Giorgio Scerbanenco - A Private Venus

The little emperor waved a hand, unhappily, but in the darkness it almost didn’t seem like a living hand, it appeared as vague and phosphorescent as ectoplasm, and even more unhappy in that funereal darkness.

‘And now I’d like to make one last attempt,’ Auseri said, ‘put him together with someone who could be both a friend and a doctor, who’d use any method he wanted to, to make him stop drinking, who’d stop him physically every minute of the day, even in the toilet. I don’t care if it takes a year, or what means he uses, he could even beat him to death, I’d rather he was dead than an alcoholic.’

In prison you can actually become intelligent, and words mean a lot, the words you say and those you listen to. Outside, where you were free to say what you liked, words, and listening to words, were wasted, underestimated: people spoke without knowing what they were saying, and listened without understanding. But with Auseri it wasn’t like that. That was why Duca liked him, apart from the pain and bitterness concealed within the imperious exterior. He said, ‘You want me to be that person who’s both a friend and a doctor, and who gets him off the drink.’

‘Yes, the idea came to me yesterday. Superintendent Carrua is a friend of mine, he knows the whole story. I had to go to Police Headquarters yesterday and I dropped by his office. He talked to me about you, and asked me if I could find you a job with Montecatini. Of course I could find you a desk job with Montecatini if you wanted it, but then it struck me that someone like you could help me with my son.’

Of course, someone who’s only been out of prison for three days helps everyone, does everything, sings any song. He was certainly lucky to be a friend of Superintendent Carrua’s, he already had many things to choose from. Carrua had also found him a job selling pharmaceuticals, it was the ideal profession for a doctor who had been struck off, a suitcase with samples, a car with Ciba or Farmitalia painted on the doors, driving around the region, calling on doctors and pharmacists: it was almost better than being a doctor yourself. Or if he preferred something more unusual, he could accept Engineer Auseri’s offer and devote himself to his alcoholic son, cure him, remove the poison from him, be a kind of social worker. Or if he had lost the taste for socially redeeming work, he could make sure that Auseri got him that position with Montecatini: a desk somewhere in one of those neat offices, he could gratify his small-minded selfishness, the inertia of a man who no longer believes in anything. But in prison you also become sensitive, easily irritated. And because he was irritated now, he said calmly, ‘What made you think of me? Any other doctor could treat your son.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Auseri said. He had become irritated, too. ‘I need a person I can trust absolutely. From the way Superintendent Carrua spoke to me about you, I know I can trust you. I have an intuition about these things. Earlier, when I saw you sitting here, with those stones in your hand, I knew I could trust you.’

These weren’t empty words, he could hear it in the tone of Auseri’s voice, and his irritation vanished. He liked talking to a man, after having talked to so many fools: the director of the clinic in the beanie hat who told dirty jokes as he operated, the prosecuting lawyer who shook his head each time he uttered Duca’s name in his closing statement: ‘… I don’t understand how Dr. Duca Lamberti’-a shake of the head-‘can maintain such an absurd version of events. Dr. Duca Lamberti’-a shake of the head-‘is either more naive, or more cunning, than may appear. Dr. Duca Lamberti’-another shake of the head-how could anyone be such an idiot? Auseri, though, was a man, and he liked listening to him.

‘Any other doctor would take advantage of the situation to drum up publicity for himself,’ Auseri said. ‘Until now my son’s alcoholism has been a closely guarded secret, known only to a few discreet friends. With any other doctor, it would become an item of gossip in all the drawing rooms in Milan. But you won’t talk, and I know that if you accept the job you’ll get it done. Another doctor would get bored after a week and leave the boy stuffed full of pills and injections, and he’ll get drunk anyway. I don’t want pills and injections. I want a friend and an inflexible guardian for my son. It’s my final attempt. If it doesn’t work, I’ll let him go, I’ll cut him off and wash my hands of him.’

Now it was his turn. What time was it, and where were they? In a damp dark corner of the Brianza, on the side of a hill, with a villa ahead that seemed to be sliding towards them and inside the villa a young man clinging to a bottle of whisky, that was where they were. ‘I need to ask you a few questions,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ Auseri said.

‘You say your son has been drinking like this for a year. Did he drink before? Or did he just suddenly start drinking?’

‘No, he drank before as well, but not very often, he’d get drunk two or three times a month, no more than that. I don’t want to be ungenerous towards his dead mother, but it’s a tendency he gets from her.’

‘You also told me your son has no friends, no girlfriends. Does that mean he usually drinks alone?’

‘He’s drinking alone right now, in his room. But he drinks alone because he’s never with anybody. He doesn’t want to be.’

‘You also said that, despite appearances, your son is a normal young man. I’m prepared to believe that. But a normal young man doesn’t start drinking in that way without a reason. Something may have happened to him that drove him to drink more than he did before. He may have got involved with a woman, for example. In films, men drink to forget unhappy love affairs.’

Auseri’s hand rose again, floated in the dark air, and moved across his face. ‘That was what I asked him when I hit him with the poker. We have a fireplace in our apartment in Milan, an old-fashioned one with a poker. A poker on the face hurts, and as it happened quite recently you can still see the mark on his cheek. I asked him if there was a woman, if he was in debt because he’d had to pay for some underage girl to have an abortion, he said no, and I believe him, because he’s useless-even at doing something wrong.’

He must be a strange young man. ‘I’m sorry to insist, Engineer, I’m speaking now as a doctor,’ as an ex-doctor, of course, a doctor who’s been struck off, ‘you told me before that as far as women are concerned, your son doesn’t have girlfriends, he’s always turned to prostitutes. Given this habit, it’s possible he’s contracted what he thinks of as a terrible disease and in his desperation, considering himself human refuse, has started drinking. Syphilis is a less fearsome disease now than it was in the past, but it’s still a stigma, and a sensitive young man like your son could well find it traumatic.’

In the darkness, Auseri said, ‘That was the first thing I suspected, and four months ago I had him see a doctor. He was given all kinds of tests. He’s in perfect health, no infection at all, not even the most commonplace.’

So not even the fear of disease was driving young Auseri to drink. ‘But what does your son say? What excuse does he give?’

‘My son is humiliated and desperate. He says he doesn’t want to drink but can’t help himself. Whenever I hit him, he says to me, “You’re right, you’re right,” and starts crying.’

It was time for Duca to make up his mind. ‘Have you told your son about me?’

‘Certainly.’ Auseri used that word often, which coming from him meant that he was absolutely sure, he wasn’t wasting his breath. ‘I told him that a doctor I really trust might agree to help him, and he promised me that he’ll do whatever you want. Even if he hadn’t promised, I’d have made him do it all the same.’