The Secret of Santa Vittoria Read online

  When he had dreamed of this moment he had dreamed that he would surrender, but that in surrendering, as it should be with any good soldier, the price would come high. He knew that what he was doing would in some way, perhaps a serious way, damage him; and yet he also knew that in the end he couldn’t care about that, because this was what he had always wanted in his life. As it had been with Tufa all of that day, he found he could not take his eyes away from her, although he attempted to be casual and even careless with her.

  “So you’ve come as I said you would come,” von Prum said.

  “Not in the way you said,” Caterina said.

  “No. Not from the snow or the rain or the cold. But you came. That’s what is important. None of them came.”

  “None of them had anything to offer you.”

  “They could have brought me the answer to the secret.”

  “There is no answer.”

  He smiled at her. “You too, eh? No, that isn’t the answer. It’s because they know that after he dies, in a month or two they will have forgotten, because they know that in a month or two they themselves would be forgotten. They have souls of leather. I don’t say that in disrespect.”

  “And we? We have souls of what?”

  “I don’t know that we have souls. Maybe that’s why we put such an importance on living and dying.”

  The conversation was not going the way he had heard it in his mind before this night, and he didn’t like it. He had wanted her to ask, to beg him just a little, to offer something that he could resist at first; and it was Caterina who was wise enough to change the way things were going.

  “And what about the cognac you promised if I came?” Caterina said. “You seemed so certain I’d come you must have saved me some. I could use it now.”

  He looked at her with genuine pleasure. “What a good idea,” he said.

  He went to the other room to get the glasses and the brandy, but before he went into the room he turned and looked at her.

  There was no need for either of them to speak then. They both understood what must take place. If someone was asked to buy something he must be allowed to examine what he was buying. She moved for him and he watched her. She crossed the room to the mirror and the tallow light, where she undid the scarf that held her hair and began to arrange it, with the knowledge that he was watching her.

  To attempt to tell what lies behind a woman’s beauty is a stupid effort. The very effort destroys the beauty one wishes to re-create. There was one thing about the Malatesta, however, that can be described. Von Prum, when he wrote about it, called it a “dark brightness,” and then once he called it a “bright darkness.” Maybe they are the same. But the thing of her beauty was the contradiction of herself. Her eyes were large and dark and the darkness of them served to emphasize the light of the eyes; the same was true of her dark hair which at the same moment was bright. She was lean and fine-boned, and yet she was voluptuous; but there is no way of describing her voluptuousness without destroying it. Because she was a capable woman the sadness that at the same time could be seen in her eyes in the end made her appear vulnerable. Everything about her was a contradiction of itself and the contradictions were so perfectly blended with one another that they created beauty. There was a maturity about the Malatesta which every beautiful woman owns, from the time she is very young, as if all beautiful women must have lived at least once before and known things that one life alone can’t provide in order to arrive at the beauty they possess.

  It is hopeless then to tell you. Every beautiful woman is beautiful in only her own way, otherwise there would be only one beautiful woman, and this is not so. As is said about the devil, they come in all disguises and in improbable places, and they appear in unexpected ways.

  She was, as each of them is, a marvel. To von Prum there was about the Malatesta a quality beyond. That she would come to him as she did betrayed to him an instinct for destruction, a willingness to extend herself to the point of risking her own ruin. That was the thing which excited him beyond all other things; it was the thing beyond the glorious animal that he saw. Every man must have to see beauty in his own way as well.

  He made an effort, as he had promised himself, to resist. He told her that he didn’t like dark women, women with skin the color of olives, and that his dreams of women were of blond women with full white breasts who understood they were inferior to the men they adored, and who were happy that way.

  “What do you have to offer?” he had said when he came back into the room with the glasses and the brandy.

  “Myself,” Caterina had said.

  He allowed the brandy to work in him before he spoke again. There was no embarrassment between them.

  “Do you really think that is enough for what I will have to do?” von Prum said.

  “Yes, I will be enough for you,” Caterina said. “I will be a good mistress for you. You’ll see.”

  He looked away from her, because when he watched her the things he wanted to say were weakened by her.

  “You won’t regret it,” Caterina said. It was said with the simple assurance of a woman who has known since she was very young that some part of her at least belongs in the dream of every man who has dreamed of possessing a beautiful woman.

  “This thing could ruin me,” von Prum said. “It could destroy me.”

  “You won’t regret it,” Caterina said.

  “How do I know that?”

  “Because I’ll show you.”

  She had taken off her scarf and a dark outer coat which she had chosen to wear, and she came across the room toward him.

  “Where do you stay?” Caterina asked. He motioned with his head in the direction of his room and she went past him and into the room, where she began to undress. He came to the door and stood by the entrance to the room.

  “I want to watch you,” he said.

  “As you wish,” Caterina said. She moved with the assurance of those who are beautiful in their bodies and as if he were not in the room. When she was halfway through undressing she asked for more brandy and she drank.

