Dead and Alive

CHAPTER NINE

The so-called artist’s studio was on the top floor of the next house. The door at the head of the dark wooden staircase was opened to our knock by a skinny little urchin of about twelve. As soon as we entered the apartment, it was obvious that, although he lived in a slum, he was not short of money. We were shown into a big room with french windows open to a terrace where evergreens stood in pots half screening a view that ranged across the moonlit rooftops of Naples to the sugar-loaf bulk of Vesuvius.

The shadows were deep in the room. The cold half-light of the moon filtered in to show it expensively furnished in appalling taste.

‘Alfredo! Accendi la luce per favore.’ The voice was soft and slurred.

The urchin went back to the door and the light switch clicked, flooding the room with a golden glow from a big standard lamp in the far corner.

It showed a room furnished partly in the ornate gilt so beloved by the Neapolitan and partly as an artist’s studio. There was a low easel near the window, a litter of paints and brushes and palettes on a table, and a desk with a glass top and a base of chromium.

The man we had come to see was seated in a rubber-tyred wheel-chair at the far end of the room. He had a gaudy coloured rug wrapped round his legs and his hands plucked nervously at the covering with long white fingers, the nails of which were grimed and stained with acids. His head was small and nearly bald and his features emaciated. The birdlike impression he gave was accentuated by the quick thrust forward of his head as he said, ‘Good evening. I am glad you have come. I do not often get visits from my own countrymen.’

He thrust his wheel-chair towards us with deft movements of his strong hands. A jerk of his head I took to indicate that we should seat ourselves on the uncomfortable gilt chairs. Beads of sweat glistened on his lined forehead. Sharp pale eyes beneath sandy eyebrows suggested that he was no fool and I found difficulty in suppressing a feeling of suspicion.

As though in answer to an unspoken query of mine, he said, ‘I suppose you are wondering why I have asked you here tonight?’ He pushed a box of cigarettes across to us. It was a wooden box, the top inlaid with a picture of Vesuvius. ‘Help yourselves,’ he said, and then called ‘Anna!’

The woman who answered his call was as typically Neapolitan as the furniture. She had probably been beautiful only a few years ago. Neapolitan girls are at their best between the ages of sixteen and twenty. She was about twenty-five now — heavy, raddled and slatternly. Only the eyes were still beautiful. They were big and dark, and they watched him like a bitch watching its master. Her legs, though sheathed in silk, were too fat in the calf and she stood with them slightly apart. Her hips were wide and her body heavy. Her breasts, which no doubt had once been firm, were like two great sacks that not even an Italian brassiere could support in decency below the low-cut satin dress. Her fleshy features were framed in an untidy mop of jet black hair.

‘Bring some drink in,’ our host ordered. He was massaging the grime from his neck with the tips of his fingers abstractedly, as though considering the line he was going to take with us.

When the woman had brought glasses and a bottle of whisky and he had poured all of us, including Monique, a nearly neat drink, he said, ‘Yes, I think you must be wondering why I asked you to come. You, Cunningham, are also probably wondering why I gave Monique the papers and passport she needed and which you could not get for her.’

I did not say anything, but waited for him to go on. The liquor, which was real Scotch, was fiery in the heat of the room.

‘It’s not out of friendship,’ he snarled, suddenly darting his slight body forward at me and gripping the wheels of his chair so hard that the backs of his brown hands were almost white. ‘Nor is it out of sympathy for the jam you’re in. You’re an officer — or you were. You represent everything I hate about Britain. Do you think I’ve enjoyed living in exile all these years? I was born at Ballachulish in the Western Highlands. I’ve forgotten my native dialect. I’ve almost forgotten how to speak ordinary English. You and your type put me where I am.’ He leaned back, suddenly relaxed. The sweat was streaming down the sides of his face. He mopped it off with a dirty handkerchief.

‘I didn’t ask you here to gloat,’ he added softly. ‘I asked you here because I need your help.’

He leaned forward and poured Boyd and myself another stiff tot. ‘There’s a lot wrong with your type of world, Cunningham. But I’ll give ‘em this — they’ll drive men to death in the capitalist wars or in the sweat shops from which they get their money, but they’ll always see that they’re buried decently. And that’s what I want you to do for me.’ He snickered. It was a sound that might have appeared foolish if it had not been so full of bitterness.

‘I don’t quite follow you,’ I said.

His lips twisted back from brown rotting teeth. ‘I’m not asking favours, Cunningham,’ he said. ‘You and your kind won’t get that final satisfaction.’ He leaned quickly forward again. ‘I’m not wanting your charity. I’ve been in Wales. I’ve worked in the anthracite pits, where men die of silicosis because the owners won’t take steps to install modern machinery to keep the dust down. I’ve seen how charity works. I became a communist then. Now I’m a realist. But I still remember. And if you’ve got a conscience, I’m not going to help you salve it. Mine is a straight business deal. You help me and I’ll help you. Boyd here told me how you were fixed this afternoon. I know something that you don’t know. And in exchange for that information you’re going to swear to do something for me.’

