Читать книгу A House in Naples - Peter Rabe - Страница 6

BECAUSE HIS SIDE FELT SORE he got out of bed with a slow roll. When he stood it wasn’t so bad. Francesca had washed his clothes and he put them on, leaving the belt loose. First he went and shaved, then he walked through the low door into the kitchen. Joe Lenken was there, at the table like before, and if there had been any spots on the white pine top Francesca had scrubbed them clean. She was standing next to Joe’s chair and his arm was around her hip. Joe turned his head.

“You been out all day,” said Joe.

Charley could tell by the sun. The light outside wasn’t morning any more. It shone red through the leaves outside the door and made the kitchen look darker.

“Farmer Joe and his sturdy woman enjoying the vesper hour,” said Charley. He walked to the other end of the table and sat down. “I see real bliss there,” he said. “After an active day in the hot sun, Farmer Joe having some quiet frolic with his woman at the kitchen table.”

Joe didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what vesper hour meant and didn’t give a damn. His arm stayed around the girl who leaned against him like a farm animal.

“What happened to the last one?” said Charley. “Wouldn’t hold still long enough?” The curve of his mouth was like a smile.

“She was getting too old,” said Joe.

“That figures. You had her a whole month.”

Charley pulled the aspirin out of his pocket and took two pills. He put them under his tongue and watched Joe.

“Stop pawing a minute. We got business.”

“Make you nervous?”

“Ya. She might wake up and then what?”

Joe laughed and kept his arm there. He had a laugh like a rock jumping down a hillside, only it never got any faster and then it stopped.

“I know all about it. You lost the whole truckload.”

“Who told you?”

“Vittore was here. He said they ambushed the truck like you wanted to give it to them.”

“Vittore didn’t say that. He wasn’t around long enough to tell.”

“I say it.”

Lenken had his hand on the girl’s hip and Charley moved the pills inside his mouth. Then Charley said, “You made the arrangements, clinker head. They got a thousand gallons of gasoline. There were enough carabinièri in those woods to stop a convoy.”

“Maybe you’re saying I sent ’em?”

“No, but you might just as well. You didn’t check out that greedy bastard enough, that creep who sold us the stuff.”

“He delivered. You lost it.”

“Sure. He highjacked the gas in Trieste where they watch every ship that docks like it had bombs on it. He left a trail—”

“He never goofed before.”

“That was small time. They don’t watch so hard when Swiss watches get lost, or some nylon.”

“Have it your way, Chuck. The creep goofed, I goofed, but not you. You just lose the stuff and get yourself shot.”

“Lenken, stop pawing that girl a minute.”

“Beat it, Chuck, willya? And next time you handle the works. You’re the brains; you handle it.”

Charley had the pill box in his hand and started to rattle it back and forth.

“Maybe there won’t be a next time.”

“Sure,” said Lenken.

“Send out the girl.”

“Ten years in the black market and never a hitch. Maybe a loss here and there, so what. But then Chuck boy gets shot in the skin, there’s blood, and right away there’s a catastrophe.” Lenken shifted his weight. “You’re scared, Chuck.”

“You’re right.”

Charley paused because he saw that Joe was listening now. Joe closed his mouth, then opened it. The way he let it hang gave him a stupid look except that Charley knew better. Joe wasn’t stupid and Joe wasn’t exactly slow. He’d heard about that ambush even before Charley walked into the kitchen. He didn’t rant, didn’t complain about the loss, didn’t apologize because the mess was mostly his fault. He didn’t even hide the way he felt, that maybe one more fluke like that and Charley might not be around to tell about it.

Joe must be thinking it was time to let their combine go to pieces. He didn’t need Charley any more. Ten years ago he did. He needed Charley because Charley had the brains and Joe had just the cunning. He needed Charley because all that Joe was good at were details. They’d gotten in the racket while the Occupation was still on, when things were easy. They made a team and stayed in the black market ever since. They didn’t get into each other’s way because they never tried too hard to make a friendship out of it. They didn’t have to. What kept them close was quite something else.

“So grin a little harder,” said Joe. “Maybe the scare will go away.”

“Send out the girl.”

“Make you nervous?”

“Send her out, Corporal.”

Joe stopped with his hand. He gave the girl a push, told her to beat it. Then he put both arms on the table and talked low.

“Chuck. I don’t want you to say that.”

Charley smiled and started to rattle his pills again. “Now that you’re listening—”

“Don’t say that again, Chuck.”

“Joe,” said Charley, “it’s better I say it than somebody else.”

Joe got up and hitched his pants. The girl was still in the kitchen, at the far end. She was standing there with nothing to do. Joe yelled at her in Italian and watched her run out the door. Then he came around the table.

