Beautiful Antonio (39 page)

“Not even you, I said – and just you leave my face alone!”

“What a hoity-toity little thing you are!”

“I am what I am. And leave go my hands!”

“Heavens, can't I even touch your hands?”

“No you can't!”

“Not even this little nose of yours?”

“Hands off my nose! Gawd give me patience!”

“Then what
can
I touch?”

“Nothing! You can't touch nothing!… Oh no sir, no!” The poor, dazed girl let out a sudden shriek. “Holy Mother of God, what are you doing? What's got into you today?”

Edoardo acted swiftly, forcefully, never for an instant relaxing his appearance of being in a towering rage.

Having got himself to his feet and mopped his brow, he hastily lowered his eyes, for he had small wish to look the woman in the face: she was making no secret of her smouldering resentment and animosity, tugging her skirt down and dusting it off… He made for the stairs, started up them, but progress was slow up the first flight. The second was no better… but the third he took at a run. Entering the flat, with clumsy haste he flung open the shutters, crossed to the telephone and dialled Antonio's number.

“Yes?” came his cousin's listless query. “Hullo? Who's calling?”

At Edoardo's end, silence.

“Who's on the line, please? Hullo, hullo?”

Silence.

“Oh, stop fooling! Who is it?”

Edoardo burst into blubbering sobs.

For a minute Antonio hesitated; then he said, “Is that you, Edoardo?”

At this end of the line the sobs slackened, grew less incoherent, paused, as if to leave space for a word that just wouldn't come out, and for two or three deep sighs to relax the cramps in the chest. And finally they ceased.

“Yes,” said Edoardo, “it's me… I… please, I beg you to forgive me.”

“Forgive you? What for?”

“Because I had the impudence to… to tell you off… I… I…” – he choked on another sob – “who am the lowest of the low. I who have…”

“You who have
what
?”

“Next time you see me, Antonio, you must spit in my face! You must stamp all over it and then give your shoes a good clean!”

“But what on earth have you been up to?”

Far in the distance a bomb went off, the window-panes rattled just a little, the sky seemed dimmer…

“Edoardo, what have you
done
?”

Unsparingly self-abrasive, Edoardo told what had happened at the foot of the stairs.

When he had finished there was a pause: Edoardo waited for his cousin to speak. He waited in vain. There was silence on the line.

“Aren't you going to say something?” asked Edoardo, pained.

Dead silence.

“Have you nothing to say?”

Silence.

“Not even a word?”

Antonio still said nothing, though plainly he was listening intently. And another thing he made plain all in a flash was this: that far from condemning Edoardo, or commiserating with him for what had occurred at the foot of the stairs, he envied him. With every throb of blood in his veins, with every least thought in his head, he envied him. Ever more intense, and vehement, and scalding, the force of that envy reached Edoardo over the wire.

“No!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, “no, no, no, no! Believe me, Antonio – I swear by all that's holy – you've got it all wrong – it's not like you say at all –”

“I haven't said anything,” replied Antonio; and, drawing in a mighty breath, he held it for as long as he could, filling the telephone wire with all that was utter silence. Until he too broke into weeping.

Between those tears and Edoardo's there was a great gulf fixed. Far more strangled and desperate this weeping was, and ruptured by the rasp of lungs that for many long years had never for one moment breathed freely of the air of happiness.

Edoardo held on for another minute or two; then, realizing that there were no signs of a let-up, he lost heart, took the instrument from his ear and looked at it. For a long, long time he looked at it, depressed, dismayed, as it gurgled forth the sobs of an incurable adolescent.

“Very bizarre, all this,” he murmured, wiping away a tear now frozen on his cheek. “Very bizarre indeed…”

Then very slowly, very gently, he replaced the receiver.

*
The Fascists banned the use of the polite third-person form of address
lei
as being of foreign origin (from Span,
usted
). They used
Voi
instead.

*
Benedetto Croce

*
Our Duce thinks he's the kipper's knickers! When he struts by, with the air of an Appollo, He's got no idea how everybody snickers…