Darconville's Cat (59 page)

  There wasn’t a sound inside of Adams House. One
corridor led to another, communicating to ever more and more
shadowy rooms, and, all in all, it seemed to be one of those places
that had been kept, swept, and oiled, but locked up for ages and
never to be used again. Gothic-shafted windows let in grey light.
There were more exits and entrances, unexpected turnings and
angles, than Darconville had ever seen—including the many Venetian
palazzi he’d known famous for them. He was intrigued. He looked
down—and listened—into stone stairwells that wound down and around
as if into sunken, desolate dungeons. He started up the stairs,
turning from landing to landing, higher and higher, and he came out
of the surprising changes of level to the top floor of F staircase.
It
appeared
to be the top floor. At the end of the staith
there, however, just out of conventional view, a glimpse of some
nearly hidden balusters invited further inspection; it was
obviously a bam—the corners white with the striggles of spiders— of
the stairbuilders of yore.

  Curious, Darconville kept on up, entering a gallery
that seemed contained in the thickness of the wall, an interior
space which consisted of another winding ascent, not quite an
inclined plane, yet not by any means a regular stair, the edges of
stones, neat but primitive, having been suffered to project
irregularly to serve for rude steps or a kind of assistance.
Through this narrow stairwell Darconville crept to the top of the
house, which was partly ruinous and full of nooks. There was a good
deal of hooded furniture and old stuffed chairs, upsidedown and
shrouded with linen antimacassars turned inside out, all blocking
spare rooms reserved for lumber and empty portmanteaux. The dust
was formidable. There, branching off at irregular intervals,
horizontal galleries—full man height, but narrow—went round the
whole building, or so it appeared, and received air from circular
holes, wheel-windows that fell open from their peaks and were held
by a chain. There were—rooms up there!
Inhabited
rooms!

  Then came the sound of a sudden step. Darconville’s
heart squeezed in fright as, turning, he found himself staring at a
delicate, slack-twisted boy of indeterminate age—fourteen or forty,
it was impossible to say—whose complexion was the color of a slug.
He had one of those faces, ellipsoidal and cricket-like, which
resembled one’s reflection when looking closely into a shiny spoon
or doorknob. Blowing up fitfully at a wisp of his ashy-blond hair,
he shifted, the better to grip the box of books and bottles he
tightly held with nailbitten hands, and pointing from the wrist to
a nearby door stammered in angry panic, “I’m
t-telling
Dr.
Crucifer about this, y-you wait!”

  LXI

  A Telephone Call

  If love should call, and you were I

  And I were you, and love should call,

  How happy I could be with I

  And you with you, if love should call.

        —S. J.
PERELMAN

  —ISABEL?

  —This is Dot. Good lord!—
hush up,
y’hear
!—some folks here neighborin’ a spell but carryin’ on
like they was clappin’ their feet in the air. Hello?

  —This is Darconville.

  —
Darconville
!

  —I’m sorry to be calling so late. It’s midnight.

  —Midnight? Shoot, I didn’t
think
it was
5:30. My watch was upsidedown, for cry-eye. But listen to you: too
late don’t count on Saturday night, not here, (
pause
)
Will somebody turn that damfool thang down
?
(
pause
) You still up yonder in Massatoochits?

  —Yes. Yes, I am.

  —Isn’t that nice? That’s right nice.

  —Sort of. I wonder, may I speak to Isabel?

  —What in the
world
? O law, here I am
holdin’ a glass in one hand and, fool that I am, nearly proceeded
to try to drink out of the
telephone receiver
!
(
pause
) Hello?

  —Isabel. May I speak to her, please?

  —Is she here?

  —Um, don’t you—know?

  —Funny, you know, I don’t
know
if I don’t
know. Here, you hold on, I’ll be back in a breath, (
long
pause
) Out, wouldn’t you know it. Fickle, fidgety thing.

  —Fickle?

  —Well, fidgety, really, (
sigh
) I bleeve she
got her a part-time job. Days, that child been ugly as homemade
soap to me. I mostly let her be, Darconville, plain out. I’m at my
end of the rope, I’m telling you. We
habm’t
seen a sign of
her much lately. She’s been takin’ to goin’ on long walks night and
day. All that. You know? In the woods. Off down the path. Hands
deep in her pockets. All that kind of—
quiet
!— thing.

