A Private Venus Read online

  ‘Have you tried any others?’

  ‘No. I did call a doctor and talk to him about the matter, and he told me that the only way was to put my son in a detox clinic.’

  Yes, it was true, in a clinic they would detoxify the young man and then as soon as he got out he would probably start drinking again. But he didn’t say this: Auseri did.

  ‘I’d already thought of putting him in a clinic, but when he comes out he’ll only start drinking again: as soon as he’s alone he starts drinking. He needs friends, he needs women.’ Auseri offered him another cigarette and lit it and they started smoking. The air was still damp, and now it was also dark, apart from the lighted windows at the end of the drive. ‘Especially women. I’ve never known him to have a girlfriend. Don’t get me wrong. He likes women, I can tell that from the way he looks at them, and I believe he often uses prostitutes. But he’s too introverted to get a girlfriend. I’ve seen girls run after him, he’s a good match after all, but he clams up when he’s with a woman, he literally never opens his mouth. He may give the impression of not being normal. But that’s wrong. He did the whole of his military service, and as a private, not an officer. At first his companions teased him, because he always kept himself to himself. He almost broke one fellow’s head and cracked another’s ribs, after that they respected him and left him alone. My son is normal, he just takes after his mother. She was like that, too, she had no friends, or even acquaintances, she was quite happy to stay at home with me. I only ever managed to take her to receptions or parties a few times. Defects can be inherited, whereas qualities are recessive. It’s a kind of biological entropy.’

  The little emperor waved a hand, unhappily, but in the darkness it almost didn’t seem like a living hand, it appeared as vague and phosphorescent as ectoplasm, and even more unhappy in that funereal darkness.

  ‘And now I’d like to make one last attempt,’ Auseri said, ‘put him together with someone who could be both a friend and a doctor, who’d use any method he wanted to, to make him stop drinking, who’d stop him physically every minute of the day, even in the toilet. I don’t care if it takes a year, or what means he uses, he could even beat him to death, I’d rather he was dead than an alcoholic.’

  In prison you can actually become intelligent, and words mean a lot, the words you say and those you listen to. Outside, where you were free to say what you liked, words, and listening to words, were wasted, underestimated: people spoke without knowing what they were saying, and listened without understanding. But with Auseri it wasn’t like that. That was why Duca liked him, apart from the pain and bitterness concealed within the imperious exterior. He said, ‘You want me to be that person who’s both a friend and a doctor, and who gets him off the drink.’

  ‘Yes, the idea came to me yesterday. Superintendent Carrua is a friend of mine, he knows the whole story. I had to go to Police Headquarters yesterday and I dropped by his office. He talked to me about you, and asked me if I could find you a job with Montecatini. Of course I could find you a desk job with Montecatini if you wanted it, but then it struck me that someone like you could help me with my son.’

  Of course, someone who’s only been out of prison for three days helps everyone, does everything, sings any song. He was certainly lucky to be a friend of Superintendent Carrua’s, he already had many things to choose from. Carrua had also found him a job selling pharmaceuticals, it was the ideal profession for a doctor who had been struck off, a suitcase with samples, a car with Ciba or Farmitalia painted on the doors, driving around the region, calling on doctors and pharmacists: it was almost better than being a doctor yourself. Or if he preferred something more unusual, he could accept Engineer Auseri’s offer and devote himself to his alcoholic son, cure him, remove the poison from him, be a kind of social worker. Or if he had lost the taste for socially redeeming work, he could make sure that Auseri got him that position with Montecatini: a desk somewhere in one of those neat offices, he could gratify his small-minded selfishness, the inertia of a man who no longer believes in anything. But in prison you also become sensitive, easily irritated. And because he was irritated now, he said calmly, ‘What made you think of me? Any other doctor could treat your son.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Auseri said. He had become irritated, too. ‘I need a person I can trust absolutely. From the way Superintendent Carrua spoke to me about you, I know I can trust you. I have an intuition about these things. Earlier, when I saw you sitting here, with those stones in your hand, I knew I could trust you.’

