North From Rome Read online

  “The signore is going to the airport? Then I wait?” the driver asked as Lammiter prepared to climb wearily out of the small green taxi—legs got trapped by the up-and-over step at the door of every Roman cab. Lammiter looked sharply at him. But then he realised it was only the Italians’ magnificent communication system designed to make a traveller’s life as well served as possible: it was amazing how thoughtful an Italian could be for other people’s comfort. Anyway, one always had to take the first taxi in the waiting rank: this man had come to him in his right and fair turn. There was a protocol about being hired that would defeat any planted cab trying to pick up a special fare.

  Lammiter relaxed. “Too long,” he said tactfully. The Italian gestured that that didn’t matter, he could wait. “Too much money,” Lammiter added with a sad shake of the head. The Italian looked regretful, but he understood that.

  “The signore speaks good Italian,” he said wistfully. “Molto bello!”

  “I know about four sentences,” Lammiter said with a grin, pleased and modestly untruthful, “and you’ve heard two of them.” They had the usual attack of conversation. The driver came from the province of Calabria, which explained his accent—and then, with good wishes to the driver’s wife and two bambini and the canary that wakened them too early every morning (better be careful, that one, Lammiter thought: the early bird in Italy was apt to end up grilled for lunch), and pleasure expressed in the success of the immigrant brother in Schenectady (that was something to hear pronounced) who grew his own grapes in his back yard and made his own wine, they parted. Lammiter carried his two cases, with his typewriter uncomfortably gripped under his arm, into the cheerful bedlam of the American Express office. The noise was overwhelming: the afternoon mail was being collected and the crowd was enormous, mostly American and very young. It was odd how you instinctively raised your voice the minute you started talking to a foreigner, as if you thought that loudness would make you clearer. The Italian English-speaking clerks behind their counters listened with tolerant good humour.

  Lammiter looked round for a free corner where he could unload his luggage before his arm cramped up. He found one beside a girl who was tearing open a letter she had just picked up at the mail desk. She was on the young side of twenty, a blonde, with her hair caught back at the crown of her head by a perky blue bow, smartly dressed (how did girls, travelling, keep themselves so crisp and neat?), cool, capable, confident, and—judging by the way she opened her letter—as homesick as a six-week-old puppy dog shut up in the baggage car. “Telephones?” he asked her, as he set down his cases.

  She looked up wide-eyed from the letter’s first lines. “Telephones? Upstairs, I think.”

  “Upstairs?” He looked at his baggage and then at the crowd.

  “Do you want me to look after these things for you?” she asked patiently, eager to get back to her letter.

  “Would you?”

  “Sure. Don’t be long, though. I’m meeting some friends.” And they’d all troop out with their letters to the Spanish Steps; and there they’d sit, while they read and discussed the letters from home, on the long flight of old stone stairs, the flower stalls and the fountain at their feet, the old church raising its towers above their heads. It was the daily ritual.

  “Don’t worry,” he promised her. She nodded, sat down on one of his suitcases, and went back to her letter. He eased his way through the tight crush. It wasn’t possible that everybody knew everybody else, and yet, bumping against a quiet young man and exchanging an understanding grin for their common predicament as they made way for each other, he felt they might have belonged to the same town. Suddenly he felt ancient, although actually he was only about ten years older than most of them.

  He managed, after two false starts, to call the number Rosana had given him. “Hallo there,” he said. “Ready or not, here we are.” Just when he began to wonder if he had been cut off, he heard Rosana’s voice.

  “Where are you? Not at the hotel?”

  “No,” he said, amused at her concern for his lack of caution. “No. Nor at any place where I’m likely to be known. And I have my luggage with me.”

  “Take a taxi to the station. When will you get there?”

  “In twenty minutes, possibly fifteen.”

  “Can you delay that a little? Make it five o’clock.”

  “At the station? Where?”

  “Just get out at the main entrance. Giuseppe will meet you. You saw him today.”

  “Did I?”

  “He drove the princess’s car.”

  “Oh! Well, that should be easy.”

  “Perhaps. I hope so. But don’t be rash. Please.” She sounded worried.

  “Five o’clock?” he asked soothingly. He heard the telephone go dead.

  Funny, he thought, all foreigners believed Americans were rash. If they only knew us properly. Then he smiled as he descended slowly (he had time to waste) into the crowded room. How many of the young Americans here could talk or understand Italian? How little money had they in their pockets, how few traveller’s cheques to last their ambitious journeys? How many thousands of miles travelled, how many still to go? Rash? Ambitious, perhaps. But not rash, if you remembered the months of planning, the budgets calculated to the last dollar, the guidebooks studied, the maps memorised in private. His thoughts halted abruptly. Near the door, he saw the man he had noticed in the hotel lobby. Coincidence? Anyway, the man was leaving.

  “There you are!” the blonde girl said in relief, and rose from his suitcase. She stuffed the letter pad she had begun to use into her, outsize handbag. “Are you really William Lammiter? The man who wrote Home Is the Hunter?”

