North from Rome (8 page)

“We like the view,” Ferris said, pointing to the window, and quickly picking up a black lace brassière lying over the arm of a chair, he retreated towards the bedroom. He came back, fastening his cuffs, and trying to assume control of the interview. “Writing a new play?” he asked.

Lammiter said, “I keep trying to settle down to work. But I’ve had a bad attack of distraction. Today—well, I’ve decided to clear up the current batch of problems, and then, perhaps, I’ll have some peace to settle down to a hard job of work.”

Ferris lit a cigarette and dropped the match carefully into a pot of flowers. “What’s on your mind?”

“I want to get in touch with Bunny.”

“Well—go ahead!” Ferris pointed. “The telephone is in the hall.”

“Would you call for me? I’ll wait here. I don’t want to call and then find he isn’t there.”

Ferris glanced at him with a slight look of surprise, followed by amusement. “And then have someone insist that you leave your name? It is odd, isn’t it, how a reasonably honest man feels impelled to answer truthfully on the telephone?”

Lammiter grinned. It was pleasant to be judged an honest
man, even reasonably so. “You were in O.S.S.?” Ferris looked as if he might have been World War II vintage.

“No. Navy. But I enjoy a good Hitchcock.”

“Oh—I’m not on any hush-hush job. Nothing like that.”

“Of course not.” Ferris smiled broadly. “You sound like a real pal of Bunny’s. He’s always engaged in some quip or merry prank.”

Lammiter liked Professor Ferris’s flexible use of language. He also liked the prompt way Ferris moved into the hall and put the call through. He had to make two calls: one to the Embassy, one to a private address. In both cases he left his own name, a sure sign of failure.

“Bunny’s said to be in Naples,” he reported when he returned, “but he’s expected back some time today. I left word for him to phone me fastest. Where can I have him reach you when he does get back?”

“I don’t know. I’ve practically checked out of my hotel. There’s just the luggage to collect and the last bill to pay.”

“You’re leaving Rome?”

“Well—no. Not actually.” He hesitated. “I just want to keep some people guessing.”

“Oh?” Ferris would make a good dean of students. Lammiter found he was clearing his throat nervously, almost ready to tell the whole story.

“Oh, just some people. Some people who seem pretty eager to have me leave.” He grinned suddenly. “Don’t ask me why. I’m staying to find out the answer for myself. But I’d like it to appear that I really was going back home—and when I do stay, I’ll make it look like a sudden impulse.”

Ferris nodded. He was bewildered but polite.

“So—” Lammiter rushed on, “I’d like to keep telephoning you here, to see if Bunny has been run to earth. I’d like his advice on something. What’s your number?”

Ferris scribbled it down on a piece of paper. “I’ll be here most of the day,” he said, pointing to the books opened on his desk. “I’m finishing a paper to deliver this week-end at the opening of the summer school in Perugia.” Then he noticed Lammiter’s gradual edging towards the door. He smiled, “Well, I shan’t keep you now.”

“Goodbye,” Lammiter said, restraining his eagerness. “And many thanks. In fact, many many thanks.” He added truthfully, “Hope we get together some day.”

“I’ll give you a ring when we come up to New York for Christmas shopping. Perhaps Bunny will be on leave then, and we can make it a party. You knew him in Korea, didn’t you? He makes a good story of the time you met.”

They shook hands. A clatter of high heels on a marble floor suddenly made Ferris snatch the cigarette from his lips, nick its burning end with his fingers, and then jam the broken stub into the cuff of his trousers. “Gave up smoking months ago,” he said cheerfully as he opened the door. “Doctor’s orders. Sure you won’t stay for coffee? That’s one thing our small gas ring can cook around here.”

“Some other time. Oh, by the way, you are a historian, aren’t you? How long did that Roman wall—the Aurelian Wall—how long did it keep out the barbarians?”

“More than a hundred years.”

“Then they might have managed it?”

“The Romans? Yes. If only they had invented gunpowder.” Ferris was delighted by the effect this produced. “Or a United Nations. Or both.” He smiled. “Yes, they might have been here yet. Frankly, I don’t know whether it’s better that they aren’t still around. They’d be too clever for the rest of us, by this time.” He smiled again. “Goodbye.”

