The Secret of Santa Vittoria by Robert Crichton Read Free Book Online

catwalk starts to fall off.”
    â€œFascist bastards,” Bombolini said. “They cheated on the specifications. They were supposed to put up a ladder and they put up that pipe and pocketed the difference. They were supposed to put a platform up here and they put up this thing. How far are you now?”
    Fabio had already painted out MUSSOLINI IS ALWAYS RIGHT and was halfway through the eight DUCE’S .
    â€œFour more to go, eh?”
    â€œYes. Whoever did it, overdid it,” Fabio said.
    â€œI did it,” Bombolini said.
    Fabio was silent. It embarrassed him to think of a man risking his life to climb a tower and write DUCE DUCE DUCE all over the side of it. And he could not imagine this man as ever having been young.
    â€œI was young once, you know. I was tall and lean. I used to look like Garibaldi. I had long shiny-black hair. I wonder what made it curl? Ah, well. When I was through I wasn’t even tired.”
    Fabio went on with the painting.
    â€œI know what you’re thinking, Fabio. You don’t have to tell me,” Bombolini said. “But you have to try and understand how it was then. It wasn’t like this now at first, Fabio. He was beautiful at first, Fabio. He was promises for us.”
    They felt the tower tremble and they gripped the iron railing, but then it passed. The mountain rises and falls here, a little bit each day, like a giant shifting in his sleep.
    â€œAnd what promises, Fabio. I don’t mean the stupid ones like building the army and making Italy fierce again. They were going to help us build a school and pay for teachers. Everybody was going to join in. They were going to help us build a road, and we were going to plant the hillsides with grass and trees so the land would stay on the hills and the water would stay on the land and there would be no more landslides. We believed that, Fabio. Oh, there was excitement then, Fabio. Everything seemed possible. And we believed.”
    â€œHow could you?” Fabio said. “You believed because you wanted to believe.”
    â€œYes. And because he believed, too. I really think Mussolini believed.”
    â€œAnd then none of it happened.”
    â€œSome of it happened. This thing, this tower, happened. Oh, we were going to be like America here, Fabio. Look.” The wine seller pointed although Fabio could not see him. “Can you see Scarafaggio from where you are?” Fabio said that he could. “When the tower was built they fell down in the streets with envy from looking at us. ‘Our turn next,’ they said. ‘It’s happening. The miracle is happening.’”
    He told Fabio of the famous morning when the tower was to be dedicated. The dignitaries had come from Montefalcone in cars and been taken up the mountain in oxcarts decorated with flags and flowers. A great flag had covered the top of the tower and when the string was pulled and the tank was revealed, there, shining fresh and black in the morning sun, was MUSSOLINI IS ALWAYS RIGHT and all the DUCE’S , and on the catwalk was Italo Bombolini.
    â€œI was a hero once, for a few days, and then they turned the water off,” Bombolini said. “After that I was a fool.”
    When the leaders from Montefalcone had gone The Band assumed control of the water tower and began to charge for the water. When the grape growers refused to pay, the water was turned off, and soon the cement spillways began to fill with leaves and dirt and the people went back to the old way, praying to God to send rain, and He was, as always, not quite generous enough. But the people forgot about the tower.
    While he talked Bombolini threw the bottle off the tower, and there was a shout from the people as it arched out over the town and finally crashed in a tinkle of glass on the roof of the Cooperative Wine Cellar. A minute or two afterward an old man with white hair and a face as red as wine came out onto the roof and shook his fist