  These weren’t empty words, he could hear it in the tone of Auseri’s voice, and his irritation vanished. He liked talking to a man, after having talked to so many fools: the director of the clinic in the beanie hat who told dirty jokes as he operated, the prosecuting lawyer who shook his head each time he uttered Duca’s name in his closing statement: ‘… I don’t understand how Dr. Duca Lamberti’—a shake of the head—‘can maintain such an absurd version of events. Dr. Duca Lamberti’—a shake of the head—‘is either more naive, or more cunning, than may appear. Dr. Duca Lamberti’—another shake of the head—how could anyone be such an idiot? Auseri, though, was a man, and he liked listening to him.

  ‘Any other doctor would take advantage of the situation to drum up publicity for himself,’ Auseri said. ‘Until now my son’s alcoholism has been a closely guarded secret, known only to a few discreet friends. With any other doctor, it would become an item of gossip in all the drawing rooms in Milan. But you won’t talk, and I know that if you accept the job you’ll get it done. Another doctor would get bored after a week and leave the boy stuffed full of pills and injections, and he’ll get drunk anyway. I don’t want pills and injections. I want a friend and an inflexible guardian for my son. It’s my final attempt. If it doesn’t work, I’ll let him go, I’ll cut him off and wash my hands of him.’

  Now it was his turn. What time was it, and where were they? In a damp dark corner of the Brianza, on the side of a hill, with a villa ahead that seemed to be sliding towards them and inside the villa a young man clinging to a bottle of whisky, that was where they were. ‘I need to ask you a few questions,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ Auseri said.

  ‘You say your son has been drinking like this for a year. Did he drink before? Or did he just suddenly start drinking?’

  ‘No, he drank before as well, but not very often, he’d get drunk two or three times a month, no more than that. I don’t want to be ungenerous towards his dead mother, but it’s a tendency he gets from her.’

  ‘You also told me your son has no friends, no girlfriends. Does that mean he usually drinks alone?’

  ‘He’s drinking alone right now, in his room. But he drinks alone because he’s never with anybody. He doesn’t want to be.’

  ‘You also said that, despite appearances, your son is a normal young man. I’m prepared to believe that. But a normal young man doesn’t start drinking in that way without a reason. Something may have happened to him that drove him to drink more than he did before. He may have got involved with a woman, for example. In films, men drink to forget unhappy love affairs.’

  Auseri’s hand rose again, floated in the dark air, and moved across his face. ‘That was what I asked him when I hit him with the poker. We have a fireplace in our apartment in Milan, an old-fashioned one with a poker. A poker on the face hurts, and as it happened quite recently you can still see the mark on his cheek. I asked him if there was a woman, if he was in debt because he’d had to pay for some underage girl to have an abortion, he said no, and I believe him, because he’s useless—even at doing something wrong.’

  He must be a strange young man. ‘I’m sorry to insist, Engineer, I’m speaking now as a doctor,’ as an ex-doctor, of course, a doctor who’s been struck off, ‘you told me before that as far as women are concerned, your son doesn’t have girlfriends, he’s always turned to prostitutes. Given this habit, it’s possible he’s contracted what he thinks of as a terrible disease and in his desperat
ion, considering himself human refuse, has started drinking. Syphilis is a less fearsome disease now than it was in the past, but it’s still a stigma, and a sensitive young man like your son could well find it traumatic.’

  In the darkness, Auseri said, ‘That was the first thing I suspected, and four months ago I had him see a doctor. He was given all kinds of tests. He’s in perfect health, no infection at all, not even the most commonplace.’

  So not even the fear of disease was driving young Auseri to drink. ‘But what does your son say? What excuse does he give?’

  ‘My son is humiliated and desperate. He says he doesn’t want to drink but can’t help himself. Whenever I hit him, he says to me, “You’re right, you’re right,” and starts crying.’

  It was time for Duca to make up his mind. ‘Have you told your son about me?’