“See you in New York.” Lammiter ran lightly down the flights of shallow stairs, his hand sliding down, the smooth stone banisters. Once this house had been a villa standing in its own grounds, now the various floors were broken into small apartments. Someone moved on the landing above; a small hard object, a pebble, a nail, grated under a cautious shoe. The little sound was silenced so quickly that Lammiter knew that someone regretted it and was now standing motionless, not even daring to breathe. For a moment, he wondered if he should retrace his steps just to spread more alarm and confusion. But he continued on his way, whistling cheerfully. Nothing that had been said either near or actually at the door of Ferris’s apartment could possibly be interesting to anyone else.

In the hall, he stopped to look at the eighteenth-century ceiling, now peeling here and there, fading in patches, a little scabby. But there was still plenty of opulent draperies, pearly arms, pink chins, sofalike clouds, and a sunburst over all. A young man came out of the ground-floor apartment, leaving the sound of a piano,
fortissimo brillante,
behind him, and caught Lammiter craning back his neck to admire the painting. “Hits you with a splash, doesn’t it? You’ll get a better view from the top floor,” he suggested.

“I’ve had my quota of stairs for today.”

“You at the school?”

“No. Just visiting an old friend before I leave for home.” From above, there came no sound of movement.

“Thought I hadn’t seen you around much. Like a lift into town?”

“Thanks, I would.”

“Most people do. There’s a long wait between buses.”

They left the villa with its curlicued trim around the front door, stepped on to the half-acre of sparse gravel which formed the garden along with clusters of rhododendron bushes, and passed through the elaborate gate, broad enough to take a coach and four. The young man started his motor bicycle. “Hold my books, will you?” He thrust a small pile of learned-looking objects into Lammiter’s arms. “All set?” Lammiter, perched behind, could only nod and grip with his knees.

They roared down the Janiculum Hill towards the river. Lammiter laughed. His driver half-turned his head, and the bike swerved sharply.

“Nothing, nothing!” Lammiter yelled. And then he thought he ought to offer a plausible explanation. “I just thought of the people waking up from a siesta and cursing our noise.”

“Noise?” The young man looked perplexed, listened for engine trouble, and then took the bridge over the Tiber at full throttle.

But even after Lammiter, temporarily bowlegged, had dismounted and said goodbye to his benefactor (nameless and asking no name, just one of the friendly souls who offered a lift in the same spirit they’d accept it), he was still amused by the vision that had suddenly burst upon him as they roared down the twisting Janiculum road towards Father Tiber. It was a vision of someone most serious, who had indeed followed him into the villa, who must have come hurrying out too late, only to see Lammiter, complete with schoolbooks, perched
on the rear of a motor bicycle, careering down between the Janiculum trees. He would very much like to see the written report on the Afternoon of Signore William Lammiter.

At the hotel, the porter’s desk announced with quiet triumph that there was space available on the midnight plane. Lammiter paid his last bill, told the porter he’d collect the ticket himself, and found his luggage in the entrance hall, where it had already been deposited. No doubt there was some new American in his room, standing on his balcony, smoking a cigarette, wondering about the Aurelian Wall which he overlooked, admiring the giant crowns of the huge pine trees beyond in the Gardens. He wished he could have had just one minute to say goodbye to that view. It had cheered him up on many a night in these last few weeks. He hadn’t been happy. But he had liked that balcony, the sunset, the moonrise, the flight of the swallows. It would have been pleasant just to have had one last look around from the balcony. But life wasn’t a playwright, drawing everything neatly into a final scene and last act. Life had a
way of surprising and not explaining and turning you out into the street without one moment for sentiment.

Perhaps just as well, he thought: he hadn’t much time to waste now. It was just after four o’clock. And what would be the safest way to telephone Rosana? He was taking not the smallest chance that his movements weren’t of interest to Pirotta and his organisation—Rosana’s hated “friends”. As for his own role in this strange fantasy, he’d find out when he saw her. He’d find out a lot of things. That was the end purpose of the telephone call as far as he was concerned. Then he decided how he could both telephone and evade anyone following him. He made his way through the crowded lobby, and signalled to the doorman for a taxi from the cab rank across the street. “To the airport,” he told the doorman. He was conscious of a man who, circling vaguely around, now stood within earshot.