He began to cough then, quietly and chokingly till his whole frame was aflame and the veins on his forehead stood out in ridges.

At length the spasm passed and he sat back weakly. He reached for his glass, drained the neat whisky at a gulp and poured himself another. ‘I guess it shakes your sense of decency that a nice girl like Monique knows any one like me.’ He laughed quietly to himself. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps she shouldn’t have known me. She used to come and sit here for hours watching me paint when she lived next door with the Gallianis. I wasn’t in this bloody chair then. I don’t know why she came. Probably because she was lost and lonely and a stray. If there had been no war and she had lived with her revoltingly bourgeois family, she would never have come anywhere near me. As it was we were both strays, and I suppose that is what we had in common.’

He propelled his chair over to the far corner of the room and returned with a medium-sized canvas. It was a portrait of Monique — very sweet and placid and at ease. ‘That’s the best portrait I ever did. I’m not a very good artist. My notes are all right, but my pictures are not good. Except this one — it’s got all the longing for my youth and the innocence of first love and the nice clean straight things of life. At least that’s what I think. Anyway, that’s why I liked having her around. One remembers sometimes. And the last four years are not good company in one’s thoughts.’

He poured out more Scotch, filling his own glass almost to the brim with neat whisky. ‘Mostly I try to forget,’ he went on, raising his glass with a sardonic smile. ‘But Monique was like a breath of fresh air in a stale room. When she was here I felt young again, forgot that I was a rotting outcast and remembered my youth and what I might in different circumstances have made of my life.’

‘What do you want me to do? I asked. ‘And what is the information you are willing to trade?’

‘Not so fast,’ he said. The liquor was making his speech very difficult to follow. ‘You’re down and out. And I’m the only person who can help you. That’s never happened to me before. You can sit there with a sneer on your face drinking my whisky — all right, I am gloating. But you’re going to stay sitting there whilst I tell you just what you and your sort have done for me. I’m going to tell you the sort of dirty bastard you’ve made me.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve never told a soul. Nobody knows who I am. Here they all think I’m a Swiss from one of the French cantons. I’m Signor Buisson.’ He looked across at Monique and the bitterness of his face softened momentarily. ‘I’ve told her more about myself than I’ve told any other living soul,’ he said.

He leaned forward to pour out more liquor. Both Boyd and I refused. We hadn’t finished our last glass. ‘So I’m not good enough to drink with, eh?’ He filled our glasses to the brim. ‘Well, you’re bloody going to drink with me. And you’re going to listen.’ His voice dropped as suddenly as it had been raised.

‘My mother still lives in Ballachulish. She’d be about seventy now. I write to her regularly. She thinks I have a flourishing little business here in Naples and that I’m married to an Italian girl and have a kid. Well, it’s all got a basis of truth. This business flourishes all right. And I’ve got this woman and the kid who is a bastard of hers and nothing to do with me. Whatever else I’ll do, I’d never give a slut like that-‘ and he nodded in the direction of the door through which the woman had appeared — ‘a child, the way I am. I’m going to stop writing to my mother now. I’ll be dead soon anyway. My mother is about the only happy memory I have left and I don’t want her ever to know what her son was really like — what he did and how he lived. It would break her heart, for my father is dead and I was her only child. That’s what I want you to do for me. She’s always asking me in her letters when I am coming home to see her. I shall never go, of course.’

He sat back and gazed out of the windows. He didn’t expect any comment and I said nothing. Words were tumbling into the man’s mouth from the depths of his being. I didn’t like him. But I felt sorry for him.

‘I last saw her when I was twenty-four,’ he said softly. ‘That was nearly eight years ago. When I was sixteen my father, who kept a little store in the town, sent me to work with the British Aluminium people. But I wanted to be an artist. I spent all my spare time drawing and painting. I saved some money and got myself to Paris, where I learned little about painting and a lot about how to exist on next to nothing. Eventually I got desperate. I am not a very good artist. I know that now. I went back to England and was in and out of the labour exchanges until I joined the Army.’

His voice drifted on, a dull monotone in the heat of the room.

It wasn’t a new story to me. A lot of men had gone the same way in the moral collapse of a world in chaos.

Frustrated, and suffering from an inferiority complex because he had the sense to know his limitations in the only thing he wanted to do, he found himself posted to Ordnance Survey as a draughtsman. This carried him through the first two years of the war. Then he had been fool enough to seduce his officer’s girl friend. Justified or not, he had then developed persecution mania. To get out of the unit he had applied for a commission. After three months at an O.C.T.U. he had been returned to unit. He explained that by saying, ‘Not the right schools, old man.’ But then added, ‘Anyway, gunnery wasn’t my line of country at all.’ Soon after returning to his unit, his officer had had him posted. And to justify the posting he had been given an adverse report.

