers, not even shoes. Between two policemen, he shuffled along in bare feet, his hands shackled behind him. At the front desk, he said something and one of
the policemen abruptly struck him in the face. The young man’s head snapped back, but he did not cry out. His nose began to bleed and the policemen pushed him towards another door. The young man stumbled and they more or less picked him up and carried him away. It was unnerving to see such rough treatment of another human being, and at that moment I began to feel less sure of everything. Perhaps they were manhandling L.M. too, though I had difficulty picturing it.

Nora whispered, “Do you think if I told them that I’m on the radio back in New York, it would help?”

“They don’t speak our language, Nora.”

We sat there until nearly eight o’clock. We watched the young woman put a cover over her machine and then pick up her purse and say good night to the policemen. As she passed by us, she stared down with such contempt that I felt like a common criminal. Through the tall windows behind the desks, the sky was darkening. Finally L.M. came out of the room. He was pale, but he still had his bulldog look. The little man was now all smiles and friendly gestures, so it was with relief that we could see matters had been resolved. The little man obviously enjoyed being the centre of attention. He playfully wagged a finger at L.M.

“It is fortunate for you, Signor, that they did not apply the
olio di ricino
.”

L.M. merely glared at him. I looked up
olio di ricino
(castor oil). Apparently (L.M. told us later) it is commonly used as a humiliating punishment for dissenters and troublemakers.

They telephoned a taxi for us and how good it felt to be away from that uniformed brutality. Nora was holding L.M.’s hand and kissing him in the taxi.

“What happened, Lewis? Did they strike you at all?”

“No, no. I threatened them with the embassy. They’re a bunch of ruffians. Country boys dressed up in uniforms. It was just a show for the crowd. I could have killed that old wop though. If it hadn’t been for him . . .”

Perhaps, but L.M. doesn’t seem to understand that he brought the whole business on himself with his outlandish behaviour on the street. Dinner in the hotel was subdued. To Florence tomorrow.

Train to Florence through the hot dry countryside. Many Germans on board, and I could sometimes make out a few words; they all seemed to be talking of the games in Berlin. Our hotel is near the Duomo.

I like Florence with its red-tiled roofs and pretty churches, but like Rome, it is filled with soldiers and policemen. This afternoon a demonstration in the piazza in front of the Uffizi Gallery. Mostly young Italian men waving flags in support of the Spanish rebels under General Franco. A kind of angry patriotism flowing through the crowd, most of the ill feeling directed against England. A number of English tourists appeared nervous as they watched the rally.

Unpleasantness at dinner when L.M. got into a political argument with a man at the next table. I thought the man gave a good account of himself. Nora is very unhappy. Told me she can’t wait to get back to New York. Yet I am enjoying all this. I don’t like the soldiers and the policemen who seem to be everywhere, but ordinary people are friendly enough, and the cities are filled with beautiful buildings. There is also a vitality about the country that I like. I wonder if this is what attracted the Englishwoman to Rome.

Bags packed and waiting for the porter. We are to catch the train for Venice in an hour. A storm in the night awakened me from a dream in which I was surrounded by the priests in their cassocks and sandals. Among them was the Englishwoman’s lover, the bare ankles showing above the yellow shoes. I lay awake listening to the rain, looking out at the tiled roofs lighted by the storm. From the open windows, the sound of water spilling from the drainpipes into the street.

The train climbed the hills of Tuscany, often disappearing into long tunnels and these gave me trouble. As we hurtled into those black spaces, the carriage lights dimmed and I felt a great pressure in my chest, a tightening of nerves. A kind of claustrophobia, I suppose.
Some of the tunnels seemed endless and then, just as I felt that I could no longer draw a breath, we were flung headlong into sunlight with green fields and the red roofs of farmhouses. At the station in Bologna where we changed trains the following:

L.M.: “Do you know who was born in this town, kiddo?”

Nora: “No, Lewis, tell me. You know everything.”

L.M.: “Well, my little angel of the airwaves, this is the birthplace of the founder of it all. Without him you wouldn’t have all those listeners on the edge of their kitchen chairs. Marconi was born in this city.”

Nora (looking out the carriage window as if the people hurrying by had assumed a sudden and vast importance): “Really? Gee, I used to sell Marconi radios in Toronto.”

Death in Venice today. Not the literary death from plague that awaits Von Aschenbach in Mann’s novel, but actual death, sudden and dramatic in the Grand Canal near the Piazza San Marco. It happened after lunch. We were walking through the overcast afternoon, following some young Germans. They were boisterously enjoying themselves and then (who knows why?) one of the young men jumped or was pushed (playfully?) into the canal. Laughter from the others as the young man splashed about in the oily water. Soon, however, it was evident that he could not swim. We were perhaps forty or fifty feet behind them, but I could see that he was in trouble. Two others from his group leaped in to help and everything suddenly went wrong. It was going to be a more difficult job than they imagined because the young man was in a panic, fighting them off, his arms flailing about. For a moment, we could see only the tangle of arms, the thrashing water, the wet blond hair. Then he simply disappeared, nearly dragging one of the others
with him. It all happened so quickly. One of the German girls clutched the sides of her head and began to scream, a terrible sound in the Venetian afternoon. Others pulled the two men
from the water and in their sodden clothes they sat weeping on the canal wall. A policeman began to push people away from the edge of the water. A careless few moments and a young life was now over. Nora had tears in her eyes and L.M. put his arm around her. We walked to a small gallery, but we were too upset to enjoy the pictures. This sombre mood prevailed at dinner as the conversation settled on the arbitrary nature of events, the randomness of fortune, a subject that has intrigued me since that day I stopped believing in God. Nora was adamant that events are foreordained by Him (her words); there is purpose and meaning even in calamity. If there weren’t, how could life be endured? How indeed? L.M. read her mood (the feisty Nora) and was careful not to contradict her. I liked him for that. Why tamper with another’s
faith?

