A Soldier of the Great War (18 page)

Alessandro was happy to have found in such a place a man to whom he could speak frankly. Obviously it was because he was a soldier. And because Alessandro knew no one among the guests, he grabbed the attaché by the elbow and pulled him to the side.

"Look," he confided, "I've never been to something like this. I'd much rather be on my horse. What shall I do?"

"When?"

"In general."

The attaché pondered the question. "You're nervous?" Alessandro shook his head. Now that he had a friend, he was not as nervous as he had been before, but he was still extremely uncomfortable. "You needn't worry. I'll watch out for you."

"May I sit next to you at dinner?"

"One is seated according to protocol."

Alessandro looked disappointed.

"But don't worry. All you have to do is walk into the crowd, take a glass of champagne, and look for someone whose face you like. Time and events will do the rest."

"And if I meet the ambassador do I call him Excellency, Your Highness, Baron?"

"No."

"What do I call him?"

"You don't call him anything."

"What if I have to address him?" Alessandro was now more at ease, if only because ten minutes had passed and he was functioning quite well. In fact, though he thought that he was imagining it, it seemed that all eyes were upon him.

"If you have to address him, call him Zoltán. That's his name."

"They'd throw me out."

"Are you sure? He's just a man. He has a son your age. He, too, was once a student. Call him Zoltán."

Alessandro bent close to his friend's ear. "
Zoltán
is such a strange name. In Italian it sounds ridiculous, like the name of a Persian god, or a company that makes electric motors."

"I know, I know. Now why don't you just go in and find a pretty girl. I have to greet people. I'll see you later on."

Alessandro moved confidently toward the circle of delirious dancers, deftly snatching a glass of champagne from a silver tray on the upraised hand of a speeding waiter. The instant he grasped the thin crystal stem he was surrounded by a single gigantic woman in a sparkling dress. She was at least a head taller, with a jaw that had been copied from the bow of a trireme. And yet she had beautiful hazel eyes, a long straight nose, and strong white teeth. Furthermore, although she was large, she was well proportioned. Her breasts were three-quarters exposed, and her décolleté made them taut enough for an observer to monitor not just her breathing, but her heartbeat. She had had two bottles of champagne.

"Let me guess your nationality," she said, backing him against a table of hors d'oeuvres as if she were going to arrest him. Her rapidly rising and falling bosom was right in his face. He felt like someone who goes to an ocean promontory on a stormy day and stands with his feet in jeopartly of the sea. "You're Czech!"

Alessandro shook his head.

"British!"

Again, he had to shake his head.

"You can't hide from me. I've spotted you," she said, pressing her lower body upon his as if she were a construction worker fitting something to a wall. "I'm not a little chicken, but you've conquered me completely. You, like me, are Bulgarian."

"I'm Italian."

She blinked.

"Is it true," she asked, as if she were talking about politics, "that young Italian men do not make love to women until marriage?"

"They do, but only upside down."

Her puzzlement gave way to a sort of growl, and she thrust her face toward his. "A woman twice your age," she said in such a way as to numb him, "might want to keep you in her bed for several
days on end." She looked coyly at the ceiling. "I usually get up at one or two."

"In the afternoon?"

"My husband is in Trieste, and I am at Via Massimo, one forty."

The next he knew, she was gone. Encountering a group of people she had undoubtedly seen a dozen times in the previous week, she greeted them as if she and they had met by accident at the North Pole.

Alessandro thought that he was not doing so badly, since he had already survived for half an hour and made two friends. He turned to face the table over which he had leaned so far backward.

Many glasses of champagne, fifty shrimp, and a score petits fours later, he left to find a face that he liked. He now understood how one could tolerate conversations atomized into measly little snuppins and snidgets, how men could dance with crane-like dowagers, and women with men who were as fat as barrels of Turkish olive oil.

