Damnation of Adam Blessing (15 page)

The hotel was on the Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, not far from the Mediterraneo. Adam was paying eight thousand lire for a double with bath, a deluxe rate, but he was glad to be away from the Via Po apartment. He posted the letter to Ernesto at the desk and walked out into a warm sunny day, not badly hung-over, not at all depressed. As he strolled along he looked for the familiar yellow sign with the telephone on it. There was one above a bar sign on the corner, and Adam ordered a whisky and asked the cashier for a
gettone
to make a call. He took his drink with him, dialed Dorothy’s office number, and when she answered, Adam pressed the button to let the slug drop into the box.

“Where are you, Adam?”

“In a bar.”

“Where are you staying, Adam?”

“The Holy Father has asked me to share his quarters in the Vatican.”

“I don’t appreciate that, Adam. I don’t appreciate any of it.”

“Did I get any mail?”

She let out a sarcastic little laugh. “Stacks of it, Adam, from all your friends. The florist in New York, the bartender in New York, Ernesto, Billy, Chary — I can’t count all your mail.”

“You’re still mad, is that it?”

“Adam, I have to pay my phone bill. You called all over the world the other night. If Norman hadn’t stopped you — ”

“He’s still around?”

“Of course he’s still around. What do you think? Adam, he’s a better friend than you know. They were supposed to go to Capri this week, and he’s only staying because he’s worried about you.”

“I must be the most exciting thing that ever happened to Norman. Even more exciting than Shirley.” Adam took a gulp from the whisky glass.

“Oh, Adam, you can’t even stop drinking while you make a phone call. I can hear the glass.”

“It’s just wine.”

“Norman was going to ask the police to help find you, if you didn’t call today.”

“The police have nothing on me,” said Adam.

“Of course they haven’t
got
anything on you! What kind of a way is that to talk! You were talking that way the other night! I don’t know what you mean half the time any more! Adam, we’re all very worried about you, that’s all.”

“I’m fine, Dorothy. Really. I really feel great!” He meant that. He felt tears in his eyes.

“Why don’t you come back to the apartment?” “When they go. Not before.”

“Adam, I’ll ask them not to stop by any more. Will you come back then?”

“It’s the nagging I can’t take,” said Adam. “I haven’t done such bad things.” More tears. He turned his back on the bar so the old man behind it would not see his eyes.

“Where are you staying without luggage?” “I have a new suitcase I bought.” “Oh, Adam, come back to the apartment.” “Yes,” said Adam. “I want to. I want to pack everything.” “Pack?”

“I may have to go to Venice,” said Adam. “Billy sounded worried the other night on the phone.”

“Adam, he was worried about
you.”

“I know. I ought to reassure him.”

“Come home, Adam, and we’ll talk about it.”

“You see, Dorothy,” said Adam, “they could be having trouble with their marriage. They are some things you don’t know, you see?”

“Adam … Just come home, will you?”

“I have to go to the Piazza Verano this afternoon. After that, maybe.”

“The cemetery? Not the cemetery?”

“Ernesto’s wife is there, Dorothy.”

“What time are you going there?”

“Oh, after lunch, I suppose.”

“All right, Adam.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Adam. “I just hate Norman.”

“All right, Adam. I’ll see you later then.”

“Yes,” Adam smiled. “Good-bye.” He put the phone’s arm back. There was a residue of tears in his eyes, which he brushed away with his fingertips. He swallowed the rest of his whisky and set off for the narrow old street north of Piazza Navona, the Via de Coronari.