Within two months he had found himself in an infantry replacement draft bound for Egypt via the Cape. Too late for Alamein, he had gone into Sicily with Montgomery’s Eighth Army.

But though he was realistic enough about his artistic abilities, he had by then developed the artistic temperament to the nth degree. He revolted against the whole life of the infantryman. ‘It wasn’t my sort of job,’ he said. ‘Why, because they wouldn’t give me a commission, should they shove me in the infantry? I just wasn’t cut out for it. The end came at Cassino. Have you ever been scared — so scared that you feel like blowing your brains out rather than face it any longer? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. You went to the right schools and they taught you to be more afraid of being scared than of hell itself.

‘Well, I wasn’t made that way. I just cracked up like a lot of other lads. It was in the early spring of ‘44. We were going out on patrol for the third night in succession. We were platoon strength when we went out and half the lads were crying. It’s all so vivid even now. The tears were hot in my eyes and cold on the tip of my chin. I was crying like a child. I just couldn’t go through with it. We were going up to the Hotel des Roses to try and wipe out a spandau position that had been worrying us and I just lay on the hard rubble of a ruined building and let the tears stream down my face. I couldn’t control myself.’

He laughed mirthlessly, drained his glass and refilled it.

‘The officer came over to me,’ he continued. ‘Give him his due, he did his best to get me to go on. And then when he found I wouldn’t, he dug his pistol into my ribs. But I was past caring. “Go on, shoot me, you swine,” I said. But he didn’t. He just sent me back and the next day I was up before the C.O.

‘I was sent to a field punishment camp. I didn’t care after that. I had no pride left. I escaped and made my way to Naples. I had no money, so I joined up with a gang of deserters who were doing all right. We made a living by pinching trucks and running foodstuffs for the Black Market. But it was dangerous work and I soon discovered that there was a good living to be made as a forger. For the first time in my life I found myself making money as an artist. Remember the forged greenies and blackies that were turned out? I did the original designs for one of the gangs in that racket. And then there were passes, certificates, passports, licences. I’ve copied practically every Allied and Italian permit. I’ve built up one of the most prosperous — and incidentally one of the safest — underground jobs in Naples.’

He wiped the sweat off his forehead. He had been talking hard and the liquor was making him a bit dazed. ‘I’ve made money, had all the women I wanted, enjoyed life — and I’ve hated myself doing it. I might have snapped out of it if I hadn’t got tied up with Anna the first few weeks I was in Naples. You wouldn’t think it now but she was a beauty then, luscious like a fully ripe peach. But she was a tart and she had just bought her way out of hospital for fifteen thousand lire. I didn’t know that. I guess I was a fool, but there you are. And now when I’ve got the money I can’t go back to Ballachulish. Not because I’m a deserter — a false name and false papers would be easy. But I’d have to tell her the whole story. And a woman’s got a right to end her days in a fool’s paradise, thinking she’s given birth to a child that’s made a position for itself in a foreign land — instead of to a monstrosity, twisted mentally and physically.’

He laughed loudly and obscenely, and I saw Monique wince. Then he leaned forward and stabbed an uncertain forefinger at me. ‘That’s where you come in,’ he said. ‘The old lady’s suspicious. She thinks that if I’m doing as well as I say in my letters there ought to be no reason why I shouldn’t take a holiday and go and see her. You must go and see her when you get back to England. Tell her you’ve seen me. Tell her anything you like about me — anything, that is, except the truth. And tell her I’m dead. Tell her I was run over — an accident. Tell her you saw it happen and were with me when I died in hospital. I’ll forge all the necessary papers, including a will, and I’ll have a firm of lawyers send her a legacy. Tell her that I spoke of her with my dying breath and that you promised to come and see her. You’re the officer type — she’ll believe it all coming from a bloke like you. She won’t expect an ex-naval officer to be lying, will she? She’ll believe you. That way she’ll never know the truth. She’ll never know how I’ll really die.’ ‘You can’t do this,’ I said. ‘It’s horrible.’ He laughed at that. ‘Horrible! Who are you to judge whether it’s horrible or not. A mother will forgive anything, but not her son mucking around with bad women. You’ll be doing a great kindness. And you’ll do it because you’re in a fix and you’ve made yourself responsible for the girl here.’

I said, ‘I’d do it anyway if I were convinced it were the right thing to do. I don’t need a bribe to do a kindness for some one.’

‘You don’t need a bribe, eh?’ he sneered. ‘Well, you’re bloody getting one, whether you like it or not. I wouldn’t trust any one to do this for me unless I had their conscience in fee. You’ll do it for me because it is a bargain between us — not as a damned kindness. Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t take charity. I’ve fallen low — Goddamned bloody low — but not as low as that.’