He eavesdropped along the perimeter of the dancing. People spoke of places to which he had never been, things that he could not afford, figures of whom he had not heard, and accomplishments that he found hard to believe. The duchesses and diplomats fabricated as much as laborers in a tavern. Alessandro remembered that his father had said, "Of all people on earth, only merchants tell the truth, but only when they are talking to each other, and sometimes not even then."

A bewigged servant made his way through the crowd, ringing a silver bell. The orchestra stopped and a long line of guests began to move toward the dining room.

Though the musicians rested, the percussionist who worked the bird machines was unable to stop, and the guests filed ahead like the huntsmen in one of Uccello's dark green forests. Two servants on each side of the door held engraved leather seating
boards—diagrams of the long table, with name cards matched to the seats.

An ancient Neapolitan couple came to the sign. "De Felice," the man declared.

"
Onorevole Dottore Fabio De Felice,
" one of the servants said, indicating a position fairly close to the ambassador's wife, who was at one end of the table, "
e la signora.
" He held his hand over a place across the table exactly as far away from the ambassador as the husband was from the ambassadors wife.

"Giuliani," Alessandro said, not quite believing they would have remembered his name and place.

"
II Signor Alessandro Giuliani, "the,
servant intoned, and pointed to a card solidly in the middle of the long table.

"That says,
De Sanctis, Maria
" Alessandro stated.

The servant peered over the board to scan the cards, reading upside down. He pronounced the names in a panic that resembled the recitations of an embezzler trying to cover his tracks.

"
Er war eine Veränderung,
" another servant instructed, pointing to the card that represented Alessandro. "
Pardon.
"

Alessandro was to be seated at the left side of the ambassador, across from the ambassador of France. "Its a mistake," he said.

The servants checked their cards. "No, sir," one ventured. "The baroness herself moved the card."

"It's impossible," Alessandro declared.

The right eye of one of them started to wink involuntarily while the left side of his mouth collapsed inward.

As Alessandro walked toward the end of the table he was not so surprised to see that the ambassador was the kindly military fellow with the gold collar and white jacket.

Seated directly on Alessandro's left was Lia Bellati. Her hair was up, she wore an emerald necklace, and her gown was so blue that Alessandro thought of the Atlantic. He believed that the world was not constructed this way, and that, if it were, his luck was sure to
turn. "Zoltán!" he said in a voice that was pleasant, authoritative, unwavering, and deep, and that was so difficult to summon that he nearly fell off his chair as he sat down.

The ambassador shook Alessandro's hand. "Good to see you, Alessandro," he said. "The last time we met, everything was different."

Then he introduced Alessandro to the French ambassador, who was deeply disturbed that he did not know the identity of the young man opposite him, undoubtedly a prince or a musical prodigy. The French ambassador racked his brain so hard to figure out who Alessandro was that he began to resemble a beehive.

Alessandro turned to Lia and found that he had to do all he could do to restrain himself from kissing her. Her eyes sparkled, and the ocean-blue dress and emerald necklace framed her young face so beautifully that he ignored the representatives of the great powers.

"How did you do it?" Alessandro asked.

"My brother," she answered, glancing diagonally across the table at a young man in the military uniform of Italy. His face was kind, and stronger than Alessandro's in every detail, perhaps because he had been tested as Alessandro had not been. One could tell merely by looking at him that he was not only an excellent shot, but one of those people who in war are usually untouched. "He arranged the invitations," Lia said, "but we had no idea that you already knew the ambassador, who just told me that, despite protocol, his wife never once has failed to put you directly on his left."

"Who cares about him?" Alessandro asked.

A servant in livery removed the gold-rimmed plate that had been holding Alessandro's name card, and put one exactly like it in its place. Alessandro wondered why he hadn't simply removed the card.

"These cards can have filthy edges," Lia said as she watched his expression during the substitution.

The cutlery and china arrayed in front of Alessandro made a small city, behind which was a toy mountain range of crystal—five forks, three knives, half a dozen spoons, three napkins, four wine glasses, a champagne glass, and a water goblet. Each place had before it three decanters—for red wine, white wine, and water. This, it seemed, was the custom of the imperial family.

