The Dividing Stream (35 page)

‘‘When will they let me out?’’

‘‘Who knows?’’ The
carabiniere
extracted a cigarette from a packet which lay on the table, lit it, and haying puffed two or three times asked: ‘‘ Care for a smoke?’’

‘‘I could do with one.’’

The
carabiniere
took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it through the bars, and thus they continued to smoke it, turn by turn, until it was finished. ‘‘Care to see the paper?’’

‘‘Thanks.’’

‘‘Montevardia lost—two goals to nil. Does football interest you?’’

‘‘I play myself—for Castellocino.’’

‘‘You do? I thought you looked like an athlete when I first set eyes on you. Those muscles in your legs.…’’ He glanced down. ‘‘I bet you’re strong.’’

Enzo blushed slowly, without contradicting him.

A few minutes later the
carabiniere
was relieved by a middle-aged man who grumbled, for some time, in a bass voice, about the meal he had just eaten, and then took off his tunic and cap, revealing a shirt sticky with perspiration, lowered himself on to the stool, and having rested his head against the white-washed wall and stuck out his legs, at once began to snore. Enzo stretched out on the wooden slats but they pressed too uncomfortably into his back and his thoughts were too troubled for him to fall asleep.

More than an hour later, a
carabiniere
clattered down the stairs and unlocked his cage. ‘‘You’re wanted,’’ he said, still chewing on the remains of something he had apparently just eaten.

‘‘What for?’’

‘‘How should I know?’’

‘‘When are they going to give me some food!’’ His belly had begun to rumble and ache with hunger.

‘‘I don’t know, brother. You’d better ask when you see the sergeant.’’

It was the same room in which he had been interviewed by the white-haired man, and the same two sentries still slouched on either side of the door; but it was the sour, dyspeptic little sergeant and the peasant detective who were now waiting for him. The peasant was swinging a key ring round and round on its chain, as he looked Enzo up and down with his small, lazily malicious eyes.

The sergeant said: ‘‘ Well, what have you got to tell us?’’

‘‘I?’’ Enzo pointed at himself in astonishment.

‘‘Yes, you.’’

‘‘Nothing.’’

‘‘Look, Rocchigiani, you’re being a bloody fool. You’re wasting our time. You know where that brooch is?’’ The last sentence was a statement, rather than a question; but at the end of it the sergeant cocked one of his thin eyebrows in interrogation and added: ‘‘ Well?’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Now look here, Rocchigiani, you know where the brooch is. Tell us.’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’

‘‘You’re wasting our time—and of course your own. I have a note here’’—he glanced down at a pink slip of paper, the size of a visiting-card, which lay on the desk, and held it to the light from the window, as he read out—‘‘from Police Constable Gardini. He says that you told him at thirteen-forty hours that you had certain knowledge of the whereabouts of the brooch.’’ The boy had gone white and one nervous tremor after another was making his right knee, recently so carefully washed and tended, flutter against his left. ‘‘ Did you or did you not say that?’’

In a voice attenuated by despair Enzo answered: ‘‘ Yes.’’

‘‘You know the whereabouts of the brooch.’’

‘‘I said I thought I knew. I meant that I could guess.’’

‘‘Well, where is it?’’ The right knee continued to tremble as the boy rubbed the palm of his right hand down the seam of his shorts; but no answer came. ‘‘Well?’’ the peasant put in, the twirling bunch of keys making a rotating shadow on the white-washed wall behind him. ‘‘Are you dumb?’’ At some slight indication from the sergeant, he eased one buttock and then the other off the table and, still twisting the keys, slouched over to Enzo. ‘‘Tell us,’’ he said; and then, suddenly raising a hand, he slapped the boy five or six times back and forth across the face. Tears came into Enzo’s eyes, not from pain but as a reaction to the swift, stinging blows, but he made no effort to move away or to resist the detective; he was filled with a profound, lonely despair which made even this humiliation seem unimportant.

But he still had obstinacy and the honour which forbade him to mention his father’s name, even though that illogical connection between Signor Rocchigiani’s extravagance and the theft persisted, as strong as ever, in the boy’s mind. They did much else, in a mild, half-hearted way to force him to speak, and he endured it in silence. Fortunately it was too hot, and his persecutors were too lazy, for any systematic brutality to be practised against him. In the end, his nose having been made to bleed, the peasant administered a brisk, parting kick and the boy was led back to his cell.