The talk then shifted to poetry and I said how much I liked Stevens’s “Sunday Morning.”

“I met Stevens once,” L.M. said. “At a party down in the Village though the man is no bohemian. Did you know that he works for an insurance company? Three-piece suit, the whole kit and caboodle. Looking at him, you’d never know he was a poet. Of course, Williams is a doctor. These guys have to make a living too.”

I would have enjoyed hearing more about Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, but L.M. had moved on. Still, it was the most enjoyable meal that the three of us have had together on this trip.

The day after tomorrow Nora and I return to Rome and then to Naples to catch the boat for America. L.M. goes on to France and Germany. He is an interesting man, brilliant in his own way, but self-indulgent to a fault. He wears you down with his relentless opinions and his forceful nature. He is far too vivid to be lived with for long, and I think Nora realizes this now. I have enjoyed meeting him, but I will not be sorry to say goodbye. For the first time in weeks, I miss Whitfield.

An hour ago L.M. made a pass at me, but I don’t want to make too much of this; he was a little tight and he didn’t persist. I had just finished packing for tomorrow and was getting ready for bed when I heard the knock. Thought it was Nora, but when I opened the door, Lewis was standing there in his rumpled linen suit, looking a bit down in the mouth, not a trace of the bulldog in his face. Wanted to come in for a minute and I asked him why. He said he wanted to apologize; he had behaved badly on the trip and now felt contrite. Before we parted in the morning, he “wanted things to be right between us.”

I should have told him to go to bed, but I didn’t and he came into the room and slumped in the green baize chair by the window. He said nothing but stared at the floor. Nora told me that L.M. suffers from spells of depression and had been seeing a doctor about this in New York.

Through the open window behind him, I watched the dark shapes of passing gondolas with their lanterns. After a while L.M. said, “Your sister and I are having a rough time of it these days, and it’s made me miserable. I have a lousy disposition anyway.”

I was wearing my dressing gown and I could see that he was looking at my feet and legs.

“I’m fond of Nora,” he said. “She’s a sweet woman.”

His voice trailed away and he turned to the window to look out at the boats. All evening I had been thinking of the young German tourist. It was almost unbearable to imagine him lying under the weight of all that dark water. Then L.M. said, “You’re so unlike your sister.”

I told him that this was true, though not perhaps as true as he thought. In fact, we were alike in many ways. He wanted to know in what ways, but I didn’t feel right talking to him about any of this. I wondered if Nora were now asleep. I hated the idea of talking to L.M. in my room while Nora was sleeping. So I told him that it would be best if he were to leave. He shrugged and then got up and stood there
looking down at me. I was seated on the edge of the bed and after a moment he sat beside me. I was going to get up at once, but he put his arm around me and began to rub my neck. It was a clumsy gesture, foolish in the extreme, and he was saying something I couldn’t catch. It might have been a line of poetry. I smelled the drink on him and oddly enough thought of Hamlet’s words to his mother about Claudius. Something about paddling in your neck with his damned fingers. I wasn’t about to play the hysterical old maid, but neither did I want his hands upon me, and he didn’t pursue matters.
Either he was too tired and discouraged or he didn’t think me worth the struggle. Then, like some character in an old bedroom farce, Nora was knocking at the door. I could hear her voice from the hallway.

“Clara, is Lewis in there with you?”

When I opened the door she looked in and saw him sitting on the bed.

“What the hell is he doing in here?”

“Not what you might think,” I said. “All is well and Lewis is on his way.”

And so he was, quite subdued as he passed by her stare. After he left, Nora stayed a while, packing herself into the green baize chair, drawing her legs up and clasping her knees, just as she used to do on Saturday nights in our bedroom when she would talk about the cute salesman from the wholesale company or the shy young man in her acting class. She told me that she and L.M. were probably finished.

“The whole thing has just run its course. It’s burned out,” she said. “Lewis is just too demanding. I can’t take any more of it. Let him go back to his brainy women. The night we had dinner in Rome with that awful little fruit? Remember? That was it as far as I was concerned. Lewis just sat there and laughed at me all evening. Well, to hell with him. There’s plenty more fish in the sea. I’m tired of his sulks and his demands. Always after me to do unnatural things in bed. Brother!”

“What kinds of things?” I asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Nora said, giving me a peculiar
look of dislike. But why, I wondered, had she brought up the subject if she didn’t want to talk about it? And why, for that matter, did I want to know?

Arrived home yesterday and glad to be here. Marion looked in after church today, eager for news. “How was it, Clara? What did you see?”