Eleven (18 page)

Seppe smiled and dashed away.

He was gone quite a while, Merrick thought, though he was not sure, and automatically looked at his watch, as if that could tell him anything, for he hadn’t the slightest idea what time it had been when the boy left. Then just as Merrick turned around, the boy appeared, on his way back.

“Can I have a cigarette?” It was the second time Seppe had asked him.

“I’m afraid not,” Merrick said, refusing for the second time, though he felt himself relenting. Alone, he would have given the boy a cigarette. “Why don’t we take a little walk?”

They walked up the road that went past the hotel. Seppe was quieter, as if the darkness had muted him.

“Where do you live?” Merrick asked.

“Down there.” Seppe pointed behind him.

“We should walk that way then. It’s late.” Merrick turned.

When they came to the Hotel Orlando again, Seppe waved a hand and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow on the beach. Good-bye!”

“Good-bye,” Merrick said.

“
Grazie!
”

“
Prego!
”

Merrick went into his hotel. As he crossed the lobby, the manager, a man of about forty with a moustache, came toward him.

“
Signor
Merrick—ah—” He beckoned Merrick into a corner of the lobby. Before he could speak, a large-breasted blonde Italian woman came up and joined them, saying to Merrick:

“
Signor
, excuse me, but we cannot take street boys into our hotel. Never!”

“Signor—Just a minute, Eleanora,
piano piano
, I will talk to him. First of all, we are not sure.”

“Ah-h, sure enough!” said Eleanora.

“Signor,” continued the manager, “there has been a small robbery.”

Now the American woman with the light-brown hair was walking toward them. “Hello. Look—I’m not trying to make any accusations, but my gold compact, my cigarette lighter—”

“And fifty thousand lire,” Eleanora put in.

“All I had in this bag,” said the American woman, holding out a tapestry bag to show Merrick. “I didn’t miss anything till two minutes ago. The only time it was out of my sight was when I had it on the table in the ladies’ room for two minutes.”

“A clever thief. He put rocks in it to weight it,” said Eleanora. “Show them.”

“Yes,” said the American woman, smiling a little. “Stones from the beach.”

Merrick looked into her open pocketbook and saw some broken tiles of the sort he and Seppe had gathered that afternoon.

“Did that street boy leave you this evening to go to the toilet?” asked Eleanora. “He did. I saw him leave the table. That boy, I know him, I know his face. He is not a good boy. They call him Seppe. What is his last name?” She frowned as if the name would come to her, and looked at the manager. Then to Merrick, “Where does he live?”

“I don’t know,” Merrick said, in a daze. “I am sure he
didn’t
,” he said earnestly.

But despite his conviction, Merrick was completely overridden. The manager went to the desk to call the police. The blonde Italian woman continued to rant about street boys in decent hotels, the American woman was downcast over her gold compact, but not angry at Merrick.

“I will certainly do what I can,” Merrick said. “Certainly.” But he hadn’t the least idea what to do.

Somehow, Merrick and the American woman found themselves out in the garden. Each was having a brandy. Merrick was jolted by its sharpness in his mouth. He tried to listen to what the woman
was saying. But it seemed of no importance whatever. It seemed they were waiting for something. When Merrick finally looked at his watch, it was after midnight.

The hotel manager came out to tell them that the police had gone to the boy’s house, but that the boy had not come home. “His name is Dell’ Isola. He lives up in Città Morta.” He waved an arm at another section of the town, which Merrick knew sat halfway up a mountain. “
Signora
, I am sorry. The morning should shed some light.” The manager smiled, and left.

The next thing Merrick was really conscious of was the hot water in his bath. He could not believe it. No, it was too absurd. The stones—they could have been put there by anybody. Certainly it was a clever action, the action of an old, experienced thief.

The next morning at nine, when Merrick came out of his room, the manager greeted him in the hall and said, “Well, the boy is home this morning. He came in very late last night, his mother said. But of course they deny everything. No money, no compact, nothing. They are together, the whole family.” He waggled his hand, palm downward. “The police searched the house, of course.”

“Well—you see?” Merrick replied calmly. “I’m sorry it happened, but you see it wasn’t Seppe.”

