Letter from Casablanca (7 page)

Madame was a treasure to introduce me as her “artistic secretary, Mademoiselle Rossi-Fini.” It helped me to find the self-composure I’d needed. Not that I felt embarrassed, let’s be quite clear about this, but I don’t deny being a little excited, yes. And then the Delatours weren’t exactly the kind of people who put you at your ease, especially Madame Delatour. As a young girl, she must have been gorgeous. Now she cultivated a kind of austere beauty,
à la
Grace Kelly, but more haughty and cold: very thin eyebrows, ash-blonde hair pulled back at the nape of her neck, the stretched face of women who go to Swiss clinics. On the other hand, the years gave Monsieur Delatour a touch of charm, as happens sometimes to men who aren’t very good-looking: silvery temples, lines and crow’s-feet
around his eyes, a light tan, blue eyes. He was a Von Karajan type, but more solid, less esthetic.

Giuseppe entered bringing the avocado cocktails. In their silver cups the pistachio green of the avocado cubes sprinkled with a very light coating of shaved ice and with a drop of ketchup looked magnificent. Oh, a trifle (I pretended to be evasive, emphasizing that I was pretending to be evasive), old Francine had taught me to make it. Papa was so fond of avocados, actually he adored all exotic fruit, perhaps for esthetic reasons, who knows? (He had a terrible esthetic sense, Papa did.) An artist? No, no, he was in mining. (Ah, yes, really a terrible esthetic sense.) Actually, a certain exotic fruit is an authentic pleasure for the eyes, no? Don’t a pineapple, a papaya, a guava, an avocado put together make in their own way an Ikebana? An Ikebana without a title, that’s all.

—And what is this one called?—

Madame Delatour’s question caught us by surprise, an authentic cold shower. In the haste to prepare it, in the agitation of the unexpected arrival, Madame and I had certainly not thought to give it a name. I was silent, waiting for Madame’s answer. Instead, Madame elegantly extricated herself with an inviting gesture toward me. —Please, dear, you tell her,—it meant. —I don’t want to deprive you of this pleasure.—

I groped desperately in the search for a title worthy of the occasion. Madame Delatour’s eyes pierced me like two pins, searching and skeptical. —Bliss … Heavenly Bliss,—I said. —It’s a traditional
moribana
,—I continued in one breath. —It means the enchantment that is born in the soul of the masters of the house upon the arrival of welcome guests.—

Madame Delatour finally let her glacial expression melt. Her drawn face relaxed (it seemed to me to be uglier, I must say) and opened in an affable smile. She was about to surrender. I left it to Giuseppe, who was coming in with the
cart, to conquer her once and for all. The roast pheasant, gently laid on the
flambé
tray, was superb. Before entrusting me with the cart, Giuseppe drew out the tail feathers which ornamented the tray, uncorked the champagne, and opened the cognac with impressive calm, and only then did he say—Monsieur Delatour, there’s a telephone call for you from Paris.—He had some unexpected talents, the good Giuseppe, perhaps I had underestimated him. In the meantime the ladies had united against Monsieur Huppert in regard to hunting. Proceeding from the pheasant the conversation had come to hunting in general, and Monsieur Huppert, somewhat rashly, had confessed his passion for safaris.

—What!—(Madame Delatour spoke in her detached tone of voice but was visibly scandalized.) To shoot down a gazelle, that mass of
élan vital
contained in the gracefulness of a slender body, to kill that marvel of creation, was not this a crime against nature?

Monsieur Huppert tried to explain, without too much enthusiasm, that on safaris not only gazelles were killed, or at least not exclusively. He appealed to the thrill of danger, of man pitted against the animal, he even cited Hemingway. But he was clearly at a disadvantage. And then he was isolated. I refrained from getting into the situation. It seemed risky to me.

Monsieur Delatour returned with a rather worried expression, sat down distractedly, seemed to be far away. The conversation resumed with a certain weariness. It was just the moment to
flamber
. It would revive the atmosphere a little. —Oops,—I said, carrying the match from the fireplace like a torch. —The infidel is condemned to the funeral pyre. Justice is served!—It seemed an appreciable witticism to me, but nobody laughed. I made a fiasco.

