G. (35 page)

Was his uneasiness partly the result of a premonition of the vast historical changes under way—changes which would transform social and private life and death in Europe to such a degree that he must become unrecognizable to himself? I do not know. He showed no interest in history or politics. From certain things I have already written it would seem that the future filled him with foreboding, but not in a personal sense:

‘As soon as one of you disappears there is another to take his place and the number of places is increasing. There will be shortages of everything in the world before there is a shortage of you. Why should I fear you? It is you who speak of the future and believe in it. I do not.’

In early December G. left London for Trieste. The idea of his going into declared enemy territory came about in the following way. Of his contemporaries at school he had remained in contact with only one: an Anthony Wilmot-Smith who worked at the Foreign Office. They had met at various flying events during the past five years because Wilmot-Smith was also a flying enthusiast. G. happened to complain to him about the way he found himself trapped in England. Such an unpatriotic attitude at such a time might have shocked Wilmot-Smith; in the circumstances it did not, for he had always thought of G., ever since their schooldays when he was nicknamed Garibaldi, as being more than half foreign.

A few days after their conversation he telephoned G. and asked him how well he spoke Italian. Like an Italian, G. told him. They arranged to meet the same evening. Wilmot-Smith explained that since he worked for the Italian desk in the Foreign Office, he was in a position to make an offer, on a personal basis, to his old friend. He could arrange for G. to be given an Italian passport with the surname of G.’s father. With this passport he could leave the country immediately and travel where he wished. In exchange, he would ask G. to visit Trieste and there meet some fellow Italians who might have some messages for him to take out. He assured G. several times that he would be running no appreciable risk, or anyway a far smaller one than going for a flip in a Blériot. To Wilmot-Smith’s surprise and consternation G. acepted the proposition without demanding a single further explanation.

Later Wilmot-Smith tried to point out to G. that the small task he had agreed to undertake would be of great service to the interests of both Italy and Great Britain. The Italians in Trieste, he began to explain, were increasingly restive under the Austro-Hungarian yoke and had to submit to ever more repressive measures; meanwhile His Majesty’s government were trying to seek an accord with the Italian government whereby the Italian right to all Italian-speaking parts of the Adriatic coast would be recognized and admitted as an allied war aim. Beginning with these developments, Wilmot-Smith hoped to come reasonably and reassuringly to the aim of British tactics in Trieste. (The British wished to encourage the Italian nationalists there to demonstrate and so provoke savage Austrian reprisals. These reprisals would then strengthen enormously the popular appeal of the war party in Italy). G. cut short Wilmot-Smith’s
explanation and told him he only needed to know whom he had to meet where. I do not believe, he added, in the Great Causes.

After the Austrian frontier, the train went through a number of deep cuttings and tunnels until it emerged at a point where he could see the whole bay of Trieste before him. He could not think of himself as being in enemy territory. It was winter. The city looked frozen and desolate. The train was ill-heated. The sea was empty of ships. But, as he looked out of the train window down at the streets of buildings arranged sometimes neatly and in other parts haphazardly round the semicircle of the sea, he had a sense of controlled excitement or tension which in itself or by association was pleasurable. It was comparable to what he felt when he was about to enter a house from which he knew the husband or the male owner was absent. This absence, which he has foreseen, fits in with his own presence like a handle to a blade. Inside the house all the furniture and properties which are visible, the curtains and cupboards, the objects on every table, the doors, the carpets, the family beds, the books, the lamps, the portraits have all taken up their positions (without having to be moved a centimetre) to line, like a crowd, the way along which he is about to walk towards the woman who is expecting him.

From the museum garden, on the day he first met Nuša, G. walked slowly towards the Exchange in the Piazza della Borsa. At a corner he stopped to see whether he was being followed. With the streets so empty it must be hard, he thought, to trail somebody and remain unnoticed. He passed the end of the street in which an Austrian banker called Wolfgang von Hartmann lived with his Hungarian wife. Von Hartmann was one of the men with whom he was discussing the fruit-canning project. He retraced his steps and walked down the street, past the house. Behind its windows and its heavy swathes of brocaded curtains, the objects were in place, already
lining the route of his arrival of which the exact day and hour had yet to be arranged. To picture Marika, the wife of von Hartmann, he had only to recall her extraordinary mouth and nose.

