A HOLIDAY AT THE HIPPO CLUB [Old][in memoriam David Winzar, Oxford Poet & Used Bookseller Extraordinaire]

When I say "our London club," you no doubt form

an image of a neo-classical pile of grey limestone,

of silent womanless rooms wood panelled and

insulated by thick red persian rugs, of leather

wingback chairs amongst which men in dark lounge

suits discreetly pad about. But you are wrong.

Our club did not forbid women. It simply failed

to attract them. Our club had no noble epithet

above the door, no Hellenic name, no fashionable

address, no Roman statues on pedestals, no

newspapers on long brasstrimmed polished wooden

wands...not even a proper loo.

Our Club Hippo was and is a private drinking club

founded to provide painters, poets, bookworms from

the British Library or Museum Street haunts, Irish

playwrights on the dole, ex-RAF officers, small

publishers and the like with a discreet betting

parlor and liquid sustenance during the Holy Hour,

between half-two and seven p.m. when legitimate pub

life wound down to a standstill after the wives of

uxorious pubkeepers had hoovered one out the side

door. Only in Dublin was one lucky enough to be

locked inside with the blinds drawn for the

duration, those essential hours when many a book,

play, or scheme blossomed and wilted, when the

saying of it was as good as the doing of it.

Our Club Hippo is reached by climbing two flights

of dark steep stairs in a building that leaned into

its neighbor when rare Ben Jonson scribbled. Its

unprepossessing interior, little more than a long

bare narrow barn of a room, is stained yellow and

brown from tobacco smoke and paved with greenish

cracked lino and the invisible sherds of countless

jokes and tales that have ricocheted off deaf ears.

Our club was the perfect place for any momentary

midafternoon stirrings of discontent.

It was no doubt the Italian wine, a pino grigio,

that set me off that particular afternoon when I

began brooding on how Italy, the idea of being in

Italy, exercises some magical power upon the

northern soul: Montaigne, Goethe, Byron, Ibsen, the

Brownings, D.H. and Frieda, Pound...even my friend

Ryle. Whatever seeds of greatness or madness the

northern soul possesses lie partially dormant

until the peculiar intensities of heat and light

in Italy force them into bloom.

Hunter is my name...and somewhat my inclination.

Hugh Llewellyn Hunter: H Ll H, as you see here

blindstamped on my old pigskin tobacco pouch.

Abercrombie & Fitch, New York. But that's another

story. I quite like it still, though tis more than

a bit worn. As a man of means, so to say, being

accustomed neither to compare myself to, nor be

pressurized by, the inconveniences of others, I

find, with a minimum of introspection, that Life

has offered a fair range of Experiences. Enough to

keep one content with the moment.

For the most part. I read much of the night and

go south in winter, so to say. I mean that Life

has been reasonably good to me as I expect nothing

much of it. Professionally, I hunt for rarities in

the antiquarian book world--am known, in common

parlance, as a bookrunner.

Given the choice, however, I prefer always to

walk rather than run. Or to sit, neither in

pursuit of, nor pursued by, necessities of love and

livelihood.

I began to discover in this particular

conversation with my old acquaintance Ryle a tone

of impatience with my lot, a sense of lack. It was

he who called it to my attention. A passing remark

about the new "distinguished" greying of my hair.

We were in that fish restaurant in Lisle Street, by

Leicester Square. Manzi's. You know it? Opposite

our club. Here I always suffered a fleeting

juxtaposition of contradictory mental images: pairs

of warm grey lisle stockings dancing madly amongst

gold coins of sunlight on the broken stone

fragments of some ancient Mediterranean ruin;

satyrs playing panpipes to huge fleshy mozarelle

reclining by a blue sea; Botticelli's Venus rising

above a redcheckered tablecloth clasping cruets of

vinegar and extravirgin olive oil in either dimpled

hand, coy putti on the plastered ceiling dispensing

ground pepper from phallic mills.... All were

evoked by the restaurant's crude gay murals of

generic seaside scenes of the sunny south festooned

with gaudy red plastic lobsters' claws clasping

lank green nets, the castoff stockings of sea

giantesses.