  ‘Certainly.’ Auseri used that word often, which coming from him meant that he was absolutely sure, he wasn’t wasting his breath. ‘I told him that a doctor I really trust might agree to help him, and he promised me that he’ll do whatever you want. Even if he hadn’t promised, I’d have made him do it all the same.’

  Naturally, or even: certainly. What should he do? This wasn’t a job, it was shaping up to be a right old mess, but the idea of being a pharmaceuticals salesman, when he thought about it, did rather turn his stomach. He tried to be calm, not to become irritated with himself. ‘I don’t think it’ll be difficult to stop your son from drinking. In little more than a month you can have him teetotal again. What will be difficult, if not impossible, is to stop him starting again, as soon as he’s free. Alcoholism is a symptom here, if we don’t find the cause, we’ll be back at square one.’

  ‘Start by making him teetotal, and then we’ll see.’

  ‘All right. I’m ready.’ It was time to meet this victim of alcohol.

  ‘Thank you.’ But Auseri did not get up, he looked for something in his pockets. ‘If it’s all right with you, I want to leave him in your hands immediately and not have to deal with him again. I’ve been watching him for a month, and I’m exhausted. Seeing him drunk from morning to night is depressing. I’ve written this cheque for you, and there’s some cash, too, to cover your first expenses. I’ll hand my son over to you now, and then I’m going straight back to Milan, I have to be in Pavia by six o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ve already neglected my work long enough for him. Do whatever you want: you have carte blanche.’

  In the darkness, he couldn’t tell the cheque from the cash, it was just a little wad of papers of a certain thickness, and Duca put them in his pocket. Engineer Auseri was well aware that people who are just out of prison don’t have very much to fall back on.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  They started climbing towards the villa. When they entered, a young man stood up somewhat unsteadily from an armchair, but managed to stay on his feet without swaying. The living room of the villa was small, too small for him, it was like a doll’s house with him inside, not a real villa.

  ‘My son Davide. Dr. Duca Lamberti.’

  2

  It all happened very quickly: the little emperor with the narrow trousers had grown weary again, he came out with a few more lines, like an exhausted actor, his son would do the honours, he said, he was sorry he couldn’t stay, he seemed reluctant to even look at his son, he said goodbye to him with his back turned, then held out his hand to say goodbye to Duca and said, ‘Phone if you have to, but it won’t be so easy to reach me for a while,’ which was probably just a polite way of saying that he didn’t want to be disturbed. ‘Thank you very much, Dr. Lamberti,’ and only as he was about to disappear into the garden did he look for a moment at the gigantic young man who was his son, and in that look there was a bit of everything, just like in a supermarket: compassion, hate, fierce love, irony, contempt, a painful fatherly affection.

  Then the crunch of his steps on the gravel, then silence, then the muted roar of an engine, the dull sound of tyres on the drive, then nothing.

  They stood for a while in silence, barely looking at each other. Davide Auseri swayed only twice in all that time, but elegantly: there was nothing vulgar about his drunkenness, especially as far as his face was concerned. What was the expression on that face? Duca tried to figure it out, and then realised: it was the face of a schoolboy at a major exam who can’t answer a question: a mixture of anguish and shyness, and a few wretched attempts to appear natural.

  It was a gentle face, a pageboy’s face, and yet manly, as yet unravaged by the alcohol. Elegant, too, was the parting on one side of his dark blond hair, the stubble on his cheeks, the white shirt with the long sleeves rolled up on his big arms with their coating of down, the black cotton trousers, the opaque black shoes: the model of a respectable young Milanese, with an echo of British style, as if Milan was somehow, morally, part of the Commonwealth.

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ Duca said to Davide, who swayed one last time, then eased himself into an armchair. He said it to him sternly, because even though he had been in prison he still had a heart, in the form not so much of a cardiac muscle, but like one of those hearts you still see drawn on greetings cards. Sternness masks your own emotion, your own weakness. Even a doctor can be upset by a moral disease, and this young man was morally ill. ‘Who’s in the villa apart from us?’ he asked him, again sternly.