The choice was between a silver salt cellar and an eighteenth century wood punch-ladle, with a worm handle and silver mounts. Adam stood in the antique shop trying to make up his mind. His book on silver was with the rest of his belongings on the Via Po, and while he was almost positive he would buy Luther Schneider the punch-ladle, he had some reservations. The punch-ladle was the more expensive gift, but the silver salt cellar was larger and looked less skimpy. Still, Schneider was more likely to have a salt cellar in his collection. Adam picked up one, then the other, ultimately choosing the punch-ladle. He left instructions for mailing, and enclosed the note he had written last night at the hotel. He had had to rewrite it this morning, for his hand had looked strangely unlike him, even though he allowed for the fact he was quite tight. It was a bewildering curiosity — last evening’s handwriting sample. There were those odd breaks in the lower sections of his a’s and o’s. He had smiled to imagine such ominous traits in himself, and he had redone it with great care: “Greetings from The Eternal City with thanks for your faith in me.” It was the first time he had ever put a message in with a gift for Schneider. He left it unsigned, but he felt a certain warm satisfaction at the thought that he had finally made a direct communication, as though somehow it gave more stature to his bond with Schneider. The clerk was smiling at Adam, bowing to him, being so very kind that Adam left the place with his eyes filled. There was a lot of good in the world, and as Adam crossed the street and headed toward the Piazza Navona, he realized he wanted to dine outdoors in the sun, where he could watch people, toast them with his wine in a secret sacrament, embracing absolute strangers and Billy, Chary, Ernesto … his friends…. He thought suddenly of the nice clerk from the Gracie Branch Post Office back in New York City, the one to whom he had handed over the change-of-address slip, and to whom he had told the fib about Chary’s moving. The clerk had such a friendly face. When Adam had gone back to the post office to reroute Chary’s mail the second time, he had looked for that clerk in vain. Adam wished he knew his name. He would have liked to send him a post card, even though the clerk would probably not know who it was from. He would simply have liked to send him greetings from Rome. Tears again. Adam blinked them away. He turned onto the Via Guiseppe Zanardelli, where he saw Passetto’s, with the large summer terrace. He looked forward to a very happy luncheon there, and he had to stop a few feet from the entrance to get control of himself, to wipe his eyes.

• • •

A light rain began to fall as Adam was leaving Passetto’s — a misty sort of precipitation with the sun still hot but screened by pinkish clouds. Adam had ordered an extra pot of coffee at the end of his meal, so that he no longer felt the gay euphoria he had while he was dining; instead, a not melancholy but more pensive feeling; serious, very serious now. A tonsured monk passed him in the street, and Adam crossed himself — the first time in his life he had ever done it, but it seemed very natural. In the taxi on his way to the Piazza Verano he remembered his first trip to Rome, when he had ridden an elevator to the roof of St. Peter’s Basilica. There were bits of saints’ bones for sale there, along with the rosaries, guidebooks and Benedictine liqueurs. There were signs everywhere which warned “Do not spit,” and Adam had thought at the time that it was comical for such signs to be there, but now he knew that it was very sad and he understood those signs. They were not there because people would spit, Adam decided, they were simply reminders that at any time, in any place, man could turn on you and foul you. Who was safe really, where was anyone safe from unkindness or vulgarity? Adam smiled. It no longer made him sad as it had in Passetto’s when he remembered Ernesto’s last words to him; it made him glad he could forgive Ernesto for another wrong, as he had forgiven all his friends. Perhaps when he left the cemetery he would return to St. Peter’s and buy a small sack of the saints’ bones for Ernesto. Adam leaned back and closed his eyes, his neck rubbing against the leather seat, which was hot and sticky. He felt slightly dizzy, and he wondered if he could give in to the impulse momentarily to let his mind whirl, as though it were a separate part unconnected with his body, and it would whirl and spin, and even Adam would not be aware of it … just for a few slow seconds. Like a weight lifted, the end of great pressure … lightness, floating. Dancing.

• • •

“Signore! Per favore, Signore!”

Adam rubbed his eyes and sat up. The driver was pointing to an ornate procession in front of them. Black horses dressed in black plumes, a black hearse with a man on top wearing a Napoleonic hat.

“Here you get out,
Signore!”
said the driver, with a shrugging gesture to indicate his helplessness. “We are sticked!” he said.