Yes, as I fingered a sprig of artificial seaweed

that graced our table, I was experiencing a

definite twinge of dissatisfaction with the

substance of the moment, a mood to which I was

unaccustomed. I mean, a sort of yearning had set

in. The rain? The chill? The greying of my hair?

I was longing for an alternate life, a new and

dynamic simplicity, to become anonymous among

foreignspeaking locals, somewhere, where anything

might happen. Something lay dormant and might

sleep on forever if I were to remain in England

where the air is dimmer, the sky smaller, were I

never to allow myself to be forced out of habitual

habits.

I was talking with Ryle over our bluefish about

the difficulty of translating one's normal vision--

how Life is--into how it ought ideally to be. Or

might be. And what would happen if we were to

transport ourselves away from Leicester Square

to...to wherever. Some mountain lake or sunny

rocky Italian shore where the sea grinds down the

land and polishes the ragged cliffs where Odysseus

walked, far away from damp grey mediocrity

to...quale cosa: una terra straniera, in ochre tones.

There each moment would be an overwhelming

intensity of Being, all-sufficient to all the

senses, every moment. Living! Hah! That would be

a horse of a different colour I can tell you!

As we prepared to walk out the side door into the

damp narrow Ryle chided me for my moodiness. A

harmless sympton of approaching middle age, he

opined. It would pass. Ryle had always been a

jolly fellow whose sole and perpetual cure-all was

a glass of John Jameson & Son, neat. So, at his

suggestion, we repaired, as the saying goes, to our

private club, up the wooden hill and into the

Hippo.

"Tell us a story, then," I suggest as we choose

our Stammtisch near the wall at the far end of the

room. The club is empty but for Paddy and Dai who

soon give us the customary silent nod on their way

out. And of course Fat Albert is minding the bar.

We settled in. Ryle had a habit that amounts to

a ritual of wetting his little finger, the one with

the gold signet ring, and rubbing it round the rim

of his glass to create a ringing overtone. This

always gave him great pleasure. He did it now and

a soft secret smile turned up the corners of his

ginger mustache. "Aye, the story," he says. And

falls silent. I want to go on talking of Italy.

I try to get him talking. "I have heard it said,

'All wants are created in the mind and all shall be

satisfied in the mind'. Some cracked Romantic

notion adopted by self-improvement cultists,

doubtless. Still there is something in that. Have

to imagine before doing. What's the lure of travel?

Expectation of the possibility of an imagined

impossibility? And one does, after all, want to

feel pure hot sun on one's face. After this eternal

London rain."

"Aye, su-ure an' it's only mistin', acushla,"

Ryle mocks.

"Well, it's bloody well peeing with rain, boy-o,"

say I.

Some part of my soul, for want of a more

scientific term, was yearning to fulfill itself and

neither London nor Bath nor Brighton nor Pontypool,

my usual haunts, would satisfy. Is it possible

that places possess souls of their own which have

the power to seduce our buried selves? I was to

discover that such had been the case with Ryle.

We adjust our chairs for a fuller view of the

presently bleak prospect of the long empty room and

wait for the afternoon light to fall slantwise

through the mullions of the two grimy front

windows. The weak sun paints a feeble rainbow in

the air between us and the tiled roof of the fish

restaurant. Ryle is lost in reverie. I was never

a brilliant conversationalist, and now more than

ever itched for some way of talking him out of this

funk. Perhaps my repeated references to Italy had

reminded him of the War. I, not yet fully lulled by

the uisce baugh, Ryle's very "water of life," build

myself a house of cards with beer mats: the house

of Morrel's, the house of Young's, the house

of...Courage. Cocorico-o-o! Take Courage. In a

straight glass, please. I can't bear this.

"What's on your mind, Ryle?" I, eyeballing his

empty glass, automatically rise for another round.

Although a man of about my own age, Ryle always

had this aire of perpetual youth. His body seemed

lithe and trim, perhaps a bit tense.

