The Foreign Correspondent

maybe Victor Gollancz, but we like Staunton. For the Italian publication, maybe a small French house, or we’ll use one of the emigre journals-their name, anyhow-but we’ll get copies into Italy, you can depend on that. And it must go to the United States, it could be influential there, and we want the Americans to think about going to war, but Staunton will make that sale. Allright so far?”

After Weisz told him what had been said, the colonel nodded. The reality of being an author was just beginning to reach him. “Please ask,” he said to Weisz, “what if the publisher in London doesn’t like it?”

“Oh, they’ll like it well enough,” Brown said.

“Don’t worry,” Weisz said to Ferrara. “This is the best kind of story, a story that tells itself.”

Not quite. Weisz found, through the end of March and the early days of April, that considerable embroidery was needed, but this came more easily to him than he would have suspected-he knew Italian life, and he knew the history. Still, he held tight to the narrative, and Ferrara, on prompting, had a good memory.

“My father worked for the railroad, in the town of Ferrara. As a brakeman in the railroad yards.”

And your father-stern and distant? Warm and tender? A bad temper? Tall? Short? The house, what did it look like? Family? Holidays? A scene at Christmas? That could be appealing, snow, candles in the windows. Did he play at being a soldier?

“If I did, I don’t remember.”

“No? With a broomstick, maybe, for a rifle?”

“What I recall is football, every spare minute I had. But we didn’t play all that much, I had chores to do, after school. Bringing water from the pump or coal for the little stove we had. It took a lot of work, just to live day to day.”

“So, nothing military.”

“No, I never thought about it. When I was eleven, I brought my father his dinner, at the yards, and I would meet his friends. It was understood that I would do the same work he did.”

“You liked that idea?”

“It wasn’t up to me to like it.” He thought for a time. “Actually, now that I think about it, my mother’s brother had been a soldier, and he let me wear a sort of canvas belt he had, with a canteen on it. I did like that. I wore it, and I filled the canteen and drank the water. Which tasted, different.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Water from a canteen has a certain taste. Musty, but not bad, canteen water is not like other water.”

Ahh.

By 10 April, the new issue of Liberazione was, against all odds, ready for publication. Weisz’s evenings were taken up with the book, and his days belonged to Reuters, which left Salamone, and eventually Elena, to do much of the editorial work. Weisz had to tell Salamone what he was doing, but Elena knew only that he was “involved in work on another project.” This she accepted, saying, “I don’t have to know the details.”

For the 10 April Liberazione, there was plenty to write about, and both the Roman lawyer and the art historian from Siena contributed articles. Mussolini had issued an ultimatum to King Zog of Albania, demanding, essentially, that he give his country to Italy. Britain was asked to intercede, but declined and, on 7 April, the Italian navy bombarded the Albanian coast, and the army invaded. This invasion violated the Anglo- Italian agreement signed a year earlier, but the Chamberlain government was silent.

Not so Liberazione.

A New Imperial Adventure, they said. More dead and wounded, more money, all for Mussolini’s frantic competition with Adolf Hitler, who, on 22 March, had taken the port of Memel by sending a registered letter to the Lithuanian government, then sailing into the port, to grinding newsreel cameras and popping flashbulbs, on a German warship. Very saucy, as Hitler liked to say, with the sort of panache guaranteed to infuriate Mussolini.

But, just in case it didn’t, the April Liberazione surely did-if the palace stooges allowed him to see it. For there was not only the editorial about German agents but also a cartoon. Talk about saucy. It’s nighttime, and here’s Mussolini, as usual, on a balcony. This balcony, however, is off a bedroom, the outline of a bed barely visible in the darkness. It’s the familiar Il Duce; big jaw thrust out, arms folded, but he’s wearing only a pajama top-with medals, of course- revealing hairy, knobby cartoon legs, while, from behind the French door, a pair of woman’s eyes, very alarmed, are peering out of the gloom, suggesting that all has not gone well in the bedroom. A suggestion confirmed by the old Sicilian proverb used as the caption: “Potere e meglio di fottere.” Nice rhyme, there, the sort of thing that made it fun to say, and easy to remember. “Power is better than fucking.”

It had been three weeks since Weisz’s return from Berlin, and he had to call Veronique-casual as the love affair had been, he couldn’t just vanish. So, on a Thursday afternoon, he telephoned and asked her to meet him after work at a cafe near the gallery. She knew. Somehow she knew. And, Parisian warrior that she was, had never looked so lovely. So soft-her hair soft and simple, eyes barely made up, blouse falling softly over her breasts, with a new perfume, sweet, not sophisticated, clouds of it. Three weeks’ absence and a meeting at a cafe made words practically pointless, but decency demanded an explanation. “I have met, somebody,” he said. “It is, I think, serious.”

There were no tears, only that she would miss him, and he realized, just at that moment, how much he’d liked her, what good times they’d had together, in bed and out.

“Someone you met in Berlin, Carlo?”

“Someone I met a long time ago.”

“A second chance?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Very rare, the second chance.” You won’t get one here.

“I will miss you,” he said.

“You’re sweet, to say that.”

“It’s true, I’m not just saying it.”

A melancholy smile, a lift of the eyebrows.

“May I call you, sometime, to see how you’re doing?”

She put a hand, also soft, and warm, on his, by way of telling him what a jackass he’d just been, then stood up and said, “My coat?”

He helped her on with her coat, she turned, shook out her hair so that it fell properly over her collar, rose to give him a dry kiss on the lips, and, hands in pockets, walked out the door. When, later, he left the cafe, from the woman behind the cash register, another melancholy smile, another lift of the eyebrows.

The following day, he forced himself to deal with the list he’d brought out of Berlin. Leaving the office at lunchtime, he took an endless Metro ride out to the Porte de Clignancourt, wandered through the flea market, and bought a valise. It had been born cheap-cardboard covered with pebbled fabric-then lived a long, hard life; a tag on the handle evidence of a stay at a railway baggage room in Odessa.

That done, he walked and walked, past stalls of prodigious furniture and racks of old clothes, until, at last, he found an old gent with a goatee and a dozen typewriters. He tried them all, even the red Mignon portable, and finally chose a Remington with a French, AZERTY, keyboard, haggled a little, put it in the valise, dropped it off at the hotel, and returned to the office.

Long hours, the spy business. After an evening with Ferrara-the troop transport to Ethiopia, the misgivings of a fellow officer-Weisz walked back to the Dauphine, took the list from its hiding place, beneath the bottom drawer of his armoire, and went to work. The thing was a bear to retype, the old ribbon had barely any ink, and he had to do it twice. Finally, he typed two envelopes, one to the French Foreign Ministry, the other to the British embassy, added stamps, and went to bed. They would know what had been done-French keyboard, umlauts put in by hand, local mailing-but Weisz didn’t so much care, by that point, what anybody did with it. What he did care about was keeping his word to the man in the park, if he was still alive, and especially if he wasn’t.

It was very late by the time he finished, but he wanted badly to be done with the whole business, so he burned the list, flushed the ashes down the toilet, and set out to dispose of the typewriter. Valise in hand, he walked down the stairs and out into the street. Harder than he thought, to lose a valise-people everywhere, and the