The Angry Mountain (11 page)

The waiter brought my drink and I gulped at it thirstily. “Do you recognise that man?” I asked and thrust the photograph across the table towards her.

She stared at it, her forehead wrinkling in a frown. “Well?” I said impatiently. “Who is it?”

“I do not understand,” she said. “He is in Fascist uniform.”

“And he has a moustache, eh?”

She looked across at me. “Why do you show me this?”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“You know who it is. It is the man you meet last night.”

I knocked back the rest of my drink. “The name of the man in that photograph is Dottore Giovanni Sansevino.” I picked up the pasteboard and slipped it into my wallet.

“Sansevino?” She stared at me uncomprehendingly. “Who is Sansevino?”

I thrust my leg out. “He was responsible for that.” My voice sounded harsh and blurred in my ears. “My leg was
smashed up in an air crash. He could have saved it. God knows, he was a good enough surgeon. Instead he did three amputations on it, two below the knee and one above—all without anaesthetics.” Anger was welling up inside me like a tide. “He deliberately sawed my leg to pieces.” I could see my fingers whitening as they tightened on each other. I had them interlaced and I was squeezing them as though they were closed around Sansevino's throat. Then suddenly I had control of myself. “Where will I find Walter Shirer?” I asked her.

“Walter Shirer?” She hesitated. Then she said, “I do not know. I think he is not in Milano to-day.”

“He's staying at the Albergo Nazionale, isn't he?”

“Yes, but—” Her fingers were on my hand again. “You should learn to forget the past, signore. People who think too much of the past—” She shrugged her shoulders. “Every one has things inside them that are better forgotten.” Her eyes were looking beyond me, not seeing the details of the room.

“Why do you say that?” I asked her.

“Because you are all tense inside. Walter reminds you of the man in that photograph and you are bitter.” She sighed. “I also have the past that I must forget,” she said softly. “I have not always been dressed like this, you see. Life has not been easy for me. I was born in a slum off the Via Roma in Napoli. You know Napoli?” She smiled as I nodded. It was a wry, hard smile. “Then you know what that means, signore. Fortunately I can dance. I get to know a man at the San Carlo and he gets me into the Corpo di Ballo. After that it is much better. Now I am a Contessa, and I do not think too much of the past. I think I should go crazy if I think too much of what my girlhood is like.” She leaned towards me and her eyes were fixed on mine. They were large eyes—pale brown with flecks of green and the whites were not quite white, more the colour of old parchment. “Think of the future, signore. Do not live in the past.”
Her fingers squeezed my hand. “Now I must go.” Her voice was suddenly practical as she reached for her handbag. “This afternoon I go to Firenze.”

“How long will you be in Florence?” I was thinking it was a pity she was going. She was exciting, unusual.

“Not long. I stay two nights with some friends and then I motor to Napoli. I have a villa there. You know the Palazzo Donn'Anna on the Posillipo?”

I nodded. It was a huge medieval building, the base of its stone arches planted in the sea just north of Naples.

“My villa is just near the Palazzo. You will come and see me I hope when you are in Napoli. It is called the Villa Carlotta.”

“Yes, I should like to,” I said.

She had risen to her feet and as I escorted her to the entrance hall, she said, “Why do you not take a holiday? It would do you good to lie in the sun and relax yourself.” She glanced at me with a swift lift of her brows. “Milano is not good for you, I think. Also I should like to see you again. We have something in common, you and I—our pasts.” She smiled and gave me her hand.

I watched her as she went out and got into the car that was waiting for her. Then I turned and went back into the bar.
Milano is not good for you, I think.
What had she meant by that? And why had she come to see me? I realised then that she had not given me any really satisfactory reason for her visit. Had she come by arrangement with the man who had searched my room?

What did it matter anyway? The bug eating into my mind was Shirer. The idea that he was really Sansevino clung with a persistence that was frightening. I had to know the truth. I had to see him again and make certain. The thing was ridiculous, and yet … it was the sort of thing that could happen. And if it were Sansevino.… I felt anger boiling up in me again. I had another drink and phoned the Albergo Nazionale. Signor Shirer wasn't there. He wasn't expected
back till the evening. I rang Sismondi at his office. He told me Shirer had said something about going out of town.