—At Dakar didn’t you make the contacts we had decided on?—Monsieur Delatour suddenly asked, staring at Monsieur Huppert.

Monsieur Huppert started slightly, was silent for a moment
as if uncomfortable, drank a sip of champagne. —I’ll explain later,—he said. —It wasn’t very easy this time.—

—I don’t believe it’s necessary,—continued Monsieur Delatour. —I have received some
very confidential
information from Paris, and you know from which source.—He spoke in a dry, neutral tone, without a shade of courtesy, as if he had never seen Monsieur Huppert. —The Germans settled the deal, as was foreseeable. Now we can leave everything in the warehouse to age.—

The cognac on the pheasant was burning merrily, with a sizzling blue flame full of promise. The recipe called for at least one minute of flame, but probably it didn’t last that long; I hadn’t put on much cognac. On the other hand, it was better this way. I felt it was just the moment to come to the point: the eye had had its share, now it was the stomach’s turn. I carved hurriedly and called Giuseppe to serve. Madame Delatour took a morsel of breast hidden under a truffle. She was on a strict diet, the embalmed beauty. Damn! Madame Huppert, perhaps not to embarrass her guest, followed her example. When Giuseppe offered me the tray, I remained undecided whether to do the same. There was an upper thigh with two threads of meat of much reduced dimensions that might do well enough, inasmuch as after supper I’d always be able to pay a little visit to Constance. Then it struck me that Giuseppe and that greedy Constance would have made a clean sweep of the leftovers, happy as clams that the gentry had such small appetites, and I served myself a generous slice of breast. As I said, I’d eaten practically nothing since morning, the sandwich for dinner had only tickled my stomach, the day had been stressful … and, after all, I deserved that pheasant.

—I don’t know if you’re aware of the problems that your lack of timeliness is causing us,—Monsieur Delatour said in the same tone as before.

Monsieur Huppert said that he was aware of them.

—Good,—continued Monsieur Delatour. —Now try to translate these problems into dollars.—

Probably Monsieur Huppert did the translation mentally, because he grew pale; the fork with the truffle remained in mid-air. His forehead was beaded with a veil of perspiration.

—Monsieur Huppert,—said Monsieur Delatour in a cutting tone—are you aware that we pay you to sell? You cease to sell, we cease to pay.—

I blessed Giuseppe, who came in with dessert. It was a frozen pineapple mousse garnished with candied cherries, Constance’s masterpiece, which I knew from memory: I was crazy about it. When Giuseppe served me, I whispered to him to bring more champagne. (I had providentially put two more bottles in the fridge an hour before.) And to do it at once. Then I got up to light the fire, not without remarking that that evening I felt exactly like a vestal. Vestal or pyromaniac, the choice was up to them. Madame Huppert had a good laugh, and Monsieur Delatour joined her. The atmosphere was frankly brightening. I thought that there was nothing better than a good fire in the fireplace to relax the nerves. And then Giuseppe came in with the bucket of ice and the Dom Perignon wrapped in a snow-white napkin (impeccable, the old Giuseppe—he was behaving like a
maître d
), drew the cork from the bottle with a pop, and refilled the glasses.

—You are aware,—said Monsieur Delatour again to Monsieur Huppert (but now his voice was more relaxed, more conciliatory)—you are aware, I hope, that if you want to regain the lost territory at this point, the only remaining choice is X-21. Moreover, if you had followed my advice, you’d have settled the terms last year.—

Monsieur Huppert did not yet seem completely restored from the slight dispute. He was still pale; I noticed that his lips trembled imperceptibly. He talked with his eyes lowered, on the defensive, that fool Monsieur Huppert. It seemed he
was going to purposely ruin the whole evening, which until this moment had been very precariously restored.

—But it’s not possible …—he mumbled. —You understand, Monsieur Delatour … it’s not a question of it being a whim of mine … I mean it’s a thing …—

As I anticipated, Monsieur Delatour lost his patience once and for all, blood surged to his face, his neck muscles tensed. Monsieur Huppert’s obstinacy had succeeded in ruining the evening.

