A Bell for Adano (19 page)

Borth knew that Mayor Nasta was dragging up accusations and suspicions out of the past, that he meant that these men were not to be trusted by the Fascists. His talk was crazy, for he was overcome with fear.

Therefore Borth gagged Mayor Nasta, and tied his hands behind his back, and let his milky eyes speak his terrors. At least his eyes were silent.

As the jeep passed the Cacopardo Sulphur Works on the way into town, Borth looked at his watch. It was just before twelve o’clock. Major Joppolo would be either at lunch or on his way there. So Borth told the driver to go to the Albergo dei Pescatori.

Since it was the noon hour, scores of people had drifted to the Doppo Lavoro clubs along the street near the Albergo dei Pescatori to listen to the radio and wait for lunch. When they saw Borth’s jeep, with a man tied up in the back seat, they clustered around, and called for their friends. And when they saw that Borth’s cargo was Mayor Nasta, and that after all these years the Mayor had a gag in his mouth, they cheered and laughed at the man.

These noises increased Mayor Nasta’s terrors, and he kept twisting and trying to look behind him.

Borth went into the restaurant and found Major Joppolo and brought him out.

Major Joppolo held up his hand to silence the crowd. “I want to speak to Nasta,” he said to Borth. “Can he hear me with that thing on his face?”

“Yeah,” Borth said; “you’ve got the rare pleasure of being able to speak to Nasta and he can’t talk back.” Major Joppolo said: “Nasta, you are a disgrace to your people. There is goodness in your people, but not in you, not a bit. The world has had enough of your kind of selfishness.”

It was one of Major Joppolo’s greatest attributes in his job that he could speak pompous sentences with a sincerity and passion so real that his Italian listeners were always moved by what he said. Now all the listeners except Nasta were moved by his words to shout: “Kill himl Kill himl Kill him!”

Here was one time when Major Joppolo’s sincerity and passion bounced back on him, because the people’s shouts frightened Mayor Nasta so badly that he fainted, and Major Joppolo was the first to see the ridiculousness of trying to spell-bind an unconscious man.

There was nothing left to say except one sentence to Borth: “Well have to send him to Africa.”

And to the music of Adano’s delighted cheers, Borth and his limp companion drove down the street.

Chapter
20

THERE was no better index to the state of mind of Adano than the activities of the painter Lojacono. If one had made a graph of the spirits of the town and then put beside it a graph of the number of commissions Lojacono received, the two would have exactly corresponded Whenever the town was optimistic, Lojacono worked. When the town was blue, Lojacono was idle.

Lojacono could paint anything. He could paint a house or he could paint a saint. He was the one who painted panels in the churches. He was the one who painted the fat and holy people on the fat Basile’s two-wheeled cart.

The white-haired Lojacono suffered when he painted. First he suffered the pangs of creation, then he suffered when the people of Adano criticized his work. His work was beautiful and everyone in the town loved it, but for some reason they always criticized it first.

Major Joppolo had not been in Adano very long before Lojacono was busy. His first efforts were a little crude, because the town had been depressed, and his right hand idle, for so very long. But soon he warmed to the town’s happiness, and he did things he had never been able to do in his life, which had not been short.

The same morning that the crowd stood around Borth’s jeep in front of the Albergo dei Pescatori, another, smaller crowd stood on the Molo Ponente in the harbor and watched Lojacono work. He was painting new names and little figures on the bow surfaces of the fishing boats, and the crowd consisted of fishermen and their families.

Except for Lojacono’s work, the boats were all ready to go. Their seams were calked, and they were tight as wine-bottles. The barnacles and the whiskers were off, and the bottoms had been given a little lead paint. The rigging was smart, for Major Joppolo had persuaded the Navy to give the fishermen some bright cable and some unsoaked hemp rope.

The fishermen were impatient to have Lojacono finish.

“Lojacono is talented but slow,” said the fisherman named Agnello, on whose boat the painter was working just then.

The white haired painter said: “Would you rather have me quick and messy?”

