Beautiful Antonio (38 page)

“Edoardo!” cried Antonio, struck aghast, flinging his arms wide (though without rising from his couch): “Edoardo!”

His cousin grasped Antonio's hand and shook it: his own palm was dry and callused to the touch. He hooked a stool under him and sat down.

“Edoardo?” said Antonio, “Is that really you?”

“Yes, yes, it's old Edoardo all right,” returned the other, pinching the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right. He looked around him wearily and gave a wry grimace. “Yes, it's old Edoardo. The same old Edoardo…”

The name fell sadly on the air, then silence. “You know where I've just come from, eh?” he added.

“No, no I don't… or rather, yes I do…”

“From gaol.”

“They told me you'd been sent to a concentration camp!”

“First to gaol, then to a camp, then back to gaol again… Mind you, I don't take back a single word of what I said! I haven't changed my opinions one jot. But heavens above, it's pretty bizarre to have waited so many years for freedom… and you
know
how I waited!… and when it finally arrives the first thing they do is shut me in a cell with a steel door, then it's a barbed-wire compound, then a cell again. It's bizarre Antonio, bizarre…”

The caretaker's niece poked her head in through the curtains and asked Antonio if she should make up his bed.

“Yes please,” he said. “I'll take forty winks, I think.”

The woman smiled, glad to have another job to set her hand to, and trotted off.

“The more I know of cells, barbed wire, and sentries with Sten-guns, the more I detest tyranny,” continued Edoardo. “I must admit my sentry wasn't a bad chap, though; a stolid bank-clerk who'd mugged up a few words of Italian. One night we had this conversation through the wire about Shakespeare and Keats, as we looked up at the stars above our heads and wondered if the world had gone to the bad for ever. Such a late-night chat between a prisoner and his warder, such exchanged confidences, the way the same star caught our eye at the same time, seemed to me a good omen. But every time a car's headlights swung by, the glitter on his Sten gave me a sick feeling: if I tried to escape there were bullets in there with my name on them… And after all… How can I put it, Antonio? One thing is reason, with its mental processes always on a tight rein, but quite another is the heart that despairs for reasons all of its own… No man,” he burst out, his eyes reddening in an effort to restrain his tears, “no man ought ever to be shut in by another man behind barbed wire or a steel cell-door. It's a bloody miracle if he gets out of there with enough human pride left in him to be able to stand on his own two feet; and even so he'll be left with the wild animal's distrust of man, instinctively seeking cover whenever humans come
near him. You know, each evening, when it gets to the time of day I was arrested, I go and hide in the attic… Every army truck that grinds to a halt, stops my heart. I'm honestly convinced that the entire Eighth Army is on my track, that it landed in Europe for the sole purpose of hunting me down. No, Antonio, we never ought to hunt men down – never! God knows I've always detested despotism, so just imagine, now that I've experienced it at first hand!… And the bizarre thing is that it's this blessed ‘freedom' that has opened my eyes…”

Gently lulled by the doleful drone of this discourse, Antonio nodded off, but a moment later was awakened by the caretaker's niece popping back through the door-curtains, and asking him to step that way a moment as she had something particular to say to him.

Antonio signalled that he'd be with her in a moment, and the woman, all smiles, withdrew.

“Then there's another thing,” resumed Edoardo. “Can tyranny really be demolished by gunfire? You know what a cell-mate of mine said to me? ‘If you go hating the rich and sticking up for freedom of opinion you're going to be a man of sorrows. Hating the rich will get you in among the Communists, who'll bung you into gaol because you fancy freedom of opinion!' So what's the answer? Do those other Hordes pouring in from the East rebel as much as I do against censorship, deportation and imprisonment? Don't you think they might have come to accept these horrors as being in the nature of things? Antonio, we are duty-bound to ponder on these matters and come to a decision that enables us…”

“Excuse me one moment,” said Antonio. “I'll be right back.”

He rose from the sofa with an agreeable sense of lassitude in his legs, left the study, sauntered the length of the corridor and entered his own bedroom.