  ‘In the villa, let’s see,’ the exam question wasn’t difficult, not as difficult as the mere fact of speaking to a stranger must have been for the young man, ‘in this villa, let’s call it a house, well, there’s the maid, who’s the wife of the gardener, there’s a butler, and then there’s the cook, she’s making dinner right now, even daddy says you can’t really call her a cook, but these days you just have to make do …’ He was smiling as he spoke, playing beautifully the part of a brilliant young conversationalist.

  ‘Anyone else?’ Duca cut in, harshly.

  The giant young man’s eyes clouded over with fear. ‘Nobody,’ he said immediately.

  It was a difficult case. He mustn’t make a mistake in establishing a rapport: the young man was drunk, but quite lucid. ‘Try not to be afraid of me, or we won’t get anywhere.’

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ Davide said, swallowing with fear.

  ‘It’s only natural for you to be afraid, you’ve never seen me before and you know you’re going to have to do everything I say. It’s not the most pleasant of situations, but it’s what your father wanted. I’d like to start my work by speaking ill of your father, if you’ll allow me.’ The young man did not smile at all, a teacher’s witticisms never makes the frightened examinee smile. ‘Your father has crushed you, he’s always imposed his will on you, he’s stopped you becoming a man. I’m here to help you kick the drink habit, and I can do that easily, but it’s not your real illness. You don’t treat a son as if he was still a child who has to sit quietly at the table. Your father made that mistake and I can’t remedy that, and won’t even try. When you’ve got out of the habit of drinking, I’ll leave you, and it’ll be a relief for both of us. So you should try to be as little afraid as possible. Apart from anything else, it bothers me when people are afraid of me.’

  ‘I’m not afraid, doctor.’ He seemed more afraid than ever.

  ‘Drop that. And drop the “doctor.” I don’t like being too familiar too soon, but in this case it’s necessary. We’ll call each other by our first names.’ It would be a mistake trying to become his friend, to lure him in: the young man was intelligent, sensitive, he would never believe such a sudden friendship. Better the truth, even though he could still hear his defence lawyer whispering in his ear: never, never, never the truth, better death.

  Then the elderly maid came in. She looked more like a peasant woman who had entered the villa by mistake and was disconcerted to see them there. She asked sourly if she should lay the table, and for how many. ‘It’s half past eight,’ she added, almost with derision.

  Even this question brought anxiety into the pageboy’s sad eyes, and Duca had to
resolve it. ‘Let’s eat out. Tell the staff they can have the evening off.’

  ‘We’re eating out,’ Davide said to the sour woman, who looked at them mockingly for a moment then disappeared from the room as randomly as she had entered it.

  But before taking the young man out, Duca decided he needed to give him a medical examination, and so he asked Davide to take him upstairs to his room, and there told him to undress. Davide stripped down to his pants but Duca gestured to him to take them off. He was even more impressive naked than clothed, and Duca felt as if he was in Florence, looking at Michelangelo’s David, grown a little fat, but only a little.

  ‘I know it’s a bother, but turn around and walk.’

  Davide obeyed like a child, worse, like a laboratory mouse following a pre-arranged path according to the impulses received, except that he couldn’t turn with much precision and swayed more than before.

  ‘That’s enough. Now lie down on the bed.’ Apart from these motor disorders due to his drunken state, his walk presented no abnormalities. When he was on the bed, Duca felt his liver, and for what such a rudimentary examination was worth, it could have been a teetotaller’s liver. He looked at his tongue: perfect; he examined his skin centimetre by centimetre: perfect, although the texture was undoubtedly masculine, it was as limpid and elastic as that of a beautiful woman. Even alcohol would take time to eat away at this physical monument.

  There might be some failure elsewhere. ‘Stay there on the bed,’ he said, ‘just tell me where I can find a pair of scissors.’

  ‘In the bathroom, just go out in the corridor, it’s next door.’