The Conformist (11 page)

At that moment there was no one left in the waiting room except one old white-haired man with a round head and a lively face, whose expression was a mixture of impudence, cunning, and greed. Dressed in light-colored clothes, a sporty, youthful jacket
ripped down the back, big rubber-soled shoes on his feet and a flashy tie on his chest, he gave the impression of being at home in the ministry, walking up and down the room and carelessly consulting the obsequious ushers posted at the threshold of the doors with an air of playful impatience. Then one of the doors opened and a middle-aged man emerged: bald, thin except for a prominent belly, with an empty yellow face, eyes lost at the bottom of large, dark sockets, and a ready, sceptical, spirited expression on his sharp features. The old man went straight up to him with an exclamation of playful protest; the other saluted him ceremoniously and deferentially; and then the old man, with an intimate gesture, took the man with the yellow face not by an arm but right by the waist, as if he were a woman. Walking across the room beside him, he began speaking to him, whispering urgently in a very low voice. Marcello, who had been following the scene with an indifferent eye, suddenly realized to his astonishment that he was feeling an insane hatred for the old man and he didn’t even know why. Marcello was not unaware that at any moment and for the most diverse reasons one of these excesses of hatred could burst through the deadened surface of his usual apathy; but each time it happened he was amazed, as if faced with an unknown aspect of his own character that gave the lie to all the other known, secure ones. That old man, for example: he felt that he could easily kill him or have him killed; more, that he actually wanted to kill him. Why? Maybe, he thought, it was because scepticism, the fault he hated most, was so clearly painted on that ruddy face of his. Or because his jacket had a tear in the back and the old man, who was keeping his hand in his pocket, was lifting one of the flaps, exposing the back of his pants, which were too big and floppy and made him look disgustingly like a tailor’s dummy. Anyway, he hated him with such great and unbearable intensity that at last he preferred to lower his eyes to his newspaper again. When he raised them once more, after some time, the old man and his companion were gone and the room was deserted.

One of the ushers came over to murmur that he could go in, and Marcello rose and followed him. The usher opened one of
the doors, standing back to let him pass through. Marcello found himself in a vast room with frescoed ceiling and walls, at the end of which was a table scattered with papers. Behind the table sat the man with the yellow face whom he had glimpsed already in the waiting room; to one side sat another man, whom Marcello knew well, his immediate superior in the Secret Service. At Marcello’s appearance the man with the yellow face, who was one of the ministry secretaries, rose to his feet; the other man stayed in his chair and greeted him with a nod. This last, a thin old man with a military aspect, a stiff scarlet face, and a moustache as black and bristling as a false moustache on a mask, made, he thought, a complete contrast with the secretary. He was, in fact and as he knew, a loyal, rigid, honest man, accustomed to serving without protest, putting what he considered to be his duty above everything else, even his conscience. While the secretary, as far as he remembered, was a more recent and altogether different sort of man: ambitious and sceptical, worldly, with a taste for intrigue pushed to the point of brutality, beyond any professional obligation and every boundary of conscience. All of Marcello’s goodwill was directed toward the old man, naturally, and also because he seemed to recognize in that red and ruined face the same obscure melancholy that so often oppressed him. Maybe, like him, Colonel Baudino was feeling the contrast between an unshakeable, almost spellbound loyalty that had nothing rational in it and the too-often deplorable character of daily reality. But maybe, he thought, looking at the old man again, it was just an illusion and he — as can happen — was lending his own feelings to his superior because he liked him, almost in the hope that he was not alone in feeling them.

The colonel said dryly, without looking at Marcello or the secretary, “This is the Dottor Clerici I spoke to you about some time ago,” and the secretary, with ceremonial and almost ironic eagerness, leaned over the table, extended his hand, and invited him to sit down. Marcello took a seat. The secretary seated himself as well, took up a box of cigarettes, and offered them first to the colonel, who refused, and then to Marcello, who accepted.

Then, after lighting a cigarette for himself, he said, “Clerici, I’m very pleased to meet you. The colonel here does nothing but sing your praises … It would appear that you are, as they say, an ace.” He underlined “as they say” with a smile and went on, “The minister and I have examined your plan and found it excellent, absolutely … do you know Quadri well?”

