Damnation of Adam Blessing (12 page)

“You have been so very kind,” said Adam to his new friend.

“Nonsense,” Ernesto Leogrande said. “I am bored with the way my people treat the American tourists.”

Adam had been quite drunk when Leogrande had come up to him in the bar opposite the Mediterraneo. Leogrande had prevented the waiter from overcharging Adam by a thousand lire, after which he helped Adam leave, supporting Adam by crossing one of Adam’s arms over his shoulder. At another bar, he had gotten a coffee for Adam, and sat with him while Adam sipped it slowly and pulled himself together. He had brought Adam to this small
trattoría
on the Portico di Ottavia.

Adam said, “It’s not the money, Ernesto. I hope you believe that. I was just treated rather cruelly by a lifelong friend, then for a perfect stranger to help me — well, I appreciate it.”

“Sì,sì — ” Leogrande brushed aside Adam’s gratitude, and took another stab at his veal. He was a large, hook-nosed Italian with a sunburned face and straight, dark eyebrows, black wavy hair and a wide white smile. He wore a light blue shirt open at the neck, a brown-and-black checkered sport coat, and light blue slacks. While he ate and drank, he smoked a cigarette that rested in the plastic ashtray beside his plate, and around his neck on a silver chain he wore a religious medal. His English was good. He was from Civitavecchia, he told Adam. His family ran a
pensione
there, and all spoke English. He was in Rome on a holiday.

Adam said, “I insist on taking you to dinner, Ernesto.”

“No, no, forget that! You are my guest. Besides, hang on to your money. Rome is expensive. Save enough to come to Civitavecchia. We have a good beach. You like to swim?”

“I never learned,” Adam said. “I was fat as a boy. I was afraid I would sink.”

Ernesto threw his head back and laughed as though Adam was a great comedian, and Adam joined in, warmed by his friend’s congeniality.

“Don’t worry about my money,” said Adam. “I have enough.”

“But be careful in Rome, Adam. All the hands are open.”

“I insist on taking you to dinner,” Adam said again. “Really, Ernesto, I have enough money and more!”

Leogrande changed the subject. He told Adam that this section where they were dining was the old Ghetto.

“Some say the persecution of the Jews was bad with Hitler,” said Ernesto, “but here in the Middle Ages, much worse.” He told Adam that it used to be during Carnivale that the Romans rounded up the Jews and made them run races down the whole length of the Corso, naked. “Cruelty,” he said, “such terrible cruelty! What’s the matter with mankind anyway, Adam?”

Adam had never talked very confidentially with anyone but Mrs. Auerbach. He found himself able to open up with Ernesto, and he told him quite a lot about Billy and Charity. “You mentioned cruelty awhile ago,” he told him. “How do you think I felt when after all this time I was brushed off like a fly by Billy? I didn’t even see Chary. I call her that. Pet name.”

“A sad tale,” said Ernesto. “Tonight we eat and drink and forget, Adam! How about that?”

The idea appealed to Adam immensely. He would be all right with Ernesto, no matter how much he drank. The trouble in the past was that he had been alone, with no one to talk to. He felt as though he could tell Ernesto anything, almost anything. The pair ordered another litre of Frascati, and clinked their glasses together in a toast to the Alban Hills, where the wine came from, Ernesto said. Ernesto was a great talker. The
trattoría
was within sight of the theater of Marcellus, and looming over the whole area was the huge, gloomy Palazzo Cenci. Ernesto told Adam about the Cenci family and the hideous crimes that stained the family name. Adam listened while he imagined himself dining at this spot with Billy and Charity, expounding as Ernesto did on the history of the area, ordering more Frascati, proposing the toast to the Alban Hills — all of it, while Billy and Charity admired his intimacy with this unfamiliar part of Rome, complimented him, perhaps, on his remarkable acclimation to Europe.

“… and I mean every crime imaginable,” Ernesto was saying, “that was the Cenci family for you. Rape, murder, incest, torture — and plain old-fashioned robbery! No excuse for it — man’s inhumanity to man!” He poured more wine in both their glasses. “But I do all the talking, Adam. You talk.”

“What did you think of the Zumbach kidnapping?” said Adam.

“Detestable!”

“Yes. I thought so, too. At least the other one — the one in our country was not so bad.”

Ernesto said. “I remember hearing of your Lindbergh child.”

“Oh, this Schneider case was different. The child was returned safely.”

“And his kidnappers?” “There was only one, I think.”

“Usually there are two, no?”