I had lunch then and after lunch I called on various firms. I didn't get back to the hotel till nearly eight and by then the whole idea seemed so fantastic that I discarded it completely. I had a quick dinner and then went into the bar. But after a few drinks, I began to feel I must see him and make certain.

I got a taxi and went straight over to the Nazionale. It was a small and rather luxurious hotel almost opposite La Scala. There was an air of past grandeur about it with its tapestried walls and heavy, ornate furnishings. In this setting the lift, which was caged in with a white-lacquered tracery of wrought-iron, seemed out of place whilst at the same time adding to the expensive impression already given by the furnishings, the deep-piled carpet and knee-breeches uniform of the servants. I went over to the hall porter's desk and asked for Shirer.

“Your name, please, signore?”

“Is Mr. Shirer in?” I repeated.

The man looked up at the sharpness of my tone. “I do not know, signore. If you will please give me your name I will telephone his suite.”

I hesitated. Then some devil in me prompted me to say, “Just tell him a friend of Dr. Sansevino wishes to see him.”

The porter picked up the telephone. He gave my message. There was a pause and then he was talking fast, looking at me all the time, and I knew he was describing me to the person at the end of the line. At length he put down the receiver and called one of the pages. The boy took me up in the lift to the top floor, along a heavily carpeted corridor and rang the buzzer of a door marked B. It was opened by a manservant, or it might have been a secretary. It was difficult to tell. He was neatly dressed in a lounge suit and his small button eyes were quick and alert. “Please to come
in, signore.” He spoke English in a manner that suggested he hated the language.

He took my hat and coat and then showed me into a large, surprisingly modern room. It was decorated in white and gold, even the baby grand was white and gold, and it was lit by concealed lighting. The floor was carpeted in black. The effect was startling in contrast with the rest of the hotel. “So it's you, Farrell.” Shirer came forward from the fire, his hand held out in greeting. “Why in the world didn't you say who you were?” His voice was irritable, his face pale and his eyes searching my face.

I looked past him and saw Zina Valle in a big armchair by the electric fire, her legs curled up under her and a sleepy, rather satisfied smile on her face. She looked somehow content and relaxed, like a cat that has been at a bowl of cream. “A friend of Dr. Sansevino.” Shirer patted my arm. “That's rich coming from you.” He caught the direction of my gaze and said, You know the Contessa Valle, I think.”

“Yes,” I said. And then as Shirer took me towards the fire I said to her. “I thought you were in Florence.”

She smiled. “I could not go to-day. I shall go to-morrow instead.” Her voice was slurred and languorous.

“Queer running across you again like this,” Shirer said. “It takes me back to things I'd rather forget. I guess you'd rather forget them, too—eh? Sorry about last night. Afraid you caught me off balance. It was just that I wasn't expecting to find you there. Care for a drink?”

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“What will it be? Whisky and soda?”

“That'll do fine.”

He had turned to an elaborate cocktail cabinet. “I had no idea you were in Milan. I suppose you're here on business. Sismondi never entertains any one unless there is some business behind it.”

He was talking too fast—too fast and with a sibilance that
did not belong to Shirer. The room, too. Walter Shirer had been an ordinary, simple sort of person. Maybe he'd reacted against his environment. He'd been a coal miner. But even then the room didn't seem to fit and I was filled with uneasiness.

He handed me my drink. Then he raised his glass. “Up she goes!” I remembered Shirer in agony over those gas blisters raising a glass of filthy medicine to his lips and saying “Up she goes! “He'd always said that as he drank.

An awkward silence developed. Zina Valle had closed her eyes. She looked relaxed and almost plump. A clock on the mantelpiece ticked under a glass case. “How did you know I was at the Nazionale?” Shirer asked.

“Oh—somebody told me,” I replied.

“Who?”

“I'm not sure.” I couldn't tell him I'd overheard him give the address to the taxi-driver last night. “I think perhaps it was the Contessa, this morning when she came to see me.”

He turned quickly towards her. “Zina. Did you give Farrell my address this morning? Zina!” She opened her eyes. “Did you tell Farrell I was at the Nazionale?”