“Listen here,” he said, and looked down at Charley. “What’s eating you?”

“Trouble,” said Charley.

Joe sucked his teeth and looked out the door where the red sun was almost gone. Then he looked back at Charley, only nothing showed. The bastard looked like he was smiling. He’d smile if he were killing his grandmother, thought Joe. That smile used to confuse him, until he found out that you couldn’t go by Charley’s face. You could always go by what Charley said, though. When Charley said trouble it was trouble, and when he said fine things were fine.

“Let’s go to the osteria,” said Charley and when he walked out the door Joe just followed.

They went down the street, crossed the square, and went uphill a little. Couples were making the circle around the square and old people sat in the small gardens. Somebody greeted them now and then. Charley waved back, but Joe didn’t answer.

They came to the osteria, and since they owned the place they went to the back, down the stairs, and into the basement room which had a fancy cylinder lock on the door. Except for the cylinder lock it wasn’t much of a room, and the trap door in the floor didn’t show. That’s where they kept the high-priced stuff, like German precision tools or the small boxes with hard-to-get medicines.

“Listen to that racket,” said Charley and looked up at the ceiling. “Beats me how they get happy just on that coffee and vino.”

Joe sat down and waited to hear about the trouble.

“Hear that music,” said Charley. “That’s old Silvestro making music. Every time it sounds like the espresso machine blowing its top, that’ll be Silvestro singing a shepherd song.”

“Let’s hear it, Chuck.”

“You will,” and Charley sat down. He put his feet on the safe by the wall, a rusty and beat-up thing, but the mechanism inside was new. “That ambush was worse than just losing the merchandise. It—”

“Ya, I know. They fired guns and it scared you.”

“Worse, Lenken. They got a good look at me. They caught me and in the headlights they got a good look at me.”

That’s when Joe sat back and didn’t seem interested any more: “So maybe you’ll get a couple of years,” he said. “Good riddance.”

For the first time Charley raised his voice. It was sharp and he talked fast.

“Not a couple of years, you dumb bastard. The rope! Or worse, you bastard. Maybe life!”

Joe knew what Charley meant but it didn’t faze him.

“You got a fever, Chuck?”

“I got a fever. I got a fever to stay the way I am, stay left alone, stay so your and my uncle don’t know about it.” And then his voice got so quiet Joe could just hear it. “Or maybe you don’t remember, Corporal. You and me are deserters.”

They didn’t say anything for a while because everything was clear. If they got caught for jaywalking and the police had nothing better to do for the moment and started to look at papers, at dates and names on their papers, then pretty soon the whole rotten underpinnings would start to shake. Joe Lenkva, born Iowa, U.S.A., a farm boy with no skill except running potato tillers, good stuff for the infantry, sturdy stuff all the way up through Africa, making corporal in the motor corps because good stuff Lenkva was just the right type of noncom material. They never suspected he had a brain of his own. He always kept his mouth hanging open, which made him look stupid. That’s how cunning he was. He didn’t care how stupid he looked.

So when Lenkva hit Anzio he didn’t run because he was scared. He ran because he figured it was best that way all around. And he made it. He made it from Corporal Lenkva to Joe Lenken, Italy, tavern owner and lover of Fannys.

Or if they caught Charley driving a truck with the wrong kind of merchandise in the back and they should look at his papers a little too long, they would find he’d been Charley all along, but the first time he changed his last name was when he ran away from home. Home wasn’t much good, with too many brothers and sisters and not enough mother and father. So he picked fruit for a while and then the season was over. He washed dishes in Frisco, got a good look at the bums on Mission Street, but that was too much like home so he ran again. He learned being a carpenter where the developments mushroomed in the valley next to Los Angeles and that was all right until they got organized there. He had saved his dough so he ran again. When he walked into the little town at the foot of the Rockies he had another name, just from habit. There wasn’t any building going on there so he started to pump gas for Old Benton, who had the only station for miles around. Just when Charley bought a piece of Old Benton’s garage the draft caught up with him and being a fast liar and the only available male in town, Charley made private in nothing flat. He stayed that way until Anzio and when it came to the point where the platoon was gone, all dead, Charley was still alive. That had been luck.

From there on it wasn’t luck but determination, or at least luck used to his best advantage. Charley ran again. He ran good that time—so good he figured he’d never run again, not change his name again except this one time when he went underground—and watched the advantages. Victory made everybody generous, which was an advantage, and when Charley showed up again he was an American immigrant with an easy way about business, smiling most of the time because that’s how his face was built. If he was worried or if he had eyes in the back of his head, it didn’t show. Charley didn’t drink in the afternoon and he didn’t have a nervous smoking habit. All he did was eat aspirin, and few people knew about that.