  “As long as we’re doing this,” she said, “there is no reason why it should be unpleasant.”

  When he was beside her he began to tremble.

  “That won’t do,” Caterina said. “Why are you trembling?”

  “Because you’re what I have wanted all my life,” von Prum said, which was the moment of his surrender.

  “Then we understand,” the Malatesta said. “It is me for him.”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t regret it.”

  “No, I won’t regret it.”

  “I’ll make you a good mistress,” Caterina said. “You’ll see.”

  “But I will have to take someone else,” von Prum said. “You understand that.”

  “That isn’t what I came for,” the Malatesta said.

  They lay in the bed, and although the bed was small they didn’t touch one another.

  “Now what is it you want to do with me?”

  “Nothing,” the German said. “I want to lie here.”

  “That won’t do either,” Caterina said.

  “Everything,” von Prum said.

  “Then come here.”

  * * *

  Sometime during the night she said to him, “Have you realized now that you’re only a man after all? A man like any other man.”

  She woke him before dawn because he had asked her to wake him then, before the people were up, and he got dressed and went out into the darkness of the Piazza of the People to the fountain and woke Sergeant Traub. Tufa was awake, lying on his back, looking up into the night.

  “You can take the ropes off him,” von Prum said. “He’s going free.”

  It pleased Traub. “You heard him?”

  “Yes,” Tufa said. “I don’t know whether to thank someone or despise someone.”

  It was still dark when Tufa crossed the piazza and started up to High Town. Once on the hill he could see the first
light of the morning, and although he has never talked about that morning again it must be guessed that Tufa was happy then, because it was his life, and a day was beginning that he had not counted on seeing.

  There was no Caterina Malatesta waiting for him, of course. When he reached the house some of the people were already up, and he asked them about her, but none of them would tell him. It was a long time, a day or two at least, before anyone in Santa Vittoria found enough heart to tell him.

  WHEN DAWN came and it was found that Tufa had been freed, there was fear in Santa Vittoria. It could only mean that someone had told about the wine. But when it was found that the wine was safe, the fear became joy. They learned about the Malatesta and the contract she had made and the people approved of it. It was a very good bargain.

  “She can always bring her body back when it’s all over,” Babbaluche said. “It’s more than Tufa would have been able to do.”

  Some of the women were envious of the Malatesta.

  But as the morning wore on, a new consideration occurred to some of the people and the joy died.

  “Now it’s someone else’s turn,” Pietrosanto said. “Someone else has to die in Tufa’s place.” And everyone knew it was true.

  Everyone began to look at everyone else to see if they could see death in the eyes of their neighbor. There is a feeling here that death enters the body before the body actually dies.

  “He wouldn’t want someone like me,” a man would say. “Why would he pick someone like me? You’re more the kind he would want.”

  By afternoon, work on the terraces had almost come to a stop. Everyone was preparing for someone else’s death and praying to God that it wouldn’t end up being his own. By evening the city was in such a state that Bombolini was forced to go across the piazza and ask to speak to Captain von Prum. He was surprised to be invited inside Constanzia’s house.

  “I’m sorry to have to bother you on this day,” Bombolini began, and he was embarrassed. He had almost said on your wedding day. He told the captain about the state of the city.

  “If you must have a hostage, and it is a very bad idea,” Bombolini said, “the people want you to pick one. Until you do the entire city is condemned. We have been tortured enough.”

  The words should have angered the German, but instead Bombolini found the German looking at him with a smile.

  “There never really was any other choice from the start,” von Prum said. “I had always thought of you, Bombolini.”

  During all of this time it had never once occurred to Bombolini that he would be the one to be the hostage.

  “No,” he said. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.” It caused the captain to laugh, but Bombolini was serious. “The city would lose a good leader. Without me here there could be serious trouble.” It was a simple fact.

  “And who would you suggest then?” von Prum asked. “Do you have some enemy you might enjoy seeing in front of a firing squad. Do you want the power of picking?”

  He could hear Caterina moving in the other room and wondered if she was listening. He wondered if it had occurred to her that the next death would belong to her.

  “I think the only way to do it is the way we did it before,” Bombolini said. “Take it out of our hands and put it in God’s hands. Let Him be the one to make the choice.”

  “The first one in the piazza?”

  “No, no, they would never go into the piazza again,” the mayor said. “I have in mind something different. A lottery.”

  He could see that the idea appealed to the captain.

  “Put the names of all the people in a wine barrel and then let the priest draw out the name.”

  The idea of using the priest had an even stronger appeal to the German.

  “You might call it a lottery of death,” he said.

  They said the words over in their minds, “A lottery of death.” There is an excitement to the words.

  “Would the priest involve himself in something like this?” von Prum said.

  “Oh, yes,” the mayor said. “This is God’s work now. No matter who puts his hand into the barrel it will be God who chooses the winner.”

