Читать книгу Innocence - Julian Barnes - Страница 16

10

When he was ten years old Papa had taken him on a journey to see Antonio Gramsci. It was a last chance, since Gramsci, having been moved from one prison to another for the last nine years, was known to be terminally ill. There had been an international petition to the Italian government for his release, which had met with the fate of most petitions.

By 1936 he had been transferred to Rome. He was no longer an official prisoner, but was under medical treatment at the Clinica Quisisana. The rules for visiting him were relaxed. On the other hand, there were not so very many people, and almost none of his old associates, who cared to visit him.

Domenico and his son got a lift in a tomato lorry as far as Benevento, and then took the slow train to the capital, which gave them a good chance to look at each other without interruptions. Salvatore saw a patient man whom he loved, and who, he knew, had had to ask Mother’s permission to make this expedition, a tired man, worn and shiny like an old suit. Domenico looked back uneasily at his bright, unaccountable boy.

When Domenico had been little his grandmother, who worked in a hotel kitchen, had edged him upstairs into the reception hall in the hopes of presenting him to a bishop (who had just arrived) for a blessing. They knelt together for a moment on the marble floor, risking everything. But the bishop, who was on a private visit and wished to indicate that he was off duty, turned his ring round on his finger so that the faithful could not kiss it. The grandmother got up and twitched the boy back to the service quarters, as though he had been in some way to blame.

All Domenico wanted now was for his son to come into the presence of a great man. At the same time he had a few questions to ask after these many years, and of course he could not come empty-handed. On his knees, with their sandwich, he had a parcel consisting of medicines, writing paper and a woollen pullover. It was fastened with insulating tape, and anyone could tell that it had not been wrapped up for him by a woman. When they got to Rome and steamed into the old peach-coloured station in Piazza Esdraia, he tried to make it look a little more presentable.

Salvatore was disappointed firstly when they crossed the city without seeing a single one of the new Alfa Romeo two-seaters whose image he had studied in a magazine, and secondly when the Clinica Quisisana had no bars.

‘It’s not a prison,’ his father told him.

‘Can he go away if he wants to?’

‘No, he can’t do that, he can’t go into Rome without a police guard.’

Then it’s a prison, the child thought.

There was a bell in the outer gate and when they rung it was answered by a young male nurse in uniform. Salvatore saw that he was not going to be petted, as he would have been in a convent, or a hospital run by Holy Sisters. This impressed him. He was impressed because he was ignored.

The male nurse asked whether they had an authorization from Dr Marino or Professor Frugoni, and Salvatore felt an unaccustomed admiration for his father when he pulled out of his inner pocket a note from the Professor confirming their appointment. The nurse went away, and came back to say that the patient Antonio Gramsci was not well enough to receive visits. He was now carrying a blue folder under his arm.

‘Who says so?’ asked Domenico.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. He stood there in the blank early spring sunshine, holding his son’s hand.

‘The management are anxious that he shouldn’t see members of the public without medical knowledge, who might be distressed by certain changes in him,’ said the young man, reading from the folder as though repeating a lesson. ‘The tuberculosis has affected the spine — do you understand me? — and the sight is poor.’

‘You can spare yourself anxiety. My permissions are all in order. In reply to a letter I sent him Comrade Gramsci himself asked us to come and see him.’