—It’s a thing…? —he said, trying to control himself. —It’s what kind of thing?—

—Let’s say that it leads to imprisonable falsifications,—said Monsieur Huppert.

—Oh!—murmured Monsieur Delatour sadly. —Progress has its own risks, dear Monsieur Huppert, don’t you think so? Civilization is always paid in some way. One doesn’t pass with impunity from caves to refrigerators.—

Monsieur Huppert was silent, staring stubbornly at the pineapple mousse which he’d left on his plate. There was a very long moment of silence. The only sound was the crackling of the fire in the fireplace.

Monsieur Delatour assumed a conciliatory, almost good-natured tone. He spoke as if to a child who had committed some unintentional foolishness. —Never mind what I told you about not conquering the market with your methods. I don’t want to teach you your job, for God’s sake, but after all you can’t claim to sell certain products accompanied by certificates of guarantee. How many other times have you brought those poor people the refined products of our civilization without writing treatises of ethics on them? …. You need good manners … you understand … delicacy… . Find a name that’s a little innocuous and … conventional, that’s it, and possibly attractive. They’re primitives, believe me. Monsieur Huppert, the primitives love poetic names,
mythical names. Don’t consider leaving any signed documents, it’s always better to leave … how do you say? … a pseudonym.—

His eyes wandered around. His gaze rested on the fireplace, on Madame Huppert who was watching the fire, on me who was staring at him, on the champagne, on the Ikebana in the middle of the table.

—For example,—he whispered insinuatingly, in the tone of someone who has had an excellent idea—for example, begin by selling them a million dollars’ worth of “Heavenly Bliss.’’—

Just at that moment Giuseppe appeared to ask if he should serve the coffee.

—In a few minutes,—said Madame. —We’ll have it by the fire.—

H
e was a happy child, really happy. He was always laughing, so happy, and he even had a sense of humor. For instance, my sister Elsa was crazy about jokes, she knew a hundred of them, and when he saw her he would run up to her and cry, Aunt Elsa, a joke! Aunt Elsa, a joke! And he would laugh, but as if he were amused, like an adult. Perhaps he really got that happiness from Elsa, who was so vital, even too much so, maybe a little reckless, but at least she enjoyed her life, after all, in her own way. Affectionate, too. And he remained that way when he was grown-up. Happy, well, no, but very affectionate. Never once did he forget my birthday, even when he was far away, always something, a rose from Inter-Flora, a telegram … Would you like to see his telegrams? I have them here in this little Droste cocoa tin. Look, from 1970 to today there are eight telegrams. This one here, for instance, is from four years ago. Listen, it says
He thinks of you with gratitude for the life that you gave him
. Yes, it’s signed Piticche, we called him that. It’s never come out in the newspapers, nobody knows it, it’s something kept in the family. For us it was a pet name. I’d be grateful if you’d be quiet about it, too. Afterwards in the newspapers it comes between quotation marks after his real name: “called
‘Pilicche.’” It’s awful, don’t you think? How do you get people to understand that Piticche’s a pet name? Even you don’t understand it. If only I could explain to you the origin of the name, its meaning, but no one can understand what it means to me. In names there’s the time spent together, persons who have died, things done together, places, other names, our life. Piticche means little one. He was really tiny when he was young. He was blond, look at this photograph, he’s four years old—not that one, he’s eight there—this one here crouching near Pinocchio. Don’t you see that Pinocchio is taller than he is?