  Cursing inwardly, Lammiter glanced down at the labels on his suitcase. She had looked so childlike and unnoticing with her candid blue eyes and her pretty little bow. He smiled. “Did you like it?”

  She was frank, at least. “I haven’t seen it yet. I live in Burbank. That’s California,” she explained carefully. Californians were always so helpful. “Mr. Lammiter, would you do something for me? I’m writing to Mother and Dad. Look—here it is.” She drew out the pad of paper from her handbag. “You see, I’m answering this letter I got today. Dad fusses. So I’m writing to tell him I look fine—got all my teeth and both eyes. Look— would you bear witness to that? Right here...” She pointed to a small asterisk in the margin of her letter.

  He had given enough autographs in the last six months to have stopped hesitating at signing his name. (At first it had troubled him.) But still he glanced at what he was going to sign. He said with a grin, “I always read the small print.” It was a harmless letter home, gay and affectionate. “Are you travelling alone?” he asked her. No wonder her father was worried.

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “In Rome? Oh, just five days. But I’ve been travelling since school ended in June. I went to England first, and I saw Scotland, too—I loved that; and then I went to France, and then Spain—oh, it was wonderful in Seville. Four days there. I went out every night to hear the gypsies sing. They live in caves. Have you heard them?”

  He shook his head, and began to write.

  “They’re the most,” she said dreamily.

  “You’ve run into no trouble?” Heavens, he thought, I’m going paternal.

  She eyed him frankly. She smiled. “I’ve met nothing but gentlemen, except for one fat slob of a middle-aged—” She brushed that aside. “I laughed so much, I thought I’d go into a fit or something. He was furious. Funny, isn’t it?— It’s always the ugliest and oldest who think they are irresistible. He—” She broke off. “Hi—Tommy!” She waved to a tall young man in a shirt with a button-down collar.

  “Hi, Sally! See you on the Steps!” Tommy said, with a searching glance at Lammiter.

  Sally confided, “I met him in London, and then again on the bus from Naples. That’s the nice thing about travelling—you always keep meeting up with people. What did you write there?” She
wrinkled her brow as she read the closely written lines.

  All descriptions of your daughter endorsed. Wherever she has landed, the situation seems well in hand. At least half the college students in America are having their school picnic abroad this summer. Like Sally, they’re healthy, still solvent, and completely cheerful. You ought to see them, though, lining up for a letter from home.

  “Why, that’s genius!”

  “Thank you.”

  “But it is!” She gave him a wide, even white teeth gleaming smile.

  “Needs cutting,” he said, re-reading his composition. “I always write too much. Get carried away, I suppose. Goodbye and good luck. And thank you for taking charge of my luggage.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Lammiter. I’ll let you know what I think of your play.”

  She would, too. They shook hands solemnly.

  In spite of these delaying tactics, he arrived fully five minutes early at the station. Fortunately, he had scarcely time to step out from the hot small cab on to the hot wide sidewalk before a porter arrived, which gave him something to argue about. That was better than standing alone before a modern railway station, with its vast stretches of windows and glass doors to make a man feel both observed and vulnerable.

  “No, thank you,” he told the porter, looking around the open square in front of the station.

  “Si, si, signore,” the man insisted. “Your friend waits near the wall. His car is there.” He hoisted the suitcases and led the way to the side of the station building, where an ancient wall—a collection of giant squared-off boulders—lay outcropped against the station’s glass and concrete.

  Here was another open space, cars, some moving, some waiting. A small grey Fiat edged towards the porter and then stopped. “Ecco!” the porter said, swinging a door open and the luggage inside. He didn’t even count the money that Lammiter held out to him. Then all this probably was right, Lammiter decided, in the sense that it was arranged. But the Fiat troubled him. Not its size, not its colour: he had noticed a hundred small grey Fiats since one of them had waited for Rosana beneath his hotel window last night. It was the licence plate that bothered him: its three last numbers—all he had been able to see from his hotel balcony—were identical with those on the abduction car. He hesitated. Then he thought, this is interesting. He moved to the car door.

  “Hurry!” said the driver impatiently.

  The car was so compact that Lammiter could only see the man at the wheel properly as he stooped to enter. Yes, he verified as his memory kept on stirring, it could be the same man who had driven the princess’s noble and aged Lancia. A dark-eyed man, about thirty-five or so, with coarse black curling hair, combed, long and thick, back from a broad brow whose permanent wrinkles looked more like furrows, giving him a constant look of surprise. His skin, sallow and coarse, was like untanned leather. He had given up his chauffeur’s dark blue uniform, and wore a white short-sleeved cotton shirt open at the neck. His arms were brown, muscular, well covered with strong black hair. His teeth were white, his smile infectious, his American strongly accented but completely fluent and assured. “I’m Joe,” he said. “Giuseppe is too much to say. Call me Joe. What the hell kept you?”

  Ah, we’re being informal, Lammiter decided. “I thought I was early.”

  “Sure. That, yes. I mean when you followed the porter. You were slow, What’s so funny about the car? Got a bashed fender or something?”

