Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

The concierge behind the desk was busily pasting Italian airmail stamps to the pile of postcards before him. He did not look up when David approached. Wearing the silver-and-blue uniform of the hotel, his eyes distantly bored behind glasses whose rims were a shocking pearl-gray, he voraciously lapped stamps like a jungle cat licking his chops in the entrance doorway to a slaughterhouse.

“May I have my key, please?” David said.

The concierge did not look up from the postcards. The pink tongue darted out, another stamp gathered moistness.

“Your room number, sir?”

“Four-twelve.”

“Ah, yes, sir. Mr. Regan, sir?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s a message for you, sir.”

He flashed a mercurial and rare smile, and then turned his back to David, his extended forefinger running down the cubbyholes behind the desk. Then he whirled, dropped key and small white envelope on the desk before him, and reached for another stamp, his tongue darting out simultaneously.

“Thank you,” David said.

He looked at the envelope as he walked away from the desk. A meticulously small hand had lettered the name David Regan on the face of the envelope. He turned it over and looked at the flap.

The name Giovanni Fabrizzi sat in the center of the white triangle, and beneath it the man’s business address on the Corso. David pressed the button for the elevator, tore open the flap of the envelope, and pulled out a square of white note paper, which bore the same letterhead and the same studied careful handwriting:

MY DEAR MR. REGAN:

My secretary tells me that you have been calling repeatedly since your arrival in Rome several days ago. I was, as you know, away for a while with my family and have only just returned to my office and my various duties. If it is convenient to you, I would be happy to see you this afternoon at four o’clock.

My very kindest regards,

The elevator doors opened. David stepped into the car. “Four, please,” he said.

The elevator boy nodded and set the car in motion. David leaned back against the mirrored wall. A tiny fan tried to stir the hot air in the car. Four o’clock, he thought. Four o’clock and Giovanni Fabrizzi would be happy to see him.

I wish I had a drink, he thought.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. He walked down the corridor to his room, unlocked the door quickly and walked directly to the small ivory panel resting on the night table near his bed. The panel was attached to an electric cord, which ran to some mysterious wall connection somewhere under the bed. There were three rectangular buttons on the face of the panel, one beneath another. Each of the buttons was illustrated with a line drawing.

The top button pictured a man in an apron carrying a pair of shoes. He seemed in great haste. The middle button was a frontal presentation of a woman holding a feather duster. She seemed in no hurry whatever, but the intelligent look on her face indicated she was waiting at the ready to rush wherever beckoned. The last button showed a man in tails carrying a tray. He too seemed in a desperate hurry to get somewhere, undoubtedly to the place where he would collect his tip.

Now which of you little people has the keys to the wine cellar? David wondered. The room waiter, of course, and he stabbed at the third button, pulled off his coat and shoes, loosened his tie, and threw himself down on the bed.

In a few moments, a knock sounded on his door.

“ Avanci, avanti ,” David floundered. “Come in, come in.” He turned to face the door, thinking how comical it would be if a man the size of the little man on the button walked into the room, a half-inch-high human carrying a minuscule tray. The illusion was shattered instantly by the entrance of a tall gangling man wearing a look of surprise on his sharp features.

“Sir?” he asked.

“A Scotch-and-soda, please,” David said.

“Yes, sir,” the waiter answered, and departed hastily, the same look of surprise on his face, as if he were a baron who had only accidentally stumbled into this hotel where they’d dressed him as a waiter before he could explain or protest.

The drink arrived not five minutes later. David signed the check and tipped the waiter, and remembered only after he was gone that one didn’t tip these buzzards each time they performed a service; one waited until check-out time to drop the brimming sackful of largess. Sighing, he wondered if he would ever grow accustomed to the European way of doing things.

And again he wondered what he was doing here.

Why’d you come to Rome? he asked himself. Why in hell did you come to Rome?

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked through the open shutters to the city beyond. The heat had been insufferable for the past few days, building to an intensity that was felling people in the streets, hanging over the city now in a thick, electrically charged haze, which promised rain. There was blackness in the distant sky. He hoped it would rain soon.

Why did you come to Rome? he asked himself again.

He sipped at his drink.

I came because I don’t like the idea of being cheated out of half my mother’s estate, that’s why I’m here, admit it, face the knowledge, and for God’s sake stop inventing fairy tales!

I’m here because I loved her, he thought.

I’m here because she came back from this place once. She came back and she was no longer the person who had left. And when she returned, there was nothing there any more, nothing but the accidental bondage of birth, the love was gone. And I’m here because I want to know it was she who changed and not me, not her son, it was she who came back without love, and not me who was suddenly unworthy of whatever love she had to give.

Fabrizzi knows, he thought.

He had looked up the man’s name the moment he arrived in Rome, surprised to discover he was a lawyer, dismayed by the knowledge because he had the sudden feeling he’d be facing the Italian counterpart of Elliot Tulley, close-mouthed, legal, infuriating. His premonitions mounted as he made call after call to Fabrizzi’s office, certain he was being ducked, constantly being told by a secretary who barely spoke English that Fabrizzi was away but that she would deliver Mr. Regan’s message the moment he returned. And now the note, and the neat careful hand, another lawyer, a Roman Elliot Tulley.

I should go home, he thought, what the hell am I doing here? Who cares? Who cares where love goes, who cares where it vanishes?

He heard the first rumble of thunder in the sky to the north of the city, saw the lightning flash. It would rain soon, and heavily. He looked at his watch. It was only eleven. There were five hours ahead of him before his meeting with Fabrizzi, there was a whole lifetime ahead of him. He did not relish the idea of sitting alone in his room, waiting out the time. There were gifts he should buy. Something for Curt and Martha. And something for Kate.

Something very special for Kate.

He finished his drink and began dressing. By the time he left the hotel, it was pouring.

He did not recognize the city at all.

Walking in the rain, picking out his gifts and having them sent back to the hotel, he was amazed at how short memory could be, astounded by this timeless Rome surrounding him, a Rome that should have remained sharply etched in his memory, unchanging, and yet a city he barely recognized. He walked through the streets, trying to find the courtyard with the trompe l’oeil arch and statue, locating the Bernini fountain, but confused completely by the identical doors in the street beyond. The ancient cobblestones collected puddles of water, which he tried unsuccessfully to avoid. He was wearing a light raincoat, and he ducked from doorway to doorway looking for a time he had known, but the rain had washed the city clean of memory.