One of Agnello’s three helpers, Merendino, said: “It will have to be proved that you are not messy before we answer that.”

Lojacono stopped working and looked at the fishermen standing there. He pointed at his work and said angrily: “Have you ever seen a porpoise less messy than that one?”

Agnello said: “The porpoise is not bad, but he will die of loneliness unless you hurry and give him some company. Porpoises like company, you know that, Lojacono. Have you ever seen a porpoise play alone?”

“He will have company,” Lojacono said impatiently. “The Mister Major is going to be riding on his back. If you would be silent, I could get on with my work.”

Merendino said: “Work then, old man, do not be so slow.”

The old man went back to his work. Tomasino, sitting with his head in his hands on the afterdeck of his boat, which was moored next to Agnello’s, said gloomily: “I cannot see the point of all this painting. It is frivolous. My boat has been named Tina since the girl was born. It will remain Tina. The leaves and the fruit which dangle from the name are good enough for me, even if they are not new. You would think that Christ had come again, with all this fresh paint.”

Agnello shouted to Tomasino: “What is the matter with you, sour one, do you have gas in your bowels this morning? Cheer up, we are going fishing again.”

“In the next century,” said Tomasino glumly, “after all this painting is finished.”

Lojacono stuck his head up over the side of Agnello’s boat and shouted: “Be quiet, Tomasino, you know that the only reason you are so impatient is that you like what I did twenty years ago and you have no desire for anything new.”

Tomasino said: “If I have to wait another day for the slow painter I will blot out the name Tina and the leaves and fruit with some lead paint I have, and I will go fishing alone in a nameless boat.”

Lojacono started painting the Mister Major, and the little crowd came in closer to see the details. He resolved a difficult point by making the Major’s hat rather big and by tilting it so that it covered most of his face. At least the hat was definitely American.

“His leg is too short. The leg of the Mister Major is longer,” Agnello said.

“I was about to say that the leg is too long,” Merendino said.

“In other words,” Lojacono said, “the leg is precisely right.”

“He does not have a hunch-back like that,” said Sconzo, another of Agnello’s helpers.

“He is bending forward because of the speed of the porpoise,” Lojacono said.

“The color of his skin is too white,” said the wife of Agnello. “His skin is more Italian-colored.”

“You are dull,” Lojacono said, “you do not see the symbolism of the white skin.”

This is what the criticism was always like. And this shows the purpose of the criticism: it was not so much that the people did not like what Lojacono was doing, as that they wanted to know exactly what was in his mind. In future, showing off his boat, Agnello would be able to say: “You can see how fast the porpoise is going by the way the Mister Major is leaning forward. And do you see how white his skin is? That is because of the symbolism in the Mister Major’s skin.”

In due course Lojacono finished his work, and everyone pronounced it quite good, although, one said, it would be hard for a porpoise to jump that high out of the water with a man on his back, and, another said, should not the name of the boat, which was now Americano, be a little lower? Lojacono attributed the former highness to good spirits and the latter highness to the way the name American had been raised in everyone’s esteem by the Mister Major; and everyone went away satisfied.

The next morning the boats went out. Major Joppolo went down to the harbor to see them off, and the people in town were all excited at the prospect of eating fish.

The catch that day was excellent. When the boats were all in and the fish all weighed, it was estimated by Agnello that a total of three thousand two hundred pounds had been taken in. Better than that, the fish were mostly of good grades. It was the custom to sort the fish into four grades, the biggest to be sold for five lira, the next for four, the next for three, and the smallest for one. More than half of that first day’s catch were of the five lira grade.

The second day’s catch was even better - nearly thirty-five hundred pounds.

On the third day it was still over three thousand.

There were near riots at the fish market, and in the Albergo dei Pescatori, which in the old days had specialized in fish for fishermen (and that is the most delicate and finicky of all fish cookery), the crowds were bigger than they had ever been, and lots of people went away disappointed, not because of a shortage of fish, but simply because there wasn’t time to feed them all.