The manager’s lips parted, but he did not say anything. Merrick walked on. In the lobby, the desk clerk handed him a telegram that he said had just come in. It was from the Denises.

DON’T WORRY. YOU ARE AHEAD SCHEDULE. STILL IN ZURICH. MUNICH SENT US TELEGRAM. SEE YOU SOON MUNICH. LOVE. BETTY-ALEX

He must have wired them that he would be late for Munich, Merrick realized. But when had he sent the wire? He didn’t remember sending it. He only remembered feeling intensely a couple of days ago that he must stay on and on at the Orlando, and that he didn’t want any engagements to pry him away.

Merrick stopped at the small bank of the town and cashed two thousand dollars in Travelers Checks into lire. Then he took the lire to the post office and made out four money orders for lire to the equivalent of five hundred dollars each, and sent them to Mrs. Dino Bartucci in the little town.

Seppe was not down at the beach that morning. Merrick lunched at a beach front restaurant, and around two, he saw Seppe hopping down the plaza steps on one bare foot, his hands in his pockets. Then he whirled in circles, his eyes shut, like a blind dancer. From these antics, Merrick knew that Seppe had seen him, no doubt before Merrick saw him. At last Seppe drifted over, hands still in his pockets, and with a timid smile.

“Well, good afternoon,” said Merrick.

“Hi.”

“I hear the police called on you last night. This morning, too.”

“Yes, but they didn’t find anything. Why should they?” His hands flew out. “I didn’t have anything.” Seppe’s eyes were earnest and intense.

Merrick smiled and relaxed. “No, I didn’t think you did.”

“
Gesu Maria!
Police in
my
house!” He glanced around to see if anyone were listening, though he had not spoken loudly, and the man at the nearest table was buried behind the Paris
Herald-Tribune. “
I never had police in
my
house before. What did you tell them?”

“Well—I certainly didn’t tell them to go looking for you. It was the hotel manager’s idea. Sit down, Seppe.—They thought you robbed a woman’s pocketbook. I couldn’t stop them from going to you.”

Seppe said something under his breath that Merrick could not understand, and shook his head.

“I’ve just had lunch. Would you like something?”

They spent the afternoon together, taking a carozza ride around the town, and shooting rifles at a booth in a corner of the plaza. But Seppe did not walk all the way back to the hotel with Merrick. He stopped at the last curve in the road before the hotel, and said with an air of contempt (for the hotel) that he didn’t care to walk any farther.

“Okay,” Merrick said agreeably. “Well—take it easy, Seppe. See you tomorrow maybe.” He went on.

The woman who had been robbed did not speak to Merrick that evening, or even nod to him. Merrick didn’t care. She associated him with her loss, mistakenly, and there was nothing he could do about it. Merrick sat long in the swing chair after dinner, alone and dreaming.

Seppe seemed much happier the next day, and also the day after that, when he announced that his father was going to buy a television set.

Merrick looked at Seppe and thought,
could
it be that he had stolen all those lire, the compact? Merrick frowned. No. His whole mind and his heart rejected the idea. “Seppe, you did not take the money from the lady’s pocketbook—did you?”

They were leaning against an inverted fishing boat on the beach.

“No,” Seppe said, but less positively than three days before.

Merrick frowned harder, and forced himself to say, “I’ll give you—ten thousand lire if you tell me the truth.”

Seppe grinned mischievously. “Let’s see the ten thousand.”

“Tell me the truth first.”

“All right. I stole it,” he said softly.

Merrick began to breathe shallowly, as if a weight sat on his chest.
I don’t believe you
, he thought. And he made no move to reach for the lire.

“Where is the ten thousand?”

“I don’t believe you. Prove that you stole it.”

“Prove it?” The mischievous grin grew wider. Seppe pulled a hand slowly from his pocket, and looked around him as the hand came out in a fist. The fist opened, and in his palm lay a lipstick which looked like gold, but wasn’t, Merrick knew, though it was obviously expensive. It was set with small red stones that sparkled like cut rubies. The lipstick case seemed to scream that it was American, and the possession of the rich woman with the light-brown hair.

