One group went out on the terrace to look. The piazza was deserted, the abandoned cars seemed asleep and blacker than ever. And the drivers? Were they invisibly asleep on the back seats? Or had they too fled to join the revolt? The streetlights glowed as usual, everything was asleep, people strained their ears to catch the approach of a distant rumble, the sound of riots or shooting or the rattle of gun carriages. “Are we mad?” somebody shouted. “What if they see all this light? It’ll draw them like a mirror!” They came in again, and closed the shutters, while somebody went to search for an electrician. Soon the huge lights in the foyer went out. The ushers brought a dozen candles and put them on the ground. This too bore down on their spirits like a presage of evil.
In their weariness, men and women alike began to sit down on the floor because of the shortage of sofas, first spreading out their coats so as not to get dirty. A queue formed in front of a small booth near the Museum, where there was a telephone. Cottes waited his turn, to make sure that Arduino was at least aware of the danger. Nobody near him was joking anymore: they had forgotten all about the Strage and Grossgemuth.
He waited at least three-quarters of an hour. When he was alone in the booth (lit, as there was no window), he twice formed the number wrongly because his hands were trembling. At last he had a clear line. It sounded friendly, the reassuring voice of home. But why didn’t anyone answer? Hadn’t Arduino come back? Yet it was past two o’clock. And what if the Morzi had gotten him already? He tried to control his anguish. My God, why didn’t anybody answer? Ah, at last.
“Hello, hello.” It was Arduino’s sleepy voice. “Who on earth is it at this hour of night?”
“Hello, hello,” said his father. But he regretted it at once. It would have been so much better to have kept quiet: he suddenly realized the line might be tapped. What should he say now? Advise him to escape? Tell him what was happening? But what if they were listening?
He hunted for a plausible explanation. Ask him, for instance, to come to the Scala straightaway to give a concert of his music. No, that would mean Arduino had to come out. What about something quite trivial? That he had forgotten his wallet, and was worried about it? That would be even worse. His son would not realize what was happening, and the Morzi, who were most certainly listening, would suspect something.
“Listen, my boy . . .” he said to gain time. Perhaps the only thing was to tell him he had forgotten the keys of the main door: the only plausible and innocent explanation of such a late call.
“Listen,” he repeated, “I have forgotten my keys. I shall be outside the house in twenty minutes.” A wave of terror swept through him. And what if Arduino came down to wait for him, and went out into the street? Perhaps there would be someone waiting in the street below with orders to kidnap him.
“No, no,” he corrected himself, “don’t come down till I arrive. You’ll hear me whistle.” What an idiot I am, he thought again, that’s the easiest way of showing the Morzi how to catch him.
“Listen carefully,” he said, “. . . don’t come down till you hear me whistling the theme of the Roman Carnival Overture. You know it, don’t you. . . . All right. Mind you, remember.”
He put down the receiver to avoid dangerous questions. What sort of mess had he made now? Arduino still knew nothing about the danger, he had put the Morzi on their guard. Perhaps some musician among their number knew the Overture. Perhaps when he arrived, he would find the Morzi already in wait. He could not have been more stupid. Ought he to telephone again, and tell him the truth? But just then the door half opened, and the frightened face of a young girl appeared. Cottes came out, mopping his brow.
He came back into the dim light of the foyer to find the atmosphere of general collapse even more evident. Ladies paralyzed with cold were sitting tightly side by side on the sofas. Many had removed their most showy jewels and had put them in their bags, while others, by dint of rearranging their hair in the mirrors, had reduced their hairstyles to less provocative proportions; others had arranged their capes and veils in strange ways, so as to seem like penitents.
“But this waiting is terrible, anything is better than this.”
“We could certainly have done without this . . . and I was sure something was going to happen . . . we should have left for Tremezzo today, then Giorgio said it was a pity to miss the prima of Grossgemuth, and I said they were expecting us, but it doesn’t matter, he said, we can arrange everything by telephone, no, I didn’t feel like coming, now I’ve got a migraine too, oh, my poor head . . .”
“Oh, stop worrying, dear, they will leave you in peace, you haven’t been compromised . . .”
“. . . Do you know, my gardener Francesco says he has seen their blacklists with his own eyes? . . . He belongs to the Morzi . . . says there are more than forty thousand names in Milan alone.”
“Good Heavens, how is it possible, it’s too dreadful . . .”
“Is there any news? . . .”
“. . . No, nobody knows anything.”
“Has anybody arrived?”
“No, I said nobody knew anything.”
Some people were praying with their hands clasped as if by accident, others were whispering ceaselessly into a friend’s ear, as if in the grip of a frenzy. The men were stretched out on the ground, many with their shoes off and