In a café just off the Piazza Ponterosso, two men were impatiently awaiting G.

He always makes us wait, grumbled Raffaele, the younger of the two men.

Let us watch him when he comes in, said the other, a man in his late fifties who was known as Dr Donato.

When he entered the café the two men were hidden behind the half-closed door of the back room.

He has come! Dr Donato whispered.

We should ask him straight away to explain himself, said Raffaele.

You are too impatient, my ardent young friend, said Dr Donato. The door had a glass window and the elder man was holding up a corner of the curtain so that he could peer through. I have often had occasion to notice in my work, he continued, how much you can learn about a man if you watch him closely without his realizing it. There is a moral language of gestures. The informer sips his coffee in a different way from other people, a distinctly different way. This is not superstition, there are good reasons for it. For example, the idea may cross his mind that his coffee is poisoned, because his mind is accustomed to intrigue. The idea then becomes evident in the way he picks up the cup.

Her nose broke with all conventions. It was so asymmetrical and irregular that it seemed to be almost shapeless. If a cast had been made of it and it had been removed from the context of her face, it would have looked like a delicate piece of a root. Its protuberances and dents, although very slight in themselves, were like the irregularities one finds on those parts of a plant which grow downwards into the earth towards water, rather than upwards towards light. The whole centre of her face suggested a reversed orientation. The outer edges of her lips were already part of the inside of her mouth. Her nostrils were already her throat. When she was seated, she was already running.

Look! He has chosen a table by the window. Now he is trying to peer down the street. He is moving the curtain aside. But he pretends it is because of the sunlight in his eyes. He is sly. There is no doubt about it, he is as sly as a fox biding his time. Look! He is beckoning to the waitress. A little furtive movement of the head—and she goes because she is inquisitive and can’t resist secrets. You—take you—you would never call a waitress with a gesture like that. Dr Donato let the curtain fall and placed his hand on the younger man’s arm. Everything you do, he explained, has a certain grandeur and confidence. And why, we may ask. Because you want everything to be seen.

Raffaele looked suspiciously at his companion with the thin face and white pointed beard.

Because you have nothing to hide, Dr Donato reassured him.

Dr Donato was by profession a lawyer. His intelligence was evident in his eyes and in his voice which was a little high in tone but very distinct. He took great pleasure in all explanations. He prided himself on being an atheist and a republican. What satisfied him more than anything else was to be able to explain the passion of others. Excess fascinated him because to explain it, in either positive or negative terms, was to demonstrate the full reach of Reason. He had been a member of the Secret Committee of the Italian Irredentist Party in Trieste for twenty years. Many credited him with the famous plot of the tricolour in the Piazza Grande.

On 20 September 1903, exactly as the clock in the Piazza Grande struck noon, a large Italian tricolour unfurled itself and flew from the mast on the tower of the city hall. Police ran into the building and up the stairs to take it down. The door to the tower was locked and barred. Italians ran into the square from all sides to gaze up at the flag against the blue sky. Many thought: when the city is at last Italian, a flag will fly like that every day. 20 September had been chosen because it was the anniversary of the day Rome was declared the capital of Italy. The flag was visible even to ships at anchor in the bay.

When asked about his contribution to this affair, Dr Donato would
shrug his thin shoulders and say, as if speaking in a code and wanting to emphasize the fact: We Italians are the most musical race in Europe, and our second most outstanding gift is our ingenuity.

Once more Dr Donato lifted up the corner of the curtain. He has seen something, he said.

What has he seen?

Somebody.

Can you see them? asked Raffaele.

