The Angry Mountain (19 page)

I nodded.

He gave me a toothless smile and hurried out. He had surprising agility and he moved quickly as though expecting
to be kicked out. In a few minutes he returned with a carafe of vino and a glass. “What's your name?” I asked him in Italian.

“
Agostino, signore.
” He gave me a smile that was as fawning as a spaniel.

Zina had been right about the wine. It was the sort of wine you never find in the trattorias. It was the wine reserved for the grower, the pick of the vintage.

A brief exploration along the passage revealed a bathroom, beautifully tiled and complete with foot-bath and bidet. I had a bath, shaved and changed. Then I went downstairs. Agostino was laying the table in one of the rooms. I asked him where the Contessa was. “She is having her bath, signore,” he answered.

I nodded and went outside. Some little distance away from the villa was a huddle of farm buildings. There was a large ugly house with a reddish plaster front that seemed to house several families as well as a good deal of livestock. A girl was drawing water from a well. She wore a black cotton frock that showed the backs of her knees and by the way her body moved under the dress I knew it was all the clothing she wore. She turned and looked at me, a flash of white teeth in a dirty brown face. Near a stone building which presumably contained the wine presses an old woman was milking a buffalo. The buffalo stood quite still working its jaws very slowly.

I turned and went back to the villa wondering why in the world Zina had suggested coming out to this little peasant backwater. But I was glad it was so secluded. And then I started to wonder why Maxwell had tried to follow us. What the devil was it he thought I knew?

As I approached the villa I heard the sound of a piano and a voice singing the jewel song from Gounod's
Faust.
I went up the steps and into the room on the left. The shutters were pulled and the lights were on, and Zina was seated at the piano in a plain white evening gown with a blood red ruby
at her throat and a white flower in her hair. She smiled at me and went on singing.

When she had finished she swung round on the stool. “Phew! It is so hot. Get me a drink. It is over there.” She nodded to the corner.

“What will you have?” I asked.

“Is there some ice?” I nodded. “Then I will have a White Lady.” She gave a little grimace to stop me making the obvious crack.

I mixed the drink and as I handed it to her I said, “Why exactly did you suggest coming out here?”

She looked up at me. Then her lips curved in a slow smile and she caressed the keys of the piano with one hand. “Don't you know?” Her eyebrows arched. “Here I can do as I please and there is nobody to tell my husband that he is a cuckold.” She suddenly threw back her head and gave a brazen laugh. “You fool, Dick! You know nothing about Italy, do you? You are here for two years during the war and you know nothing—nothing.” She banged the keys of the piano with sudden violence. Then she finished her drink and began to play again.

I stood there, listening to her, feeling awkward and somehow shy. She was so different from any woman I'd ever met before. I wanted her. And yet something stood in the way— native reserve, my damned leg; I don't know. The music swelled to a passionate note of urgency and she began to sing. Then Agostino came in to announce dinner and the spell was broken.

I don't remember what we had to eat, but I do remember the wine—lovely, soft, golden wine, smooth as silk with a rich, heady bouquet. And after the meal there were nuts and fruit and aleatico, that heavy wine from the Island of Elba. Zina kept my glass constantly filled. It was almost as though she wanted to get me drunk. The smooth mounds of her breasts seemed to rise up out of the shoulderless dress, the ruby blazed red at her throat and her eyes were large and very
green. I began to feel muzzy. The pulsing of my blood became merged with the gentle putter of the electric light plant outside in the stillness of the night.

Coffee and liqueurs were served in the other room. Zina played to me for a bit, but she seemed restless, switching from one tune to another and from mood to mood. Her eyes kept glancing towards me. They were bright, almost greedy. Suddenly she slammed her hands on to the keys with a murderous cacophony of sound and got to her feet. She poured herself another drink and then came and sat beside me on the couch and let me touch her. Her lips when I kissed them were warm and open, but there was a tenseness about her body as it lay against me. Once she murmured, “I wish you were not such a nice person, Dick.” She said it very softly and when I asked her what she meant, she smiled and stroked my hair. But a moment later the madonna look was gone. She was listening and there was a hungry look in her eyes that I didn't understand.