He had come prepared for a touching farewell. His pocket was bulging with hundreds of lire notes (he’d be glad when it was empty of the tattered scraps of paper sticky with age: handling them, he began to understand the Wyoming cow-boys who wouldn’t touch dollar bills; they weren’t real money. Silver dollars might need leather-lined pockets but at least they felt and sounded like something) and his progress through the hall to the doorway was triumphant but embarrassing. Everyone, even the second
facchino,
who had once taken his shoes to the cobbler’s, had gathered nonchalantly along his route of dispersal. A taxi was waiting—and within one minute of his last goodbye, he was being driven down the Via Vittorio Veneto, past Doney’s where the post-siesta crowd was already on view (all washed and perfumed and powdered, bare heads shining and carefully dressed, fresh low-necked dresses with wide skirts swirling over
tanned legs and bare-footed sandals), down into the business section of the city, past the fountains, the buses and jammed cars, the narrow sidewalks encrusted with human beings, to reach the American Express office near the Spanish Steps.

“The signore is going to the airport? Then I wait?” the driver asked as Lammiter prepared to climb wearily out of the small green taxi—legs got trapped by the up-and-over step at the door of every Roman cab. Lammiter looked sharply at him. But then he realised it was only the Italians’ magnificent communication system designed to make a traveller’s life as well served as possible: it was amazing how thoughtful an Italian could be for other people’s comfort. Anyway, one always had to take the first taxi in the waiting rank: this man had come to him in his right and fair turn. There was a protocol about being hired that would defeat any planted cab trying to pick up a special fare.

Lammiter relaxed. “Too long,” he said tactfully. The Italian gestured that that didn’t matter, he could wait. “Too much money,” Lammiter added with a sad shake of the head. The Italian looked regretful, but he understood that.

“The signore speaks good Italian,” he said wistfully.
“Molto bello!”

“I know about four sentences,” Lammiter said with a grin, pleased and modestly untruthful, “and you’ve heard two of them.” They had the usual attack of conversation. The driver came from the province of Calabria, which explained
his
accent—and then, with good wishes to the driver’s wife and two bambini and the canary that wakened them too early every morning (better be careful, that one, Lammiter thought: the early bird in Italy was apt to end up grilled for lunch), and pleasure expressed in the success of the immigrant brother in Schenectady
(that
was something to hear pronounced) who grew his own grapes in his back yard and made his own wine, they parted. Lammiter carried his two cases, with his typewriter uncomfortably gripped under his arm, into the cheerful bedlam of the American Express office. The noise was overwhelming: the afternoon mail was being collected and the crowd was enormous, mostly American and very young. It was odd how you instinctively raised your voice the minute you started talking to a foreigner, as if you thought that loudness would make you clearer. The Italian English-speaking clerks behind their counters listened with tolerant good humour.

Lammiter looked round for a free corner where he could unload his luggage before his arm cramped up. He found one beside a girl who was tearing open a letter she had just picked up at the mail desk. She was on the young side of twenty, a blonde, with her hair caught back at the crown of her head by a perky blue bow, smartly dressed (how did girls, travelling, keep themselves so crisp and neat?), cool, capable, confident, and—judging by the way she opened her letter—as homesick as a six-week-old puppy dog shut up in the baggage car. “Telephones?” he asked her, as he set down his cases.

She looked up wide-eyed from the letter’s first lines. “Telephones? Upstairs, I think.”

“Upstairs?” He looked at his baggage and then at the crowd.

“Do you want me to look after these things for you?” she asked patiently, eager to get back to her letter.

“Would you?”

“Sure. Don’t be long, though. I’m meeting some friends.” And they’d all troop out with their letters to the Spanish Steps; and there they’d sit, while they read and discussed the letters
from home, on the long flight of old stone stairs, the flower stalls and the fountain at their feet, the old church raising its towers above their heads. It was the daily ritual.

“Don’t worry,” he promised her. She nodded, sat down on one of his suitcases, and went back to her letter. He eased his way through the tight crush. It wasn’t possible that everybody knew everybody else, and yet, bumping against a quiet young man and exchanging an understanding grin for their common predicament as they made way for each other, he felt they might have belonged to the same town. Suddenly he felt ancient, although actually he was only about ten years older than most of them.