‘Don’t believe it … They will own you one day, and you’ll be one of their creatures.’
‘Ernst, you are truly obsessed. I’ve had enough of your theories. You could be the best friend a person could have, if you weren’t always reading from a script.’
‘I’m saying it for your own good. One day you’ll understand.’
‘Never. And while we’re waiting, we’re not walking all the way to Rome. You go on ahead, I’ll try to hitchhike.’
Ernst refused to leave him. He waited until a van stopped for Jean. The driver dropped Jean off on the outskirts of Rome. From there he walked barefoot along burning pavements until, an hour later, he saw the Pincio. He was dying of thirst, and hungry. The Adler’s doorman was walking up and down in front of the hotel. He looked superb in a tightly tailored linen uniform with gilt buttons, and a cap with a brim as wide as a Soviet general’s. He might be a flunkey, but he could not be hoodwinked. The rich gave tips, the poor got kicks up their backside. Jean’s build saved him from such treatment, but he had to threaten the man to make himself heard. The doorman in turn threatened to call the police. Jean told him he would punch him in the face, and, because he was pale with fury, the doorman finally understood that some strange relationship could link a half-naked and shoeless young man wandering the streets of Rome at lunchtime with a prince who travelled in a Hispano-Suiza with a black chauffeur and a blonde mistress. Thus Jean learned that his one remaining possibility of assistance had left early that morning for Venice.
Ernst appeared on his bicycle, pink and dripping with sweat, having pedalled like fury to catch up with his friend.
‘Now I am in a mess,’ Jean admitted, sitting down at the top of the Spanish Steps.
‘No. Never. We stick together.’
‘My poor Ernst, you’re a very decent friend, but you can’t do anything. I’m going to hitchhike back home.’
‘Without papers or money?’
‘I’ll work my way back. As for papers, when I reach the border I’ll explain what happened.’
‘You’re really breaking my heart. At least take some money. Half of what I’ve got left. I’ll work my way back too.’
‘You’re awfully decent, but you make me feel ashamed.’
‘Think nothing of it. I owe you for stopping my bike getting stolen. If you hadn’t come to my rescue, that fellow would have run off with it. Logically I should give you half of it.’
‘That would get us a long way.’
At the bottom of the steps a florist was making up a bouquet of red carnations for a fat woman in her Sunday best whose sandals tortured her swollen feet. As she climbed the stairs, her arm extended to protect the flowers, her gleaming handbag bumping against her short thigh, she passed close to the two friends, murmuring, with a look of disgusted pity, ‘Che miseria!’ although it was impossible to tell whether she was sorry for them or just found their youth intolerable.
‘It’s a shame you can’t beg in this country any more,’ Jean said.
‘It’s not that you can’t,’ Ernst corrected him. ‘It’s that there’s no need to any more. In Fascist Italy there’s work for everybody. You’ll see the same thing when you come and visit me in Cologne.’
‘Right at this moment, Fascist Italy has not seen fit to serve us lunch and I’m ravenous.’
They bought bread, ham and two apples, which they ate sitting on the edge of the fountain of Neptune in Piazza Navona. Rome was gently dozing. The street vendors, sitting in the shade, daydreamed behind their stalls of watermelons, filled rolls and ice cream. Two girls, so alike that they must be sisters, came and sat on the lip of the fountain, laughing and dangling their dusty feet in the cold water. They were not particularly pretty, and had that yellowish complexion that was common among the city’s workers, but they were happy and when they laughed they showed teeth as fine and healthy as their free, young figures under their loose cotton smocks. The friends gave them their apples, which they accepted straight away and bit into, still laughing. After a superficial exchange, the girls jumped down with a cheerful ‘Arrivederci’ that ruled out any idea of following them. In any case Jean was no longer able to walk, for his feet had been burnt by the asphalt of the streets and the pavements’ flagstones. He needed to find a pair of sandals at all costs. When sandals had been bought, the friends counted the money they had left: enough to feed themselves with bread and salami for a week and sleep under the stars.
‘You ought to ask your consulate for help,’ Ernst said. ‘And some papers to get yourself out of Italy.’
At the consulate Jean was only able to speak to a thin-lipped young official who looked him up and down with an expression of profound contempt. How dare he present himself in such a holy place with bare legs and his shirt undone to the waist?
‘Papers? Who says your name is really Jean Arnaud? Do you have any witnesses?’
‘I only have my friend Ernst, a German.’
‘A German! Are you making fun of me?’
‘What can I do then?’
‘I shall write to Paris and ask them to make enquiries at your town hall at …’
‘Grangeville, Seine-Maritime.’
‘As soon as I have an answer, I’ll draw up a provisional paper for you.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Now you really are joking. A week’s time, at the very least. Allow ten days to avoid disappointment.’
‘In ten days I’ll have died of hunger.’
The young man raised his arms to the heavens. Consulates were not charitable institutions. Jean studied him without rancour, with iron in his soul. His last hope had faded. This testy, disdainful consular official symbolised the first of his encounters with the world of administration. He looked more closely at him: flabby around the neck, a shiny nose on which sat horn-rimmed spectacles, a suit of beige tussore set off by a loud tie, a podgy hand wearing a signet ring with two intertwined initials. The initials restored some of Jean’s composure. He remembered a sarcastic remark of Monsieur de Malemort’s once about a bourgeois who, lacking a coat of arms, had sported similar initials on his signet ring.
‘You heard what I said,’ the young man said. ‘Come back in ten days’ time.’
‘Has no one ever told you that it’s bad taste to wear a signet ring engraved with initials?’ Jean asked, in such a faraway tone of voice that he was surprised himself, as though the remark came from someone else.
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘You heard very well what I said. Goodbye, Monsieur.’
‘Get out of here, you cheeky wretch!’
‘No one can tell me to get out of a place where I have a perfect right to be.’
‘You don’t have the right to insult me.’
He had stood up, scarlet with fury, strangled by his starched collar. Another mistake, Jean thought, noticing that he was barely more than five foot tall. Behind a desk he could maintain the illusion; upright, he was to be pitied.
‘I ask you kindly to get out!’ he yelled.
A secretary opened the door, alerted by the raised voices.
‘What’s happening, Monsieur?’
‘Nothing. In ten days’ time this man will return to see if we have received an answer about his papers. Now leave me, I need to work.’
The secretary kept the door open for Jean, who walked from the room, smiling at the woman. She looked at him with anxiety. Her hair was grey but fine and soft, and she had gentle eyes.
‘You’ve had your money and your papers stolen, haven’t you?’ she said, in a pretty singsong accent.
‘Yes, Madame.’
‘Poor boy! How could someone do that to you? People truly are too bad. In Rome?’
‘No, at Ostia.’
‘It makes me feel ashamed. I’m Italian, married to a Frenchman. Will you let me help you?’