At the side of the short bar a scuffle suddenly flared up, two men in brightly colored shirts pushing and taunting each other; they were from different contrade, by their shirts. The men tipsily grappled with each other, not punching or kicking, as if there was an acknowledged code of battle, rather clasping each other in a palsied, theatrical manner, like in a silent film. But they rolled back hard into Laura and made her spill her entire drink onto Nicholas; a large splotch bloomed darkly on his light-blue shirt and white linen pants. The contrada man was very short and built thickly and he held up his hands in clear apology, but Nicholas kept shouting at him, tugging to show him his soaked shirt, and the scene would have been over quickly enough had Nicholas not become instantly, unreasonably, furious; he even brusquely dismissed Laura’s attempt to blot his shirt as he accosted the man. Standing much taller, Nicholas hotly scolded him as he would a child, and in a lull in the music Hector could hear that he was doing so in English, though this time with a much sharper British accent, and though Hector didn’t know enough of the world to place it or give it a name he would have said it was a workingman’s tongue, what you’d hear dockside or in an alleyway bar.
This confused Hector; maybe Nicholas was an accomplished and elusive thief (this gleaned from the papers in Clines’s folder) but this openly volatile temper didn’t quite jibe, not to mention how sensitive and quiet and artistic June always said he was. He wasn’t someone who would strike a match in a place he shouldn’t. To his momentary credit he was impressively aggressive, enough that both contrada men and their respective mates were initially silent, slightly amazed that this lone foreigner would address them so; but then, soon enough, as Nicholas persisted, they pushed in around him with anger in their faces. This was a locals’ club, after all, and as locals’ clubs went, Hector could see from how the bartender and bouncers now stepped back without pause that this was a serious one, intramurally run, a place where a certain kind of visitor could get himself in trouble.
Laura evidently knew this and had stepped forward to get between him and the local men, pleading with all for calm, but from behind her Nicholas got right up in the faces of them, and they right at him, the shouting escalating into finger-pointing, nudging, hands raised and ready. Hector instinctively approached now, Bruno close by. Someone behind the contrada men shoved forward, jamming one of them hard against Laura and Nicholas, and it was then it began, perhaps because Nicholas saw Hector, while Bruno tugged Laura away as the first punches were thrown.
Hector approached to help, given that he was here to retrieve him, but in the mess of the moment, in the mayhem of fists and grunts and flying sweat and spit, a region in which most decent folk perceived only senseless blurs and flashes but was pacific and deep-etched for Hector, a life-sized diorama he could move about in at his own pace and pleasure, he decided that the extent of his help would come in the form of not allowing Nicholas to be maimed or blinded. He had no issue with the contrada boys, doing the same as they plenty of times at Smitty’s, and he only had to pull off one of them from doing uncalledfor damage, the others allowing him (this gentleman-appearing tourist) to move in and cover the offender from more kicks and blows. When they stopped, he hustled Nicholas out to the street. Bruno and Laura quickly trailed them. Nicholas, who was propped over his shoulder, tried to break from him and run but caught his foot on a raised cobble-stone and fell. He rose to get away but suddenly a very different impulse compelled Hector to trip him, sending him hard to the ground. He lay there prostrate, and instead of helping him up Hector pressed his knee on the back of his neck.
“What are you doing to him?” Laura shouted. “Why are you doing this? Get off of him!”
Hector didn’t answer her, but Nicholas did, surprising them all by telling her to go away. His face was swollen, his lip puffed and cut. His entire head of hair was sopping with sweat and he was breathing heavily. Laura was still yelling at Hector and not listening but Nicholas now screamed at her, cursing her, so cruelly and profanely dismissing her that one could believe he could have slit her throat in a slightly different moment. She stepped back, horrified, incredulous, perhaps waiting for him to explain himself or try to amend his words, and Bruno took it upon himself to take her by the arm and accompany her home. But she wouldn’t let him touch her and she began cursing Nicholas in Italian, stomping on his legs, trying to kick Nicholas in the groin, spitting at him, Hector collaterally receiving a part of her fury, which was no doubt trebled by what she had likely suspected of Nicholas from the beginning but had not heeded and was now wretchedly taking the full measure of. Finally Bruno was able to corral her and lead her away, though she kept her eye on him as they went, as if she were still unsure of what had occurred, wondering if Nicholas might still call for her, say everything was a mistake, that nothing was what it seemed.
“Get the hell off me,” Nicholas cried, getting up after they had gone. “Get off me!”
Hector did, pushing him forward with a firm hold on his shoulder.
“Where are we going?”
“To the hotel.”
“The traveler’s checks are already gone. I sold them, to pay my debts. I’ve got a couple of hundred from the cash you gave me, that’s all.”
“Give it over.”
“Those checks were mine, you know, she said they were mine.”
Hector punched him hard in the kidney, Nicholas buckling as if he’d been shot.
“What the fuck?” he groaned, down on one knee. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Here, here, just fucking well take it!” He threw Hector his wallet. “Now leave me alone.”
“You’re coming with me,” Hector said, lifting him up by the shirt collar.
“I’m not who you think I am,” he cried, struggling to keep up as they walked. “I’m not him. I’m not her son.”
“I know.”
“You want to know my name?”
“Isn’t it Paul?”
“That one’s fake. It’s Nick.”
“Nick?”
“That’s right. Isn’t that a laugh?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
“But what for? She must know I’m not him.”
“You’ll tell her where Nicholas is.”
“She knows where he is! He’s dead. He’s been fucking dead since last year. We were decent enough mates, I suppose. He was a pretty good player, really. Maybe a little soft, a little too nice where our marks were concerned, but I was getting him into shape. We were getting to be a fantastic duo, really. We were up at some nouveau lord’s hall in Sussex. Full of primo stuff. But Nicholas fucking fell off a horse and broke his leg and in the hospital a clot got up into his lung and killed him.”
“But you’ve been writing to her as him.”
“Just once. But she kept on, like he was alive. Didn’t she know? So I wrote back, and was flooded with letters from her, saying this and that. How sorry she was for treating him like dirt all his life. Well, boo hoo. I wrote that it was okay. I wrote that I forgave her. I forgave her for him, and that’s all it took. And when I answered that I had her book, she sent a lot of money. Lucky for me. I had kept it only because Nicholas always had it with him.”
“What book?”
“Some stupid book about an old battle up north, in Lombardy. I stopped there, actually, when I first got to Italy. Nicholas said it was a special place. But it was nothing much, in my view. I half hoped there was something to be got there.”
“You still have it?”
“The book? What if I do? What’s it worth to you?”
“You’ll see.”