Perhaps it was his regulation tan twill trousers,

crested blazer, striped school tie, and blue

windbreaker, his short-cut reddish hair, the trim

ginger mustache (or did he dye it?), the guileless

eyes of pure glassy blue, his ready wit and self-

satisfaction in his own physical agility...those

cycling trips in France, his little sloop moored

off the Isle of Wight that could weather a Channel

storm. (Wonder why did he never ask me down

there...might pick up an interesting volume or

two.)

Ryle had long ago struck up some sort of bargain

with Life, a sporting bargain. He'd flown for the

RAF--retired early enough to pursue a second career

as a gentleman truck farmer, then threw that over

to fly a bomber in the Middle East. Don't recall

which side paid him, though. Now he spent most

weekends in Town, leaving his grown daughter and

her hubby in charge of the hothouse tomatoes and

Brussels sprouts down in Hampshire. Ryle loved

nature. Also women. And any non-team competitive

sport on land, water, or in the air. Also, drink

and talk. Yes, Ryle was a good sort and faced up

to anything if there was sport in it. That's why

his moodiness struck a strange note that afternoon.

I was inclined to think it was somehow my fault,

with all my vague talk of yearning for Italy. Why

we were friends I never quite knew. Except that I

tend to be a good listener. And an admirer of the

imagination and energy of others. Certain other

men. Ryle and I, we both loved a good story.

I've not had many adventures of my own, to tell

you the truth. Only for the quiet pastime I

indulge in of watching strangers pass, of inventing

their secret life histories, their motives, their

private little missions or assignations which lead

them temporarily within my view. Only for these,

as ephemeral as raindrops on a windowpane--aside

from my usual encounters with eccentric types in

the book trade--was I able to reciprocate Ryle once

in a while with a Story.

We shared a penchant, too, for poetry. You know,

the sort collected in Other Men's Flowers, or short

terse verse such as Tennyson's "The Eagle."

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world he stands.

Ryle was inclined, on an equally visual but less

elevated plane, to make ad hoc limericks about the

people I would comment upon as they passed or sat

at nearby tables. I could see a possibility now,

on this particularly wet afternoon.

A youngish woman with a halo of fluffy red hair,

accompanied by an older dark man, appear through

the door of our club and sit down tentatively at

the first table by the bar. Fat Albert, as usual,

is leaning on the counter reading a smutty novel.

I am about to pass some comment on the newcomers

when Ryle flings back his head, gives his trim red

mustache an imaginary twirl, and bursts out with:

There was an old man of Spoleto

Who spent all his days reading Plato.

He hadn't a name,

Which was rather a shame,

But his faithful dog, he was called Phaedo! Ha!

"Ah, no. That's hardly worthy of you," I

protest. But am secretly grateful for at least some

sound from Ryle, and I swing my chair round for a

better view of the two strangers. She sits with

her back to us. He sits opposite, peering at us

through the smoke and gloom of the long room.

"It's an eye-rime," Ryle replies. "It would work

better on paper. Your round, mate."

As I take the dozen or so strides across to the

bar, the young woman's voice catches my attention.

A foreign accent. Italian? Yes. Fat Albert has

the two Jamesons poured out by the time I get there

and, as he shoves them over, gives me a nod and a

wink as if to say, Catch these two sitting there--an odd

couple, eh? I see in the mirror, behind the fat white

shoulder and striped braces that Albert always

affected, that the dark man has seen "the look" and

half stood up, nearly knocking over their tiny

table. A dark man with a dark look. Neither a

Brit nor a Gailegore. No. Definitely not a Hippo-

Crit, as Ryle and I were wont to dub members of our

little inner circle of hypocritical literary

critics.

Speaking of members, I forgot to mention a

certain clubby characteristic we all shared, a

greeting consisting of a dip of the head to the

right, such as one finds in Ireland with locals

preparing to pass in friendly silence on a country

road.

And so I test him. Rather than turning my back

upon the newcomers, I hold the man's gaze in the

lookingglass, then turn round to meet his eye and

give the habitual headsignal.

He does not respond in kind, of course, but

pulls his intense black eyes away and asks

"Signore" Albert for two glasses of Cynar.

