“Excuse me, won’t you, Clissi, but tell me whether you’d talk like this tonight if you didn’t feel safe?”
“How do you mean?”
“Come, Clissi, don’t force me to say what everybody knows. But anyway, why should I reprove you for having good friends even—how shall I say?—amongst the revolutionaries? . . . You’ve been sensible, very sensible. . . . Perhaps we shall realize it very soon. . . . You know very well you can count on exemption . . .”
“What exemption? What exemption?” said he, growing pale.
“Dear God! Exemption from the firing squad!” And she turned her back on him amid the smothered laughter of those standing by.
The group broke up. Clissi was left almost alone. The others gathered around Liselore, a little farther on. As though it were a sort of bivouac, the last desperate resting place of her world, Liselore Bini squatted down on the floor, crumpling among cigarette stubs and champagne stains a dress from Balmain which without exaggeration had cost no less than £145. Then she began arguing fiercely with an imaginary accuser in defense of her class. As there was nobody to contradict her, she thought she had not been properly understood, and grew as angry as a child, raising her head to the friends who were still on their feet. “Don’t they know what sacrifices we’ve made? Don’t they realize we haven’t got another penny in the bank? . . . The jewels! All right, here come the jewels!” And she started undoing a gold bracelet with a heavy topaz, weighing nearly eight ounces. “A fine business! Even if we gave them all our finery, what would it settle? . . . No, that isn’t the point,” and her voice was close to tears, “it’s because they hate our faces. They can’t bear there to be civilized people . . . they can’t bear us not to smell like they do . . . that’s the ‘new justice’ those pigs are trying to get! . . .”
“Be careful, Liselore,” said one young man. “You never know who may be listening.”
“A fig for carefulness! Do you think they don’t know that my husband and I are top of the list? Have we got to be careful as well? We’ve been too careful, that’s the trouble. And now perhaps . . .” she broke off. “All right, it’s better I keep quiet.”
The only person to lose his head straightaway was Maestro Claudio Cottes, who was terror-struck at the thought that the Morzi were going into action. To make an old-fashioned comparison, he was like an explorer who had managed to coast clear of the plague of cannibals, and enjoy several days of undisturbed travel in safe territory, so that he had forgotten all about it, when from the bushes behind his tent he could see hundreds of javelins emerging and the glint of the natives’ hungry eyes between the branches. Everything had landed on him within the space of a few hours: the first hint of trouble through the telephone call, Bombassei’s enigmatic talk, the warning of the unknown man, and now the imminent catastrophe. What an idiot Arduino was! If there was trouble the Morzi would finish him off straightaway. And now it was too late to do anything about it. Then he comforted himself by thinking, But isn’t it a good sign if that man thought to warn me? Doesn’t it mean that they only suspect Arduino? . . . What an idea. Another part of him replied, “As if there’s time for such subtle distinctions during revolutions! And what’s to prevent their having warned me this evening out of pure devilment, now that there’s no more time for Arduino to save himself?” Upset and tense, he went anxiously from one group to another in the hope of hearing some reassuring piece of news. But there was no good news. His friends wondered why he was so agitated, as they were used to seeing him in a constant good humor and full of gay repartee. But they were too worried about themselves to think overmuch about a harmless old man, who most certainly had nothing to fear.
He wandered aimlessly about, in search of anything that would give him relief, and distractedly swallowed glass after glass of the Spumante the waiters were constantly offering. And the confusion in his head grew worse.
Suddenly the simplest of solutions occurred to him. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before: to go back home, warn his son and hide him in some other apartment. There would certainly be friends who would be willing to shelter him. He looked at the clock—ten past one—and went toward the stairs.
But he was stopped a few paces from the door. “Wherever are you going at this hour, dear maestro? And why that expression? Don’t you feel well?” It was Donna Clara, no less, who had broken away from the official group and was standing near the door with a young man.
“Oh, Donna Clara,” said Cottes, recovering himself. “And where do you think I should be going at this hour? At my age? I’m going home, of course.”
“Listen, maestro,” and Signora Passalacqua’s voice took on a confidential tone. “Take my advice: wait a little longer. It’s better not to go out. . . . There are things going on outside, do you realize?”
“What, do you mean they’ve already begun?”
“Don’t be alarmed, dear maestro. There’s no danger. Nanni, would you take the maestro to have a drink?”
Nanni was the son of his old composer friend, Maestro Gibelli. While Donna Clara slipped away to prevent others leaving, the young man went with Cottes to the buffet, and told him what was happening. Frigerio, a well-informed barrister, and a close friend of the Prefect’s brother, had come hurrying to the Scala a few minutes earlier, and had warned them to let nobody leave. The Morzi were concentrated at various points on the edge of the city, and were about to move into the center. The Prefecture was already
