The Complete Stories (33 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: The Complete Stories
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“Cretins,” muttered Bevilacqua. “The portiere said the heat was perfect.”
He consulted his paper. “I have a place in the Prati district, two fine bedrooms and combined living and dining room. Also an American-type refrigerator in the kitchen.”
“Has the apartment been advertised in the papers?”
“Absolutely no. My cousin called me about this one last night—but the rent is fifty-five thousand.”
“Let’s see it anyway,” Carl said.
It was an old house, formerly a villa, which had been cut up into apartments. Across the street stood a little park with tall, tufted pine trees, just the thing for the kids. Bevilacqua located the portiere, who led them up the stairs, all the while saying how good the flat was. Although Carl discovered at once that there was no hot water in the kitchen sink and it would have to be carried in from the bathroom, the flat made a good impression on him. But then in the master bedroom he noticed that one wall was wet and there was a disagreeable odor in the room.
The portiere quickly explained that a water pipe had burst in the wall, but they would have it fixed in a week.
“It smells like a sewer pipe,” said Carl.
“But they will have it fixed this week,” Bevilacqua said.
“I couldn’t live a week with that smell in the room.”
“You mean you are not interested in the apartment?” the Italian said fretfully.
Carl nodded. Bevilacqua’s face fell. He blew his nose and they left the house. Outside he regained his calm. “You can’t trust your own mother nowadays. I called the portiere this morning and he guaranteed me the house was without a fault.”
“He must have been kidding you.”
“It makes no difference. I have an exceptional place in mind for you now, but we’ve got to hurry.”
Carl halfheartedly asked where it was.
The Italian looked embarrassed. “In the Parioli, a wonderful section, as you know. Your wife won’t have to look far for friends—there are Americans all over. Also Japanese and Indians, if you have international tastes.”
“The Parioli,” Carl muttered. “How much?”
“Only sixty-five thousand,” Bevilacqua said, staring at the ground.
“Only? Still, it must be a dump at that price.”
“It’s really very nice—new, and with a good-size nuptial bedroom
and one small, besides the usual things, including a fine kitchen. You will personally love the magnificent terrace.”
“Have you seen the place?”
“I spoke to the maid and she says the owner is very anxious to rent. They are moving, for business reasons, to Turin next week. The maid is an old friend of mine. She swears the place is perfect.”
Carl considered it. Sixty-five thousand meant close to a hundred and five dollars. “Well,” he said after a while, “let’s have a look at it.”
 
 
They caught a tram and found seats together, Bevilacqua impatiently glancing out of the window whenever they stopped. On the way he told Carl about his hard life. He was the eighth of twelve children, only five now alive. Nobody was really ever not hungry, though they ate spaghetti by the bucketful. He had to leave school at ten and go to work. In the war he was wounded twice, once by the Americans advancing, and once by the Germans retreating. His father was killed in an Allied bombardment of Rome, the same that had cracked open his mother’s grave in the Cimitero Verano.
“The British pinpointed their targets,” he said, “but the Americans dropped bombs everywhere. This was the advantage of your great wealth.”
Carl said he was sorry about the bombardments.
“Nevertheless, I like the Americans better,” Bevilacqua went on. “They are more like Italians—open. That’s why I like to help them when they come here. The British are more closed. They talk with tight lips.” He made sounds with tight lips.
As they were walking toward Piazza Euclide, he asked Carl if he had an American cigarette on him.
“I don’t smoke,” Carl said apologetically.
Bevilacqua shrugged and walked faster.
The house he took Carl to was a new one on Via Archimede, an attractive street that wound up and around a hill. It was crowded with long-balconied apartment buildings in bright colors. Carl thought he would be happy to live in one of them. It was a short thought, he wouldn’t let it get too long.
They rode up to the fifth floor, and the maid, a dark girl with fuzzy cheeks, showed them through the neat apartment.
“Is sixty-five thousand correct?” Carl asked her.
She said yes.
The flat was so good that Carl, moved by elation and fear, began to pray.
“I told you you’d like it,” Bevilacqua said, rubbing his palms. “I’ll draw up the contract tonight.”
“Let’s see the bedroom now,” Carl said.
But first the maid led them onto a broad terrace to show them the view of the city. The sight excited Carl—the variety of architecture from ancient to modern times, where history had been and still, in its own aftermath, sensuously flowed, a sea of roofs, towers, domes; and in the background, golden-domed St. Peter’s. This marvelous city, Carl thought.
“Now the bedroom,” he said.
“Yes, the bedroom.” The maid led them through double doors into the “camera matrimoniale,” spacious, and tastefully furnished, containing handsome mahogany twin beds.
“They’ll do,” Carl said, to hide his joy, “though I personally prefer a double bed.”
“I also,” said the maid, “but you can move one in.”
“These will do.”
“But they won’t be here,” she said.
“What do you mean they won’t be here?” Bevilacqua demanded.
“Nothing will be left. Everything goes to Turin.”
Carl’s beautiful hopes took another long dive into a dirty cellar.
Bevilacqua flung his hat on the floor, landed on it with both feet, and punched himself on the head with his fists.
The maid swore she had told him on the phone that the apartment was for rent unfurnished.
He began to yell at her and she shouted at him. Carl left, broken-backed. Bevilacqua caught up with him in the street. It was a quarter to four and he had to rush off to work. He held his hat and ran down the hill.
“I weel show you a terreefic place tomorrow,” he called over his shoulder.
“Over my dead body,” said Carl.
On the way to the hotel he was drenched in a heavy rainfall, the first of many in the late autumn.
 
