Cabaret (11 page)

“Why her?”

“You know why: because Madame Jo-Jo never gets it wrong.”

“Puh! You and your fortune-tellers! What do they know?

And what about me?”

“It won’t change a thing between us, trust me.You know we’ll be together forever.”

I slept. It had been such an early start, and I had been sleep deprived since I left home. I woke up some hours later to find the bus had broken down, far from the port, but way before reaching the pyramids.We were marooned.The driver was brewing hibiscus tea at the side of the road. A man had tethered his buffalo in the shade, and was milking it into a pail. My neighbor handed me a slice of succulent water-melon, with a completely toothless smile. I took it gratefully.

She sucked a slice herself with relish and spat the seeds out with a splat. Around me the ship’s passengers had collapsed like flies, groaning. Chickens pecked among their sprawling forms.The ventriloquist was still in his seat two rows behind.

Beads of sweat stood out on his brow and on his upper lip. In the luggage rack Malco was strangely silent.

We never did get to see the pyramids or the Sphinx. The bus remained at the roadside for the rest of the day, and into the night. At sunset we were passed by the luxury coaches containing the first and second classes, on the opposite side of the highway, returning to the port. Sometime later another local bus was sent out to retrieve us and we were driven back at frightening speed to reach the cruise ship before it sailed.

The ventriloquist was glued to my side during the return journey. Neither of us spoke.

As we bobbed across the pontoon, just as the
Santa
Domenica
was about to weigh anchor, I turned to the short, fat man and said:

“I’m agreeing to nothing until I’ve consulted my parrot.” And then I left him without a backward glance.

T
he climax of the cruise was now over, and the ship was heading back to Civitavecchia. We were on the home run, and there was an air of anticipation that affected the first- and second-class passengers and the crew. In third class, it was very different. An air of failure, of melancholy, hung over the lowest deck like a cloud. The whole purpose of the trip had been denied us, and there was talk of a conspiracy among the more suspicious-minded. People became depressed; their spirits were crushed.

And what made matters worse was when Rula Argenti developed dysentery, and in the unsanitary conditions be-lowdecks, it spread like a forest fire. The resigned queue that waited without hope outside the single lavatory that soon became horribly blocked discussed the cause of the epidemic: cabaret

“It was that lemon-flavored water we drank in the parking lot,” said Fantasia Spiga, struggling to control the eruption she could feel brewing within her.

“No, it was the chicken stew they cooked up on the bus,” said Nero Pupa. “We never should have tried it.”

“It was the buffalo milk,” countered Nicoletta Bellini.

“That evil-looking creature was responsible for it all.” So far, I had avoided the contagion, and tried to spend most of the day on the sundeck, where I hoped the sea breezes would keep the germs at bay.

At my side, constantly, was the ventriloquist, for the first time without the suitcase.The dummy was, apparently, suffering from heat exhaustion after the day spent in the luggage rack of the bus, and was having to lie down in their cabin with a damp washcloth on his head.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but already we had assumed the diaphanous mantle of a couple. Unintentionally we walked in step along the decks. Instinctively we moved in unison toward an empty bench for a rest, an enticing patch of shade, or an interesting sight out at sea. The ventriloquist drew rogue strands of hair out of my eyes. I plucked fluff from the collar of his sailor suit, or snatched for his hairpiece when it took flight.

When we encountered the captain near the bridge, the ventriloquist introduced me as Freda Castro, his fiancée. I wasn’t surprised.

Neither of us felt the need to say very much. We had the practiced ease of people who have been together for a long, long time. Who know the other’s stories, and smile generously at their well-worn anecdotes. Who can anticipate what the other will say before they open their lips. And who can feel their presence without looking by virtue of their scent in the air, the sound of their footsteps, and the invisible strings that bind us together. Yet in this we were mistaken, for we were absolute strangers to each other.

Looking back on it, I certainly wasn’t attracted to the ventriloquist. Alberto, as I shall call him now. But I didn’t really know what attraction was. I hadn’t felt it before. I certainly had felt no attraction to Ernesto Porcino, just curiosity about his body. Yet, like Alberto, I was convinced of the in-evitability of it all. I put my faith in Mamma. She saw my future with a ventriloquist. In all probability, it was this one.