He huddled his bruised and aching body on the hard wooden slats and covered his blotched face with his hands, as nervous tremor after nervous tremor made his whole body shudder. As he lay there, he looked like someone who is crying, but his was a dry, tearless grief. Uninterested, the
carabiniere
continued to snore, his head tilted against the wall and his vast thighs stuck out.

Later, this
carabiniere
was relieved by the smooth, clean young man, Gardini.

Gardini strolled over to the iron grille and rattled a foot along: ‘‘Hey, there,’’ he said pleasantly.

Enzo remained huddled on the bed, his face to the wall.

‘‘Hey, there! Rocchigiani!’’

When there was still no answer, the young man fetched the key of the cell, opened it and went in. He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said: ‘‘What’s the matter? Did they give you a tough time? I’ve brought you something to eat. Otherwise they don’t feed you till six. Look’’—he pulled a package from his tunic—‘‘it’s bread and
mortadella
. Come on,’’ he coaxed. ‘‘Eat it. It’ll do you good, Rocchigiani!’’

‘‘Go away,’’ the boy’s voice came sullenly. He still remained like a sick animal, crouching, with his knees drawn up and his face under his arms.

‘‘But—look, son—you must eat——’’

Suddenly Enzo’s whole body opened like a spring, and he leapt to his feet. The
carabiniere
drew away, made a sudden dash for the iron grille and slammed it behind him. There was a rattle, as with agitated fingers he turned the key in the lock. ‘‘ What’s the matter?’’ he asked, his face yellow under the glossy black wings of his hair. ‘‘What’s up?’’

‘‘You know perfectly well.’’

‘‘I know?’’

‘‘You told them—what—what I’d told you,’’ Enzo said bitterly, holding his blotched, swollen face close to the bars while he gripped them with both fists.

‘‘But look, I never——’’

‘‘They told me you had.’’

‘‘I have to do my duty,’’ the young man replied and as he spoke his face turned rapidly from yellow to crimson.

‘‘Oh, I see that!’’

‘‘They asked me if you’d said anything, and what could I do? It wasn’t that I wanted—’’

‘‘Shut up!’’ Enzo turned his back on him and returned to the wooden bed. He heard the
carabiniere
say in a frightened, pleading voice: ‘‘Anyway, eat what I’ve brought you,’’ but though he felt agonizingly hungry, he made no move to take what was being proffered through the bars.

‘‘I’m sorry,’’ the
carabiniere
said. ‘‘I suppose It was a shit’s thing to do.’’

Again there was no answer; and having taken off his tunic and hung it on a peg behind him, the
carabiniere
continued learning English from his grammar in apparent composure.

At half-past five the peasant detective clattered down the stairs with an uncharacteristic nimbleness and announced to Enzo, as if he were an old friend: ‘‘Good news, Rocchigiani! You can go home.’’ The grille having been opened, he grabbed Enzo by the hand and shook it, saying: ‘‘ No hard feelings. We have to do our duty.’’

Enzo looked at him in complete bewilderment.

‘‘But come and eat first.’’

Colin had returned home.

Late that evening, Giorgio said to Enzo: ‘‘ You’ll never believe how Father got that money. I managed to drag the story out of him. You know, he does some pretty shabby things.’’ He cleared his throat and spat into a small enamel bowl in which frothed a mixture of disinfectant, phlegm and streaks of blood. ‘‘ The day after—after Bella’s death, I remember hearing him and Ma Kohler argue, and I wondered what it was all about. Well, he was asking her for compensation. Can you beat it?’’

‘‘Compensation?’’

Giorgio nodded his head as he again began coughing. ‘‘ Yes, compensation,’’ he said breathlessly. ‘‘ The chair to be re-covered, the carpet to be cleaned. God knows where she found the money, but to-day she gave it to him. And of course the chair and the carpet will remain exactly as they are.’’ Suddenly, in soft, plaintive reiteration, like a man in a delirium, he said: ‘‘ Oh, Bella, poor Bella … poor Bella … poor Bella.…’’ He had closed his eyes and the long, fair lashes made deep fringes of shadow on his smooth cheeks. He put but a hand and suddenly gripped his brother’s.

T
HERE
was a small, white-washed room at the end of the
villino
in which stood a plain deal table, a rush-bottomed chair and along the wall a number of dusty packing-cases which gaped splintered wood and rusty nails. There was a lamp on the table and Frank Ross was working there. He wrote slowly, and with few corrections, in a small, rounded handwriting, using Greek
e
’s and showing a complete disregard for the lines of the foolscap paper on which he was working.

Karen knocked at the door and, before he answered, came in, wearing slippers and a silk kimono over which she had tied an apron of coarse brown cotton, one of her acquisitions in the market. ‘‘It’ll be ready in five minutes,’’ she said.

