F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night [113]
“Are there any English? Are there any Americans? Are there any English? Are there any—oh, my God! You dirty Wops!”
His voice died away and she heard a dull sound of beating on the door. Then the voice began again.
“Are there any Americans? Are there any English?”
Following the voice she ran through the arch into a court, whirled about in momentary confusion and located the small guard-room whence the cries came. Two carabinieri started to their feet, but Baby brushed past them to the door of the cell.
“Dick!” she called. “What’s the trouble?”
“They’ve put out my eye,” he cried. “They handcuffed me and then they beat me, the goddamn—the—”
Flashing around Baby took a step toward the two carabinieri.
“What have you done to him?” she whispered so fiercely that they flinched before her gathering fury.
“Non capisco inglese.”
In French she execrated them; her wild, confident rage filled the room, enveloped them until they shrank and wriggled from the garments of blame with which she invested them. “Do something! Do something!”
“We can do nothing until we are ordered.”
“Bene. BAY-NAY! BENE!”
Once more Baby let her passion scorch around them until they sweated out apologies for their impotence, looking at each other with the sense that something had after all gone terribly wrong. Baby went to the cell door, leaned against it, almost caressing it, as if that could make Dick feel her presence and power, and cried: “I’m going to the Embassy, I’ll be back.” Throwing a last glance of infinite menace at the carabinieri she ran out.
She drove to the American Embassy where she paid off the taxi- driver upon his insistence. It was still dark when she ran up the steps and pressed the bell. She had pressed it three times before a sleepy English porter opened the door to her.
“I want to see some one,” she said. “Any one—but right away.”
“No one’s awake, Madame. We don’t open until nine o’clock.”
Impatiently she waved the hour away.
“This is important. A man—an American has been terribly beaten. He’s in an Italian jail.”
“No one’s awake now. At nine o’clock—”
“I can’t wait. They’ve put out a man’s eye—my brother-in-law, and they won’t let him out of jail. I must talk to some one—can’t you see? Are you crazy? Are you an idiot, you stand there with that look in your face?”
“Hime unable to do anything, Madame.”
“You’ve got to wake some one up!” She seized him by the shoulders and jerked him violently. “It’s a matter of life and death. If you won’t wake some one a terrible thing will happen to you—”
“Kindly don’t lay hands on me, Madame.”
From above and behind the porter floated down a weary Groton voice.
“What is it there?”
The porter answered with relief.
“It’s a lady, sir, and she has shook me.” He had stepped back to speak and Baby pushed forward into the hall. On an upper landing, just aroused from sleep and wrapped in a white embroidered Persian robe, stood a singular young man. His face was of a monstrous and unnatural pink, vivid yet dead, and over his mouth was fastened what appeared to be a gag. When he saw Baby he moved his head back into a shadow.
“What is it?” he repeated.
Baby told him, in her agitation edging forward to the stairs. In the course of her story she realized that the gag was in reality a mustache bandage and that the man’s face was covered with pink cold cream, but the fact fitted quietly into the nightmare. The thing to do, she cried passionately, was for him to come to the jail with her at once and get Dick out.
“It’s a bad business,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed conciliatingly. “Yes?”
“This trying to fight the police.” A note of personal affront crept into his voice, “I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done until nine o’clock.”
“Till nine o’clock,” she repeated aghast. “But you can do something, certainly! You can come to the jail with me and see that they don