Smoking and talking, I said.
You seem extraordinarily cheerful, Henry. Its not quite like you. She sniffed again. I can almost believe that poor Wordsworth is with us still.
Its fabulous, Tooley said, that you know Wordsworth, I mean.
Il y a un monsieur qui vous demande, madame[131], the conductor interrupted, and I saw beyond my aunt, between a trolley of newspapers and a trolley of refreshments, a very tall thin man with exquisite white hair gesticulating with an umbrella.
Oh, its Mario, my aunt said, without bothering to turn. I wrote to him that we should need lunch. He will have ordered it. Come, my dear, come, Henry, theres no time to be lost. She preceded us down the steps and dropped straight into the arms of the white-haired man, who with steely strength held her for a moment suspended. Madre mia, madre mia[132], he said breathlessly and dropped his umbrella as he put her carefully down onto the platform as though she might break the very idea connected with Aunt Augusta was ridiculous.
What on earth is he calling you that for? I whispered. Perhaps it was the effect of the Cannabis, but I had taken an extreme dislike to the man who was now kissing Tooleys hand.
I knew him since he was a baby, Aunt Augusta said. He is Mr. Viscontis son.
He was very good-looking in a histrionic way; he had the appearance of an ageing actor and I didnt like the way he was trying to dazzle Tooley with pieces of his repertoire. After his burst of theatrical emotion with my aunt he was conducting Tooley ahead of us down the platform to the restaurant, holding his umbrella by the ferrule and pointing the crook up like a crozier. With his white hair and his head bent towards Tooley he looked like a hypnotic bishop instructing a neophyte on purity.
What does he do, Aunt Augusta? Is he an actor?
He writes verse dramas.
Can he live on that?[133]
Mr. Visconti settled a little money on him before the war. Luckily, in Swiss francs. I suspect too that he gets money from women.
Rather disgusting at his age, I said.
He can make a woman laugh. Look how Tooley is laughing now. His father was the same. Its the best way, Henry, to win a woman. They are wiser than men. They think of the period that must elapse between one lovemaking and another. In my youth not many women smoked cigarettes. Look out for that trolley.
I could feel in my head the cunning of Cannabis. He must have been born when you knew Mr. Visconti Did you know his mother too?
Not very well.
She must have been a beautiful woman.
I am not a fair judge. I detested her and she detested me. Mario always thought of me as his real mother. Mr. Visconti called her the blond cow. She was German.
Mario Visconti had ordered a saltimbocca Romana for each of us and a bottle of Frascati wine. My aunt began to speak to him in Italian. You must forgive me, my aunt said, but Mario speaks no English, and it is many many years since we have seen each other.
Do you speak Italian? I asked Tooley.
Not a word.
You seemed to be having quite a conversation.
Oh, he was very expressive.
What was he expressing?
He sort of liked me. What does cuore mean?
I looked at Mario Visconti with resentment and saw that he had begun to weep. He was talking a great deal and using his hands in explanation and once he picked up his umbrella and held it above his head. In the short intervals between paragraphs he put a lot of saltimbocca Romana into his mouth, leaning his handsome face forward over the plate, so that the fork only had a short distance to travel and the tears only a little way to fall. It was lucky that the dish was heavily salted already. My aunt lent him a wispy lace handkerchief, which he applied to his eyes and afterwards adjusted becomingly in his breast pocket to show a frilly corner. Then he became dissatisfied with the wine, which seemed very good to me, and called to the waiter to change it. Only after he had tasted a new bottle did he resume his tears. I noticed the waiters were as indifferent to the scene as usherettes at a cinema are to a movie which has been running a week.
I dont like a man who cries, I said to Tooley.
Have you never cried?
No, I said and then added for the sake of accuracy, not in public. The waiter brought us all ice-creams in three colours. They looked dangerous to me and I left mine untasted, but Marios disappeared quickly and I noticed how his tears were quenched as though the ice had frozen the ducts. He gave my aunt a shy boyish smile which went strangely with his white hair[134], and she surreptitiously lent him her purse to pay with.
On the steps of the train I was afraid he would begin to cry again when he embraced her, but instead he gave her a small brown-paper parcel and walked silently away, holding up his crook to hide his emotion or perhaps his lack of it.
So thats that, my aunt said with cool thoughtfulness. Tooley had disappeared I suspected into the lavatory to smoke another cigarette and I decided to tell Aunt Augusta about her trouble.
But I found when I sat down beside her that she wanted to do the talking herself. Mario seems rather an old man, she said, or has he dyed his hair, I wonder? He cannot be more than forty-five. Or six. I am bad about dates.