At our house there was a lemon tree. It grew espaliered against the facade facing south. Its branches reached the window of the upper floor. He spent his childhood playing with a Pinocchio, this one here in the photograph. “Oh, ho! Here comes Pinocchio! …” I still hear his voice repeating that refrain down there in the courtyard. At that time Rodolfo was already sick, I spent a lot of time in the bedroom taking care of him. His little voice came to me through the window. He was always playing with Pinocchio, it was his only company. He usually made him die, hanging him from the lemon tree as the cat and wolf disguised as brigands do in the book, and then he would make him a little grave of earth with a cross of reeds, but naturally he hid Pinocchio somewhere else. Then the fairy with the dark blue hair would arrive and go and cry over the tomb of her Pinocchio—that is, over the flower bed by the lemon tree. I was the fairy. He would watch me mischievously, because it was all arranged between us. I would kneel down in front of the lemon tree and cry, “Pinocchio, my poor little Pinocchio, I’ll never see you again, oh! oh! oh!” And then I would hear a weak voice, because the pretense was that it should seem to come from under the ground, which said, “My beautiful little sister, do not be in such despair. If you love your Pinocchio, he’s alive!” I would look around in amazement, searching for that voice, and see him standing
like a puppet on his matchstick legs, thrusting out his arms to me, moving them like a marionette, and I would run to hug him and hold him tight to my breast. And while this scene was going on, he was laughing crazily, jumping up with his hands behind his back and doing a kind of ballet, singing, “Oh, ho! Here comes Pinocchio!” And the game was over.

Yvette gave him his name, Piti, but it was he who called himself Piticche, pointing to his chest. It was ’49. Elsa had brought Yvette and Gustave, she’d found them in the station at Livorno some years before. They didn’t know where to go. They had with them four frying pans and a Siamese cat they called Mayer that died a month later. He was a beekeeper in the Ardenne. They escaped to the south without a plan, just to escape, otherwise they’d have been deported. Elsa told them they could come, to our house, soup was always a good remedy. They said they’d go when the front had passed, then they stayed for four years. They were refined persons, they became like relatives. Yvette died last year. They have a son, a dentist in Marseilles, she was pregnant later when they returned to France… . Am I straying from the subject? I know that I’m straying. Let me stray, then I’ll come to the point.

I’m sure we loved him very much. Do you have children? Do you love your children? I know, there is more than one way. Look, it was ten years before we had him. We’d done everything. I had a fibroma, not that it bothered me, but if I wanted a baby I had to have an operation. It was ’39, there wasn’t penicillin then, I got septicemia. To save me they gave me paraffin injections in the thigh so the infection localized there—an abscess comes and the surgeon cuts it. I have legs full of scars. He was born in ’46, it wasn’t a good time to be born. Many were born in ’46, the soldiers came home, those who hadn’t died. No, Rodolfo didn’t get his illness in the war, he returned healthy, only a little thinner. He got sick the first time in ’51. Who knows why? If we knew why we get sick, we wouldn’t get sick. But he lasted a long time, until ’61—ten
years. A little longer, in fact, he died in December. Excuse me if I cry. I didn’t want to cry, but the tears come down by themselves. It’s good for me to cry? You’re right, it’s good for me to cry.

The film I liked best among the few I’ve seen was called
Roman Holiday
—I remember that one as if it were yesterday—with Gregory Peck, and I liked Gregory Peck very much. I don’t remember the actress, she was very good. I know it doesn’t interest you, but it has something to do with it, I’m just telling you that Rodolfo had promised that all three of us would take a trip to Rome. He seemed to be better, there were years when he seemed to recover, we made a lot of plans for a long time, Rodolfo even bought a map so he could study the two-day tourist itineraries. I won’t repeat it to you, but I could, I remember it perfectly. Then all of a sudden Rodolfo needed dialysis, there wasn’t any money to go to Rome, so we went to see
Roman Holiday
. We even took the boy, though maybe it was a boring film for an eleven-year-old. However, we did see a lot of the famous places in Rome. There was one very funny scene when they go to visit some historic buildings and at a certain point he puts his hand into the mouth of a big stone mask on the porch of a church, and the legend says that if someone tells a lie, the mouth bites off his hand. He turns toward her—oh! it was Audrey Hepburn—and I think he tells her, “I love you,” and at that point he gives a cry and pulls out his arm without his hand, because he’s hidden it in the sleeve of his jacket, and they both laugh and hug each other.