It was then that I heard the aircraft. It was flying very low, its engines just ticking over. I jerked upright, listening, waiting for the crash. It seemed to pass right over the villa, so low that I thought I could hear the sound of the slip-stream. The engines were throttled right back and after a moment's silence they roared into life and then stuttered to a stop. “I believe it's landed,” I said. I had half-risen to my feet, but she pulled me back. “They often pass over here like that,” she said. “It is the plane from Messina.”

I rubbed my hand over my eyes. I started to tell her that the plane from Messina wouldn't be flying from east to west, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. I was too drunk to care.

Roberto came in then. He didn't knock. He just walked straight in and stood there, staring at me with an angry, sullen, animal look. Zina pushed me away from her and got to her feet. They talked together for a moment in low voices. Roberto was looking at her now, his features heavy and coarse
with desire. I wasn't so drunk I didn't know what the look on his face meant. They reminded me of King Shahryar's Queen and the blackamoor and I began to laugh. Zina turned at the sound of my laughter. The blood drained from her face so that her eyes were big and dark and angry. She dismissed Roberto and then came towards me. “Why do you laugh?” Her voice was tight with rage.

I couldn't stop myself. I suppose it was the drink. It seemed so damned funny. She was leaning over me now, her face white. “Stop it. Do you hear? Stop it.” I think she knew why I was laughing, for she suddenly hit me across the face. “Stop it, I tell you,” she screamed at me. Whether it was her voice, which was not pleasant, or the blow, I don't know, but I stopped laughing.

She was leaning over me still and I thought for a moment she was going to hit me again. Her face was twisted with passion. “Because I tell you I am born in the slums of Napoli—” She stopped herself and turned quickly to the drink table. She came back with cognac in a balloon glass. “Drink that,” she said. “Then you must go to bed.”

I didn't want the cognac. I'd sobered up a little and I was beginning to feel uneasy. “Why did you bring me out here?” I asked. My voice sounded slurred and I couldn't get her properly into focus.

She sank down on to the couch beside me. “I am sorry, Dick. I do not want to hit you like that. Something get into me, I think. It is the heat.”

“Whose villa is this?”

She pulled my head down on to her breast. “You ask so many questions. Why are you not content to take things as they come?” Her hand was stroking my hair again, her fingers caressing my temples. It was very soothing. “Close your eyes now and I will sing to you.” She chose a soft Neapolitan lullaby. My eyes felt heavy with sleep. Somehow I found the glass in my hand and I drank. Her voice came and went, the drowsy murmur of a bee, the soft hit of water.
I closed my eyes for the room was pulsing to the sound of her voice.

Then I was being helped up the stairs to bed. I heard her say in Italian, “He will sleep now.” Her voice sounded very far away. It was Roberto's voice that answered her. He just said, “
Bene.
”

Some sixth sense told me I mustn't become unconscious. I fought to get control of my reeling brain. Then I was lying on a bed in complete darkness. No breath of air stirred in the room. It was suffocatingly hot and I felt sick. I rolled out of bed and felt my way to the farther wall. I found the basin just in time. I broke into a cold sweat then, but I felt better and my head was clear. I cursed myself for a fool. To come out to a lonely villa with a girl like Zina and then get so drunk that I had to be put to bed!

I stood there leaning on the basin and wiping the sweat from my forehead with a towel. The villa was very still. The gentle putter of the electric light plant had ceased and I could hear no sound of voices. I glanced at my watch. The luminous face of it shone bright in the utter darkness. It was just after one.

I was feeling much better now. I rinsed out the basin and had a wash. As I dried my face I was wondering why Zina had given me so much wine to drink. Had she wanted to get me drunk? Was that the way she liked her men? Maybe she'd been in the room with me. Then I remembered the expression on Roberto's face and her sudden blaze of anger. And I began to feel uneasy again.

I put the towel down and turned to feel my way towards the door. Her room would be somewhere along the passage. I was feeling fine now. Half-way across the room I remembered there was a torch in my suitcase which was on the window seat. I found the case and was just slipping back the clasps when I noticed a vertical red line where the shutters were swung across the window. I lifted the securing bar and pulled the shutters back.

