The Girl on the Via Flaminia Read online

  “Buonanotte, Antonio.”

  “And remember: go to America, signora. In the end, one is happiest far away from the scene of one’s mistakes . . . or one’s sufferings . . . And Europe is only that: a continent of despair.” He went out, with his apologies and his despair and his intenseness, all belted into that raincoat.

  In the mirror, she thought that at last the face would either laugh or cry. It must either laugh or cry. It could not stay like this, neither laughing nor crying. He had apologized! He was contrite! He offered her advice! She would laugh. The face must laugh. But she did not laugh nor did she cry. She brushed her hair, carefully, mechanically, over and over, in the mirror.

  9.

  They came into the dining room, shuddering with the cold. Outside, the bells and the guns had ceased. “Show’s over,” the English sergeant said. He held Mimi’s arm. “It was like a bloody mutiny.” They all came into the room. “Bring us another bottle of vino,” the Englishman said.

  Mimi was pleased.

  “Tutti i soldati sono pazzi, non è vero, Signora?” she said to Adele.

  “Sì, tutti,” Adele said.

  Mimi went off for the bottle.

  “My gel’s almost her age,” the Englishman said, looking after her. “Still has her pigtails down, me missus says. Must be the sun and the vino makes the difference.”

  “Are you alone?” Ugo said to Robert. He was sitting at the table with the bottle of cognac.

  “Yes.”

  “And Lisa?”

  “She’s tired. She’s in the room.”

  The bell in the hallway rang; then the door was knocked on, loudly.

  “Chi è?” Adele called.

  There was a noise of voices in the hallway. There was an angry voice among the voices they could hear. Adele went out of the dining room, quickly, follow by her husband.

  “Row, sounds like, doesn’t it?” the Englishman said, indifferently.

  They came into the dining room then, a curious procession: Adele and Ugo together. There was a soldier, too. The soldier limped slightly. The angry voice was his. There were two Italian carabinieri with him. They wore black polished puttees and they carried slung carbines, and small black holsters with berettas. Above the visors of their hats shone the insignia of the police: a golden sunburst. Behind the carabinieri, Mimi came, her face frightened. Robert looked at all of them as they trooped into the dining room.

  The soldier who limped said, “That’s her! This is the place. She’s the one got me sick.”

  He meant Adele.

  “Calmo,” one of the carabinieri said. He was the better looking and the more authoritative of the two. He tried to quiet the limping soldier. “It will be taken care of. Which is the one you said telephoned?”

  “Her,” the soldier said. “The old bitch.”

  “Here now,” the Englishman said, standing by the table. “Take it easy with the names.”

  “Signora?” the carabiniere said.

  “What does the drunkard want?” Adele said.

  She did not look at the soldier who limped. She looked at the handsomer and the more authoritative policeman. Her eyes had a hard sharp blackness. She had crossed her arms across her breast, and a cigarette smoked between her fingers.

  “Did you solicit for this American,” the carabiniere said, “a woman named—” He consulted a small black notebook. “Maria Galluzo, who lives on the Viale Angelico 38?”

  “I solicit for no one,” Adele said.

  “What is it?” Robert said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Niente,” Adele said. “Do not concern yourself.”

  “That’s a goddam lie,” the soldier who limped said. “She telephoned. She called that tart up.”

  “Did you telephone, signora?” the carabiniere asked, politely. He obviously did not care too much for the limping soldier.

  “Yes, I telephoned,” Adele said. “The drunkard whined to me how lonesome he was.”

  “He asked her all right,” the Englishman said. “I heard him ask the old lady.”

  “Now,” Adele said, “the drunkard comes to my house with accusations.”

  “She was sick!” the soldier said.

  “So?” Adele said. Now she looked at him, but with enormous contempt. “It was probably another American who made her sick.”

  “Did you know, signora, for what purpose you were telephoning?” the carabiniere asked. He was still polite. He held the small black notebook in his hand. The edge of his carbine stuck up beyond his shoulder.

  “I know nothing,” Adele said. “I telephoned. What the girl does later is her own business.”

  “And of the police, signora.”

  “Then go to Maria Galluzo! My house is a good house.”

  “One must look for the source of the infection,” the carabiniere said, smoothly and patiently.

  “She was in on it,” the soldier said, loudly and angrily. “They’re all in on it.”

  “Calmo, amico,” the carabiniere said.

  “But she made me get sick!” the soldier said.

  “What did you expect her to make you?” the Englishman said. “A bloody hero?”

  “Then it was simply to introduce him, signora?” the carabiniere said. “You did not know the profession of this Maria?”

  “She’s a girl without work,” Adele said.

  “Sì, of course,” the carabiniere said. “They are all girls without work. Exactly, signora, what kind of a house do you have here?”

  “A house,” Adele said.

  “And the soldiers?”

  “I serve wine and eggs. Is that a crime?”

  “One has not yet said there is a crime.” He turned, very elegant and tight and black in his uniform. “And this one here, the little one?” He indicated Mimi.

  “She is my maid.”

  “She lives here?”

  “No. She lives with her family.”

