The Foreign Correspondent

“Tutti avanti!” he sang out, waving them along, stamping each passport without so much as looking at the owner. The second engineer could have been born anywhere, but he spoke merchant seaman’s English, enough to say, “We take care of Nunzio. So we don’t have no trouble in the port.”

For a time, Weisz just stood there, alone on the wharf, as the crew disappeared up a flight of stone steps. When they’d gone, it was very quiet, only a buzzing dock light, a cloud of moths fluttering in its metal hood, and the lapping of the sea against the quay. The night air was warm, a familiar warmth, soft on the skin, and fragrant with the scents of decay-damp stone and drains, mud flats at low tide.

Weisz had never been here before, but he was home.

He’d thought himself alone, except for a few wandering cats, but, he saw now, he wasn’t. There was a Fiat parked in front of a shuttered storefront, and a young woman in the passenger seat was watching him. When he met her eyes, she gave him a nod of recognition. Then the car drove off, slowly, bumping over the cobbled quay. A moment later, the church bells began to ring, some near, some far away. It was midnight, and Weisz set off to find the via Corvino.

The vicoli, the Genoese called the quarter behind the wharf, “the alleys.” All of them ancient-the merchant adventurers had been sailing out of here since the thirteenth century-narrow, and steep. They climbed up the hill, became lanes, bordered by high walls hung with ivy, turned into bridges, then to streets made of steps, with, now and then, a small statue of a saint in a hollow niche, so the lost could pray for guidance. And Carlo Weisz was good and lost. At one point, thoroughly discouraged, he simply sat down on a doorstep and lit a Nazionale-thanks to Kolb, who’d tossed a few packets of the Italian cigarettes into his valise as he was packing. Leaning back against the door, he looked up: below a starless heaven, an apartment building leaned out over the street, windows open on a June night, and, from one of them, came a steady rhythm of long, mournful snores. When he finished the cigarette and rose to his feet, he slung his jacket over his shoulder and returned to the search. He would keep at it until dawn, he decided, then he would give up and go back to France, a footnote in the history of espionage.

Trudging up an alley, sweating in the warm night air, he heard approaching footsteps as someone rounded a corner ahead of him. Two policemen. There was nowhere to hide, so he told himself to remember that his name was now Carlo Marino, while his fingers involuntarily made sure of the passport in his back pocket.

“Good evening,” one of them said. “You lost?”

Weisz admitted he was.

“Where are you going?”

“The via Corvino.”

“Ah, that’s difficult. But go back down this alley, then turn left, uphill, cross the bridge, then left again. Follow the curve, don’t give up, you will be on Corvino, you must look for the sign, raised letters carved into the stone on the corner of the building.”

“Grazie.”

“Prego.”

Just then, as the policeman started to go, something flickered in his attention-Weisz saw it in his eyes. Who are you? He hesitated, then touched the bill of his cap, the courtesy salute, and, followed by his partner, walked off down the alley.

Following his directions-much better than the ones he’d memorized, or thought he had-Weisz found the street, and the apartment house. And the big key was, as promised, on a ledge above the entry. Then he climbed, his footsteps echoing in the darkness, three flights of marble stairs, and, above the third door on the right, found the key to the apartment. He got it to work, entered, and waited. Deep silence. He flicked his cigarette lighter, saw a lamp on the table in the foyer, and turned it on. The lamp had an old-fashioned shade, satin, with long tassels, and so it was everywhere in the apartment-bulbous furniture covered in faded velvet, cream-colored draperies yellowed with age, painted-over cracks in the walls. Who lived here? Who had lived here? Brown had described the apartment as “empty,” but it was more than that. There was, in the dead air of the place, an uncomfortable stillness, an absence. In a tall bookcase, three spaces. So, they’d taken these books with them. And pale squares, on the walls, had once been home to paintings. Sold? These people, were they fuorusciti-the ones who’d fled? To France? Brazil? America? Or to prison? Or the graveyard?

Now he was thirsty. On a wall in the kitchen, an ancient telephone. He lifted the receiver but heard only silence. He took a cup from a cabinet crammed with the good china and turned on the water tap. Nothing. He waited then went to turn it off, but heard a distant hiss, then a rattle, and then, a few seconds later, a thin stream of rusty water splashed into the sink. He filled the cup, let a few particles float to the bottom, and took a sip. The water tasted like metal, but he drank it anyhow. Carrying the cup, he went to the back of the apartment, to the largest bedroom, where a chenille spread had been carefully pulled over a feather mattress. He took off his clothes, crawled under the spread, and, exhausted by tension, by journey, by return from exile, fell dead asleep.

In the morning, he went out to find a telephone. The sun worked its way into the alleys, caged canaries were set on windowsills, radios played, and in the small piazzas, people were as he remembered them-the shadow that lay over Berlin had not fallen here. Not yet. There were, perhaps, a few more posters plastered on the walls, mocking the French and the British. On one of them, a bloated John Bull and a haughty Marianne rode together in a chariot, with wheels that crushed the poor people of Italy. And when he paused to look in the window of a bookstore, he found himself staring at the disconcerting fascist calendar, revised by Mussolini to begin with his ascension to power in 1922, so giving the date as 23 Giugno, Anno XVII. But then, the bookstore owner had chosen to display this nonsense in the window, next to Mussolini’s autobiography, and that said something, to Weisz, about the persistence of the national character. He recalled Mr. Lane, the night of the meeting in Passy, amused and perplexed, in his upper-class way, by the idea that there could be fascism in Italy.

Weisz found a busy cafe, drank coffee, read the paper-mostly sports, actresses, an opening ceremony at a new waterworks-then used the public telephone by the WC. The number for Matteo, at Il Secolo, rang for a long time. When at last it was answered, he could hear machinery, printing presses running in the background, and the man on the other end of the phone had to shout. “Pronto? ”

“Is Matteo around?”

“What?”

Weisz tried again, louder. Out in the cafe, a waiter glanced at him.

“It’ll take a minute. Don’t hang up.”

Finally, a voice said, “Yes? Who is it?”

“A friend, from Paris. From the newspaper.”

“What? From where?”

“I’m a friend of Arturo Salamone.”

“Oh. You shouldn’t call me here, you know. Where are you?”

“In Genoa. Where can we meet?”

“Not until tonight.”

“Where, I said.”

Matteo thought it over. “On the via Caffaro there’s a wine shop, the Enoteca Carenna, it’s called. It’s, it’s crowded.”

“At seven?”

“Maybe later. Just wait for me. Read a magazine, the Illustrazione, so I’ll recognize you.” He meant the Illustrazione Italiana, Italy’s version of Life magazine.

“I’ll see you then.”

Weisz hung up, but did not return to his table. From Paris, he could not telephone his family-the international lines were known to be tapped, and the rule for emigres was: don’t try it, you’ll get your family in trouble. But now he could. For a call outside of Genoa, he had to use the operator, and when she answered, he gave her the number in Trieste. The phone rang, again and again. Finally, she said, “I am sorry, Signor, but they do not answer.”

23 June, 6:50 P.M.