“I think only one in the Schneider case. A civilized sort, you know what I mean, Ernesto? He never harmed a hair on the child’s head.”

“Ah, well … crime is crime.” Ernesto picked up the check and began adding it up.

“Please,” said Adam, “I would like to pay for this. I have plenty of money on me.”

Ernesto, with a wave of his hand, brushed aside Adam’s offer. “On me,” he said, “and in Civitavecchia, you stay at our place.”

“I’ll pay,” said Adam.

Ernesto smiled. “Of course … there, I am in business.”

“I’ll come as soon as I can,” said Adam. “I may even bring friends with me, my friends I told you about.”

“You have forgiven them already?”

“Well — ” Adam hesitated. Ernesto leaned across the table and gave Adam a friendly push with his long arm. He said, “Ah, you, you are a softie! I like you, my friend. I consider you my friend.”

Adam’s whole being was swollen with sudden joy.

After Ernesto paid the bill, the pair decided to have still another drink. Strega, Ernesto suggested, just the thing. Adam was a little drunk, but it was a pleasant sort of intoxication, warm and easy, not sloppy, and the only urgency, Adam’s growing desire to tell Ernesto more about himself. They had a Strega after the first, and one after the second, and Adam told Ernesto how Mrs. Auerbach had left him everything, and how her sister had come along and taken it all away from him.

“But how do you have anything?” Ernesto said.

“She left me one piece of stock worth plenty of money,” said Adam, and he felt bad that he had lied to his friend at their very first meeting. He wanted to undo the lie and tell Ernesto the truth, and he was very nearly on the verge of doing just that, when suddenly Ernesto said, “Well, how about it, Adam, we find some girls now!”

“Girls?” Adam blinked, dumfounded. He had expected to stay on drinking with Ernesto, the two of them together in a great camaraderie.

“Girls!” Ernesto said again, “we’re forgetting everything tonight, aren’t we?”

“I thought we would be by ourselves,” Adam said, “talk more, and have more Strega.”

“Three is all the Stregas we need. Too sweet. There’s wine where the girls are, Adam! C’mon!” He was getting up, shoving his chair back, taking a long toothpick from his jacket and digging at his mouth with it. “It’s not far away either. We can walk.”

“Are you sure we want to?” Adam said. He remained sitting at the table.

Ernesto looked down at him, taking the toothpick from his mouth a moment, his face thoughtful. “Hey, there’s not anything wrong with you, is there?”

“What do you mean?”

“You like girls, Adam, don’t you?”

Adam’s face felt hot, and he became angry. “Of course! What do you think I’ve been telling you about my Chary! What’s the matter with you anyway! I’ve been following her all over Europe!” Adam was disappointed in Ernesto for having such a thought. He had imagined Ernesto knew him like a brother, instantly.

Ernesto laughed, came around and clapped Adam on the back. “All right then! Let’s go! It’s the only way to forget your Chary, my friend. I know a girl who can make a man forget his last name!”

Adam got up. He said, “But I may be too drunk.”

“This girl,” Ernesto laughed, “can take care of that too!”

To get there, Adam and Ernesto had to make their way through twisting streets, where the houses huddled together, their shutters closed against the heat, giving the appearance that no one lived in them; there were no lights, and only vague signs of life — a cat prowling in an ashcan, an old man on a front stoop asleep with his head in his arms, a couple pressed against the side of a building making love, and in an alleyway a few doors from their destination, a drunk urinating.

Adam smiled back at Ernesto uncertainly, and then he found himself standing in a kitchen of an old house with his friend. In the sink as they entered, a candle stuck into a wine bottle, was the only light. Ernesto called:
“Signora! Subito! Ai! Signora!”

A thin old woman came rushing out, shushing him. She wore a bright green satin dress, and a matching ribbon in her gray hair, rouge and eye make-up, shiny black high-heels, with no stockings and ugly blue veins on pale white legs. Ernesto spoke to her in rapid Italian, only some of which Adam caught. An American, Ernesto said, a nice girl for him, young but not too young, and other things Adam could not understand. Then there was some dickering about money, ending with Ernesto’s emphatic: “Ten thousand lire!” The thin woman frowned and Ernesto pinched her cheeks, which made her laugh and agree.

