Page 25 of Daughter of Genoa
I observed other things, too. The dry wheezing cough that seemed a little worse each time. The fretted skin by his right thumbnail and the bruise-like shadows under his eyes. His wrists, bony and lost in overlarge cuffs that fell almost to the joint of his thumb; the gaping collar, the gaunt shoulders, the fabric bagging above the cincture of his cassock. The way his breath seemed to stick in his chest even when he sat still, and how he’d arrive sweating and winded as if he’d run, not walked, up the hill to the house. I noticed these things and they worried me more and more. I didn’t have to pretend about my feelings when it came to Vittorio. He was my friend – not the friend I would have expected, but my friend nonetheless – and I wanted him to be well.
Every time he came around, I’d try to find a different way to ask if he was all right. And every time he’d rebuff me, reaching for one of his stock of eccentric Heythrop-acquired phrases.Oh, mustn’t grumble, he’d say; orworse things happen at sea. Once, fantastically, he described himself asfairly up to snuffand then suggested wecrack on with it.
I never pressed him any further. It scarcely mattered what he said, because the truth was written on his body. He was sick, very sick already. And he was getting sicker.
15
Vittorio
When Vittorio next arrives at the Tipografia Guichard, he finds Marta waiting for him at the kitchen table and readingBrighton Rock. That pleases him, perhaps rather more than it ought. He’s resolved so many times that he’ll drop this frivolous habit of English chatter; that he’ll stop dredging up silly little phrases to amuse her. But she looks up at him and smiles, and he finds himself saying:
‘Good morning, Marta. How do you like Graham Greene?’
‘Very much,’ she says. ‘It’s all terribly exciting. I’ve been parcelling it out to myself for days, otherwise I shall read it all in one great gulp. Then the story will be finished, and I shan’t get to read it for the first time ever again. I expect that sounds silly to you.’
‘Not at all.’ He sits down and casts a guilty glance at Silvia, who’s looking steadfastly at her knitting, just as she always does. Sometimes, when Vittorio lies awake troubled by something he doesn’t quite understand, he thinks that these conversations – however innocent they may be – go against the whole idea of having Silvia there in the first place.
‘You said someone donated it to your library,’ Marta says now. ‘Does that happen often? Do people just drop off their old gangster novels for the Jesuits to read?’
‘Well, in a way… I mean, some people – parishioners, kind ones – they do bring us books sometimes, if they think we might perhaps like them. We don’t always like them,’ he adds, and she laughs. She’s looking for distraction, he realises – she’s hoping he’ll say something to entertain her, to brighten her existence a little. And why should he hold back, when he has an entertaining story to tell? That it brings him pleasure is really neither here nor there. He looks down at the table, at the white cloth with its embroidered flowers.
‘Between you, me and the gatepost,’ he says, and – in his mind’s eye – he sees her smile, ‘I’m not certain how we ended up withBrighton Rock. I know only that I found my assistant librarian reading it, and I took it from him.’
‘What, really?’ She’s delighted; he can hear it in her voice, and that delights him in turn.
‘Really. Brother Carlo can be somewhat unserious. Besides, he was supposed to be weeding the books. I’m afraid he doesn’t find library work as interesting as do I.’
‘Then he’s a fool, this… Brother Carlo, is it? Not Father Carlo?’
‘Brother Carlo, that’s right. He’s what we call a…’ The translation eludes him. It seems an eternity before he retrieves it again. ‘Temporal coadjutor. The brothers assist the priests, you see, taking care of the things of the house.’
‘But they’re not priests themselves? Or are they training to become them?’
‘No, no. Being a Jesuit brother is its own vocation.’
‘Perhaps that’s just as well,’ Marta says, ‘in Brother Carlo’s case. Is he at least useful when he isn’t reading Graham Greene? Does he have some talent for library work, even if he doesn’t much like it?’
‘No,’ Vittorio says. ‘He’s really quite awful at it. He doesn’t help me at all.’
He hopes she’ll laugh again, but she doesn’t. Instead she says: ‘But that’s all right, isn’t it? Because then you have to go on doing everything.’
He raises his head. Marta’s looking at him. Her face is quite serious, but her eyes are merry.
‘I hope I didn’t offend you, Father Vittorio,’ she goes on. ‘It’s just that if I had a library, then I should never let anyone competent help me look after it. I should want to take care of it all by myself.’
Her mouth lifts just a little at the corner, her lips pressed together as if she wants to smile but is trying not to; and with a dizzying drop of the stomach, Vittorio knows what troubles him at night. He knows what sends his mind whirring even when his body is exhausted. It’s her.
‘You understand,’ he says, and he watches her smile break like the dawn.
‘Of course I do,’ she says.
It’s too much. It’s painfully sweet, and he mustn’t indulge himself. ‘Let’s start work,’ he says brusquely, dropping into Italian, and he looks away. ‘You take the first shift.’
‘All right, I will.’ Her voice is subdued; Vittorio suppresses a pang of regret. He goes to the window and stares out at the sky: it seems to him obscenely, irritatingly blue. After a moment, there’s a discreet cough just behind him, and a cup of tisane is placed on the windowsill by his elbow.
‘Thank you, Silvia,’ he says, returning his gaze to the sky.
‘Cigarette, Father?’
