Page 97 of Shadow Ticket
“Meaning that he is?”
“I’m not so sure. I keep running into these psychical types, readers into the future, all telling me I’m on the way to…some kind of anarchist sainthood. Spain supposedly being known for its anarchists the way other countries are for their wine, their cooking, or the quality of whoopee within their borders. There’s also the church, the military, the old dictator Primo de Rivera, his son who’s putting together his own phalanx of Fascists. Hatred between the Right and the Left gets worse every day, Asturias is ready to explode. Soon as I can get hold of a tommy gun I’m just going out before breakfast and start shooting Fascists.”
“Not very saintlike.”
“Gets worse. I’m nearsighted too. Maybe you think these are pilot goggles—nope, they’re glasses, and even with them on, I’m a terrible shot. I can just imagine myself trying to get cute in Spain, ‘Butcompañera, no, you must not use this weapon, you are a danger to us all, to yourself.’ ”
Daphne is giving her a look saying, yes, but at the same time it’s not too late, you can still peel off from this sainthood trajectory you think you’re on, get back down here with the rest of us, remember what we have to wrestle with every day, before you just go blasting away into some vertical beyond. At least take a vacation from El Smootho. But is not about to start handing out free advice to any gun-happy autogyro pilot.
“Whatever it is that’s just about to happen, once it’s over we’ll say, oh well, it’s history, should have seen it coming, and right now it’s all I can do to get on with my life. I don’t care to know more than I need to about the mysteries of time,” snorting briefly, lopsidedly smiling. “You’re expecting spiritual wisdom from little G. T. del V.? you’ll be waiting a long time, sucker.”
—
Below thema cheerful march tune can be heard—mandolins, a concertina, a sort of amiable jangle to it all, a moving collective on their way to Fiume, young fighting-age men and women carrying banners with the old D’Annunzian slogan “Me ne frego,” another nostalgic descent on what used to be Hungary’s exit to the sea, rolling down into town together, down out of the Karst, to waterfront cafés, window boxes spilling over in scarlet turbulence. In the distance, out past the breakwater, evening pleasure steamers in the Quarnero bound to and from different islands.
“I can drop you here in Fiume,” Glow offers, “you may have some business here.”
“Glow. You’ve heard something.”
“Fish-market intelligence. Something to do with motorcycle traffic.”
Her heart jumps but she pretends to gaze at the Adriatic, “Can’t help noticing that good-size stretch of water there. On the off chance I’m fed up at last with the fool’s errand you found me mixed up in, this might also be a good place to kiss it off and catch a liner the hell on out of.”
“Come, come, no way for a cheez princess to talk, keep that chin up, lady.”
“Sure, so somebody can take another swing at it.”
35
Once a major port of embarkation for the New World, bright and bustling, Fiume now is a tattered ghost city with a sordid history of secret treaties and sellouts, edging its way through what the Fascist Italian regime calls Year Ten, continuing to collapse in on itself, unlikely to be redeemed, barricaded and wire-fenced, corroded, sentry-boxed, moonlit some nights brighter than what flickering neon remains…
Some blame Fascist Italy, which absorbed it. Others point out that any attempt to go up against the liberal bourgeois order is destined to fail. Rollicking youth grow old, the middle-class condition goes on forever. So forth.
One day of rain and fog, secondhand light here in the streets and piazzas reflecting off the wet pavement, a day meant for slow silver emulsions and long exposures and few chances for color, Daphne hears a woman somewhere invisible singing “Daleko m’ê moj Split,” an operetta tune from a few years back, grabs an umbrella, walks out the door, down an alleyway, then another, trying to find the source. The sky brightening a little, then dark again with more rain.
Adrijana, who works at the cigarette factory, is off shift today and just about to put in earrings representing a black Moor’s head in a fancy white turban, which Daphne has been noticing on ears elsewhere around town.
“What wonderful earrings.”
“There’s something like it in Venice, but you’ll find the Morcic only in Fiume. Our little Moor, our protector, our good luck.”
They locate a café with a piano in back, Adrijana teaches Daphne thesong. “They’ll excuse your accent, but miss a double-dot on the beat and they’ll never let you forget it.”
—
A couple nights later,after hours, they show up at a sympathetic room in a roadhouse on the Yugoslavian side of the line, where neighborhood musicians like to get together, tonight a C-melody sax, banjo-uke, trombone, piano, an underlying beat from snare brushes and woodblock. Daphne understanding before she’s eight bars in, not without goose bumps, that this is likely not the last time she’ll be singing it in public…a warm peach-colored spot picking up sun streaks in her hair she’s forgotten were there, a smile at the band for going easy with practical jokes such as unannounced key changes…and after the vocal, an instrumental break, joined out of somewhere by a clarinet, all too immediately recognizable as who else but Hop Wingdale, klezmerizing all over the place, salaciously wiggling his licorice stick in her direction, understanding with some seldom used fraction of his brain, about the same time she tumbles, that like it or not here they are again.
“Caught me right in the middle, couldn’t believe it was you, had to stop and go back to the tonic and wait.”
“I noticed.”
“Liked your number.”
“Still needs some work, but thanks.”
“Hope you weren’t thinking I ran out on you, or—”
“Did cross my mind.”