“They don’t know any English,” said Ernesto to his companion, “so you are in a sinking ship together, ah?” He laughed, and punched Adam’s arm playfully. “But before the ship goes down, you — ” he made an obscene gesture. Then he left through the beaded curtains with a blond girl, who appeared suddenly and the thin woman pushed a brunette in Adam’s direction. She was smoking a cigarette, the hot ash dangerously close to her lips, her hands folded across an immense bosom. She shrugged and walked toward Adam, indicating with her thumb that he should follow her. He held out the lire to her, and with another jerk of her thumb, she indicated that he should give it to the thin woman. Then Adam followed her down a dark and narrow hall, into a very small room, with a bed in it, a screen hiding what seemed to be another sink, a white bowl on a table beside the bed, and a hassock with fringes on its side. The girl took her clothes off without a word. Adam removed his shirt, and stood helplessly by the bed. The naked girl came across the carpet scratching her arms, lighting another cigarette. Adam sat on the bed and removed his shoes. From behind the bed table, the girl took out a bottle of wine. She offered some to Adam in a dirty glass. He wanted to decline, but he wanted a drink just as badly.

She spoke to him in Italian. “Is that all?” meaning, was that all he was going to take off.

Adam shrugged, and she shrugged. She said, “Ready?”

Adam sighed. He started to undo his pants. The girl walked over and began to help him. “You don’t want to take them off?” “No.”

She bent and tried to kiss him. She smelled of something like rotten peach pits, and Adam could not bear it. He turned away. The girl asked him a question he could not understand. She repeated it, and he understood the sentence after: “Is that what you want?”

“Drunk,” said Adam, and in Italian: “Intoxicated.”

In English the girl said, “I take care. I know.”

She pushed Adam back in a gentle way which surprised him, and he realized as his head hit the pillow and he shut his eyes, that he was dizzy, that his drinks had caught up with him at last. It did not matter at all, for he found out that nothing was expected of him, and afterwards, he slept.

Adam had written the note to Billy and Charity three days ago, the morning he returned from his night with Ernesto. Before he had parted from his new friend, he had loaned him a little less than twenty-five dollars. Ernesto explained that the blond had helped herself to his wallet, that after he got some sleep he would go back to the house and demand the return of his money.

“You have to watch their kind,” said Ernesto, “and to think they would try it with me, a good customer!”

“I have a funny feeling, Ernesto, that I talked to the girl I was with, told her some things I don’t want anyone to know.”

Ernesto had laughed, “She speaks no English, Adam! Forget it!”

“It may have been a dream anyway.”

“A dream, of course. You were fast asleep when I pounded on your door. She must have been good.”

The conversation had taken place at dawn on the Via Monte Cenci. They shook hands, Ernesto explaining that he stayed within walking distance, that Adam would find a taxi-stand three blocks over. Ernesto said he would come to Adam’s hotel the next night, when he got his money back. He would repay Adam then.

“I wish you would just keep it, Ernesto, a gift from me.”

“Nah! Nah!” And with a wave of his hand, “Tomorrow, Adam,” he was gone.

• • •

Now he sat opposite Adam, in Adam’s small room at the Delle Nazioni. He smoked a cigar and wore the same brown-and-black checkered sport coat, and blue slacks. His shirt was different, a gaudy yellow one with Aloha written across it countless times in blue, and white flowers splashed in between. Adam would have liked to give him one of his shirts, but he was familiar with Ernesto’s stubborn pride.

“So you thought I would not show up, ah?” Ernesto laughed.

“I’m glad you’re here. Not for the money.” When Ernesto had entered the room, the first thing he had done was to slap the fifteen thousand lire onto the bureau top.

“What have you done since Wednesday, Adam?”

“Nothing, really.”

“You have no business?”

“Oh, I have investments, you see, Ernesto.”

“Good! I like to have my friends free from care!” Ernesto walked around Adam’s room puffing on his cigar, admiring a tie of Adam’s (“You can have it", said Adam — Ernesto would not hear of it) and Adam’s military brushes, and his cowhide luggage. Adam watched him, wishing he could have the courage to unburden himself to Ernesto. Adam could still not get it out of his mind that he had told the brunette — everything. Still it was all mixed up with a dream of meeting the Cenci family, and running naked down the length of the Corso, while Billy laughed and threw poodle-shaped cuff links with ruby eyes, at his body.

Over a bottle of Maccarese Adam sent for, they talked. Ernesto told Adam of his father’s illness, which he had heard of just two days ago. “Serious,” said Ernesto, “and perhaps it will mean I will take a job for a while here in Rome.” He explained that his sisters could help his mother run their place in Civitavecchia; that it would be better if he found something to pay well. Guide work, he thought; he had once worked as a guide at the Colosseum, another time as one in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

“But Ernesto,” Adam interrupted, “let me help you. Let me lend you money for your father.”