 
The next morning the hotel phone rang at seven-thirty. The children awoke, Mike crying. Carl, dreading the day, groped for the ringing phone. Outside it was still raining.
“Pronto.”
It was a cheery Bevilacqua. “I call you from my job. I ’ave found for you an apotament een weech you can move tomorrow if you like.”
“Go to hell.”
“Cosa?”
“Why do you call so early? You woke the children.”
“Excuse me,” Bevilacqua said in Italian. “I wanted to give you the good news.”
“What goddamn good news?”
“I have found a first-class apartment for you near the Monte Sacro. It has only one bedroom but also a combined living and dining room with a double daybed, and a glass-enclosed terrace studio for your studies, and a small maid’s room. There is no garage but you have no car. Price forty-five thousand—less than you expected. The apartment is on the ground floor and there is also a garden for your children to play in. Your wife will go crazy when she sees it.”
“So will I,” Carl said. “Is it furnished?”
Bevilacqua coughed. “Of course.”
“Of course. Have you been there?”
He cleared his throat. “Not yet. I just discovered it this minute. The secretary of my office, Mrs. Gaspari, told me about it. The apartment is directly under hers. She will make a wonderful neighbor for you. I will come to your hotel precisely at thirteen and a quarter.”
“Give yourself time. Make it fourteen.”
“You will be ready?”
“Yes.”
But when he had hung up, his feeling of dread had grown. He felt afraid to leave the hotel and confessed this to Norma.
“Would you like me to go this time?” she asked.
He considered it but said no.
“Poor Carl.”
“‘The great adventure.’”
“Don’t be bitter. It makes me miserable.”
They had breakfast in the room—tea, bread and jam, fruit. They were cold, but there was to be no heat, it said on a card tacked on the door, until December. Norma put sweaters on the kids. Both had colds. Carl opened a book but could not concentrate and settled for
Il Messaggero.
Norma telephoned the lady agent; she said she would ring back when there was something new to show.
Bevilacqua called up from the lobby at one-forty.
“Coming,” Carl said, his heart heavy.
The Italian was standing in wet shoes near the door. He held his briefcase and a dripping large umbrella but had left his hat home. Even in the damp his bushy hair stood upright. He looked slightly miserable.
They left the hotel, Bevilacqua walking quickly by Carl’s side, maneuvering to keep the umbrella over both of them. On the Piazza Navona a woman was feeding a dozen stray cats in the rain. She had spread a newspaper on the ground and the cats were grabbing hard strings of last night’s macaroni. Carl felt the recurrence of his loneliness.
A packet of garbage thrown out of a window hit their umbrella and bounced off. The garbage spilled on the ground. A white-faced man, staring out of a third-floor window, pointed to the cats. Carl shook his fist at him.
Bevilacqua was moodily talking about himself. “In eight years of hard work I advanced myself only from thirty thousand lire to fifty-five thousand a month. The cretin who sits on my left in the office has his desk at the door and makes forty thousand extra in tips just to give callers an appointment with the big boss. If I had that desk I would double what he takes in.”
“Have you thought of changing jobs?”
“Certainly, but I could never start at the salary I am now earning. And there are twenty people who will jump into my job at half the pay.”
“Tough,” Carl said.
“For every piece of bread, we have twenty open mouths. You Americans are the lucky ones.”
“Yes, in that way.”
“In what way no?”
“We have no piazzas.”
Bevilacqua shrugged one shoulder. “Can you blame me for wanting to advance myself?”
“Of course not. I wish you the best.”
“I wish the best to all Americans,” Bevilacqua declared. “I like to help them.”
“And I to all Italians and pray them to let me live among them for a while.”
“Today it will be arranged. Tomorrow you will move in. I feel luck in my bones. My wife kissed St. Peter’s toe yesterday.”
Traffic was heavy, a stream of gnats—Vespas, Fiats, Renaults—roared at them from both directions, nobody slowing down to let them pass. They plowed across dangerously. At the bus stop the crowd rushed
for the doors when the bus swerved to the curb. It moved away with its rear door open, four people hanging on the step.
I can do as well in Times Square, Carl thought.
 
 
In a half hour, after a short walk from the bus stop, they arrived at a broad, tree-lined street. Bevilacqua pointed to a yellow apartment house on the corner they were approaching. All over it were terraces, the ledges loaded with flower pots and stone boxes dropping ivy over the walls. Carl would not allow himself to think the place had impressed him.
Bevilacqua nervously rang the portiere’s bell. He was again rubbing the hunchback’s gobbo. A thickset man in a blue smock came up from the basement. His face was heavy and he wore a full black mustache. Bevilacqua gave him the number of the apartment they wanted to see.
“Ah, there I can’t help you,” said the portiere. “I haven’t got the key.”
“Here we go again,” Carl muttered.
“Patience,” Bevilacqua counseled. He spoke to the portiere in a dialect Carl couldn’t follow. The portiere made a long speech in the same dialect.
“Come upstairs,” said Bevilacqua.
“Upstairs where?”
“To the lady I told you about, the secretary of my office. She lives on the first floor. We will wait there comfortably until we can get the key to the apartment.”
“Where is it?”
“The portiere isn’t sure. He says a certain Contessa owns the apartment but she let her lover live in it. Now the Contessa decided to get married so she asked the lover to move, but he took the key with him.”

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