I feel, rather than see, a sort of incongruity in

this dark wiry man; a rough weather-reddened face

topped by an immaculate haircut, short at back and

sides and well oiled. He wears an inexpensive new

trenchcoat, at the neck a black silk scarf and

dazzling white starched shirt collar. The skin

about his ears is paler where the thick black hair

has been recently scissored. These touches of

narcissistic elegance touch me, hinting at a

peculiar sensuality, the barely civilized combined

with all that rough natural physicality, the brutal

potential in a brooding nature. It strikes me,

then, that anything might be possible with such a

man. Anything unpleasant or emotional, that is.

Yet he is extremely gentle with the girl.

His large black eyes engage me again, as I stand

there, and hold me for a moment too long...a

challenge. It is her voice that breaks in...that

melts, rather, the tension.

"We are here to look for a certain man, signore, a

Mister Gilberto Riley once of the Royal British Air

Force. He was a friend of my father, here, and we

understand that he is a member of this club.

Forgive us, we intrude. Yet for such a day the

business here is so slow, and perhaps you will

allow us to stay to make our inquiries?"

Oh, so lovely, that voice, that white skin

wreathed in red gold. Those azure eyes. "I should

think you might arrange to become members

yourselves," I blurt out. "Ten guineas, payable to

Fat Albert here, should do the trick. Although we

do have to impose initiation rites at some point.

We've never included a Lady Hippo, hitherto...".

Alas, Fat Albert gives a long loud disapproving

cough and turns on the watercock full throttle. He

is rinsing off a dusty bottle of Jaegermeister.

I go on. "This man you want, O'Riley, is it?

Don't know him. Non so. I'll inquire of my friend,"

I say, backing away with our two drinks sloshing.

Ryle has been trying to distract me, whistling

nervously between his teeth, impatient for his John

Jameson's.

"Now what's on your mind, Ryle?" I say, setting

his glass down. He doesn't answer, but slowly

brushes away the debris of my house-of-mats and

fits the bottom of his damp glass carefully into

the white round ring that stains the blackened

varnish of the table. He is silently eyeing the

back of that young woman. Her rich hair is haloed

in the dusky glow from the rainwashed windows.

"Divil elephant, man," I say, "the limerick was

not so bad as all that! So give us another," I'm

quite put out by this moody brooding. Not like

him, as the saying goes.

Like a painter, Ryle composes his stories from

life, using live models. As do I. I could see

what he was up to now.

His eyes turned violet in the dim light; he was

thinking. He kept staring toward that couple so

faintly illuminated by the reflected light from the

vast mirror behind Fat Albert's bar. The sides of

their faces glowed greenish as the spoke quietly in

Italian over their little glasses of Jaegermeister.

Ryle suddenly dropped his head, stared down into

his whiskeyglass and sobbed. Yet his eyes remained

dry.

"Try this one on," he murmurs. And then falls

silent again, gazing still into his tumbler as if

it were a crystal ball.

As said before, he loved travel, women, talk and

drink and generally managed to indulge all these

avocations in a generous-hearted uncomplicated

manner. Of travel he had had enough, so he

claimed, although he still kept that boat off the I

of W -- a good many of his better stories called up

adventures in foreign parts. Or his childhood in

Ireland. He saw his first black, he said, at the

age of fifteen or so when American sailors

disembarked at Kingstown--now Dun Laoghaire--where

he was a paperboy for the Irish Times. "Jaysus, a

Turk!" was his only remark to the man.

He loved to repeat that whenever he could invent

an occasion. Not a prejudiced bone in his body,

mind you. Just curiosity. And a delight at poking

fun at his own naiveté. Kept him his youth, in a

way. I think he always wanted to be able to be

amazed.

"So, tell us your phantasy, now, if you've got no

conversation in you," I say, a bit miffed at his

ignoring me. The afternoon is atrophying.

