The Salamander, page 13
‘That, too, is a classic formula.’
‘And like every formula it has limited application. I am not blaming you, Matucci. On the contrary, since I do not often choose to explain myself, I am paying you a compliment which I believe you merit Well?’
‘I’d like to pay you a compliment, too, sir. I think you’re a very civilized man. I couldn’t ask for a more stylish funeral.’
‘Excellent! More brandy?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now, as to details. As from this moment you are officially on vacation for four months, and relieved of all duties and responsibilities in the Service – except one. You will escort Lili Anders to Zurich tomorrow morning. Your flight has been booked. A hotel reservation has been made for you at the Baur au Lac. I shall hand you the tickets and the necessary currency before you leave tonight. You will remain outside Italy for at least a month. After that, you may make whatever arrangements you choose for the rest of your vacation. If you choose to divert yourself with the lady – to whom obviously you have some attachment – that is your business. The Service has no further interest in her, provided she does not attempt to re-enter the Republic. It’s all a little rushed I’m afraid, but I am sure you will find the financial arrangements more than generous… Questions?’
‘No. A minor worry. I’d hate to spend a long vacation waiting for a bullet in the back. I’d much rather stay on duty where there’s a certain amount of protection.’
‘I thought we had covered that. The whole purpose of the tactic is to demonstrate that you are no longer a threat to Leporello or anyone else and that action against you would violate what I might call your very useful neutrality… There is a danger period, however: from the moment you leave this house until you take off for Zurich tomorrow.’
‘I was wondering about that, too.’
‘So I’ve assigned a two-man team to cover for all your movements. They’ve already packed your clothes and delivered the suitcases to the Grand Hotel. Your room adjoins that of Miss Lili Anders. You will leave the hotel together at eight-thirty. Much simpler from a security point of view.’
‘Of course.’
‘Now, … two air tickets, ten thousand Swiss francs in varying denominations and an order on the Union Bank in Zurich for another twenty thousand. That’s a bonus with my personal thanks. Your salary will be credited in the normal way to your bank account in Rome… That’s all, I think. The car is waiting to take you to your hotel. I wish you a pleasant trip and a very restful vacation. Sogni d’oro, Matucci – golden dreams.’
We parted with a handshake, firm and fraternal. The Sicilian bodyguard escorted me to the ground floor and handed me into the care of two junior colleagues, who drove me like a visiting potentate to the Grand Hotel.
It was one-thirty in the morning. The foyer was deserted. They steered me past the reception desk and the concierge, rode up with me in the elevator and installed me in my bedroom. One of them checked cupboards and bathroom and even under the beds, while the other pointed out the beautiful job of packing, and how my suits had been pressed, and that if I wished to speak with the Signorina Anders the key was on my side of the communicating door… As the Director had prescribed maximum precautions, I could sleep soundly. They bade me goodnight and retired like lackeys from the presence of a prince.
Perhaps they were right. I was the Prince’s man, bought and endowed. His money was in my pocket. His gift was sleeping next door. His brand was on my forehead like a slave-mark. Still, give the devil his due, he was a very rare specimen. He recognized merit. He enjoyed malice but never practised it wastefully. He had been scrupulously polite. He had exacted my consent with just the right amount of pressure and finesse. He was the king. I was the pawn. He had swept me off the board to wait for another game. Never once had he suggested that I was making a slave’s bargain. He knew it, of course. So did I. Which is why, much as I wanted her, I could not turn the key and go to Lili, but, instead, lay dressed and wakeful until dawn, scheming revolt like Spartacus in Capua.
At dawn I abandoned the futile exercise and went to Lili Anders. With a very refined irony, the Director had kept her in ignorance of the arrangements, so that at six in the morning, sleepless and in need of loving, I was forced to explain the whole complicated play, step by step. When I explained that she was to be set at liberty in Switzerland, she was hysterically delighted. When I told her I would go with her, it was Christmas, Epiphany and all her birthdays rolled into one. After that I had no wish or heart to tell her the price. From the moment I left Italy I would be, in effect, an exile. From the moment I became an exile I would be subject to a clinical change which the Director had calculated to a nicety. For most Europeans, for all Anglo-Saxons and Americans, the word exile has an old-fashioned ring. Whatever crimes a man may commit he is never deprived of his citizenship or his primal relationship with his homeland. He may be imprisoned, he may be brutalized, but he is never robbed of that essential element of his identity, his contact with the mother earth.
