Tender Is the Night (38 page)

“I want
to go to the Quirinal Hotel.”

“He says
wan
huner
lire,” explained the interpreter.

“I
understand. I’ll give him
fif’y
lire. Go on away.”
This last to the insistent man who had edged up once more.
The man looked at him and spat contemptuously.

The
passionate impatience of the week leaped up in Dick and clothed itself like a
flash in violence, the honorable, the traditional resource of his land; he
stepped forward and slapped the man’s face.

They
surged about him, threatening, waving their arms, trying ineffectually to close
in on him—with his back against the wall Dick hit out clumsily, laughing a
little and for a few minutes the mock fight, an affair of foiled rushes and padded,
glancing blows, swayed back and forth in front of the door. Then Dick tripped
and fell; he was hurt somewhere but he struggled up again wrestling in arms
that suddenly broke apart. There was a new voice and a new argument but he
leaned against the wall, panting and furious at the indignity of his position.
He saw there was no sympathy for him but he was unable to believe that he was
wrong.

They
were going to the police station and settle it there. His hat was retrieved and
handed to him, and with
some one
holding his arm
lightly he strode around the corner with the taxi-men and entered a bare
barrack where
carabinieri
lounged under a single dim
light.

At a
desk sat a captain, to whom the officious individual who had stopped the battle
spoke at length in Italian, at times pointing at Dick, and letting
himself
be interrupted by the taxi-men who delivered short
bursts of invective and denunciation. The captain began to nod impatiently. He
held up his hand and the hydra-headed address, with a few parting exclamations,
died away. Then he turned to Dick.

“Spick
Italiano
?” he asked.

“No.”

“Spick
Français
?”

“
Oui
,” said Dick, glowering.

“
Alors
.
Écoute
.
Va
au
Quirinal
.
Espèce
d’endormi
.
Écoute
:
vous
êtes
saoûl
.
Payez
ce
que
le chauffeur
demande
.
Comprenez-vous
?”

Diver
shook his head.

“
Non
, je ne
veux
pas.”

“COME?”

“Je
paierai
quarante
lires
.
C’est
bien
assez
.”

The
captain stood up.

“
Écoute
!” he cried portentously.
“
Vous
êtes
saoûl
.
Vous
avez
battu
le chauffeur.
Comme
ci
,
comme
ça
.”
He struck the air excitedly with right hand and left, “
C’est
bon
que
je
vous
donne
la
liberté
.
Payez
ce
qu’il
a
dit
—cento lire.
Va
au
Quirinal
.”

Raging
with humiliation, Dick stared back at him.

“All right.”
He turned blindly to the door—before him, leering and nodding, was the
man who had brought him to the police station. “I’ll go home,” he shouted, “but
first I’ll fix this baby.”

He
walked past the staring
carabinieri
and up to the
grinning face, hit it with a smashing left beside the jaw. The man dropped to
the floor.

For a
moment he stood over him in savage triumph—but even as a first pang of doubt
shot through him the world reeled; he was clubbed down, and fists and boots
beat on him in a savage tattoo. He felt his nose break like a shingle and his
eyes jerk as if they had snapped back on a rubber band into his head. A rib
splintered under a stamping heel. Momentarily he lost consciousness, regained
it as he was raised to a sitting position and his wrists jerked together with
handcuffs. He struggled automatically. The plainclothes
lieutenant
whom he had knocked down, stood dabbing his jaw with a handkerchief and looking
into it for blood; he came over to Dick, poised himself, drew back his arm and
smashed him to the floor.

When
Doctor Diver lay quite still a pail of water was sloshed over him. One of his
eyes opened dimly as he was being dragged along by the wrists through a bloody
haze and he made out the human and ghastly face of one of the taxi-drivers.

“Go to
the Excelsior hotel,” he cried faintly. “Tell Miss Warren. Two hundred lire!
Miss Warren. Due
centi
lire! Oh, you dirty— you God—”

Still he
was dragged along through the bloody haze, choking and sobbing, over vague
irregular surfaces into some small place where he was dropped upon a stone
floor. The men went out, a door clanged, he was alone.

XXIII

Until
one o’clock
Baby Warren lay in bed,
reading one of Marion Crawford’s curiously inanimate Roman stories; then she
went to a window and looked down into the street. Across from the hotel two
carabinieri
, grotesque in swaddling capes and harlequin
hats, swung voluminously from this side and that, like
mains’ls
coming about, and watching them she thought of the guards’ officer who had
stared at her so intensely at lunch. He had possessed the arrogance of a tall
member of a short race, with no obligation save to be tall. Had he come up to
her and said: “Let’s go along, you and I,” she would have answered: “Why
not?”—at least it seemed so now, for she was still disembodied by an unfamiliar
background.

Her
thoughts drifted back slowly through the guardsman to the two
carabinieri
, to Dick—she got into bed and turned out the
light.

A little
before four she was awakened by a brusque knocking.

“Yes—what
is it?”

“It’s
the concierge, Madame.”

She
pulled on her kimono and faced him sleepily.

“Your
friend name
Deever
he’s in trouble. He had trouble
with the police, and they have him in the jail. He sent a taxi up to tell, the
driver says that he promised him two hundred lire.” He paused cautiously for
this to be approved. “The driver says Mr.
Deever
in
the bad trouble. He had a fight with the police and is terribly bad hurt.”