No, but something has reassured him. He looks pleased. Who it was or exactly what sign passed between the two of them, we cannot yet know for we are not yet certain of his motivations. Is he really as interested as he pretends in canning fruit? Who exactly is he? When we have established that—

Raffaele interrupted the older man without trying to disguise the impatience he could no longer contain. Let us confront him with the facts, he said. He led the way across the café floor to the table by the window. A big man, Raffaele had the air of having been anointed since infancy with praises and love. (A semblance which may well signify the opposite.) As he walked across the café, he attracted considerable attention. The clientèle was entirely Italian and Raffaele was well known for the patriotic fervour of his articles in
Il Piccolo
and the way he cunningly evaded the Austrian censorship. He walked across the café as if he were leading, not one thin man with a white beard, but a whole company of his compatriots.

When all three men were seated, their heads close together over the centre of the table, Raffaele asked G. whether he had brought any news from Rome. He spoke quietly, so as not to be overheard, but his jaw was thrust forward and he was scowling.

No, I did not go there.

And the present for Mother?

It should have arrived by now.

You entrusted it to somebody else!

Yes.

To whom?

In an exaggeratedly conspiratorial whisper G. said: If you are working for Mother, the fewer names you know the better. That should be one of the first rules of a clandestine party.

Two weeks ago you told us you were going! shouted Raffaele, pushing his chair back and making people at the nearby tables look up.

I changed my mind.

Men who change their minds are traitors!

When Raffaele was moved he had to make a noise. The first thing he was willing to abandon was secrecy. He considered numbers more important. His own duty, as he saw it, was to rally thousands of Triestine Italians to the cause by setting them an example. The example of a man who would not be intimidated.

Wait until you hear from Mother, replied G., again whispering, then you’ll know whether she received our present safely.

You are a traitor and a coward! And either way you are bloodless. At this hour when the whole future of our family is in the balance, you have nothing better to do than dither here discussing how to put fruit into tins—Raffaele lowered his voice at this point in order to underline the fact that he, unlike G., was prepared to use words that indeed required whispering—
WITH THE ENEMY
! Or do you talk about something else with them? Our Mother, for example!

Dr Donato intervened.
Caro
—he addressed Raffaele—do not let us start accusing each other. He is with us, not against us; he has already helped us on several occasions. He planned to make a journey and he found he was unable to do so and he sent a cousin—shall we say a cousin?—instead. Do not let us jump to conclusions, for my own part I am persuaded—he turned towards G. placing his hands palms down on the table—I am persuaded that we can and must
count upon you. Like us you are a dreamer and like us you wish to make the dream reality. The only question, which will eventually answer itself, is whether or not we share the same dream. His voice trailed away and he made his breath whistle softly between his teeth as if he were pretending to fall asleep. Behind his pince-nez his eyelids almost covered his eyes.

You are wrong, said G., I am not a dreamer.

All men dream.

Some less than others.

The dream of our country made great and powerful again is a dream shared by forty millions, said Raffaele. He held a single finger up in the air. This was an Irredentist gesture signifying a United Italy.

G. silently addressed Dr Donato: Twelve young women sitting on the floor at your feet, benefiting from your stories after Trieste has become Italian, you select one and when you take hold of her breasts she cries out lovingly: Papa! Papa! That is your dream.

Have you any daughters, Dr Donato?

Unfortunately not, why do you ask?

A confusion about names, that is all.

Raffaele gripped the table with his hands. It was time, he believed, for plain speaking; Donato should warn G. that if they found any further reason for suspecting him, his life would be in danger. Raffaele distrusted subtlety because he associated it with the intrigues and subterfuges which had bedevilled Italian political life for half a century. Intrigue for him meant the corridor and the lobby; and to these he opposed the battlefield and an overseas empire where Italy would rediscover herself and again impress Roman virtue upon the world. He advocated a return to the austere patriotic purity of a Garibaldi. He saw Donato as a latter-day, obsolete and over-crafty Cavour. He respected his astuteness but he believed that this time, unlike the first, Cavour’s influence should
be second to the General’s. Once, in the Ginnastica Triestina, he had taken a sword down from the wall and cut the air with it round the older man’s head and shoulders. Donato also liked to imagine that he had a lot in common with Cavour. And so, as the sword whirred through the air, he calmed himself by recalling how patient Cavour had sometimes to be in face of Garibaldi’s childishness.