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

see?” Fabio said. “If they wanted you to fall they would be shouting for you.”
    While he talked he reached up and began to work the lengths of rope under the arms and across the back and around the waist of Bombolini. His plan was crude, but Fabio felt it might work. He would tie the wine seller to the pipe, literally lash him to it, and then bring him down it spike by spike. He would place Bombolini’s foot on the next rung, or spike, below and then work the ropes down around him and the pipe and when he was secured there he would lift the next foot down. He would bring him down, all bound with ropes, like a bear being brought down from the high mountains. He made Bombolini slide along the narrow catwalk until he was at the pipe and then dip down until his feet could find the spikes to stand on. Even from where they were, so high above the piazza, they could hear the people suck in their breaths. When he was tied to the pipe they didn’t start at once, because both of them were tired even then.
    â€œWhy are you doing this for me, Fabio?” Bombolini asked. Fabio didn’t answer him. How could he mention Angela? He wondered if he would have been on this pipe now for anyone else’s father, but then he realized that only Angela’s father would be doing such a thing.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause you were a man in trouble. It is people’s responsibility to help others in trouble.”
    â€œOh, Fabio,” Bombolini said. “I don’t know where you get ideas like that. It is people’s responsibility to look after themselves and nothing more. Let us try a step.”
    Fabio lifted Bombolini’s right foot and brought it down to the next spike below, and then he climbed up so that his head was level with Bombolini’s waist and he worked the ropes down a foot or more. They did it several times and rested.
    â€œFabio?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI want you to know one thing, Fabio. If I ever get off this tower and I am alive, if there is ever one thing in the world that you want and I can give it to you, I want you to ask me for it and I will give it to you.”
    Why couldn’t he say it right then? Why couldn’t he be honest with himself and with this man he had lashed to a spiny pipe and whose life he was saving at the risk of his own? One word. A few words—Yes, there is one thing: Angela; I want your daughter Angela in marriage. Instead, all he could do was murmur, “Come on, come on,” and feel himself turning red.
    Just before they began again, Bombolini began to point to the north. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Can you see that? Can you see there?”
    â€œYes. Something is burning,” Fabio said. “Some city is on fire.”
    They could see a cloud of gray, which the late afternoon sun turned gold at the top. It rose from a city which sat on the top of a mountain like a crown, and the crown was in flames.
    â€œThe whole mountain is burning,” Bombolini said, and it was true.
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    I N THE Leaders’ Mansion they could hear the shouts from the piazza, and the cheering. The noise was now steady and they knew the crowd was growing, but none of them was ready to believe that the cheering was for Italo Bombolini.
    â€œWhy would Pelo tell a thing like that?” Mazzola asked.
    â€œBecause Pelo is a bastard, that’s why,” Copa said.
    Pelo had come back from the Piazza Mussolini and when no one in the Piazza of the People was looking he had knocked twice on the door as directed.
    â€œWho are they cheering?” Vittorini had called.
    â€œBombolini.” Vittorini could not believe his ears.
    â€œItalo Bombolini,” Pelo said. “The wine seller. The wine merchant. The Sicilian boob.”
    â€œI don’t believe you,” Vittorini said.
    â€œBut it is the truth,” Pelo said, and then he had run.
    And ever since then the noise had grown louder and with it had grown the