The final night at sea there was to be a gala. The captain’s original intention had been to include even the third-class passengers to compensate them in some small way for missing the cruise’s highlight. He was considering ways of limiting them to soft drinks, because he didn’t want them getting tipsy, and was creating a two-tiered system with respect to other refreshments, but the calculations and diagrams he produced on a sheaf of papers proved unnecessary.

When the attack of dysentery worsened, he knew the lower deck couldn’t be involved in the festivities for fear of contaminating the superior classes. Soon he was forced to put the whole of third class into quarantine.

I returned to my deck to find it sealed off with tape, and notices saying “Infected area. Danger of death. Do not enter.” From inside the controlled zone came the sound of distant weeping.

And so it came about that I moved into Alberto’s cabin, although nothing of an intimate nature took place between us, I can assure you. He was in the entertainers’ area, on the per-sonnel deck, sandwiched between second class and the engine rooms. The dummy was obliged to relinquish his bunk to me and return to his suitcase, and although he complained, Alberto stood firm. The dummy took against me after that, and although I tried to be friendly toward him, he never for-gave me.

I managed to borrow an outfit from one of the dancing girls, and the gala evening was the best night of my life. Alberto was magnificent. His act was even better than before, and I felt proud of him.Yes, proud.The other ladies in the audience looked at me with expressions of understanding, approval, and possibly even envy in one or two cases, and I blushed and was coy. The voice in my ear whispered:

“Marry me, Freda,”

and I whispered back:

“It depends on my parrot.”

Dancing followed the cabaret. It was held on the first-class sundeck, where an area had been specially prepared with a portable polished surface. Alberto was a wonderful dancer.

So light on his feet—not like a fat man at all. And although he only came up to my shoulder, I think we made a handsome couple.We whirled around the dance floor at dizzying speed, and Alberto knew all the steps: the samba, the mambo, the jive.We even performed the tango, which drew us a round of applause from the onlookers.

We were still dancing when the Klaxon sounded and the captain gave the order to abandon ship.This time, it wasn’t Alberto playing a trick.

We never found out what really happened. It was a calm and romantic night, lit by a canopy of twinkling stars paying homage to the new moon. The sea was gently undulating like ruffled silk. There was hardly a breath of wind.

A torpedo fired by a Russian submarine was one of the more imaginative theories put forward. Negligence. Metal fa-tigue. Act of God. Act of the Devil. All were considered by the investigating authorities. More likely, however, was an act of sabotage by one or more of the third-class passengers. Some, I knew, were dangerously close to the edge. Some were simply unable to take any more.

Whatever the explanation, the ship quickly began to sink.

Unlike in the shipwrecks you see in the movies, there was no panic—no hysterical ladies, or gentlemen firing revolvers and disguising themselves as grandmothers to get a place in the lifeboats. The members of the band didn’t continue playing: they put down their instruments and marshaled at their station. The captain didn’t remain stoically on the bridge.

The lifeboats were lowered in orderly fashion, and there were more than enough of them too, at least for the first- and second-class passengers, the entertainment corps, and the crew.

Belowdecks, the third-class passengers who had survived the dysentery had already drowned. Only the upper deck was still above the level of the sea. Alberto stripped off his dinner jacket and was about to dive down one of the internal staircases to rescue Malco, but before he could do so, there was a bubbling under the water and the schoolboy appeared wearing a pair of small red swimming trunks and a scuba diver’s mask. He gave Alberto an arch look, strode over to a lifeboat in which he took his place, and wrapped himself up in a blanket. As the waves lapped around the hem of my borrowed gown, we knew it was time for us, too, to leave. We stepped into the lifeboat, the sailors rowed us swiftly away, and with a gentle motion the
Santa Domenica
slipped silently beneath the waves.

The lifeboats bobbed together like floating corks. The only sounds were the gentle plash of the ripples against the sides of the boats, and the subdued whispers of the survivors.

It seemed like no time before the minesweeper
HMS

Clover
rescued us, and by midmorning we were steaming into Civitavecchia. How relieved I felt to see my home port coming closer and closer into view.While we were still some way out, I heard the notes of a brass band wafting from the quay.