"I am your phantasy life, eh? You, on the other

hand, Hunter, are as real to me as the nose on my

face; you, friend, exist solely to be thumbed at

the world when it pleases me; a nose to sniff out

subjects for our game; an ear to listen; an eye to

approve; a hand to seal the pact. We are

collaborationists in recreating this stinking

world.... Right?"

Ryle is getting at something and it is not

amusing.

"So, then, it's all on my shoulders, is it?" I

say.

He sits back and runs his left hand over his

impeccable mustache. Now he's off and running. He

wets the pinkie finger and makes the rim of his

glass ring out with a ping. He begins at last.

"Let's suppose...let us now suppose that you and

I are sitting at a gloomy table along the rear

sidewall of the Club Hippo. It is a rainy

afternoon. A strange couple come in and sit by the

bar...."

"Is it possible to imagine what is already

happening?" I enquire.

"Is it possible to forestall reality by imagining

what is as happening differently than it may be

about to do? Is it possible to imagine Life into

taking any turn you choose? Recreating it on the

spot?" Ryle sounds nervous, impatient. I suggest

that he'd had a bad night. What else could trouble

him. He can't have eaten bad fish across the way,

he ate the same as mine. Perhaps something I'd

said....

"So, then." He makes a dismissive gesture. The

gold signet ring flashes. "Let us imagine that you

and I are sitting here in the shadows along the

wall having our usual, in anticipation of whatever

or whomever is about to come within view. You are

safe, you are alone, you are successfully

maintaining that crucial state, that magical moment

between utter sobriety and utter...the other.

Blotto. That timeless state in which it is

possible, indeed unavoidable, to see All with Ab-

so-lute Clarity. All the ironies of Life. So. You

are at an advantage, in the best vantage point in

the place, about to be used to advantage because

they...." He waves with a vague gesture of his

left arm toward our nervous newcomers.

"We are where you say--no supposin' about that," I

protest.

"Jaysus X. Christ, man your imagi-NA-tion!" He's

nearly shouting.

"Go on, then," I say meekly.

The dark man at the other end is speaking

surreptitious rapid Italian to Her of the Azure

Eye.

"Let us pretend," Ryle drones on, "that the

couple over there, the first and only couple ever

here, who have sat down at the small table by the

bar, are not husband and wife, as you may have

assumed, but father and daughter. They are

foreigners. Not being one of us they are for the

time being on sufferance of Fat Albert who is bored

to tears and sees a chance of unloading some of his

seldom called-for aperitivo on them. He'll try and

charge double, just you watch. But he is also

curious about who it is they are searching for.

"And how do you know they are searching for

anyone at all?" I counter. He overheard my brief

exchange with the lovely lady?

"I don't know...we're what-iffing, see? You are

not in the spirit of this today, man," says Ryle.

The moment that young woman entered the club

Ryle's bearing had changed; his mood veered toward

some secret association. Is it possible, I

wondered, that he is capable of sentimentality? Of

nostalgia? Not like him.

"Go and ask her to come over and sit. I want a

better look at her," he demands with sudden

intensity.

Now, I must admit that I had done some pimping of

a sort for Ryle in the past, or rather been a type

of Pandarus. Harmless, really, for the most part.

But in this case, not liking the looks of that dark

man with her, I could foresee only trouble.

Anything might happen. I firmly declined to budge.

Ryle resumed his speculation. "A male stranger

and a female stranger in a strange land, made

stranger still by supposition, possible

improbabilities I am about to weave. What is more

strange than a foreigner, straniera, etranger, as

strange to us as we to them? A gap, to be filled

by...you, the eternal good listener."

He sounds sarcastic to me.

"Is it possible to imagine anything that cannot

be done?"

I am confused now. Ryle addresses his

whiskeyglass.

"There goes the bell in my head. Make mine

Jameson's. Again. Do we begin from the familiar-

to-the-strange, or from the strange-to-the-

familiar? Rather like a painter working from light

to dark or vice versa, eh?"

Ryle is trying to distract me from playing with

my house of beer mats. I have by this time already

bought the first three rounds and am damned if I'll

do it again.

"Ryle, if she hadn't got red hair -- rather like

yours, mind you -- I doubt we'd have noticed either

of them."