Ernesto looked embarrassed. He changed the subject immediately. Did Adam like the brunette the other night?

“I’m sorry,” he said, not waiting for Adam’s answer; “she was probably a pig. I hear she takes everything off. Even among whores that is thought indecent. A good whore, Adam, always keeps her stockings on. There is an expression we have here. We say that a whore who takes her stockings off is not in business. You see? She enjoys taking her clothes off. A whore is not supposed to enjoy her work. Only a pig-whore.” He bit the end off another cigar, which he took from his shirt pocket. “The occupation spoiled her, Adam. She knew all the soldiers, always joking and laughing with the Germans. Then with the Americans.”

Adam’s heart missed a beat. “But she doesn’t know English?”

“Who knows what a pig knows, Adam?” “But you said she didn’t.” “She probably doesn’t.”

“Ernesto,” said Adam, “The other night she said something in English to me. I remember. She said it very plainly: ‘I’ll take care of you.’ I believe that was it.”

Ernesto grunted: “You should have shoved her face in the wall, the pig. I hope you told her you would take care of things, not her! They do anything to save their backs, their kind.”

Adam was perspiring, his heart hammering. “You don’t understand, Ernesto. I think I told her something. I don’t know if I dreamed it, or if I told her — but she could get me in trouble, Ernesto, if I did say it — if she speaks English!”

“You, Adam? You’re making a joke on me. What could you have done so bad! Forget it!”

“Ernesto, I’m telling you, it could get me in trouble.”

Ernesto took his cigar out of his mouth, leaned forward in the leather chair and said, “My friend, you are serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes. It’s — well, a long story. It’s — but I don’t like to tell it.” Adam was thinking that it was not that he did not trust Ernesto; it was that he was afraid Ernesto would dislike him. “Crime is crime,” Ernesto had said the other night.

Ernesto stopped Adam from continuing. “You are in trouble?”

“Not yet. It’s not really bad.” He was remembering that the other night when he told Ernesto how the Schneider boy had been returned without a scratch, Ernesto seemed unsympathetic. Crime is crime … Adam said, “It just might look bad. I wouldn’t want someone like that girl to know it.”

“Are you sure she does?”

“No, no! That’s just it. I’m in the dark! Ernesto, I’ll tell you about it. You see — ”

But Ernesto held his large hand up. “Stop, Adam! Don’t trust anyone! I don’t want to know, do you see? If you are guilty of something, I don’t want to know. Then you would never think I gave you away.”

“I’d never think that,” said Adam.

“Good! But don’t tell me. Trust no one, Adam, particularly not someone you know less than a week.”

Adam smiled. “You are wonderful, Ernesto.”

“Nah! Listen, my friend, I’ll go and visit that place tonight. I’ll find out if you said anything or not. Believe me, I’ll not listen to whatever it is, if you did say it. I’ll stop her from repeating it, but I’ll find out…. If you said something, well — that can be fixed. A pair of stockings, a pretty dress — those pigs don’t know enough to be vicious. Besides, you probably exaggerate your wrong. I know you.”

Adam said, “I don’t exaggerate it…. I could tell you this much — ”

“Basta!”
Ernesto stopped him. “I don’t want to hear.”

• • •

They finished the bottle of Maccarese. Ernesto said he must hunt a job. Adam was able to convince him to borrow at least a hundred dollars, half to buy clothes he would need for a job (he had brought only a few shirts for his holiday in Rome) and half to send immediately to his father.

Adam planned to spend the afternoon searching for another gift for Luther Schneider. He changed his clothes and took a shower, then headed for the Via dei Coronari, where there were antique shops specializing in silver. At the Via Veneto, he could not resist stopping for a cold beer. Over the drink he lost interest in his afternoon’s plan. Why should he buy Schneider any more gifts? Schneider had really not had faith in him; he had simply feared for Timmy’s life. The money Schneider had paid Adam was nothing to a man that rich, no more than the sixty thousand lire Adam had handed to Ernesto. Why had Adam not seen that before? It would be ridiculous to buy another gift for Schneider. Adam chuckled to himself. Ernesto had been right last night when he had called Adam a softie. Look at the way Billy and Chary were treating him, and after Adam had taken such pains to pick out presents they would enjoy. Adam wished he had told Ernesto about that! Ernesto would have had something to say about that sort of shabby treatment. Adam smiled as he finished his beer. He could see Ernesto’s dark eyes flashing with anger, see him grabbing Billy by the fancy narrow shawl lapels of his dinner jacket, hear Ernesto shouting, “Adam is my friend, do you understand! Apologize to my friend!” … Adam ordered a Martini when he finished his beer. “What do you mean making a friend of mine wait around day after day for your phone call!” Ernesto would demand … “and don’t call him Addie any more!” said Ernesto over Adam’s third Martini, and gently, Adam put his hand on Ernesto’s arm to restrain him. A look of gratitude came in Billy’s eyes. “Thank you, Adam. Thanks a lot.” …

