Читать книгу A House in Naples - Peter Rabe - Страница 8

DEL BROCGO WAS AN ARTIST. It meant he knew he was good, he kept no regular hours, and his prices were over the top. That was because his customers knew he was good. But Del Brocco lived in a part of Rome where the gutter was in the middle of the street and if you stood on a house balcony on either side you could drop things straight down and make the gutter.

Charley parked on a market square and walked the rest of the way. It was dark. There were no lights, no house numbers, but Del Brocco’s house stood out. It had a seventeenth-century doorway which in itself meant little enough in that part of town. But his house was built of the biggest stones, going back to the time when they looted the Colosseum to build their dark little houses behind the walls of Rome.

When Charley tapped on the door nobody answered. After a while a girl opened the window across the street and leaned out. Even if Charley hadn’t understood her Italian he would have known what she meant. He told her something so she closed the window and then he tapped again. He tapped three, two, one, three, which he should have remembered sooner and when the door opened, Del Brocco’s sons were there. The short one was six feet and the tall one a lot more.

“Del Brocco. I’m Charley.”

“He is not here.”

“For me he is. Let me in.”

“He is not here, signore.”

“Don’t signore me. Tell Del Brocco—” They grabbed his arms, heaved at the same time, and Charley was where the gutter was.

If the fall hadn’t made his side hurt like hell he might have done it differently, but he picked himself up slowly and walked to the grilled window in the front of the house. He hung his jacket on the grillework, making it drape so it looked like something, and then he went back to the gutter. He brought back a stick and punched out all of Del Brocco’s little leaded windows.

Six foot and six foot plus came out of the door like heroes taking a town singlehanded, and just about when they started to tangle with Charley’s coat he walked through the door, banged it shut, and threw the bolt. Then he looked for Del Brocco.

Like the two boys had said, the house was empty. There were Del Brocco’s antiques, his tapestries and expensive furniture, and his stamp collection was open on his desk. So Charley went back to the front room where the broken window was. He climbed on a carved chest, opened one side of the old window, and leaned against the grillework. “Hey,” he said.

They ran up under the window and started to curse. After a while they stopped.

“Where’s Del Brocco?” said Charley.

“He is gone, he left before you came, days ago, even a week, you—”

“When’s he coming back?”

One of them kept cursing and the other one complained about the window. “The fifteenth-century window,” he moaned, “the irreplaceable—”

“Shut up a minute.”

When they did he leaned on the sill the way the girl had done it and tried again.

“About the window, boys, don’t worry about it. Just think what might happen to the stuff inside here and nobody stopping me.”

They held still and listened.

“When’s he coming back?”

“One month and three days, signore.”

“Ah yes. Those three days. And where is he?”

“In prison, signore.”

That took care of Del Brocco. And Charley. He almost felt like breaking something else but he let it go.

“And who takes care of his customers in the meantime?”

“Signore, no one can take care of—”

“I know. But who else is there?”

“There is Alivar.”

“Where?”

“The bookstore on the Via Claudia.”

“And now if you’ll hand me my jacket—shake it out a little. That’s it—”

They handed it through the grillework and Charley put it on.

“When I come out, boys, I’ll tell you about the window. Nothing to worry about. I’ll explain,” he said and got off the chest and went to the door. When he had it open they were waiting for him.

“Del Brocco told me,” he said, “not to worry about the window. It’s false, you know. The real one is up in the attic. Back where he keeps the dismantled altar.”

They went past him to get to the attic, and Charley walked out. He didn’t know about the window, though he had seen the altar up in the attic. He thought it might be nice if there were another window.

This time the street was wider, letting the moon shine down to the cobblestones. Alivar’s little shop was one in a row. Alivar was asleep. After ringing the bell for a while Charley said polizia through the door and that got the old man up.

He wasn’t so old, he only looked wrinkled with severe lines running down the side of his nose and cold eyes that never changed even when Charley told him about Del Brocco.

“You may speak English,” said Alivar. “I myself am not an Italian.”

“So you know how it is,” said Charley.

When Alivar nodded, Charley wondered what he had understood. They went the length of the stalls, through a back room with more books and a canopied bed, and up to the second floor. It was a bare attic, without windows, and even though it was three in the morning the heat was thick under the roof. Alivar did not sweat.

“You need a name?”

“The works. Birth certificate, naturalization papers, driver’s license, registration—money’s no object.”

“It is with me,” said Alivar.

“With me it’s only time.”

“About one month,” said Alivar.

“Too long. How about just a passport? An American passport.”

Alivar laughed as if he were listening to a child. “Unobtainable,” he said.

“Del Brocco could get me one.”

“Yes. He is also in jail.”

They argued a little longer, but it wasn’t any good. Alivar went down to his canopied bed and for 20,000 lire Charley stayed in the attic and slept past daylight. Then the heat drove him out.

Charley started to make the rounds. With Del Brocco and Alivar he had run out of the high-class artisans. What came next were the defunct engravers, and when he ran out of those he saw the thieves who stole papers. In ten years’ time he had heard of most of them, and spending this day was almost like another ten years. By noon he was limping with the pain in his side, but when he ran out of aspirin by three in the afternoon he still kept going. He was running for the last time, he had to have his name—one that stuck—even if it meant it would go only on his tombstone.

None of them were any good; cheap forgeries dolled up to be good enough for one quick look or stolen papers with a tracer on them since the minute they were lifted. It seemed to get worse by evening—everything, the heat, the rain, and the slipshod ware he was looking at. For once in his life he needed the real thing and while he kept running he kept telling himself it was going to be over soon and then he’d never run again. If he made it in time.