  “I would prefer the priest,” the German said. “It’s a strange word you use—winner. What if you are the winner?”

  “No man ever believes he’ll be the one to win a lottery.”

  “And if you are?”

  Bombolini shrugged his shoulders.

  “What could I say then?” he said. “God will have decided He doesn’t need my kind of leadership.”

  The German called into the next room.

  “And what if Tufa is picked by God this time?” he called into the room where Caterina must have been. “Wouldn’t that be funny? What would you do then?”

  “Then I’d threaten to leave you.”

  Von Prum smiled, and to his own surprise Bombolini found that he was smiling also.

  Before Bombolini left they drew up the rules for the lottery of death. Women and children would be excluded. The honor of dying would belong to all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty, the same ages that the Italian government in the north of Italy had set for the conscription of soldiers.

  “When?”

  “The drawing must be held tomorrow morning so the people will be able to go to work,” Bombolini said.

  And so it was agreed.

  When the mayor was at the door Caterina called to him and he went back inside and stood at the door of her room.

  “Does he know yet?” she said to him. “How does he seem?”

  Bombolini told her that he was tired and confused, but that he didn’t know.

  “Do you think he will understand?” Caterina asked him, and Bombolini was surprised by her question.

  “You know Tufa. You know how he is made,” Bombolini said.

  “I couldn’t let him die when I had a way to save him.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the mayor said. “You put the horns on his head.”

  “But he’s too old for that,” Caterina said. “He’s been other places.”

  “Yes, but he comes from here,” Bombolini said. “To buy his life, you sold his honor.”

  “He knows I love him.”

  Bombolini was able to laugh at her for not knowing any better.

  “It doesn’t matter, don’t you see?”

  “And Tufa loves me.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bombolini said. “You broke the rules.”

  When Bombolini was gone von Prum took Bombolini’s place at the door.

  “Do you think he really believes that God picks the name from the barrel?” he asked her.

  “Of course. It’s the way they think here.”

  “It’s very simple, isn’t it? Very childish.”

  “Yes, they’re very simple here and very childish,” Caterina told him.

  * * *

  Before an hour had passed Bombolini had called a meeting of the Grand Council, and they met in Santa Maria of the Burning Oven, going in through the side doors one at a time so as not to attract any attention. They gathered to pick the winner of the lottery.

  “I don’t like to say this, because I admire you, Bombolini,” one of the older men said, “but at a time like this, doesn’t honor require that the leader make himself available to his people?”

  Bombolini was gratified when the members of the Council voted the idea down before he had to answer. It is not easy to turn down the role of martyr when it is offered to you.

  It was surprising, the number of people who the Grand Council felt were qualified to die for the city and the wine, and who they felt would not mind doing it.

  “Take Enrico R——,” one of them said. “He has no friends, he has no land, he doesn’t owe anyone money. He’s got no real reason to live. I’m sure if you ask Luigi he would be glad to do this for us.”

  “You forget,” another member of the Council said. “Enrico happens to be married to my sister. She wouldn’t let him do it.”

 
They started down the list of names in Padre Polenta’s record book, one at a time. When they came to the name of a member of the Grand Council they had the good manners not even to mention it but to go on to the next name. When a name that seemed to be a possible winner came up they would judge him, and some of the things that were said in Santa Maria that night, if they were to be repeated even at this time, would lead to vendettas and more bloodshed than was ever seen in those times. For a time they thought they had found the right man, the perfect winner of the lottery, in N.

  No one liked N., and N., as far as anyone knew, liked no one in return. His own family despised him. If N. were selected his own family would hold a celebration. He owned a lot of land, a lot of vines, he had pieces of terrace spread all over the side of the mountain and a lot of the wine was his.

  “The beauty of N.,” Bombolini said, “is that, bad as he is, he is a man of courage.”

  “And a miser,” Pietro Pietrosanto said. “He will die with a smile on his lips before he gives those bastards one bottle of his wine.”

  But it was pointed out that N. was also related by blood to fifty-six people in Santa Vittoria and some of them were a little bit crazy. It is revealing nothing to say that Fungo the idiot and Rana the frog, for example, shared blood with N., and it was impossible to tell when one of them might have some kind of religious vision or other symptom of madness and go to the Germans to save N.’s life if not his soul.

  At the end of it all, one name came up again and again and would not leave the lists.

  “But who has the courage to face him?” someone asked. “And what if he says No, as I know he will?”

  “Emilio Vittorini, will you be one of us?”

  Vittorini nodded that he would.

  “Then go home and put on your uniform.”

  The delegation, when it was finally formed, consisted of Bombolini, Vittorini as a representative of tradition, Roberto Abruzzi as a representative of the outside world, Angelo Pietrosanto as a representative of the youth of Santa Vittoria, and Pietro Pietrosanto as a member of the military. For reasons that were obvious to everyone, it was decided to leave the priest at home.