As the soup was brought in, the orchestra (which had relocated in an aerial bower in back of the baroness) began to play the various Viennese bird delirium waltzes that had encouraged Alessandro to eat his hors d'oeuvres rhythmically. He began to sway, but then, when he realized that the musicians were soft-pedaling the music, he soft-pedaled too, wanting to avoid disastrous mistakes. His confidence was growing, and the relief that he felt for having survived so rigorous a social test brought him not just ease, but rapture.

"What's the soup?" he asked the ambassador point-blank. "It's the best soup I've ever tasted."

"It has a special ingredient," the ambassador answered.

"What is that?"

"All the champagne you've been drinking in the past hour." He leaned over and whispered so that neither the French ambassador nor anyone else could hear. "I don't drink anything, so that I can talk politics and keep secrets, and from my position of sobriety I don't think the soup is so good. I've had better soup in the army during maneuvers, and everyone knows that in the army they cook with horse piss."

Alessandro choked on his soup.

"Say to me this funny," the French ambassador called out from across the table.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to provoke an incident."

"Zoltán," the French ambassador answered, harking back to their previous conversation, "the only incidents we have to fear are those between your friends the Germans, and the Italians."

"How do you mean?" asked Alessandro, in his capacity as the highest-ranking Italian in the conversation.

"The poor Germans," the French ambassador declared with perfect Gallic sarcasm, "are really heartsick for colonies. We've seen them trying to establish a foothold in North Africa: we've seen them fail. And they'll continue to fail, because they lack naval bases in the Mediterranean, and probably would not choose war in Europe for the sake of acquiring colonies. For that very reason they won't best us and they have no chance against the British. They have a chance only against
you
."

"Me?"

"Italy."

"How?"

"In Cyrenaica and Tripolitania."

"No, I don't think so," the Baron Károly offered. "The Germans have no interest in that wasteland. Besides, it would displease us enormously."

"They may have no interest now, but as they probe along the coast and we stand our ground in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and as the British hold fast in Egypt, where will they go?"

"But they're not probing."

"German gunboats passed Gibraltar yesterday," the French ambassador said. "Of course, they may only be trying to get some sun."

"By whom was this reported?"

"The British. It hasn't appeared yet in the press. It will. We would have spotted them ourselves, eventually. I meant to ask you, tonight, if you knew anything about it, since they're
your
friends."

"It's the first I've heard."

"They're not scheduled for port calls in Trieste or Dubrovnik?"

The ambassador of Austria-Hungary shook his head. "I would know."

Astounded to have been included in just the conversation that he had wanted, Alessandro said, "This sounds to me like an incident between Germany and Austria, not Germany and Italy."

"No," the French ambassador replied. "Italy will react, fearing for Cyrenaica and Tripolitania—the weak spot on the North African coast. It may provoke a war between Italy and Turkey."

Though outside the conversation, Lia nodded.

"Turkey?" Alessandro asked.

"Italy will have to pre-empt in Libya," the Baron Károly stated, "to protect its interests. My guess is that before the year is up you will declare war on the Sultan."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Alessandro said.

Perhaps because they were so used to listening to conversations between potentates, the ambassadors felt reflexively that Alessandro was speaking on behalf of Italy. Rather than saying, "But you don't," the French ambassador asked, "Why not?"

"Nothing in Libya is worth a war," Alessandro said. Finally, his command of rhetoric, coupled with the power of his voice, silenced a dinner table in an embassy.

Lias brother spoke up. "That's not so," he said. "Italy has developed Libya over the years. There are mineral deposits of great value, and the agricultural potential allows the surplus population of the south somewhere to go. And what about our honor, not to mention the right to a colony in Africa, our history there, the problem of access to the canal, and the complete inacceptability of a German naval base off our shores."