Merrick believed. He saw in a rush, Seppe spilling out his loot in his house, the fifty thousand lire being hidden somewhere, the gold compact and the lighter whisked off by someone, maybe by an older brother, to be sold in Rome. Merrick ground his teeth and set them together. Then he walked away. He walked slowly. The boy came tagging after him, asking him questions in an anxious tone, pleading with him, hanging finally to Merrick’s wrist, but Merrick paid no attention to him. Merrick walked on past the place where people turned to go into the town. He walked on along the beach, and finally Seppe unstuck himself and hung back and Merrick was alone.

That night, Merrick sat so long in the garden that a busboy, come to collect the glasses of the candles that had burned out, told him
that they were about to close the gates. Merrick detested walking into the hotel hall, into his room. It was like living the naked, painful moment all over again, when he had learned that Seppe had stolen.

Merrick received in the morning post his four money orders with their envelopes unopened. On each one was stamped defunto, the Italian word for deceased. They had mistaken
Signora
for
Signor
, Merrick thought, though on each envelope,
Signora
was clearly spelled out. Merrick went straight to the post office with the envelopes.

“Ah,
si
,” said the woman behind the money order window. “We noticed these this morning . . . No, it is not a mistake, the wife is dead also.” She turned around. “Franco! Come here a moment.”

A dark-haired young man in shirtsleeves came over, glanced at the envelopes and said, “Ah,
si
!” then looked at Merrick. “
Si, signor
, I happen to know, because I have a cousin who lives in that town. The mother killed herself and her five children with gas from the oven. Just two or three days ago.”

Merrick was stunned. “You’re sure?”

“Sure,
signor. Sicuro
. The
defunto
was stamped in the village. Besides, my cousin wrote me.”

“Thank you.” Merrick gathered his envelopes together. One, two, three, four. Each seemed to be a slap in his face.

“
Signor
!—You must cash them,” said the woman at the window, and Merrick turned back. “What can you do with them?” she asked rhetorically, with a smile and a shrug. “You knew the woman, too?”

Merrick shook his head. “No.”

Five minutes later, he walked out of the post office with a piece of paper that would enable him to get the money from the town bank. He went back to the hotel and sat in the garden. He missed
lunch, and only reluctantly left the garden around eight to bathe and then to have dinner. That night, he told the busboy that he wished to spend the night in the garden, whether they locked the gate or not.

“It becomes cold, sir,” said the boy.

“Not very cold.”

It became cold toward dawn, but Merrick did not mind it. He changed his clothes early in the morning for slacks and a sport-shirt, then returned to the garden with a book, which he did not read. Only in the garden did he feel secure, as if he had a grasp of any kind on life or his own existence. Though he was quite aware that Helena was not with him, in the flesh, she was with him every other way in the garden. He did not have illusions of hearing her voice, it was not so physical, what he felt, but he felt her presence in every particle of the air, in every blade of grass, every flower, bush and tree. She loved the garden as much as he. His thoughts were also unphysical, never of Helena’s smile, but of her good nature, of her wonderful health that had let her ride horseback, play tennis and swim right up to the time of her death, of her love and her care for their home, whatever and wherever it had been—a simple home at first, yet even when they had acquired a staff of servants, Helena had never stopped doing some of the cooking: every dinner had to have some item in it that she had prepared with her own hands.

The blonde Italian woman whose name Merrick had forgotten came out to speak to him.

“I’m quite comfortable here,” Merrick said. “If I’m not bothering anyone else,” he added somewhat challengingly. He did not monopolize the swing chair, certainly, but frequently walked about or sat on a rock.

She said something about his health, catching a cold, and about his room being unsatisfactory.

“There’s nothing wrong with my room, I prefer the garden,” Merrick said.

Some time later, it rained. Merrick sat in the swing chair, which had a short roof, but his feet and the lower part of his legs got soaked. He was oblivious of it, or rather he didn’t mind. A garden could not for ever be a garden without rain. Two or three people ran out to speak to him during the rain, and ran back again, but when the rain stopped, five people came out, three who spoke to him and two who just stood and watched curiously.