“I’ll be
right down.”

She
dressed to an accompaniment of anxious heartbeats and ten minutes later stepped
out of the elevator into the dark lobby. The chauffeur who brought the message
was gone; the concierge hailed another one and told him the location of the
jail. As they rode, the darkness lifted and thinned outside and Baby’s nerves,
scarcely awake, cringed faintly at the unstable balance between night and day.
She began to race against the day; sometimes on the broad avenues she gained
but whenever the thing that was pushing up paused for a moment, gusts of wind
blew here and there impatiently and the slow creep of light began once more.
The cab went past a loud fountain splashing in a voluminous shadow, turned into
an alley so curved that the buildings were warped and strained following it,
bumped and rattled over cobblestones, and stopped with a jerk where two sentry
boxes were bright against a wall of green damp. Suddenly from the violet
darkness of an archway came Dick’s voice, shouting and screaming.

“Are
there any English? Are there any Americans? Are there any English? Are there
any—oh, my God! You dirty Wops!”

His
voice died away and she heard a dull sound of beating on the door. Then the
voice began again.

“Are
there any Americans? Are there any English?”

Following
the voice she ran through the arch into a court, whirled about in momentary
confusion and located the small guard-room whence the cries came. Two
carabinieri
started to their feet, but Baby brushed past
them to the door of the cell.

“Dick!”
she called. “What’s the trouble?”

“They’ve
put out my eye,” he cried. “They handcuffed me and then they beat me, the
goddamn—the—”

Flashing
around Baby took a step toward the two
carabinieri
.

“What
have you done to him?” she whispered so fiercely that they flinched before her
gathering fury.

“Non
capisco
inglese
.”

In
French she execrated them; her wild, confident rage filled the room, enveloped
them until they shrank and wriggled from the garments of blame with which she
invested them. “Do something! Do something!”

“We can
do nothing until we are ordered.”

“
Bene
.
BAY-NAY!
BENE!”

Once
more Baby let her passion scorch around them until they sweated out apologies
for their impotence, looking at each other with the sense that something had
after all gone terribly wrong. Baby went to the cell door, leaned against it,
almost caressing it, as if that could make Dick feel her presence and power,
and cried: “I’m going to the Embassy, I’ll be back.” Throwing a last glance of
infinite menace at the
carabinieri
she ran out.

She
drove to the American Embassy where she paid off the taxi- driver upon his
insistence. It was still dark when she ran up the steps and pressed the bell.
She had pressed it three times before a sleepy English porter opened the door
to her.

“I want
to see
some one
,” she said.
“Any
one—but right away.”

“No
one’s awake, Madame. We don’t open until
nine
o’clock
.”

Impatiently
she waved the hour away.

“This is
important. A man—an American has been terribly beaten. He’s in an Italian
jail.”

“No
one’s awake now. At
nine o’clock
—”

“I can’t
wait. They’ve put out a man’s eye—my brother-in-law, and they won’t let him out
of jail. I must talk to
some one
—can’t you see? Are
you crazy? Are you an idiot, you stand there with that look in your face?”

“
Hime
unable to do anything, Madame.”

“You’ve
got to wake
some one
up!” She seized him by the
shoulders and jerked him violently. “It’s a matter of life and death. If you
won’t wake
some one
a terrible thing will happen to
you—”

“Kindly
don’t lay hands on me, Madame.”

From
above and behind the porter floated down a weary
Groton
voice.

“What is
it there?”

The
porter answered with relief.

“It’s a
lady, sir, and she has
shook
me.” He had stepped back
to speak and Baby pushed forward into the hall. On an upper landing, just
aroused from sleep and wrapped in a white embroidered Persian robe, stood a
singular young man. His face was of a monstrous and unnatural pink, vivid yet
dead, and over his mouth was fastened what appeared to be a gag. When he saw
Baby he moved his head back into a shadow.

“What is
it?” he repeated.

Baby
told him, in her agitation edging forward to the stairs. In the course of her
story she realized that the gag was in reality a mustache bandage and that the
man’s face was covered with pink cold cream, but the fact fitted quietly into
the nightmare. The thing to do, she cried passionately, was for him to come to
the jail with her at once and get Dick out.

“It’s a
bad business,” he said.

“Yes,”
she agreed
conciliatingly
. “Yes?”

“This trying to fight the police.”
A note of personal affront crept into his voice, “I’m
afraid there’s nothing to be done until
nine
o’clock
.”

“Till
nine o’clock
,” she repeated aghast.
“But you can do something, certainly! You can come to the jail with me and see
that they don’t hurt him
any more
.”

“We
aren’t permitted to do anything like that. The Consulate handles these things.
The Consulate will be open at nine.”

His
face, constrained to impassivity by the binding strap, infuriated Baby.

“I can’t
wait until nine. My brother-in-law says they’ve put his eye out—he’s seriously
hurt! I have to get to him. I have to find a doctor.” She let herself go and
began to cry angrily as she talked, for she knew that he would respond to her
agitation rather than her words. “You’ve got to do something about this. It’s
your business to protect American citizens in trouble.”