The fishermen were wildly happy. The mere fact of going out again would have made them happy, but to have the catch so good, and their boats in such good condition, and their income so high for a change -they were delighted.

On the evening of their third day, some of them went to Tomasino, and Agnello said: “Tomasino, don’t you think you ought to go to the Mister Major and thank him for making it possible for us to go fishing?”

Tomasmo was as happy as he could ever be, but that did not mean that he smiled, or that he would answer happily. “I have been to the Palazzo once to see him, because my wife Rosa forced me to. Never again. I hate that place.”

The young man named Sconzo said: “Then don’t you think we should send Agnello? We think that we owe our thanks to the Mister Major. We were talking about it while we were out today.”

Tomasino was not pleased with the suggestion that Agnello should go in his place. “Is Agnello the head of the fishermen?” he said.

“No,” Sconzo said, “but if you do not wish to go…” “The best fishing boat in this harbor is named Tina,” Tomasino said, and though he spoke gloomily, there was a kind of gaiety in his idea. “Therefore the one for whom that boat is named ought to be the one to go and thank the Mister Major.”

The other fishermen thought that that was a fine idea, but Agnello said: “We would all like to be present when you give instructions to your daughter as to what she is to say to the Mister Major.” He was afraid that grim old Tomasino would tell her to say something begrudging.

So all the fishermen went up to Tomasino’s house and found Tina, and Tomasino said: “Tina, we have an errand for you. The fishermen of Adano want you to go to see the Mister Major for them...”

Tina surprised everyone by blushing and refusing to go:, But why not?” Agnello asked. “We thought it would be nice if a beautiful girl took our message to the Mister Major instead of a man who stinks of fish.”

Tomasino did not like that remark and he said angrily: “Tomasino does not stink of fish any worse than certain other fishermen he knows.”

Agnello said: “I did not have any particular fisherman in mind, old gassy bowels. Do not forget that it was suggested that I should go. I stink too.”

“That is true,” Tomasino said with a puckered face. Tina said: “I just do not wish to go.”

Tomasino turned on her: “Girl, by the same reasoning which made your mother force me to go to the Mister Major against my will, I now order you to go to him also.”

Tina lowered her head and said: “Well, if you order me...” Agnello said afterwards that he thought by the way she said this, she really wanted to go all along.

Tomasino said: “I want you to tell him that we are glad to be able to go fishing...”

“And that we are thankful to him for making it possible,” Agnello said.

“And that we are very grateful for the new rigging,” Merendino said.

“Also if he has had anything to do with sending so many fish into our nets, we thank him,” Sconzo said. Tomasino said: “Tell him those things but don’t make a fool of yourself, daughter.”

She said with more vehemence than was necessary: “Don’t worry, I won’t:”

Tina went to see the Mister Major at eight o’clock the next morning. When Zito led her to Major Joppolo’s desk, she said defiantly: “You said that if I had business with you, I should come to your office. I have come.”

Major Joppolo had the discretion to wave Zito out of the room before he said: “I am sorry I said that. I have been miserable about it ever since.”

Tina said: “Have you?” That much she said softly, then she added harshly: “You ought to have been. You were very rude.”

The Major said: “I know I was. I’m really very sorry. I have been trying to find out the thing you wanted to know.”

Tina was all softness now: “Do you mean about my Giorgio? Have you found out? Is he a prisoner?”

“I don’t know yet. But I may have some word for you on all the prisoners in a few days.”

“You may? Good word, Mister Major?” “Good word, Tina

“Oh, Mister Major, I thank you, I thank you and I kiss your hand.”

Major Joppolo hardly had time to think vaguely that he wouldn’t mind kissing Tina’s hand before she had run out.

She ran all the way home and when Tomasino asked her if she had said what the fishermen had told her, she said that she had, oh yes, she had, and she threw her arms around her father’s neck and kissed him on both cheeks, and he put his arms around her and pressed her a little and said glumly: “My little Tina, I think you are crazy.”

Chapter
21