The Conformist (23 page)

The women who came in were listless and indifferent. Some of them were partly naked, others more fully dressed. There were two with dark hair and three blondes, three of medium build, one decidedly small, and one who was enormous. This last woman came to sit next to Marcello, letting herself fall full-length on the sofa with a sigh of weary satisfaction. At first he averted his face; then, fascinated, he turned it a little and looked at her. She was really enormous, pyramidal in shape, with hips broader than her waist, waist broader than her shoulders, and shoulders wider than her head, which was tiny, with a flat, snub face and a black braid wound around her forehead. A yellow silk brassiere bound her swollen, low-hung breasts; beneath her navel a red skirt opened widely, like a theater curtain, onto the spectacle of the black pubis and massive white thighs. Seeing that she was observed, she smiled conspiratorially at one of her companions who was seated against the front wall, heaved a sigh, and then slid one hand between
her legs as if to open them and cool off. Marcello, irritated by this passive shamelessness, would have liked to pull away the hand with which she was stroking herself beneath her belly; but he didn’t have the strength to move.

What struck him most about this female livestock was the irreparable character of their fall, the same character that made him shiver with horror before his mother’s naked body and his father’s madness, the origin of his almost hysterical love for order, calm, neatness, and composure.

Finally the woman turned toward him and said, in a benevolent, playful tone, “Well, don’t you like your harem? Are you going to decide?” and immediately, on an impulse of frantic disgust, he rose and ran out of the salon to the accompaniment, or so he thought, of laughter and some obscene fragments of dialect. Furious, he headed toward the stairs, meaning to go up to the next floor and look for the madame, but at that moment the doorbell rang behind him again, and when he turned, he saw the astonished and — to his eyes, in those circumstances, almost paternal — agent Orlando.

“Dottore, hello … but where are you going, dottore?” exclaimed the agent immediately. “It’s not up there that you’re supposed to go.”

“Really,” said Marcello, suddenly stopping and calming down, “I think they took me for a client.…”

“Stupid women,” said the agent, shaking his head. “Come with me, dottore, I’ll take you there myself. They’re waiting for you, dottore.”

He preceded Marcello through the glass-paned door and into the garden. Walking single file, they followed the driveway by the hedge and circled behind the villa. The sun was burning this part of the garden, with a dry heat made bitter by dust and vegetation run wild. Marcello noticed that all the shutters of the villa were closed, as if it were uninhabited; the garden, too, was full of weeds and seemed abandoned. The agent was now heading toward a low white building that occupied the entire end of the garden. Marcello remembered observing housing like this at the end of similar
gardens and in the back of similar villas in seaside towns; in the summer the proprietors rented their villas, restricting themselves, for love of money, to a couple of rooms.

The agent, without knocking, opened the door and looked in, announcing: “Here is Dottor Clerici.”

Marcello stepped forward and found himself in a little room furnished minimally as an office. The air was thick with smoke. At the table sat a man, his hands joined and his face turned toward Marcello. The man was albino; his face had the shining, rosy transparence of alabaster, scattered with yellow freckles; his eyes were a burning blue, almost red, with white lashes, like those of certain savage beasts that live in the polar snows. Used to the disconcerting contrast between the dull bureaucratic style and often ferocious duties of many of his collegues in the Secret Service, Marcello couldn’t help admitting that this man, at least, was perfectly in his place. There was more than cruelty in that spectral face, there was a kind of ruthless fury, but contained within the conventional rigidity of a military attitude. After a moment of embarassing immobility, the man stood up brusquely, revealing his small stature, and said, “Gabrio.”

Then he sat down immediately and continued, in an ironic tone, “Well, here you are, finally, Dottor Clerici.” He had an unpleasant, metallic voice.

Without waiting for him to offer one, Marcello took a seat in his turn and said, “I arrived this morning.”

“And in fact I expected you this morning.”

Marcello hesitated: should he tell him that he was on his honeymoon? He decided not to and finished peaceably, “It wasn’t possible for me to be here any sooner.”

“So I see,” said the man. He pushed the box of cigarettes toward Marcello with a “do you smoke?” devoid of pleasantry; then he lowered his head over a piece of paper lying on the table and began to read it.

“They leave me here, in this perhaps hospitable but certainly not secret house, without information, without directions, almost without money … here.” He read a moment longer and
then added, lifting his face, “In Rome you were told to come find me, right?”