For us Italians, however, for us whose identity depends upon a small terrain, a tribal group, a dialectal area, exile is a constant and sinister reality. We can still be legally transported and confined to a distant province, a depressed island, to a community whose tongue and customs and history are totally foreign to us, where we will be strangers until the day we die. We cannot move from it without permission from the police. We cannot flourish in it because we are an alien corn. We exist only by sufferance and under surveillance.
The personal consequences are as deep and as demoralizing as if we had been transported to Siberia or dumped like castaways in the dry Tortugas.
The terror begins subtly with a sense of disorientation and discontinuity. It can end with a trauma of impotence, when every act seems pointless, every step ends at a barred gate, every hope is proved an illusion.
The Director knew this because he had used it many times as a means of immobilizing men who were hostile to him. I knew it because my father had been in exile under the Fascists and I had seen him come home a broken man. But how could I explain it to Lili who had survived her own exile and was now breaking out into freedom… Perhaps it was just as well, the loving would not have been half as sweet nor our exit from Italy half as impressive.
At eight twenty-five, our baggage was removed under the supervision of an agent. At eight-thirty, with no bills to pay, and as many bows as if we had paid them twice over, we were led from the foyer into an official limousine. At nine-fifteen, we were conducted into the V.I.P. lounge at Fiumicino and held in comfort and respect until fifteen minutes before take-off. Then, spurning the crush of common travellers, we were escorted to the aircraft and deposited in a pair of first-class seats. Our agent hovered over us until the moment before the doors were closed. Then, with a final salute on behalf of a grateful Republic, he left us. Five minutes later – this being a fair and strike-free day at Fiumicino – we were airborne in the care of the Swiss. We held hands. We made foolish jokes. We toasted each other in champagne. Then I fell asleep and did not wake until we were on the final approach to Kloten Airport in Zurich.
When we arrived at the Baur au Lac, we found that the Director had provided against all contingencies. We were accommodated in separate rooms, each communicating with a large salon, furnished already with flowers, fruit, liquor and a welcome note from the management. There was also a telegram from the Director: ‘Second Samuel Seven One.’ Zurich is a sound Calvinist town so I deciphered the joke from the Bible on my bedside table: ‘The Lord gave him rest from all his enemies.’
Later in the day, a second telegram arrived, two words only: ‘Tekel Stefanelli.’ I didn’t need the Bible for that one. I remembered the riddle from my religious youth: ‘Tekel: Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting!’ I had to answer him and I did it with Deuteronomy one sixteen; ‘Judge righteously between every man and his brother and the stranger that is with him.’ By then the joke was stale and bitter. I had to make an end of it. I told Lili the truth.
The moment of telling had a curious quality about it. It was seven in the evening. We had decided to dine early in the suite, to relax after the alarms and excitements of the last few days. Lili, glowing from a visit to the hairdresser, the masseuse and the manicurist, was dressed in a house-coat she had bought to celebrate her new liberty. She had presented me with a silk shirt and a rather exotic cravat. I was mixing drinks like an amateur barman, feeling very domestic, very comfortable and yet somehow remote and passionless, as if I were recovering from a long illness. The story told itself in the same remote fashion and I heard myself speak it as if I were listening to a report from another man :
‘… Everything the Director says is true and yet it all adds up to a lie, which you still cannot disprove. He is a very great actor. He conjures you into a world that doesn’t exist and yet makes you believe that every leaf on every tree is real. He shows you another self – and makes you believe it is you… “You lack authority, Matucci. You lack experience. You are an abrasive element. You polarize the factions.” All true, but true in an opposite way… “You are not dead, just buried for a while.” … But I knew, the moment I stepped on that plane, I was dead; because he has all my files and records now and he can reprocess history in any way he chooses. He says he wants to divide and rule. But suppose he doesn’t? Suppose he wants to unite and conquer, and then play Fouché to Leporello’s Napoleon? I’ve given him the means to do it And he paid me for them: with you, with a long holiday, with a sinecure that half the men in the Service would give their eyes for. And he’ll honour the payment, have no doubt of it, so long as I play the game according to his rules and wait on the word of the Lord…’
‘Why did you accept the payment, Dante Alighieri?’ There was no reproach in the question. There was no compassion, either. She was calm and composed as an examining magistrate. ‘Because I was part of it?’