The woman was just bending over, putting finishing touches
to the sheets. On hearing a footstep she glanced round and gave Antonio a smiling look from beneath her lashes.

“You wanted me, er… what
is
your name?”

“Rosa,” she replied, her smile more radiant than ever.

“Then what is it, Rosa?”

The woman straightened up from the bed and turned, took a slight step backwards, staring mistrustfully at Antonio's right hand, raised to his face, as if it might be about to dart in her direction.

“Nothing… I just wanted to ask…” She hesitated, smiling uncomfortably now, the colour in her cheeks, both the rosy and the vinous, growing more vivid still.

“Come on, tell me. What did you want?”

Another moment of hesitation. “Nothing… I only wanted to know would you be requiring anything more?”

A deafening roar in Antonio's ears – a hot flush behind his eyeballs as his vision clouded – on the instant, its own impetuosity breaking the fetters of its steel-hard casing, a wave of passion exploded from the very ganglions of his nerves, shrapnelled his whole skin, pulsed like a heart in tumult in that distant part of his body so many years an orphan.

Reeling slightly he approached the woman, grabbed her under the armpits, hefted her clean off her feet and welded her to him.

“Whatever are you up to?” cried Rosa, emitting the heady odour of physical thrill. “What are you thinking of? I'm gone fifty, I am…”

“What of it?” Antonio murmured huskily. “Keep quiet.”

And still shackling her to him, her feet dangling, he bore her inch by inch towards the bed.

“Whatever are you up to, what are you
doing
? I want to know!”

“Doesn't matter. Shut your trap!”

“I won't, I won't! Just you tell me what…?”

“Shut up!” he repeated.

“Oh my God!”

“Shut up!”

“My God, he's shoving me down…”

She was flung on the bed, which squeaked and bounced accordingly. Antonio, terrified as of old that the ruttish heat possessing him might come to nothing, though his face was ablaze and every vein in his body pulsing fiercely, hurled himself on the woman, tore off her clothes like a cur clawing at the wrapping of a piece of meat, scratched her, bit her, dashed her to right and to left, rolled her this way and that, panting through clenched teeth, still biting her, fingers digging in… until seized by a voluptuousness, potent, double-edged, as of one giving vent to a long-suppressed loathing – and simultaneously receiving a slap in the face which, by paying him back for some sin of his, relieves him of an intolerable guilt… A pang in his chest, his bowels, his throat, forced out a sharp cry.

A weight was on top of him, pinning him to the sofa. He awoke – in the grip of Edoardo.

“What in heaven's name's the matter?” gasped Edoardo. “Yelling blue murder and trying to rip all the skin off your ribs! What the hell's up with you?”

Antonio had another spasm, arching his body and pressing up from the sofa with his hands, then fell limply back with a deep sigh.

“So I was dreaming, was I?” he murmured, without opening his eyes.

“You certainly were,” retorted Edoardo pettishly. “There I was, talking to you, and instead of listening you coolly went off to sleep!”

“I had a most wonderful dream,” said Antonio, the shadow of a smile on his pale lips. “What a wonderful dream I had!”

He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“Edoardo,” he recommenced, a tremor in his voice. “I dreamt that… You get my meaning?”

“I certainly don't!
What
did you dream?”

“I dreamt I did it, I really did it… I felt such joy I could
have died. Or maybe it wasn't a dream, or only the woman in it was a dream, because for me… for me it wasn't a dream at all!”

Edoardo shot to his feet.

“D'you really think this is the time and place to have wet dreams?” he demanded sourly.

“No need to get so hot under the collar about it,” said Antonio. “I seem to have rubbed you up the wrong way.”

“No you haven't, but there are times, I'll have you know, when a person simply can't stand…”

“You amaze me,” returned Antonio. “You've always been so kind, so thoughtful, so… understanding.”

“My dear boy,” rejoined his cousin, “sometimes
I
need a bit of understanding too.”

“Don't get on your high horse, Edoardo. That's not worthy of your intelligence.”