He propelled his chair forward until his face was so close to mine that I could smell his liquored breath and sweaty body. ‘Would it interest you to know that I forged papers two days ago for a tank landing craft? It is a strange coincidence that they should come to me, except of course that I’ve got something of a corner in this sort of business around these parts. And would it interest you to know that the original papers were made out in the name of Trevedra?’ I stared at him in amazement. At first I could not believe it. But he had nothing to gain by lying. ‘You mean you forged papers for my own ship?’

He nodded, his lips drawn back in a sneering grin.

‘Who did you forge them for?’

‘I never divulge the names of my clients. That is a cardinal rule in this sort of game. She was purchased by an Italian firm from McCrae for the coastal trade. She is now known by an Italian name. I know what she is now called. And, moreover, I know where she is lying up at the moment.’

‘It’s fantastic!’ I said. I was just thinking aloud.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you live a little longer in Naples,’ he said, ‘you will get used to the fantastic.’

Tell me one thing,’ I said, ‘did they buy her for running arms?’

He did not answer my question, but shouted for Anna again. ‘Bring my Bible and another bottle,’ he told her. When they arrived he poured us out more drinks. Then he said, ‘I’m still Presbyterian enough to believe that a man who makes an oath with his hand laid upon the Book will not break faith. Put your hand on the Book, man, and repeat after me.’

I hesitated. But there was no point in refusing. He would die sooner or later, and it would not be a pleasant death. Who was I to judge whether his decision was right or wrong. It would serve no purpose for his mother to know the truth about his life. And whatever the man had done — and I had no doubt that he had told us but a tithe of the rottenness that had been in his life — at least he had this one spark of decency, that he wished his mother to die in the belief that her son was the son she had known eight years ago. It was difficult to refuse perhaps the one decent gesture he had made during the past few years of his life.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘But please understand that, apart from the information you can apparently give me, I would have done this anyway if you had wished it this way.’

He clicked his tongue. ‘Never mind about your high and bloody mighty principles, Cunningham. Just place your hand on the Book and repeat after me: “I swear by Almighty God and all that I hold dear to me, to visit your mother and tell her of your death and carry to her whatever last messages you direct.”’

I repeated it after him. And when I had finished, he said, ‘And may the curse of my body rest upon you if you fail to fulfil this charge.’

He sat silent for a moment after that. Then at length he said, ‘And now you’ll be wanting to know where your ship is.’ He spun his chair round and propelled it over to a desk in the far corner of the room. He pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer and for a moment or two the silence of the room was broken only by the scratching of his pen across the surface of the paper.

Then he slid back silently across the room to me and handed me the sheet. ‘That is my mother’s address at Ballachulish and her name. Below it I have put the location of your ship, the name of the man who was behind the outfit that “acquired” her and also the name of a trattoria and a time. That time is for tomorrow. Go to the trattoria and I will have a man meet you there. He is known as Il Piccolo Polipo. That means the Little Octopus. He will help you. The people who have acquired the ship want her for running arms. They represent Big Business and neo-Fascism. I am surprised that you did not get on better with them. They would have paid you good money for the ship rather than take the risk of stealing it. The man you will meet at the trattoria calls himself a communist. But I think you would find difficulty in understanding his political ideology. He heads a band of men who were once of the partigiani. It would not be good for him if neo-Fascism became too powerful in Napoli. He will wish to know where the leader is. Tell him he will be for the next three days at the villa of the banker, Mordini, on Monte Argentario. In return for that information I will see that he helps you to get your ship back. It is in any case to his advantage. If they have that ship for running arms then they will be all-powerful in this area — that is underground. But then the underground is not so far off the surface in this city as it is in most others.’

But I was scarcely listening to what he said. I had opened the folded slip of notepaper. In spidery copperplate writing the name Del Ricci caught my eye.

And immediately everything fell into place.

I felt a great relief. It is not nice to be forced to consider a friend no better than a crook.

The location of the Trevedra was given as Porto Giglio. ‘Where is Porto Giglio?’ I asked him.

‘It is a port on the island of Giglio about twelve miles off the coast just south of Elba,’ he said. ‘Il Piccolo Polipo will arrange for a boat and also transport up to Santo Stefano, which will be your port of embarkation.’ He passed his hand wearily across his brow. ‘When you see my mother, tell her that it was today I died.’ He looked across at the girl. ‘Goodbye, Monique,’ he said. ‘Pray for me sometimes. And if it’s any satisfaction to you, your visits brought light into the darkness of this room. I am glad to have had some part in getting you back to your mother.’

She went across to him and took his hand. Then she bent quickly and kissed his forehead.

We left then. And in the moonlit street outside I saw that she was crying. ‘He was kind,’ she said, not troubling to hide her tears. ‘He was kind and he was lonely.’