‘‘Oh, I can’t come now,’’ he replied without looking up.

‘‘But you must. It’ll spoil.’’

‘‘Of course it won’t spoil,’’ he said, gazing fixedly at the blurred cone of the lamp.

But you know, darling …’’ She came across to him, put a cheek against his and an arm round his shoulders, and then, kissing his ear, said: ‘‘You’re such a cross-patch if the dinner isn’t nice.’’

‘‘Look …’’ He extricated himself from her and dipped his pen in the ink-well, preparatory to writing. ‘‘ You run along and call me in half an hour. All right?’’

‘‘Well, don’t blame me if the meal tastes awful.’’

He did not answer; and soon, to her irritation, she could hear his pen scratching on the paper as he continued with his work. She sighed and went out.

When she had served him, in the kitchen, with one of the slices of beef-steak she had fried over the charcoal burner, she stood and watched as he plunged in his fork and began to cut a section. ‘‘Well?’’ she said.

He masticated, the light from the lamp gleaming on his ceaselessly working jaws; then he swallowed, and gulped at some wine. Wiping his mouth on his napkin, he said: ‘‘It’s not the waiting that spoiled it.’’

‘‘What do you mean?’’

‘‘There was nothing to spoil.’’ He looked up at her and smiled; but his eyes were strangely cold, even hostile as he asked: ‘‘ Where on earth did you buy such a hunk of meat?’’

‘‘At the butcher where I always go.’’

‘‘And you paid——?’’

‘‘Four hundred lire. For the two pieces.’’

‘‘Four hundred——! But, my dear Karen!’’ She had already discovered that meanness was one of the essentials of his character, and since she herself was naturally extravagant, she was often to be irritated by remarks of this kind. She knew, of course, that between them they had little money and must therefore economize; he was always telling her so. But for her to economize was to eat an expensive tea at Doney’s and then, in a rush of conscience, to leave ten lire instead of fifty as a tip. Unfortunately Frank’s economies were of a more logical nature.

‘‘I can see that I’ll have to do the household shopping,’’ he said, chewing heavily. He put his hand to his mouth and drew out a long piece of sinew. ‘‘I bet this is horse … Well, aren’t you going to eat yourself?’’ he asked. Karen had remained standing before him, the frying-pan in her hand, while on her face was the expression of love mingled with exasperation with which she now usually confronted his moods. ‘‘ Come along, sit down!’’

‘‘Do you really think it’s horse?’’ she asked, turning the pan from side to side and peering at the chunk of coarse-grained flesh. ‘‘Because if it is …’’ She shuddered slightly. ‘‘ I just couldn’t.’’

‘‘Now don’t be silly. Come and eat.’’

‘‘But I couldn’t.’’

‘‘Very well, it’s not horse.’’

‘‘If you say it like that …’’ She flung the pan down on the kitchen-range.

‘‘Now don’t be silly,’’ he repeated in a quietly ominous voice, laying his knife and fork down. ‘‘You can’t waste it, and you must eat something. Bring it here and eat it. Bring it here.’’

She hesitated as if about to challenge his authority and then brought the pan over and speared the meat with her fork. They both ate in silence, she forcing herself to swallow lump after lump of the resilient, crimson flesh, though at each mouthful she felt she must retch. When she had consumed half the steak in this manner, he said softly: ‘‘Good girl. You can leave the rest if you like.’’

She wanted to reply ‘‘ Thank you’’ with all the irony she could. But the words when they came out sounded ineptly docile. She even found herself closing her hand on his, as:

‘‘How’s the throat?’’ she asked.

‘‘The——?’’

‘‘The throat. This morning you said your throat was sore. Remember?’’

‘‘Oh, I’d forgotten about it,’’ he replied with the staccato abruptness he used when he did not wish to discuss anything. But she knew that he lied. She had watched him gulp his wine, and by now the way in which he did so had become so familiar to her that she could notice the smallest difference.

‘‘That’s good,’’ she said. ‘‘ I bought some gargle at the English chemist’s, just in case. But you won’t need it now.’’

‘‘That was one way to waste more money,’’ he retorted; and again her face assumed that expression of irritation which dare not express itself because of the restraints of love. ‘‘There’s only one good gargle—salt and water. Salt’s good for most things; we found that in the jungle.’’ She had heard this eulogy of the medicinal value of salt many times before. ‘‘There’s no point in buying expensive gargles when you can do the same job with a teaspoonful of salt in water. And why go to the English chemist?’’