Bunting had been strung up, and there were some slightly de-flated balloons.

Soon I was able to see my own little welcoming party on the quayside, and tears filled my eyes.The little group was just the same, standing in the same places as they had been to see me off. Was that really only five days ago? What a lot of life I had lived since then.

At a little distance I could make out Clodia’s mother, waving her mechanical hand at another woman she had mistaken for her daughter, crying with relief under the false impression she had survived.

Finally, finally, I disembarked into the waiting arms of my loved ones, with Alberto standing shyly at my side, and Malco shuffling his feet impatiently in the dust. Pierino perched immediately on my shoulder and stroked his beak along my cheek, first one side, then the other, with the motion you would use to sharpen a knife.

Signora Dorotea was the first to clasp me to her bosom, which snubbed Aunt Ninfa, who thought hers should be the prior claim. Signora Dorotea’s voice was almost incomprehensible through her tears.

“My poor girl,” she cried, “to think all this was my idea.

You could have died out there, and it would have been my fault.”

“Yes, you should be ashamed of yourself,” chipped in Aunt Ninfa, seizing her angle and her opportunity, “putting ideas in her head. Foreign travel indeed! Egypt! Why, what’s natural is to live and die within the sound of your own bells. Leave what’s foreign to the foreigners, that’s what I say.” Just as things threatened to turn nasty between the two women, the photographer from
Mortician’s Monthly
rushed over.The shipwreck was an unexpected bonus to the editorial department at the magazine. They hadn’t had a single idea for the July issue before this; now they could stretch it out to fill a double-page spread with full-color advertisement inserts.

Aunt Ninfa rounded on the photographer. She wasn’t usually aggressive, but it was the result of stress: she had been worried sick until the authorities had been able to confirm my name was on the survivors list.

“Sensationalist reporting, that’s all it is,” she said, beating him with her cheap paper fan. “These dreadful paparazzi.” All was grist for the photographer’s mill, and he continued clicking his shutter.

Clodia’s mother was wandering from welcome party to welcome party calling for her daughter to appear, but of course everybody knew poor Clodia wasn’t coming back.

“Is he bothering you?” asked Polibio, jerking his head toward Alberto. The two had been sizing each other up in an uneasy silence, and each was ready for combat.

“He’s the ventriloquist,” I said, by way of an answer.

“We’re engaged,” he said, causing a stunned reaction that seemed to suspend all activity in the dockyard. The cranes stopped loading containers onto ships; seagulls ceased flying and hung motionless in the air; the brass band paused, and their booming notes died away. Horns fell silent. Sailors, stevedores, and strumpets stood still.

The only motion was a flurry of feathers that rumpled the still air, and Pierino landed on the tip of Alberto’s nose. Momentarily they looked deep into each other’s eyes, and it was love. Pierino displayed his whole armory of affection. He nibbled Alberto’s ears delicately. He laid his head endearingly upon his shoulder. He performed somersaults around his out-stretched finger. He stood on the hairpiece and flapped his wings, all the while cooing with a baby voice; the parrots’

mating call.

“I love you,” said Pierino passionately, the first words he had ever spoken.

“You see, he loves me,” Alberto whispered.

I knew then that I would marry him, and my heart sank.

A
lberto had not, it transpired, made a favor-able impression on my friends and relatives.

“You can’t marry him,” said Signora Dorotea when I returned to work the next day.

“I don’t know what it is about him,” she continued, in her agitation piling too many cotton flocks into the cheeks of Signor Stufo, so that he began to resemble a hamster. “Yes,” she said, pulling them all out and starting over again, “I don’t know what it is about him, but it isn’t right.” This feeling was echoed by Uncle Birillo and Aunt Ninfa, who insisted I join them for dinner.

“I know you’ve just had the most terrible experience,” began Uncle Birillo over artichokes braised with spearmint and lots of garlic, “and of course, it hasn’t been easy for you since you lost your dear mamma, rest her soul.” Here he exchanged worried glances with Aunt Ninfa to check if he was doing all right. He was.