‘No. I believe that, even if I had fought him, he would still have let you go, if only to demonstrate that I was obstinate and unreasonable. He might even have worked to set you against me… He spins webs so fine you cannot see the threads.’
‘So, why did you consent? For me, this is freedom; for you, exile.’
‘Strange, but at this moment I’m enjoying it.’
‘If you could go on enjoying it, with me or without me, then it would be another story. Could you?’
‘I don’t know… Yes, by God, I do know! Last night I dined with him and enjoyed him. After dinner we worked together on the documents and I respected him – because he respected me. So, when he asked me to step out of the picture, and gave me his reasons, I had to respect those, too. Then, after I had agreed, he had to show me how clever he was, how he knew in advance that I must consent. He was so certain that he had arranged everything in advance – even to this liquor and the roses in your bedroom. Suddenly, I was not a man any more, I was…’
‘A puppet, my love! A marionette, life-size and helpless, with no manhood left at all. It’s a bitter experience, isn’t it?’
‘I think it’s funny, very funny!’
‘Is it?’
‘The joke of the century! Dante Alighieri Matucci, tenor castrato in the puppet choir!’
‘Why don’t you laugh then?’
‘I’m a clown puppet, Lili. I make other people laugh. That is his final triumph, don’t you see? He’s spread the news all round the Service. How else would Steffi know? Why else would he send me that telegram : ‘weighed in the balance and found wanting’. Mother of God! What a beautiful, beautiful comedy!’
‘I’d like to see the end of it.’
‘This is the end, Lili. Don’t you understand that?’
‘It’s the end he wrote. I think there’s a better one.’
‘I’d love to hear it.’
‘The puppet becomes a man, scrapes off the clown’s paint, and rides out to confront his enemy.’
‘It’s a fairy-tale, Lili.’
‘No! It’s a truth – my truth. And now that we’re quits, I can tell it. I know you for a man, much man – and not just in bed, Dante Alighieri.’
‘Thanks. That helps a little.’
‘But not enough. Where’s your wallet?’
‘In the bedroom, why?’
‘There’s a card in it, remember? A salamander and an inscription: “One fine tomorrow, brother!” A good motto, don’t you think? And a very appropriate device: the lizard that lives in the fire. Get the card, my love. And find the telephone number of the Cavaliere Bruno Manzini. I think you should call him in Bologna.’
The idea was seductive. But I was still gun-shy and suspicious of any new entanglement. Bruno Manzini belonged to another world, with another set of rules : the world of the condottieri, the free-booters, who had taken over the ruins of a cardboard empire and built a new one of steel and concrete and international gold. They dispensed enormous power; but the dispensation was in another currency than that to which I was accustomed. True, Bruno Manzini had invited me to trust him. Through Raquela Rabin, he had offered me proof of good faith. But, if he betrayed me, then I was lost beyond redemption; since the jurisdiction of money is universal and its minions are devoid of pity.
I argued this with Lili – the new Lili who had flowered overnight into another woman, serene, mature and wholly confident in herself. She abolished my doubts with a simple challenge:
‘What have you to lose? Nothing. What have you to gain? At best a powerful friend. At least an alliance of interest that you can dissolve at will. Most important of all, you will have begun to fight. Please! Telephone him now!’