• • •

It was anger that made Billy’s eyes so hard. “How the hell much longer are you going to keep this up!”

Instinct, impulse — whatever it was that had led Adam toward the vicinity of the Via Nazionale, onto the Via Cavour, to the Mediterraneo, it was opportunely timed. Adam stepped over Billy’s luggage, walking right past Billy as he stood holding open the door to his room. “Where are you going?” Adam said. “Were you going without telling me, Billy?”

“You know, Addie, you’re sick! I mean, you’re very sick!” Billy let the door swing shut, and he crossed to one of the twin beds and an open suitcase into which he was putting shirts and balls of socks. “Why don’t you go see a doctor, Addie?”

“You’re not wearing your present,” Adam said. Billy was wearing a green robe with a faint charcoal gray stripe in it, some sort of cotton fabric, with a shirt under it, and light gray pants.

“Okay, Addie, let’s stop talking about the presents. They’re right where you left them, at the downstairs desk. I’d pick them up on my way out, if I were you, exchange them. And incidentally, Addie,” he said, turning and facing Adam with the same hard look to his eyes, “When I was in New York this spring, I found out you were going around saying you were me. I got my cuff links back too. What’s with you, Addie? Do you need a headshrinker or something?”

Adam said, “Why do you live in the past so, Billy? Here we are in Rome together. Can’t we be friendly?”

“You’ve been drinking, too,” said Billy. “You never could drink, could you?” He slipped his robe off then, and began folding it. “Why don’t you lay off the stuff? See your friend Dorothy Schackleford. I tell you she’s with some group who helps people.”

“Ever since we were children you’ve wanted to insult me and hurt my feelings, haven’t you, Billy?”

“Rubbish!” Billy dropped the folded robe on the shirts in his suitcase. “Here, I’ll write down her address. I’ve got it somewhere here in my book.” He was fumbling through the pages of a small, green leather address book, with fleurs-de-lys stamped on it. From Florence, Adam thought; Adam had bought a cigarette case, the stamping identical … so they had been to Florence, too, and he had missed them there as well. Or had they been running from him? Were they running from him now, again? And where was Chary? Why hadn’t he seen Chary yet?

“Here it is,” said Billy. “I’ll jot it down for you…. You know, Adam, you have a tendency to exaggerate almost everything. For example this crap about our being childhood friends. Now you know damn well who I hung around with — Dick Nolan and Pete MacGuire … Now hell, Addie, why aren’t you just more realistic? We only saw each other two or three times a month when we were kids! Here — ” he handed Adam a card with an address scribbled on it. “We ran into Dorothy one afternoon on the Via Veneto. She asked about you.”

Billy closed the lid of the suitcase, and snapped the silver locks. “That does it,” he said. “Well, Addie — ” holding out his hand, “This is it.”

“And Chary? Where’s Chary?”

“She’s not here, obviously!”

“Then there is trouble!” Adam smiled. He sat down on the bed. “I knew it wouldn’t be long before it all came out.”

“There isn’t any trouble Addie, and you have to get out now.”

“Without seeing Chary?” Adam’s eyes began to fill.

“And cut out the Chary, Addie! Since when do
you
call her Chary!”

“It’s too bad you’re leaving before you meet my new business partner,” said Adam. “His name is Ernesto. We’re opening a beach club in Civitavecchia.” As he said it, Adam decided it was a very good idea. He and Ernesto could expand his family’s
pensione.

Billy was running around checking drawers and closets for anything he might have forgotten. Adam said, “We’re opening a very interesting club, the club — ” he searched for some name, thought of Ernesto’s shirt with Aloha splashed across it, and after a few more bullet associations, said: “The State Fifty, is what we’re calling it. We’re sort of using a Hawaiian theme. We might even call it The Fiftieth Star. We don’t have it all figured out yet,” said Adam, following Billy around back and forth as he talked. “We have long discussions about it. What do
you
think we ought to call it, Billy?”