Adam paid him. He waved a hand in answer to the driver’s
“Grazie!”
and he walked along until he came to the outside gates of the cemetery. The short nap on the way had confused him slightly. He had the sensation of having dreamed a horrendous nightmare, but none of it could he remember. Just the feeling left from it — a pit in his stomach; his heart beating too fast. He began to smell the sickly odor of countless flowers which were set up on stalls lining the cemetery’s outer gates. He waited while the black hearse passed through the gates; then he bought a bunch of lilies and went in the direction of the hearse.

Inside, the Piazza Verano was a world of marble, peopled by marble angels, marble children, marble adults. The living, like Adam, seemed to be intruders, and Adam noticed that many of them walked in the careful, almost apologetic manner of someone going through another person’s house, without quite having his permission. Adam passed a marble house in front of which two small marble boys dressed in sailor suits exchanged a living rose. An inscription on a stone beside them said they had lived from 1860 until 1870. They were brothers: Tullio and Giusto.

Adam walked on, and the rain was still the same vaporish quality, with the heat muggy, the sun pushing its fire through the veil of pink clouds. At another marble house, Adam saw a marble woman holding out her hand, as though she were beckoning to him. He stopped and stared at her. He imagined that he saw a faint smile on her marble lips. He looked beyond her and into the house. There were chairs to sit on. There was an altar with a white lace-edged cloth, and on the cloth were frames containing photographs of children. A bowl of oranges. A prayer book. Tiny lights burned under images of the Virgin.

Adam went closer to the marble woman, to read her name on the tablet, but there was no name. He looked up again at her face and then she seemed to frown. He turned his back on her and hurried away, and he realized as he passed house after house, he would probably never find Ernesto’s wife’s mausoleum. He was not even sure there would be one so soon; sure only that the newspapers had announced her burial in the Piazza Verano.

At a corner, mounted under glass on a small tombstone, was the photograph of a young boy about thirteen. He was posed standing on a hill with his arms pulling a dancing kite, his hair tossed in the wind, his face laughing. He wore knickers and a white blouse, and on one leg his stocking had slipped down to his ankles, and there was a dog pulling at the stocking. Under the photograph was a name — one word — followed with an exclamation point: Mario!

Adam walked across to the tombstone and placed the flowers there.

“Mario,” he said. He smiled and bent close to the photograph, “Is that your dog?” There were tears starting in his eyes, but he did not fight them and they blurred; a drop fell on the photograph. “I didn’t have a dog,” he said. “Mario, I didn’t have a dog.”

Two priests passed with large soup-tureen hats, babbling together in Italian, smiling. They glanced at Adam and glanced away.

“I’ll buy a kite for Timmy, Mario,” Adam said. “I’ll tell him about you.”

Adam straightened and backed away from the small tombstone. He gave a little wave at the photograph, smiling, the tears on his cheeks. As he started around the corner and down toward some lights on the ground in the distance, he remembered something about the dream he had on the way to the cemetery. He had been caught running down a narrow street with a knife in his hand. He remembered he was wearing the foulard and damask-tie silk dressing gown he had bought for Billy’s wedding gift. The smiling
carabiniere
from the questúra was arresting him for murder. He remembered that he had protested that he had murdered no one, and the
carabiniere
had only shrugged. “There is no reason, but it might make you feel better,
Signore!”

Adam stopped at a wrought-iron grating in front of him. It fenced off row upon row of concrete slabs, a hundred or more, with small bulbs by each one. The bulbs were about fifteen watts, only a quarter of them burning. Near the gate sat a fat old man in a little house nearly too small for him, the size of a ticket window. Outside the house were more lights fixed to a central switchboard which the man operated, and which connected with the lights that circled the concrete squares.

Adam looked at the man, and the man said, “Five lire.”

“Why?” asked Adam in Italian. Adam wiped the tears from his face with his handkerchief, while the man said in Italian, “For the dead.”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t speak Italian well.”

The fat man shrugged. He did not speak English.

“Why?” Adam tried again.

Behind him a voice said, “The lights are for the people who rest here.”

He turned and faced one of the priests with the soup-tureen hats. In the priest’s hands was a rosary. He had great coarse peasant hands, and a gold tooth in front of his mouth. “I speak English,” he said unnecessarily. “Did you lose someone?”