To make the call was easy. To speak to the Cavaliere was only less difficult than having a Sunday chat with the Pope. I was passed from a telephonist to a woman secretary, from the secretary to a male assistant, very efficient, very alt’ Italia, who informed me that the Cavaliere was conducting an important conference and could in no wise be interrupted. I took a risk then and used the magical name of the Service, threatening all sorts of vague crises if the Cavaliere were not called immediately to the telephone. I waited another three minutes before he came on the line. I told him:
‘Cavaliere, yesterday I recovered certain records from Ponza. I delivered them to my superior, our mutual friend. I am now on four months’ leave and will later be transferred to other activities in the Service. I am under orders not to return to Italy for a month and I am lodged at the Baur au Lac in Zurich.’
There was a moment’s silence, then a series of brusque questions:
‘Have you yourself examined the records?’
‘Yes.’
‘Important?’
‘As you suggested in Rome.’
‘Do you know what will happen to them now?’
‘Only what may happen. There are several possibilities.’
‘Which you can no longer control.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Do you need assistance, financial or otherwise?’
‘I need the man whom Raquela Rabin recommended to me, provided, of course, he is still available.’
‘He is. He will be with you tomorrow evening… By the way, how is our mutual friend?’
‘Very pleased with himself.’
‘No doubt. And you?’
‘Happier. Now that I have spoken with you.’
‘Are you in good health?’
‘Our mutual friend assures me I have nothing to fear.’
‘He would know, of course.’
‘Yes. But he never tells all he knows.’
‘Remember it, my friend. Walk close to the wall.’
‘Thank you, Cavaliere Goodnight.’
When I put down the phone, I was trembling and the palms of my hands were wet. I was truly afraid, now. The old man’s parting words had demolished the last frail illusion of security and revealed the full, refined malice of the Director’s design. I was a stranger in a land stuffed with money and indifferent to the point of callousness. I was a member of a legal underworld, suspect everywhere and nowhere loved. I could be shot down on any street corner and the Swiss would have the blood hosed off and the traffic flowing before you could say John Calvin. I told you I am a Tuscan born. In that moment I tasted the full, Florentine flavour of the Director’s revenge. Then, Lili came and put her arms around me and we held each other close while she whispered the words over and over like an incantation:
‘One fine tomorrow, brother… one fine tomorrow…
Tomorrow was a gift of God: no wind, no cloud, the lake a-dazzle under the spring sun, snow on the uplands, the lower meadows ankle-deep in spring grass, the herdsmen moving the cattle up the slopes to a music of bells. I hired a car and we drove eastwards along the lake into the Grisons, aimless and happy as a honeymoon pair. Lili was in a rapture of contentment. She sang, she clowned, she played word-games and love-games and built dream-houses, furnished and demolished them, plucked children out of nowhere and blew them away like thistledown.
Me? I was happy, too. I had been a stranger too long to this kind of simplicity. My relationships with women had been too haunted by time, too frail and feverish to issue in any kind of peace. I hunted; they challenged; we joined, we parted, tomorrow was another day and another hunt, with a tip of the hat and ciao, ciao bambina at the end of it. I knew nothing of home-comings and kisses at the door and the daily loving absolution from all the sins of my trade. I was the bufalo solitario, always on the fringe of the herd, cutting out the errant females, leaving them for other males to breed and cherish. I used to boast of it, because this is our national pastime to prove that we are infinite in potency. But, today, humbled by fear, diminished in self-respect, I was, perhaps for the first time, truly grateful to a woman.
For the first time, too – and this may sound strange from a man who is trained to observe and fit every human being on to an anthropometric chart – I saw her to remember: the honey-colour of her hair, escaping from under the scarf, the high Slavic cheekbones flushed with the wind and the excitement, the little flecks of gold in her eyes, the half-smile that haunted the corners of her mouth, the lift of chin and shoulder and breast and the way she fluttered her hands when she spoke, even the first faint touch of time in the texture of her skin. She was no girl this Lili. She had lived too strangely for too long. But I was no boy either; and I was tired of baby-talk and lovers’ lies and all the gossip of the model circuit.