“I heard you the first time, Walter,” she replied sleepily. “I don't remember.”

He gave an impatient shrug of his shoulders and then turned back to me. “Well now, suppose you tell me why you're here?”

I hesitated. I wasn't really sure. I wasn't sure about anything, the room, the man himself—it was all so strange. “I'm sorry,” I murmured. “Perhaps I shouldn't have come. It was just that I didn't want to leave it as it stood between us last night. I quite realise how you must feel. I mean— well, at the time I thought you'd understood. I stood two of their damned operations, but the third—” My voice trailed away.

“Forget it,” he said.

“But last night.… I felt—”

He didn't let me finish. “I was surprised, that's all. Damn it, Farrell, I don't bear you any grudge for what happened. It wasn't your fault. A guy can stand so much and no more. I wouldn't have stood up to even two of that little swine's operations.” He said
that little swine's operations
so easily that I found myself relaxing.

He turned to Zina Valle. “Can you imagine what it's like to have your foot amputated without any anaesthetic? The foot was damaged when he crashed. But it wasn't badly damaged. It could have been saved. Instead they let it become infected with gangrene. Then they had an excuse for operating. Once it was gangrenous they had to operate in order to save his life. And then when they got him on the operating table they found they'd run out of anaesthetic. But it was made perfectly clear to him that if he cared to talk, to tell them who he'd dropped behind the fines and where, the anaesthetic might be found. But he kept his mouth shut and they strapped him down and gagged his mouth and sawed his foot off. And he had to lie there, fully conscious, watching them do it, feeling the bite of the saw teeth on his own bones.…”

I wanted to tell him to shut up, to talk of something else. But somehow I couldn't say anything. I just stood there, listening to him describing it with every nerve in my body shrieking out at the memory of it. And then I saw his dark eyes looking at me, watching me as he described how they'd done everything possible to hasten the healing of the wound. “And then, when it was nearly healed, they artificially infected the stump with gangrene again. Within a few days—”

But I wasn't listening now. I was staring at him with a sense of real shock. I'd never told any one that they'd infected the leg with gangrene each time to give them an excuse to operate. I'd told Reece and Shirer about the
operations, of course. But I'd never told them about the gangrene. It was bad enough knowing that they were there in that ward through my weakness without giving them any reason to think that the operations had been necessary. Of course, it was possible one of the orderlies, or even Sansevino himself, had told Shirer, but somehow I was sure they hadn't. If they had, Reece at any rate would have made some comment.

I stared across the room with a sense of growing horror. The man was watching me, telling the story of my operations for the sheer pleasure of seeing my reaction. I felt suddenly sick. I finished off my drink. “I think I must go now,” I said.

He stopped then. “You can't go yet. Let me give you another drink.” He came across the room and took my glass. As he bent to pick it up from the table where I had placed it, his neck was within reach of my hands. I had only to stretch forward.… But in the moment of thinking about it he had straightened up. Our eyes met. Was it my imagination or was there a glint of mockery there? “I'm sorry. I didn't realise how the memory of pain would affect you.” He turned to the cocktail cabinet and I wiped the sweat from my face. I saw Zina Valle glance from me to the man she thought was Walter Shirer. Her eyes were suddenly sharp and interested. Had she guessed the truth?

“Zina. Another drink?”

“Please. I will have a whisky this time, Walter.”

“Do you think that wise?”

“Perhaps not. We are not always wise.”

“I really think I should be going,” I muttered. I was feeling dazed, uncertain of being able to control myself. It was Walter Shirer I'd seen dressed up in Fascist uniform sitting dead at that desk. Anger rose up and choked me. The words
il dottore
were on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to say them, to see him swing round under the shock of discovery and then to close with him and choke the life out of him. But I
stopped myself in time. I'd never get away with it. I'd never convince the authorities. And anyway he'd be armed. And then suddenly I knew that if he realised that I was aware of his true identity I'd never get out of the room alive. The ghastly game had got to be played out to the end now. That, and that alone, was clear in my mind. He was coming over to me now with the drink in his hand, “Here you are, Farrell. Now just you sit down and relax.”