I stood quite still then, staring in amazement at the sight that met my eyes. Framed in the window was the dark bulk of Vesuvius outlined against an incredible, lurid glow. On either side of the summit two great streaks of red snaked down towards the villa. They were like a finger and thumb of fire crooked to clutch at something on the slopes. The hand and shaft of the wrist were formed by a ruddy column that flamed from the crater, reflecting itself on great billowing masses of gas that rolled upwards, filling the sky and blocking out the stars.

I turned slowly and faced the room. It was full of a demon red glare. I got my torch and moved towards the door. As I did so the head and shoulders of a man moved to meet me. It was my own shadow thrown on the further wall by that ghastly volcanic glare.

I reached the door and turned the handle. But nothing happened. I turned the knob in the opposite direction, but the door would not budge. I was suddenly very wide awake. I jerked furiously at the door in the grip of a sudden panic fear of being trapped. With the horrid glare of the mountain behind me I became desperate to reach the safety of the passage outside. But I couldn't shift it and at last I realised that I was locked in. For a moment I was terrified. The mountain was in eruption and I had been left here to die under the ash. I was on the point of shouting for help when some instinct kept my mouth shut. I turned quickly back to the window and stood gazing up at the flaming mass of the volcano.

My heart was still pounding against my ribs, but my brain was clearer now. The mountain wasn't in eruption—not yet. It was worse than it had been last night, but it wasn't in eruption—not in the way it had been when Pompeii had been destroyed. A lot more gas was escaping, but the glow was mainly from the lava outflows. The villa wasn't in any imminent danger. And if the villa wasn't in danger then there was no call for me to panic because
the door of my room had been locked. Perhaps it was just jammed.

I went back and tried it again. But it was locked all right. And then I remembered the nightmare of that night in my room at the Excelsior in Milan. I felt the sweat breaking out on my forehead again. I told myself there couldn't be any connection. But why had the door been locked? Why had Zina gone out of her way to fill me up with wine till I was so drunk I couldn't stand? Whose villa was this?

I remembered then what Maxwell had said—
But somehow you're a part of it whether you like it or not
. And the man who called himself Shirer—Hilda had said he was in Naples. I flashed my torch round the room. The hard white beam of it seemed somehow solid and friendly. I lit a cigarette. My hand trembled as I held the match to it. But at least I was forewarned. I glanced up at Vesuvius. The whole night sky seemed on fire like a scene from
Paradise Lost
. The headlights of a car stabbed the lurid countryside on the road to Avin. It slowed and stopped. Then the headlights went out. A door closed in the stillness of the villa below me. Involuntarily my muscles tensed. I thought I heard the creak of a stair board, and suddenly I knew someone was coming up the stairs, coming to my room.

I swung the shutters to and moved towards the door. The palms of my hands were sweating and the chromium of the torch I held felt slippery. But the weight of it was comforting. I stood with my head pressed close to the panelling of the door, listening. There was somebody outside now. I couldn't hear him, but I sensed him there. Very quietly the key was turned in the lock. I stiffened and then stepped back, so that I should be behind the door when it opened.

I couldn't see it, but I felt the handle turning. Then my hand, which was touching the woodwork of the door, was pressed back as the door was opened. I grasped the heavy torch, raising it ready to strike out. But before I could hit him the man was past me and moving towards the bed. I
slipped out into the passage then, the sound of my movement lost in the deep pile of the carpet. A faint red glow showed through an unshuttered window at the far end of the corridor. I reached the dark shaft of the stairs and hesitated. The villa was all silent, an alert stillness that seemed to be listening for the sound of my footfall.

And as I stood there, hesitating, there was a sudden shout from my room. “Roberto! Agostino!”

The lavatory was right opposite the head of the stairs. The door was ajar and I stepped back into the shadows as footsteps came running out of my room. A torch flashed in the corridor. “Roberto! Agostino!” Somebody went hurtling past and flung himself down the stairs. I had a brief glimpse of a short, angry figure. Then a door opened along the corridor, near the red glow of the window. I peered out and saw the silhouette of a man hurrying down the corridor towards me. As he passed me he switched on a torch and in the reflected light from the walls I saw it was Roberto. His black hair was tousled and his features coarse and puffed with sleep. He wore a singlet and was buttoning on his trousers. He left behind him a faint smell of sweat mingled with the scent of a perfume that I recognised as Zina's.