“Yes, the agent who brought me in came to notify me that I would have to interrupt the trip and introduce myself to you.”

“Just so.” Gabrio took the cigarette out of his mouth and placed it carefully on the lip of the ashtray. “At the last minute, it seems, they changed their minds. The plan is altered.”

Marcello didn’t bat a lash; but he felt a wave of relief and hope, whose source was mysterious to him, wash over him and swell his heart. Maybe he would be allowed to keep his trip separate, reduce it to its apparent motive: a honeymoon in Paris. He said, however, in a clear voice, “Meaning?”

“Meaning, the plan has changed and, in consequence, your mission,” continued Gabrio. “The aforesaid Quadri was to be kept under surveillance, you were to establish a relationship with him, inspire his trust, maybe even get him to give you some task or other … Now instead, in this last message from Rome, Quadri is designated as an undesireable to be eliminated.”

Gabrio picked up his cigarette again, breathed in a mouthful of smoke, and set it back on the ashtray. “In substance,” he explained in a more conversational tone, “your mission is reduced to almost nothing. You will limit yourself to contacting Quadri, making use of the fact that you already know him, and pointing him out to agent Orlando, who is also going to Paris. You could, perhaps, invite him to some public place where Orlando will be waiting — a caffè, a restaurant … Just so Orlando can see him and verify his identity. This is all that’s being asked of you; then you can devote yourself to your honeymoon in whatever way you wish.”

So, even Gabrio knew about his honeymoon, thought Marcello, stunned. But this first thought, he realized immediately, was no more than an affected mask beneath which his mind sought to hide its own turmoil from itself. In reality, Gabrio had revealed something more important than his knowledge of Marcello’s honeymoon: the decision to eliminate Quadri. With a violent effort, he forced himself to examine this extraordinary and ominous piece of news objectively. And he concluded something
fundamental right away: his presence and participation in Paris were not at all necessary for the elimination of Quadri; agent Orlando could find and identify his victim very well by himself. In reality, he thought, they only wanted to involve him, even if it wasn’t really necessary, compromising him completely once and forever. As far as the change in plan was concerned, he did not doubt that it was only apparent. Surely, at the time of his visit to the minister, the plan just now disclosed by Gabrio had already been decided on and defined in all its details; and the apparent change was due to their characteristic method of dividing and confusing responsibilities. Neither he nor, probably, Gabrio had received written orders; in this way, if things went wrong, the minister would be able to declare his own innocence, and the blame for the assassination would fall on him, on Gabrio, on Orlando, and on the others who actually executed the orders.

He hesitated and then, to gain time, objected, “I don’t see that Orlando needs me to find Quadri … I think he’s even in the telephone book.”

“Those are the orders,” said Gabrio, answering almost too quickly, too readily, as if he had foreseen the objection.

Marcello lowered his head. He understood that he had been lured into a kind of a trap; and that having offered a finger, he was now being manipulated into giving a whole arm; but strangely, once he had gotten over his first surprise, he realized that he felt no rebellion at the change of plan, only a sense of dull and melancholy resignation, as if confronting an ever more thankless, yet unalterable and inevitable duty. Agent Orlando was probably not aware of the hidden mechanics of this duty, while he, Marcello, was; but it was only in this way that they differed. Neither he nor Orlando could disobey what Gabrio called “the orders,” but which were actually personal circumstances, by now fixed, outside of which there was nothing for either of them but chaos and lawlessness.

At last he said, raising his head, “All right. Where will I find Orlando, in Paris?”

Gabrio replied, glancing at the same piece of paper on the table, “You give him your address there … Orlando will find you.”

So, Marcello couldn’t help thinking, they didn’t altogether trust him; at any rate, they didn’t choose to disclose the agent’s address in Paris to him. He named the hotel where he would be staying, and Gabrio noted it at the foot of the page.

Then he added, in a more affable tone, as if to indicate that the official part of the visit was over, “Have you ever been to Paris?”

“No, it’s the first time.”

“I was there for two years before I ended up in this hole,” said Gabrio, with a kind of bureaucratic bitterness. “Once you’ve been to Paris, even Rome seems like a dump … and as for a place like this, well, you can imagine.” He lit a cigarette from the stub of his last one and added, boasting dryly, “In Paris I had it made … apartment, automobile, friends, affairs with lots of women … you know, as far as
that
goes, Paris is ideal.”