“Yes,” said Marcello. “He was my professor at the university.”

“And you’re sure Quadri doesn’t know you’re an agent?”

“As sure as I can be.”

“Your idea of faking a political conversion to inspire their trust, infiltrating their organization, and maybe even being given a mission to carry out in Italy,” proceeded the secretary, lowering his eyes toward some point on the table in front of him, “is a good one … the minister agrees with me that something of the kind must be attempted without delay. When were you thinking of going, Clerici?”

“As soon as necessary.”

“Very good,” said the secretary, somewhat surprised even so, as if he had been expecting a different answer, “excellent. All the same, there’s a point we should clear up … You are proposing to carry out a mission that is, let us say, somewhat delicate and dangerous. The colonel here and I were saying that in order not to be too obvious you should find, think up, invent some plausible pretext for your presence in Paris. I’m not saying that they know who you are or that they’ll be able to figure it out … but, well, you can’t ever be too careful … all the more so since Quadri, as you tell us in your report, was not unaware at the time of your feelings of loyalty toward the regime.…”

“If it hadn’t been for those feelings,” said Marcello dryly, “there could hardly be a conversion.”

“Right, absolutely right … but you don’t go to Paris just to present yourself to Quadri and tell him: I’m here. You have to give the impression, instead, that you find yourself in Paris for private, not political reasons, in other words, and are taking advantage of the occasion to reveal your spiritual crisis to Quadri. You need,” concluded the secretary abruptly, lifting his eyes to look at Marcello, “to combine the mission with something personal, something
unofficial.” The secretary turned toward the colonel and added, “Don’t you think so, colonel?”

“That’s my opinion, as well,” said the colonel, without raising his eyes. And he added after a moment, “But only Dottor Clerici can find the pretext that suits him.”

Marcello bowed his head and thought of nothing. It seemed to him that there was nothing to respond at the moment, since an excuse of this kind had to be thought about deliberately and calmly. He was just going to reply, “Give me two or three days’ time and I’ll think about it,” when, suddenly, his tongue seemed to move for him, almost against his will: “I’m getting married in a week … I could combine the mission with my honeymoon trip.”

This time the secretary’s surprise, although he covered it up with an eager enthusiasm, was evident and profound. The colonel, instead, remained completely impassive, as if Marcello had not spoken.

“Very good … excellent,” exclamed the secretary with a disconcerted air, “you’re getting married.… You couldn’t find a better excuse … the classic honeymoon in Paris.”

“Yes,” said Marcello, without smiling, “the classic honeymoon in Paris.”

The secretary was afraid he had offended him. “What I meant to say is that Paris is just the place for a honeymoon trip. Unfortunately, I’m not married … but if I did get married, I think I’d go to Paris, too.…”

This time Marcello said nothing. He often responded this way to people he disliked: with complete silence.

The secretary turned toward the colonel for reassurance: “You’re right, colonel … Only Dottor Clerici could have come up with this sort of pretext. Even if we had thought of it, we couldn’t have suggested it.”

This statement, uttered in an ambiguous, half-serious tone of voice, cut both ways, Marcello thought. It could be real, if somewhat ironic, praise: “God, what fanaticism!” or it could be the expression instead of a stupid contempt: “What servility — he doesn’t even respect his own honeymoon.” Probably, he thought,
it was both, since it was clear that for the secretary the boundary between fanaticism and servility was not very precise; both were means he used — now one, now the other — but always to reach the same ends. Marcello noticed with satisfaction that the colonel also refused to smile, a response the secretary seemed to be inviting with his two-way statement.

A moment of silence followed. Marcello stared straight into the secretary’s eyes with a motionless composure that he knew and wished to be disconcerting. In fact, the secretary could not stand up to it and suddenly, supporting himself with both hands on the table top, he rose to his feet.

“All right, then … You, Colonel, can come to an agreement with Dottor Clerici about the instructions for the mission. You,” he went on, turning to Marcello, “ought to know, moreover, that you have the minister’s full support, and mine. Actually,” he added with affected carelessness, “the minister has expressed the desire to meet you personally.”