We were always close to him. He never lacked affection, if this is what you were thinking. We were a very united family and he never gave us any worry, with Rodolfo in that condition, only comfort. He was so intelligent and particularly gifted in school, he was always an exceptional student—diplomas, medals, prizes. I didn’t want to send him to the lyceum, it didn’t seem to me a school appropriate to our
situation. Afterwards what can a person with a lyceum certificate do? On the other hand, with a diploma in bookkeeping or surveying it’s always possible to find a job. But it was his professor who prevented me from doing it. He said that it was a crime, it really was, a boy of exceptional intelligence with A’s in Italian and Latin—to send him to a technical school was a crime. Besides, I never had to spend anything for his studies, not even later. He always supported himself with his splendid intelligence. He’s a little poet, his professor told me. This he got from Rodolfo. You say also his political ideas? Lei’s not talk nonsense. When Rodolfo died, he wasn’t yet fifteen years old. What ideas is it possible to think about at that age? Of course Rodolfo had his political ideas, they were well-known, I’m proud of them, yes. He was in the Resistance, of course, and also the war in Spain with the International Brigades, he took part in the battle of the Ebro. He knew the great people of that time—Longo, El Campesino, La Pasionaria. He always talked about this, you know, they were his favorite memories, especially in his last years. When he talked about La Pasionaria he called her Dolores, or else Ibarruri, as if she were an intimate friend. I see him again on the divan, he spent the afternoons on the divan with a lap robe. He was emaciated, hollow cheeks, the shadow of my Rodolfo… . And Piticche stayed to listen to him with his eyes watchful, he liked his father’s stories very much. Then they sang some Spanish songs together that Rodolfo knew, Piticche had learned them right away, too, “
Gandesa
,” for example:
Si me quieres escribir ya sabes mi paradero, en el frente de Gandesa primera linea de fuego
… No, he was not a communist, he was a libertarian socialist. He said that La Pasionaria had been a friend, too, that they had fought side by side, that she was an exceptional woman. Then they had had a furious quarrel, she said ugly words to him, and he retorted that one day she would cry bitterly over the mistakes she had
made. He talked about it with much pain. He said that she had sold herself to the Russians, that she had committed atrocities against her comrades.

He was a dreamer, my Rodolfo. This he taught our son. And then he loved culture, books, he read a lot of them in his life, a kind of adoration. He said that in every book there’s always a man, and that to burn a book is like burning a person. He taught him the pleasure of reading … and writing, too. They wrote each other letters. They played a game, it was a beautiful game, I mean I think it was a very poetic thing. They read the books and then they wrote letters to each other as if each of them were a character in the books that they’d read, imaginary characters or historic personages. It was the last year of Rodolfo’s life. They wrote each other dozens of letters. Whoever received a letter read it at supper that evening. For me they were very beautiful moments. Excuse me if I cry. Rodolfo received many letters from Livingstone—Piticche liked being Livingstone so much—and then from Huckleberry Finn, from Kim, Gavroche, Pasteur. They were written with much maturity. I must have them somewhere, someday I’ll set out to look for them. And yet he was only fifteen years old, a child.

Rodolfo died in December of ’61, I know that I already told you. He spent his last days very upset, but not because of his illness. He was tormented by what was happening in the world, that is in Russia, I wouldn’t know exactly, I know that Khrushchev had revealed the atrocities committed by his predecessors, and he was in anguish. He didn’t sleep anymore, even the sleeping pills had no effect on him. Then one day a letter arrived for him. The return address said: “La Pasionaria, Moscow.’’ And inside was written: “Dolores Ibarruri sheds bitter tears.”

So, that was my son. What did they do to him? I saw his photo in the newspapers. They slaughtered him, and I couldn’t even see him. They wrote that he did … I don’t have
the courage to say it … dreadful things. Did they say dreadful? However, you’ve heard another story, the story of a person you don’t know. I’ve talked to you about my Piticche. I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention this name in your newspaper. Excuse me if I cry. I didn’t want to cry, but the tears come down by themselves. It’s good for me to cry? You’re right, it’s good for me to cry.