Although he was repulsed, Marcello felt that he must make some response to Gabrio’s affability, so he said, “But with the whorehouse right here around you, you must not get too bored.”

Gabrio shook his head. “Pah, how the hell can you have fun with that recruited mass of flesh they sell for so much a pound? No,” he went on, “the only real resource here is the casino. Do you play?”

“No, never.”

“Still, it’s interesting,” said Gabrio, settling back into his chair as if to signify that their conversation was over. “Fortune can smile on anyone, on me or on you … They don’t call her a woman for nothing. It’s all a matter of grabbing her in time.”

He rose, went to the door, and threw it open. He was truly small, observed Marcello, with short legs and a rigid chest stuffed into a green jacket cut in the military style. He stood still for a moment in a ray of sun that seemed to accentuate the transparency of his clear, pinkish skin and said, staring at Marcello, “I don’t suppose we’ll see each other again. You’re returning directly to Rome after Paris.”

“Yes, almost certainly.”

“Do you need anything?” asked Gabrio suddenly, with reluctance. “Have they provided you with enough funds? I don’t have much here with me … but if you need something.…”

“No thanks, I don’t need anything.”

“Well, good luck, then — break a leg.”

They shook hands and Gabrio closed the door in a hurry. Marcello headed toward the gate.

But when he was back on the path between the dusty hedges, he realized that in his furious escape from the salon, he had forgotten his hat there. He hesitated; it disgusted him to think of going back into that big room that stank of old shoes, face powder, and sweat, and he also feared the flattery and bawdy witticisms of the women. Then he decided; he turned back and pushed open the door, setting off the same doorbell.

This time no one appeared, neither the maid with the face of a ferret, nor any of the girls. But the loud, well-known, good-natured voice of agent Orlando reached him from the salon through the open door; and, encouraged, he peered in from the threshold.

The room was empty. The agent was sitting in a corner next to a woman Marcello didn’t remember having noticed when the girls had presented themselves at his first entrance. The agent had put his arm around her waist in an awkward, intimate gesture and didn’t bother to remove it when he saw Marcello. Embarrassed and vaguely irritated, Marcello averted his eyes from Orlando and looked at the woman.

She was sitting up rigidly, almost as if she wished in some way to drive off or at least distance her companion. She was a brunette with a high, white forehead, clear eyes, a long, thin face, and a large mouth, enlivened by dark lipstick and an expression of what looked like contempt. She was dressed almost normally, in a white, sleeveless, low-cut dress. The only whorish thing about her was the split in her skirt, which opened just below the waist to reveal her belly and groin, and her long, dry, elegant, crossed legs, as chastely beautiful as the legs of a dancer. She was holding a lit cigarette between two fingers, but she was not smoking; her hand lay on the armrest of the sofa and the smoke spiraled up in the air. Her other hand lay abandoned on the agent’s knee as if, thought Marcello, on the faithful head of a big dog. But what struck him most was her forehead, not so much white as
illuminated
in some
mysterious way by the intense expression of her eyes, with a purity of light that made him think of one of those diamond tiaras that women crowned themselves with long ago at gala balls. Marcello stared at her, astounded, for a long time; and as he looked, he realized he was feeling an incomprehensibly painful regret and irritation. Meanwhile, Orlando had risen to his feet, intimidated by Marcello’s insistent stare.

“My hat,” said Marcello.

The woman remained seated and was now looking at him, in her turn, without curiosity. The agent crossed the room quickly to retrieve the hat from a distant divan. Suddenly, then, Marcello understood why the sight of the woman had inspired that painful sense of regret in him: actually, he realized, he didn’t want her to do the agent’s bidding, and seeing her submit to his embrace had made Marcello suffer as if confronted with an intolerable profanity. Surely she knew nothing about the light radiating from her forehead, which did not belong to her anyway, as beauty does not generally belong to the beautiful. Just the same, he felt it was almost his duty to keep her from lowering that luminous forehead to satisfy Orlando’s erotic whims. For a moment he thought of using his authority to take her out of the room; they could talk a while and then, as soon as he was sure the agent had chosen another woman, he would go. Crazily, he even thought about rescuing her from the whorehouse and getting her started on another sort of life. But even as he was thinking these things, he knew that they were fantasies; she could not help resembling her companions, like them irreparably and almost innocently ruined and lost. Then he felt a touch on his arm: Orlando was holding out his hat. He took it mechanically.