“Think I'm offended, eh? Not in the least. But according to you,” added Edoardo with a rasp in his voice, “we must always be thinking about that same old thing. Is there nothing else in the world? Would to God there weren't, Antonio! While I was in the camp I did a lot of thinking about things, and you were one of them.”

“What conclusions did you draw? Let's hear the worst.”

“That you might have been more philosophical about your mishap.”

“You call it a
mishap
?”

“Yes I do. I call it a mishap, and a piddling one at that. For anyone in any other country it would have been a piddling little mishap. But for us? Oh,
we
have to make a Greek tragedy of it! And why? Because all we can think of is the one little thing, and that's it! In the meanwhile along comes a despotic gangster. One kick in the pants from him and we go flying into this war, and then all the other countries come charging back at us with another kick in the pants, and the next thing is they've taken us over, lock, stock and barrel. But no matter!
Women, women, women, four, five, six times a day… That's all
we
worry about…

“But,” he continued, “has it never occurred to you that there's no dishonour attached to living in chastity all one's life long? You, Antonio, are tall, dark and handsome. You're a fine figure of a man and you've been well brought up. You can master anything you put your hand to. You're capable of understanding anything you care to name, goddam it! Just think of all the things you could have done if you hadn't buried yourself night and day in your one, single obsession, and pined your bloody life away!”

“My dear Edoardo, all I want is one thing and one thing only: to make that dream come true.”

“Ah yes, you worship the god of lust, the great god Libido! To what lofty heights do you not aspire!”

“There
is
something else I want, and it's this: to meet Barbara and slap her face for her. I give you my word that if I met her today I'd fetch her such a wallop I'd have the skin off her cheek. And in front of her father and her husband, what's more!”

“Oh, terrific stuff! That's the way to right all the wrongs of the world, be an honour to your country, resolve the social problem…”

“A fat lot I care about the social problem!” yelled Antonio in exasperation. Then, in crescendo, “And still less about my
country
!”

“Naturally! Concerned with matters as life-and-death as you are…”

“Edoardo, if you really want to know, you're getting my goat today.”

“And if you really want to know, dearest coz, you're being a pain in the neck yourself. I can't imagine how I've stood your feeble-minded sob-stuff all these years.”

“Or I your interminable blathering on.”

“In that case we'll call it a day. I'll be off.” Edoardo got up, took his hat from the desk. “When your precious dream comes
true, just hang a flag out over the balcony. I'll get the message. Be seeing you… Oh, and speaking of flags, hang out another when you've caught Barbara a good hefty whack. 'Bye for now.”

In the doorway Edoardo glanced back to see whether he'd got any reaction, but Antonio returned his look with lofty disdain.

“Fathead!” muttered Edoardo. “Man of straw… maniac… layabout… doormat.”

In the meantime he had reached Via Etnea and was busy fending off numerous knots of military personnel, some of whom staggered drunkenly in his direction, drawn to him as matter to a vacuum and all set to collapse on top of him.

“Hapless youth… with that bee in his bonnet… always staring past his navel to see if down in the forest something stirs. He's made it his god, his religion. What a fate!”

Thinking these thoughts, and giving muttered voice to them, he reached his own building and turned in at the main door – swung to on the instant behind him by the daughter of the concierge.

“And I
so
badly needed to let off a bit of steam with him… He's left me with all the muck still bottled up inside… It's left a bad taste in my mouth… Hey, Giovanna, what the devil are you doing barring the door? It's not midnight!”

“I'm scared of the soldiers, sir, 'cos I'm alone here. They comes right inside all wild-eyed like, and what they wants I'm sure I don't know.”

“You know perfectly well what they want.”

“I don't know nothing, sir.”

“Get on with you, of course you do.”

“Think what you please, sir, I don't know nothing.”

“If you don't, you'd better get someone to teach you!”

“No one needs teach me nothing. I don't want to learn nothing from no one.”

“Not even from me?”

“Not even you, sir.”
“Come along now, from me…”