I am not in a cooperative mood. Perversity seems

to be the name of the game today. I refill my pipe

and think of where in Italy to go and look at

Titians. Venice, I suppose. Another damp city.

"Ah, yes. The visual stimulant. Gingertop. But

there is that accent. The auditory interest. How

often d'ye hear northern Italian spoken round

Leicester Square?

How does he recognize northern from any other

Italian, I wonder.

"Right." I say, "All the pizza parlours are run

by Sicilians and Neapolitans."

"Now look there," he interrupts, "she's stood up,

this time without her coat. Look at the curve of

her hips, will you? Fine figure of a lass."

Ryle is really putting me off. I don't bother to

turn my head. That lass is no doubt in her late

twenties or early thirties, I had already assessed.

"Then why don't you just hippety-hop on over to

the bar and ask Fat Albert for another round

yourself?" I suggest.

Fat Albert is pointing her to the back door where

the dartboard hangs. It leads down into the yard

below where we male members relieve ourselves.

Now he is impatiently gesturing towards the fish

restaurant opposite on Lisle Street. She departs

down the front stairs with purse leaving her coat

behind on a chair. No doubt in search of a loo.

Powder her nose.

"Aha. Missed your chance to go and get a good

close look at her," I chide. Ryle doesn't budge.

He gestures for Fat Albert to bring a bottle to our

table.

Fat Albert resists. As usual, he won't leave the

till, but he pours out two more, doubles this time,

and lets them sit. The dark man downs his sticky

aperitif and requests another, leaning against the

old brass rail. Fat Albert sells him the entire

bottle of remaining Jaegermeister, glad no doubt to

see the end of it.

"Grazie...per il mio fegato," says the man in an overly

loud voice.

Ryle has resumed his annoying tuneless whistle

and is toying with my beer mats, sorting them into

suites like a deck of cards. I am as thirsty as

he, but damned if I'll buy yet another round. I

turn back to the table to clean my pipe, having

lost interest in the stranger. And before we know

it, there he is with a tray, limping badly but

balancing two bottles and three full glasses

without spilling a drop.

The dark stranger pulls a chair up to the end of

our table, but turns his left shoulder against me

and fully faces Ryle.

"So, Gilberto, I find you." They eye one

another. Ryle is friendly but guarded. The man is

tense, trembling like a terrier. They begin to

speak in a veiled, furtive way, half English, half

Italian. For all his tall tales of travel, it

never occurred to me that Ryle'd ever pick up a

foreign lingo. But then, why shouldn't he have

done? I of course, being an enthusiast of Ugo

Foscolo, "the Italian Goethe," read it well enough,

but one never has occasion to use Italian except in

reading a menu or a musical score.

"Giacomo!" says Ryle in feigned sudden

recognition. "Fancy meeting you here of all

places. Didn't recognize you, man, all spiffed up

like that. Eh? How long has it been? Twenty-five

years? No! God bless us. And how did that little

skirmish in the mountains work out? I see you are

alive and kicking. I take it you pulled it off all

right, eh? As I suspected. We partisani put it to

old Il Duce in the end, did we or did we not, eh?"

He is too jovial, somehow. The dark man,

Giacomo, is rocking on the edge of his chair,

leaning away from me toward Ryle. I can't see his

face, now.

"So, you do remember me, amico mio, you remember

how you were to help us with your maps, how you

would not fly us yourself, would not go against

your orders. Yet you took risks to prepare us for

our secret destination. You who made all the

contacts, so you said, gave us pistols,

ammunition...."

I continue to shuffle around in my pockets,

slowly cleaning and refilling my pipe, pretending

not to try to be listening in. Clearly I am to be

excluded from this reunion.

"Yes, of course I recall, old chap," says Ryle

looking uneasy. "Trent'uno anni fa...."

"Si, Anna! My Anna...Lucianna mia," cries the man.

"Traditore! Traditore due volte...doppiamente traditore!" or

something like that.

"Ah, yes," says Ryle in a soothing voice, "your

Lucianna. Fine figure of a woman. How is she,

after all these years?"