  “Sì, sì,” Mimi said. “With my family. We live in the Trionfale.”

  “Show me the house, signora,” the carabiniere said. “There are other rooms, I suppose.”

  They went out of the dining room. Adele went first. There was a look of resignation and distaste upon Ugo’s face. Robert noticed that the old man still carried a newspaper under his arm.

  Adele knocked on the bedroom door. Lisa opened it. Her hair was combed, and the lamp was lit on the table beside the bed. The lamplight seemed to emphasize the color of the bedspread.

  “Ah,” the carabiniere said. “Buona sera. Do you live here, signorina?”

  Robert could see her look slowly at all of them gathered in the hallway. He realized there were many of them.

  “The signora is the wife of this American,” Adele said.

  “So?” the carabiniere said. “Congratulations. Your identity card, please.”

  Lisa waited. She seemed to wait for something else to be said. When they did not say it, she went to the table and took up her purse. She drew a small square card from her purse and brought it to the door and gave it to the carabiniere.

  “Grazie,” the polite carabiniere said.

  He examined the card.

  “You are then this American’s wife?” he said. He smiled at Robert.

  “Yes,” Lisa said.

  “You have the documents, of course.”

  “The documents?” Lisa said.

  “Of the marriage. One usually has such documents.” He smiled at both of them, at Lisa and at Robert. His smile seemed to acknowledge the ease of having those kind of documents.

  “No,” Robert said. He came closer to the bedroom and went in and stood beside the girl. “I have them. But not here. I have them at my billet.”

  “So? How unfortunate.” The carabiniere took out another book with a longish black cover. He began to write in the book. The slip of paper on which he wrote had straight heavy black lines.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “you can show them to the magistrate.”

  “What magistrate?” Robert
said.

  “At the questura. The signora knows the address, I think.”

  “Yes,” Adele said, “I know it.”

  “So I thought.” He finished writing. He tore the slip out of the book of slips. “At eight o’clock in the morning,” he said.

  He held the slip out toward Lisa.

  “Wait a minute,” Robert said. “Why should she have to go to the questura? I told you we were married!”

  “Do I question it, signore?” the polite carabiniere said. “But there has been a denouncement against this house. Unfortunately, the signora does not have her marriage documents, and she lives here.”

  “We have a room,” Robert said.

  “Of course: a room. Rome is full today of just such rooms.” He extended the slip politely. Robert watched Lisa take it, blindly and automatically. He watched her stare at it.

  “Tomorrow, signora. At eight o’clock. May I suggest you search well for the documents? The magistrate is difficult.”

  He touched his cap with the insignia of the sunburst on it.

  “Buona sera.”

  She was staring unbelievingly at the white slip in her hand.

  “Andiamo,” the carabiniere said to the less handsome and the less authoritative one. They began to move quietly toward the door.

  “Ain’t you going to do anything about the old bitch?” the limping soldier said.

  He stopped the carabiniere.

  “When the nature of the house is proved, amico,” the handsome one said.

  “Shove off,” the Englishman said. “You’ve done enough.”

  They went down the hallway together. Their guns stuck up above their shoulders. Their uniforms were trim and black. The door slammed.

  She was still staring at the slip of paper in her hand.

  10.

  So that, unforeseen, because it was not possible to foresee this, or anything like this, not having thought when he came across the Ponte Milvio that anything except the simple thing, the bare exchange, would happen, Robert heard the carabinieri go, the closing of the door, and then the door opening again. And Antonio, glancing backward, came into the house. The boy came toward the bedroom.

  “Mamma,” he said to Adele, “what did the police want here?” He was frowning. He must be cold in that raincoat, Robert thought: the two of them wearing raincoats, they must both be cold in them. But he must sleep in it. He sleeps in the raincoat and he stands in front of the mirror combing his hair to a point on the nape of his neck. “Mamma,” Antonio said again, when Adele did not answer him, “what did the police want here?”

  Or anywhere, Robert thought; what did they want anywhere? Around the stone bases of the bridges sometimes, leaning over, you saw the water swirling, caught there, a furious wrinkling, and what was caught in the water, in the passage of the water down to wherever the Tiber emptied, swirled with it, helplessly: broken branches, the discarded souvenirs of love, fruit rinds, whirling there, involved in the life of the river. And it was deep, he remembered: though it was a narrow river, it was deceptively deep. The Englishman shuffled uncomfortably. “Well, I better shove off.” He wants to get out, Robert thought: it’s gotten too deep for him too. He’s swirling in it. “Come on, Mimi: show us the door.”

  “Sì, sergente,” the little girl said.

  “Bloody party it turned out.”

  They went away. And I can’t, he thought: not now. Though why? What keeps me? What’s there to really keep me if I went out the way he went, just out of the door, back across the bridge: that’s the way I came, that’s the way I can go.

  “Che disgrazia,” Ugo said. “To come into one’s house . . .”

