Elena smiled. “Voi parlate italiano?”
“Not as well as I thought, it seems,” he said in Italian. “Your local dialect takes some getting used to.”
“Well, you speak it a lot better than Jumbo does. Will you tell him I’m going to the ladies’ room, please?”
“Of course.”
“What did she say?” Jeffries asked as Elena left them.
“She said she was going to powder her nose. Look, is she really a schoolteacher?”
“Why shouldn’t she be?”
James thought of mentioning what Jackson had told him the previous night about Zi’ Teresa’s celebrated glass-eyed employee, but Jeffries was glaring at him fiercely and he thought better of it. It was possible, after all, that this was how schoolteachers dressed in Naples. “Perhaps I’m mixing her up with someone else,” he said lamely.
“Actually,” Jeffries said, “I wanted to talk to you about Elena. There’s a bit of a language barrier, you see.”
James tried to look as if this possibility had only just occurred to him. “Really?”
“I need a few phrases translated. Only some of it’s a bit delicate.”
“That’s all right,” James said dubiously.
“For example, how would one say, ‘I’m feeling a bit tired actually’?”
“Adesso son un po’stanco.”
“And what about, ah, ‘That’s very nice and all that, but I’d really rather you didn’t’?”
“Well, it’s difficult without knowing the exact context, but it’s something like, ‘È molto bello ma preferirei che no lo facessi.’”
“And what about ‘It’s actually getting rather painful now’?”
“Sta diventando un po’doloroso.”
“And ‘Please stop’?”
“Smettila, per favore.”
Jeffries’s lips moved as he silently practiced the unfamiliar phrases. “Well, that should cover it,” he said at last.
Elena rejoined them, her nose sufficiently powdered. She and Jeffries smiled at each other coquettishly, holding hands across the table. “Tell me, James,” she said in Italian, “how do I tell him ‘Aspetta!’?”
“Er—‘Wait,’ I suppose.”
“Wet?” she said, trying it for size.
“Wait.”
“Wayt. Wayt! And how do I say ‘Non smettere!’?”
“Don’t stop.”
“And ‘Facciamolo ancora ma più piano lentamente’?”
“That would be—‘Let’s do that again but more slowly.’”
“Slewly,” she repeated. “Slooowly. Good. And ‘Svegliati, caro’?”
“Wake up, please, darling.”
“Wek erp plis dah’leeng. OK, I think I have everything.”
“Jumbo?”
“What?”
“Anything else I can assist with?”
“No, I think I’m fully kitted up now. Thanks.”
“In that case,” James said, “I’d better be getting back. Can I pay my share?”
Jumbo rolled up his left sleeve. His forearm bore no fewer than six wristwatches, each of them, James saw, of impressive proportions. “No need, old chap,” he said, unbuckling one and laying it on the table. “I met some Germans recently, up in Abruzzo. This one’s on them.”
As James entered the Palazzo Satriano he became aware of a commotion echoing down the marble staircase. It sounded as if there was some kind of party going on—no, not a party, he decided: The voices he could hear were raised in anger and alarm, some of them shrilly.
He rounded the first-floor landing and found his way blocked by a mass of women—young women, all dressed to the nines. They appeared to be pushing and shoving with the intention of getting closer to the door of the FSS office. Near the front, a fight had broken out, which provided an opportunity for those not directly involved to try to slip past the protagonists and take their places, which in turn was leading to yet more altercations. With some difficulty, James battled his way past waves of scent, screeching voices and glossy black hair.
“What on earth is going on?” he asked when he reached the safety of his office.
Carlo shrugged. “It’s three o’clock.”
“I’m aware of the time, Carlo. Why are there so many women outside?”
“They are the fidanzate. The women who want to marry Allied servicemen.”
“What, all of them?”
“No, these are just the most recent ones, the ones who have not yet been given a time when they will be interviewed.”
“Then—good Lord—how many have we already arranged to see?”
Carlo rummaged in a cupboard and produced a thick sheaf of papers. “Forty? Fifty?”
“And how long has this been going on?”
Carlo shrugged again. His shrugs, James was coming to realize, were remarkably expressive, almost a dialect in themselves. Sometimes they communicated that Carlo did not know the answer to whatever you were asking him, but more often they suggested that he either did not wish, or did not deign, to enter into discussion on the subject.
No wonder Jackson had been unable to do anything about the black market, James thought. All his time must have been spent on processing would-be war brides. The uncharitable thought crossed James’s mind that Jackson, knowing he was about to be posted home, might even have allowed a backlog to build up, secure in the knowledge that it would be his successor who would have to deal with it. “Right,” he said. “The first thing to do is to make a list. Carlo, could you go outside and tell those ladies to form an orderly queue?”
Carlo’s face was expressionless. “I could. But first you will need to explain to them what an orderly queue is.”
It took nearly three hours just to take the girls’ names and addresses, and by the end of it James was exhausted.
At seven o’clock precisely, a tiny Italian man entered James’s office. He was wearing a very ancient tuxedo and a white bow tie, which was almost exactly the same size and shape as the mustache on his upper lip.
“Dinner she served,” he said darkly, as if announcing the death of a favorite pet.
“Ah,” James said. “You must be Malloni.”
“I ’ave the honor, yes. Wet there.”
Malloni vanished, only to reappear a moment later with a steaming tureen in his arms. “Ees dinner.”
“Right. Where do you usually…” James gestured at the table, which was still covered in Jackson’s papers, albeit sorted into piles. He watched as Malloni pushed them haphazardly toward the center of the table to make room for his tureen. From behind the door he produced a small bronze gong, which he struck with great ceremony three times.
One by one a handful of other British officers appeared and introduced themselves as his dining companions. Kernick, Walters, Hughes and French occupied offices in various other parts of the building, carrying out bureaucratic duties even more obscure than his own. They all seemed quite haggard with exhaustion.
Malloni produced some rather green-looking silver cutlery and some ancient chinaware and proceeded to lay the table, putting a plate in front of each person. There was also a candelabrum, which he did not light, and a number of smaller dishes with lids. James touched the plate in front of him. It was quite cold.
Eventually Malloni wrapped a white cloth over his left arm like a matador’s cape, and with his other hand triumphantly raised the lid of the tureen.
It contained, as James had suspected it might, several portions of “Meat and Vegetables” removed from their tins, mixed together and warmed through. Surreptitiously, he lifted the lid on one of the side dishes. It, too, contained “Meat and Vegetables.” He tried another. “Meat and Vegetables” again. He looked up. Malloni was going round the table, standing next to the left side of each man and holding the tureen for them to spoon some onto their plate.