"Com'e? How do you ask, How she is? Lei e morta!

Dead! And so are her brother and so are her

cousins, and so would I be also dead."

He gulps for air.

"And now I find you and come to tell you about it

-- la scaramuccia, tutti -- and I will make you to listen.

You will listen and you will hear what I have come

to tell you after so many years. I have hated you,

old friend Riley, for so many years, and for so

many years I have imagined you in my mind and how

it will be when I can make you to listen."

Fat Albert, polishing half-pint glasses with a

twisted teatowel, pretends not to listen from

behind his bar. I puff up a fragrant smoke screen

and pretend to understand. As my chair is blocked

by the nextdoor empty table and the dark man's

chair, I cannot leave in any case.

"Only after months was I able to find my way

home, back to my villagio, to Lago d'Iseo, with my

ruined leg and broken hand. But finally, I come

home.

"And there is my Anna--pregnant. I am so happy.

I think it is from that last night we were together

saying good-bye to one another, yes, our first time

to make love, although we have been betrothed for

three years.

"That night I go off at dawn with her brothers

and the other men from Iseo across the lake in our

little fishing boats to i partisani--on the mission you

arrange for us. And I am so happy. I do not know

that we go towards betrayal and torture and

death...because of you, friend Riley."

I cannot look at Ryle, now. He is absolutely

still, engulfed in the past, in the dark man's

torment. Then he begins feebly: "Look here,

man...." But the dark man is growing more

passionate.

"Yes. Si, si! After the torture, the deaths, I

escape and come home after so long to my Lucianna

and a new life and she is giving me also a new

life. But the child arrives late, so I think; and

when I see that she has the red hair and eyes they

never change from blue to brown, then I know. She,

my little Guiliana, is not my own bambina after

all. And yet she is mine. I give her my family

name. I am her father; Lucianna, my Anna, is her

mother. And yet she is not mine. Twice you betray

me, twice in one night. Ma essa non merita biasima...."

The story is overtaking the storyteller, it

seems. I try to smile at Ryle but he does not see.

"You it was who send us to Bolzano with the

papers, the maps made from the air, not to

Bellinzona over the Swizzera border where our

fellow partisani hide, nor to Bergamo where the

others await us with the radio. No.

"You, amico mio, you alone manage to betray me

twice together. You send us into the enemy's

house--12 Via Marconi at Bolzano, infestato di fascisti!

And we were to go to the address of 12 Piazza

Marconi in the other direction, to Bergamo! Even

as we blindly run into the house of our enemies,

you, you are taking my Lucianna! You seduce her,

you rape her...who knows!"

"Stop harping on it, will you, man? For

chrissake. D'ye note," -- this is addressed to me

-- "how similar all Italian words sound? Bolzano,

Bergamo, Bellinzona, Beltrazano.... I mean what's

the difference, eh?"

Then Ryle dismisses me. What do I know, after

all. Then, to the dark man, defensively: "Your

bloody Italian lingo sounds all the same, just like

your eternal pasta, different shapes but all the

same flavour...words different shapes but all the

same sound. Bloody Italians pronounce every

bleedin' syllable, too. My name is RYLE, that's

all. And it's never been anything but Ryle. Not

Riley, but Gilbert Patrick Liam Ruari O'Donoghue

Ryle!"

"Ryle, Riley, is same!"

They are shouting now.

"How many nights do you violate my Anna--and my

trust? While I, I and what remains of my comrades,

all true partisani, spend so many nights of pain and

terror alone in the dark? Protecting you I keep

silent, protecting you while every night they tear

out one of my nails and break my fingers--look at

these hands--so that I cannot sleep, cannot ever do

my work again. And while they are torturing us,

there you are--lying in her arms. Anna, my

Lucianna...how many nights do you play the local

hero before you fly away in your aeroplane? You,

donnaiolo! Briccone! You are the Devil!"

He waves his arms about hysterically; I see that

the right hand is badly deformed, crushed almost,

though long-since healed. There are no

fingernails. Ryle looks only at the rim of his

whiskeyglass and caresses it with one perfect

finger.