Marcello replied nothing to this, either, limiting himself to standing up and making a slight, deferential bow. The secretary, who had probably expected some words of gratitude, gave another start of surprise which he immediately suppressed.

“Stay here, Clerici,” he said. “The minister ordered me to bring you directly to him.”

The colonel stood up and said, “Clerici, you know where to find me.” He held out his hand to the secretary, but the man — attentive, obsequious, ceremonious — was determined to accompany him to the door at all costs. Marcello watched them shake hands; then the colonel disappeared and the secretary turned to him.

“Come with me, Clerici. The minister is extremely busy — nonetheless, he’s absolutely determined to see you and let you know how pleased he is … This is the first time, isn’t it, that you’re being introduced to the minister?”

As he was saying this, they were passing through a small waiting room adjacent to the secretary’s office. Now he went up to a door, opened it, nodded to Marcello to wait and disappeared, only to reappear almost immediately and beckon him to follow.

Marcello entered the same long, narrow room he had observed a while ago through the crack of the door; but now it presented itself from the other side, with the table in front of him. Behind it sat the man with the broad, heavy face and overweight body he had spied letting himself be kissed by the woman in the big black hat. He noticed that the table was cleared and polished like a mirror. There were no papers on it, only a large bronze inkwell and a closed briefcase of dark leather.

“
Eccellenza
, this is Dottor Clerici,” said the secretary.

The minister stood up and held out his hand to Marcello with an attentive cordiality even more marked than the secretary’s, but completely devoid of pleasantry — on the contrary, decidedly authoritarian.

“How are you, Clerici?” he asked, pronouncing his words carefully, slowly, and imperiously, as if they were full of particular significance. “You’ve been praised very highly to me … The regime needs men like you.”

Then he sat back down and, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket, blew his nose as he examined some papers the secretary was showing him. Marcello retired discreetly to the farthest corner of the room. The minister looked at the papers while the secretary whispered in his ear, and then he looked at his handkerchief. Marcello saw that the white linen was smeared with red and recalled that when he had come in, the minister’s mouth had seemed redder than was natural: the lipstick of the woman in the black hat. Still continuing to examine the papers the secretary was showing him, without losing his composure or worrying about being observed, the minister started rubbing his mouth hard with the handkerchief, looking at it every once in a while to see if the lipstick was still coming off. At last the examination of the papers and of the handkerchief ended together, and the minister stood up and held out his hand to Marcello once more.

“Good-bye, Clerici. As my secretary will have told you, the mission you’re setting out on has my complete, unconditional support.”

Marcello bowed, shook the thick, blunt hand, and followed the secretary out of the room. They returned to the secretary’s office,
where he put the papers the minister had examined on his table and then accompanied Marcello to the door.

“Well, Clerici, best of luck,” he said with a smile, “and congratulations on your wedding.”

Marcello thanked him with a nod of the head, a bow, and a murmured word. The secretary shook his hand with a final smile. Then the door closed.

B
Y NOW IT WAS LATE;
as soon as he was out of the ministry, Marcello quickened his gait. He got in line at the bustop with the rest of the hungry, restless midday crowd, and patiently waited his turn to climb into the already crowded bus. He spent part of the ride hanging on outside on the footboard; then, with a great effort, he managed to insinuate himself onto the platform, where he remained, jostled on every side by other passengers as the bus, jerking and rumbling, wound its way out of the city center and climbed up the streets toward the periphery. These discomforts, however, did not irritate him; on the contrary, they felt useful inasmuch as they were shared with so many others, contributing in some small measure to his similarity to everyone else. Besides, he liked these contacts with the crowd, unpleasant and uncomfortable as they were, and preferred them to contact with individuals; from a crowd, he thought, as he stood on tiptoes on the platform to breathe more freely, he got the comforting sensation of multiple communion, whether it involved being crushed
inside a bus or the patriotic enthusiasm of a political rally. But individuals only caused him to doubt himself and others, like this morning during his visit to the ministry.