  And she was staring at the slip of paper. There could not possibly have been that much written on it: a name, an address, an hour, a charge. And yet she stared; at that official handwriting, at the penmanship of strangers. Don’t, he thought: don’t; there’s nothing there, you’ve read all there’s there to read; and watched her. They don’t understand yet, he thought; they don’t know how the water’s swirling, carrying us all downstream, and how deep, how cold it must be this time of year, with no sun, the grass withered on the banks, the dead leaves and the broken branches and the dirty rinds of fruit all flowing and being dragged downward. And then she said:

  “I’m not going.”

  With something in her voice that must have puzzled them, but which they only interpreted as a feeling possibly of shame, of disgrace, of misfortune, and thinking of it like that, all that was necessary they thought was to comfort her, to solace her, to reduce whatever fear she might have.

  “But my dear,” Adele said, “one must,” and, of course in her world one had to, a slip of paper from the police being an inexorable summons. He was to remember, later, that moment: how she stood there, with the slip of paper in her hand, and the variety of expressions on the faces of the others; and he had a bad sense of what his own expression must be. Because of the other knowledge which, standing there, he did not permit himself as yet to think of, and which, of course, was determining all the things she must have felt, perhaps even knew now, with a prophetic certainty, from the moment the carabinieri came into the house and knocked on her bedroom door, and stood, in their polished boots, politely asking their questions.

  “But, Mamma,” Antonio said, looking at all of them, “what is it? I don’t understand.”

  So that, finally, he said, with difficulty, trying to control the expression he knew his face must be wearing, “Why must she go?” Adele shrugged.

  “It is the police.”

  As though that explained everything, the inevitability, the resignation, the point beyond which it was useless to protest.

  “To hell with the police,” Robert said.

  And the woman, with that knowledge of something he did not yet possess, the knowledge perhaps that had sharpened and brought to that gleam the hard blackness in her old eyes, and set that dry old bitter mouth, said: “But then, they will come here for her.”

  “Mamma,” Antonio said, desperately, “I don’t understand!”

  “No,” Lisa said, again. “I will not go!”

  He and Antonio, he thought; neither of them understood. But Adele did; it was all in that previous knowledge. “My dear,” Adele said, patiently, “it is worse not to go.” And he pushed forward, reluctantly, toward that knowledge of hers. “What can they do,” Robert asked, slowly, “if she doesn’t go?”

  “To you?” Adele said. “Nothing.”

  She stands there, Robert thought, like a collection of bad knowledge. Her hair is that dirty gray, she can’t sleep at night, she lies there in that bedroom coughing and smoking and sleepless, and the old man reads his newspapers. I never did understand entirely what went on in this house. “You are a soldier,” Adele said. “The soldier is always innocent. But the girl—”

  “What happens to the girl?” he asked.

  I am waiting for her to tell me, he thought. This is New Year’s Eve. They shot their guns off to celebrate it. The mother has dirty gray hair and the old man dribbles cigarette ash on the crotch of his pants and the son combs his hair like that. How do I know who these people are? How do I know what she is? How do I know I’m not being taken?

  “What happens to the girl?” he repeated.

  He watched Adele. She was the source of knowledge now. She would tighten this vise that enclosed them all. He did not look at Lisa. He was aware of the movement of her hands. How they were twisting, slowly.

  “If she does not report to the magistrate,” Adele said, “they will come here and arrest her anyway and take away her identity card . . .”

  “So what?” Robert said. “Let them take it away.”

  “You are an American,” Adele said, “you do not understand. In Europe, without an identity card, one doesn’t exist . . .”

  If she would only stop twisting her hands like that.

  “But, my dear,” Ugo said, “there is nothing to worry about.”

  “No,” Adele said, reas
suringly.

  “Tomorrow you both go to the questura,” Ugo said. “And in the court you will simply show the magistrate the marriage documents. They will dismiss it. A mistake . . .”

  “But I’ve done nothing,” Lisa said, appealing to them.

  “Of course, my dear,” Ugo said. “It’s a formality.”

  “They always make trouble for the innocent and not for the guilty,” Adele said.

  “Mamma,” Antonio said.

  “It’s nothing,” Adele said. “You must not look so worried. Mistakes happen. Ugo, go make a cup of coffee.”

  The old man patted Lisa’s arm. He was distressed by the look on the girl’s face. So many things happened nowadays. “Control yourself, cara. It’s really nothing.”

  He went toward the kitchen to prepare the coffee.

  Robert heard them. The voices, consoling or explanatory. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps they were, as they seemed, good people. Perhaps she was what she really seemed. One came, through cold streets, seeking a certain warmth. But the simplest things became difficult. He could not look at her face. She will blame me, he thought. She will think I am responsible. Am I?

  “Adele,” he said, slowly.

  “Yes?”

  “What if we aren’t married? I mean, what if I can’t find the certificate? If I can’t prove our marriage?”

  There was a perceptible pause and an almost visible change in the woman’s face.

  “That would be bad,” she said.

  “Bad?”

  “For Lisa . . .”

  “Exactly how bad?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow morning she would go to the questura,” Adele said. He listened intently. He watched her thin and old and perhaps unkind mouth. The knowledge was coming to him now. “There she would be questioned. If she cannot prove she is married, or that she works, then she is taken away from the questura in a police truck . . .”