"Ah, man, I didn't rape her at all, nor violate

her. It was mutual, I can tell you. It was

spiritual. She wanted me too. It was...spiritual.

And we did wait. But then there was no word. And

you were not officially married. I mean, come off

it, all's fair in love and war, eh?"

"Do not preach to me of what is fair! I protect

you, and you...you betray me, my family, my town,

my cause--our cause! You are a bad man...selfish,

without care. Si. You do not intend evil,

forse...yet you do evil, you cause evil and it never

touch you! You must suffer now--BASTA!"

Out of the corner of my eye, through the tobacco

haze, I see just a hint of a glint, a knifeblade

flashing in his left hand, the hand nearest myself,

the good hand which he's pulled from beneath that

new trenchcoat. It is slashing out at Ryle's face.

Without further thought, I knock up his arm with

my right, breaking my pipe. But he somehow gets a

grip on that knife again, now with the maimed right

hand, and plunges it into Ryle, just beneath the

ribcage, and twists it even as he falls sidewise to

the ground with me on top of him. He is wiry and

strong and struggling like the very devil.

I hear a roar and a grunting sound from behind

and suddenly I cannot breathe. Fat Albert has me

by my collar to fling me aside and puts a deathlike

grip on the dark man's throat, dragging him to his

feet with the one arm like a bear landing a

salmontrout. The man's face turns quite black with

rage. He is shrieking "Bastardo! Stronzo!

Bestemmiatore!...and such. His eye glints like an

eagle deprived of its prey.

Ryle has had nothing to say. His right hand

grips his half empty glass and the rest of him

seems to crumple into a heap in his chair. A dark

stain is spreading across the front of his blue

windbreaker. The girl is beating her fists

uselessly upon Fat Albert's broad white indifferent

back as he hustles the hysterical man toward the

front stair where two coppers, truncheons aloft,

greet them in a flash of silver and navy-blue

officialdom. Albert must have rung them up in

anticipation when the dialogue hotted up. He's a

damn good barkeep.

She of the azure eye is now down on her knees

beside Ryle. I brush myself off -- am wearing my

best grey suit at that time -- and stand over them

wondering what to do. Ryle refuses to look up at

me. There they are, their two flaming heads bent

together, her arms embrace him heedless of the

purple smear on the front of her light blouse.

"Damn bloody pen burst," murmurs Ryle. He dabs

ineffectually, fondly, at her breast, then, in

embarrassment, his.

I gather my smoking materials together: reamer,

this pigskin pouch, my Meerschaum now in three

pieces, and walk to the telephone behind the bar to

ring up the ambulance service -- just in case of an

insurance claim.

While we wait for the St. John's lads, I wring

out a few of Albert's clean barcloths in cold water

and do what I can to mop up Ryle. He never says a

damned thing, just looks in a dazed friendly sort

of a way at the girl. Giuliana. Yes. Don't know how

much she managed to overhear, coming in on it, but

she knows, and she knows that he knows. I may as

well not exist.

I made my way home through Cecil Court to stop

off and see a man about some 18th century

incunabula I'd picked up down in Brighton. For the

time being, which is all that ever matters, really,

Ryle and that young woman would have enough to

attend to.

I was never to see him again in the Hippo. As I

went along Lisle Street and across Leicester

Square, those lines of Tennyson kept repeating

themselves in my head. Prophetic lines, as it

turned out:

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

According to what I heard, Ryle and the girl went

off to his hideaway in the Isle of Wight. A few

months later his single engine plane went down in

the Channel, and him in it. Everything he had he

left to Guiliana.

As for old Giacomo, no charges were pressed, and

he was quietly shipped off, back to the sunny

south, COD so to say. Or, as we put it in the book

trade, a bit unhinged, spine broken, corners

bumped; in short, WAF -- with all faults. That was

back in '76. Or '72, was it? At any rate, I never

did take a proper Italian holiday. Never felt the

urge again, really.

#

Alison Armstrong, New York City [Oct. '85 - Dec. '97]