  —Hands deep?

  —All that.

  —At night? Alone?

  —Or maybe with someone else.

  —Someone else? No.

  —Well, I mean with someone else if she ain’t alone,
see? Hello? Your voice sounds s’small.

  —Was she alone tonight?

  —I haven’t a clue. That’s the point. It’s difficult
to say.

  —When she’s alone?

  —When it’s too dark to see. Hello? (
pause
)
Wait, this is going to kill you—I was just talkin’ into my beer
glass!

  —You mentioned that.

        (
pause
)

  —Did I call you?

  —I called you, Mrs. Shiftlett.

  —Please, call me Dot? Besides I have a small
headache.

  —Listen, perhaps I should give you my telephone
number so Isabel can call me. All right? Now, I’m giving you my
telephone number: 1-617-495-3612.

  —A mess of numbers? Lordy! I can cold out tell you,
Darconville, they’re sure to come out, whaddyacallit,
added
wrong me takin’ them down now. (
pause
)
Was that a a-tomic bomb out there
? (
sigh
) A few
folks is by, is all, turnin’ some sweet potato vines. Sound like a
bunch of aborgirines, though, don’t it? I bleeve I cain’t hear
m’self think.

  —I’m sure it’s fun.

  —Tyin’ on favors? Steppin’ on big ol’ balloons?
Puttin’ up the RCA? O.

  —You’re enjoying yourself.

  —Enormously, (
pause
) Enormously.

  —Please. How is Isabel getting along?

  —So well.

  —Would you tell her I called?

  —I will. I pointedly will—to use one of your big
writin’ words.

  —I called all last week. I rang and rang.

  —Pet.

  —I miss her.

  —We all do.

  —

  —You’ll have to speak up louder.

  —I—love her.

  —You cain’t bleeve how much that’ll mean to you when
I tell her.

  —I’m sorry?

  —Don’t be. Maybe it’s female trouble, this mopin’
about. That’s my p’effunce. Thrums or something, that kind of
thing. The thrums come on me, I take a drink—

  —Mrs. Shiftlett? Hello?

  —Did you ring off? I thought you rang off, until I
saw myself, what, fussin’ with my glass where the receiver was.
Hello?

  — (
sigh
) I’m right here.

  —Isn’t it wonderful.

  —What?

  —Bein’ there. Harvard? I just say the name.

  —You couldn’t look again, Mrs. Shiftlett, for
Isabel, perhaps again in her bedroom? (
pause
) Are you
there?

  —Oh yes, but I’m afraid I cain’t talk to you now,
Darconville, I’m on the phone.

  —So—so am I.

  —Why, of course, don’t mind me. I’m a-sloppin’ and
a-sloshin’ about here like a rubber pig in a winter suit. But hold
on, let me first put down this fool drink. (
dial tone
)

  LXII

  A Judgment in Italy

  I don’t envy your happiness very much if the lady
can afford no other sort of favors but what she has bestowed upon
you.

        —GEORGE
FARQUHAR,
The Recruiting Officer

  A LITIGATION, in the meantime, had been resolved in
the province of Veneto. The attorney-in-fact, appointed by a
magistrate of the Court of Appeal, conducted an investigation by
locating not without difficulty and eventually obtaining the most
recent judgments rendered in a dispute between the alleged heir of
a small estate located in the City of Venice and the State of Italy
and then sent the results ahead which from Quinsyburg were
forwarded to Cambridge, Mass.

  The affair began long ago, at the outset of the
eighteenth century, when in 1718 and within that republic a certain
“
benefizio semplice di patronale- laicale
” dedicated to
San Marco, patron saint of Venice, had been created. In essence,
the so-called benefit (
benefizio
) was established by one
or more owners of certain lands (
patroni
) by execution of
a deed assigning forever their income from said lands to an
ecclesiastical entity, such as a church, in return for the
perpetual obligation of the priests, as designate by the
patroni
and from time to time in charge of said church, to
say Masses for the souls of the owners, their families, and
successors. The church (
capellano
) was entitled to receive
from the cultivation of the owners, fishermen in this case, a share
of the produce (normally 1/5 ) and to administer the land for this
purpose; the
pescatori
, i.e., the fishermen, were entitled
to retain the residual 4/5ths share of the produce. An inspection
of this
benefizio
by ecclesiastical authorities
ascertained that, with the seizure of the city in 1797 by the
French, destroying its independence, it ceded to the state. The
patroni
were sent down that judgment, the deed was
dissolved, and their names faded into oblivion.