  Lammiter made his voice as offhand as possible. “I was wondering whether I ought to buy a Fiat.”

  “What for?” Joe’s furrows were marked.

  “To take home with me. Doesn’t use much gas.”

  “What do you want a Fiat for?” Joe asked, shocked. “You could get a Chrysler or a Caddie.”

  “Or a Lancia like the princess?”

  They both laughed. “That’s some car!” Joe said. “Almost thirty years old. It’s a—a—” he searched for the word.

  “A period piece?” Lammiter suggested.

  Joe’s furrows deepened, trying to understand all the possible meanings, before agreeing.

  “It matches the princess,” Lammiter added.

  “It sure does. It’s period, all right. I’m nursing it through traffic and it comes to a full stop. Period. Get it?” He laughed uproariously.

  “Where did you learn your American?” Lammiter asked.

  “I drove for an American colonel.”

  “World War II?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Sicily. Came up with the Americans, all the way.”

  “And you never went farther than Rome?”

  Joe’s face became absolutely blank. He concentrated on winding his way through traffic. At last, non-committally, he said, “I liked Rome. It never got hurt by war. I had enough of bombed-out buildings and ruins.”

  “Ruins—that reminds me. What about that wall back there?” It seemed a safer topic than Joe’s life.

  “Wall?”

  “The huge chunks of stone, just outside the station.”

  “Oh, they’re good and old. Older than anything else you see around this town. You like that kind of thing? What are you—a professor or something?”

  “No, just curious.”

  Joe studied his face. “I guess you are,” he said quietly, “or you wouldn’t be in this car.” Then he laughed and turned the conversation back to classical remains. “If you want ruins, you come to Sicily some day. We got older ruins than anybody else. Older than the princess.”

  “But she’s better preserved?”

  Joe’s smile was real now. “She looks better by moonlight, too.” He thought about the princess. “She’s something, isn’t she?” There was a mixture of admiration and dislike, mixed with a grudging respect, in his voice.

  “She certainly is.” Lammiter noticed with interest that the car had made a long detour, almost back to the Spanish Steps, before it now swerved south-west, by busy narrow streets, towards the Tiber. “How long have you worked for her?” he asked casually.

  “Since Signorina Di Feo’s brother died.” Joe’s face was blank again, but there was a new grim note in his voice.

  “You worked for him?”

  Joe nodded, and seemed now to be concentrating on this busy section of the city. Down here, near the river, the narrow streets crisscrossed and twisted, passing yellow walls with plaster peeling, baroque churches, small piazzas, ancient fountains, Roman pillars, posters on every wall, a ruined temple, a busy trolley-bus terminal, a hodge-podge of twenty centuries. Lammiter had the feeling that they had already doubled and then redoubled back on their tracks. It was a part of Rome that always gave you that feeling, anyway, even if you were walking as straight as the flight of a bullet. But Joe was being cautious. He had a quick way of looking into the rearview mirror, of glancing left, then right, as the car was halted at a street corner. And the only sign that he was as impatient as Lammiter to reach their destination was the way his hand, as he waited for the lights to turn green, would smack several times on the gearshift as if to say, “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  Lammiter wasn’t quite sure, but he had an idea they were approaching the Piazza Navona. (He had dined several times down there, in what had once been a Roman emperor’s stadium— the Piazza was actually the long oval where the chariots had raced.) Yes, they were entering its gateway now. The three Bernini fountains were spaced down the centre of the long oval where the crowds of children now played and women gossiped as they watched them. All these people lounging around, enjoying the early evening sun which turned the yellow plaster walls into a soft gold, couldn’t possibly live in the houses, numerous as they were, that edged the Piazza: some did belong to these flats and rooms in the old converted eighteenth-century houses, but most must come from the dark narrow streets, cobbled lanes, which led off on all sides. It baffled Lammiter trying to think of how many families could live in the square mile around the Piazza. For once, all those pigeons looking for love and bread
crumbs would be out-numbered.

  “You get out at the church,” Joe said. “See that red-haired guy at the fountain opposite? That’s Salvatore. Call him Sam. I always do. He’ll take you from there.”

  “To where?” And then, “What about my luggage?”

  “I’ll keep it safe.”

  “Look—” Lammiter began. But the car had already stopped.

  “Quick!” Joe said, reaching across Lammiter to open the door. There was no time to argue.

  “Don’t lose that typewriter!” Lammiter said sharply, and got out. The car drove on. He was left at the steps to the church, a contorted variety of baroque with just one adornment too many. Architects should beware of their after-thoughts.

  “Hallo!” a quiet voice said, and a friendly hand was slipped through his arm. “This way,” the red-haired man said.

  Lammiter glanced down at the hand on his arm. He had been told, and had believed until now, that Italians disliked and even avoided personal contact with strangers. Unless, of course, the stranger was a pretty woman with a fine pair of hips. Lammiter himself didn’t particularly enjoy being arm in arm with a man whom he didn’t know. He twisted round to look again at the church commanding the Piazza Navona, and the man’s hand had to drop away from his arm.