  At the union of the republic of Venezia with the
Kingdom of Italy, several new laws were then enacted, principally
aimed at suppressing the old ecclesiastical entities and
transferring their rights to the state demesne. Soon thereafter,
law No. 1464 of August 17, 1873, established, in the absence of any
notarial deeds, owners, or assignees, various civic tenancies in
the
benefizio
in question—a piece of land with dwellings
located, as it was, off the Canale della Misericordia. The
particular palazzo on the Corte del Gatto, one division, was
declared by favor of the above law, and in suppression of the full
benefizio
, an
orfanotrofio di stato
—an
orphanage—in settlement. A Venetian notary fixed its yearly
allocation at Lir. 200.000 (about $230). The foundlings taken in
were given uniforms and arbitrarily assigned surnames that were
taken from herbs.

  A corrupt official during those years, channeling
the annual apportionment of the orphanage to his own ends—engaging,
all the while, in a scandalous liaison with one of the young girls
there—arranged to close the home with the claim that the lost
(read: stolen) assets disallowed by default any settlement pursuant
to the 1873 law, and not only for the sudden eviction of its
charges but also in view of the brisk maritime trade through the
Adriatic, he schemed a graft, attributed the grantorship to his own
office, and proceeded to open a house of assignation off the large
canal. It flourished.

  In the meantime, a certain Alessandro Dittami, a boy
randomly named from an aromatic plant which grows in the area of
Mount Dicte, found his way to the United States, specifically to
New York City, where, in his teens and insolvent, he slept in what
Italian immigrants there called the “Hotel Pepino” (i.e., beneath
the stars under Garibaldi’s statue in Washington Sq. Park) and
assumed the trade of a tailor. He taught himself English, worked
hard, and saved his money. With the passing years he came to learn
the dark fate of the orphanage in which he had once lived—the child
of a romantic and illegitimate love between a local senator there
and a girl in service— and to which, after his own small success
abroad, he had in the best of faith sent back charitable sums. The
monies, unknown to him, were being converted of course to foul
ends, still, however, under the guise of state control. Alerted,
eventually, to the misappropriation of his gifts, Dittami worked
desperately to re-establish the orphanage to the proper powers,
less in the name of justice than as a simple act of compassion
growing out of his childhood memories, and yet, while he learned
that there was no way to effect this other than by looking back
into the original
benefizio
, it was brought to his
attention that, as the initial claim of anyone to the benefit had
long ago dissolved, the state had every right to continue to assert
title to the realty, unless, of course, a
patrono
could be
proved to exist as to matters of letters-patent, grant, lease,
custodiam, or recognizance.

  Vigorously, he cast around to find ways to vindicate
a claim, to free the estate of scandal and taint, and to accede now
to full ownership which he sought to do not only by dint of his
contributions but also because, as the benefit was essentially of a
lay nature (
laicale
), it could not legally have been
appropriated by the state in the first place under whatever
jurisdiction or for any reason whatsoever. The issue was debated
for the following half-century in several suits brought before
different courts which rendered conflicting judgments, until the
dispute was temporarily settled by the Court of Appeal at Veneto in
a decision which gave full force and effect to the original compact
between clergy and laity—but not before Dittami passed away. But
what, in fact, had been decided? His widow—Darconville’s maternal
grandmother—was judicially prevented from the satisfactory
conclusion of her husband’s dream, for while it was adjudged that
the state demesne had wrongly subrogated the
patroni
years
back and taken possession of their rights, an unlawful abridgment
of the formal
laicale
, there could be given no final
resolution of tenancy and/or ownership for want of evidence as to
legal continuance. An irony of a legal nature followed: the
appellant was awarded temporary jurisdiction, but it was over
little more than a financially exhausted, debt-ridden,
overspoliated palazzo, a large account duty—substantial charges and
assessments—falling upon it coincident with the enormously
devaluated lire of several terrible wars. She returned nevertheless
to Venice upon her husband’s death where, for the memory of her
husband and in the interest of Darconville, her sole heir, she
reactivated the dispute on her own, both as to claim and cadastre.
Continuance followed continuance.