Pictures of Fidelman Read Free Page A

rapt attention.
    Fidelman at last reached the end of the long spaghetto, patted his mouth with a large napkin, and paused in his eating.
    “Would you care for a plateful?”
    Susskind, eyes hungry, hesitated. “Thanks,” he said.
    “Thanks yes or thanks no?”
    “Thanks no.” The eyes looked away.
    Fidelman resumed eating, carefully winding his fork; he had had not much practice with this sort of thing and was soon involved in the same dilemma with the spaghetti. Seeing Susskind still watching him, he soon became tense.
    “We are not Italians, professor,” the refugee said. “Cut it in small pieces with your knife. Then you will swallow it easier.”
    “I’ll handle it as I please,” Fidelman responded testily. “This is my business. You attend to yours.”
    “My business,” Susskind sighed, “don’t exist. This
morning I had to let a wonderful chance get away from me. I had a chance to buy ladies’ stockings at three hundred lire if I had money to buy half a gross. I could easily sell them for five hundred a pair. We would have made a nice profit.”
    “The news doesn’t interest me.”
    “So if not ladies’ stockings, I can also get sweaters, scarves, men’s socks, also cheap leather goods, ceramics —whatever would interest you.”
    “What interests me is what you did with the money I gave you for a sweater.”
    “It’s getting cold, professor,” Susskind said worriedly. “Soon comes the November rains, and in winter the tramontana. I thought I ought to save your money to buy a couple of kilos of chestnuts and a bag of charcoal for my burner. If you sit all day on a busy street corner you can sometimes make a thousand lire. Italians like hot chestnuts. But if I do this I will need some warm clothes, maybe a suit.”
    “A suit,” Fidelman remarked sarcastically, “why not an overcoat?”
    “I have a coat, poor that it is, but now I need a suit. How can anybody come in company without a suit?”
    Fidelman’s hand trembled as he laid down his fork. “To my mind you are irresponsible and I won’t be saddled with you. I have the right to choose my own problems and the right to my privacy.”
    “Don’t get excited, professor, it’s bad for your digestion.
Eat in peace.” Susskind got up and left the trattoria.
    Fidelman. hadn’t the appetite to finish his spaghetti. He paid the bill, waited ten minutes, then departed, glancing around from time to time to see if he were being followed. He headed down the sloping street to a small piazza where he saw a couple of cabs. Not that he could afford one, but he wanted to make sure Susskind didn’t tail him back to his new hotel. He would warn the clerk at the desk never to allow anybody of the refugee’s name or description even to make inquiries about him.
    Susskind, however, stepped out from behind a plashing fountain at the center of the little piazza. Modestly addressing the speechless Fidelman, he said, “I don’t wish to take only, professor. If I had something to give you, I would gladly give it to you.”
    “Thanks,” snapped Fidelman, “just give me some peace of mind.”
    “That you have to find yourself,” Susskind answered.
    In the taxi Fidelman decided to leave for Florence the next day, rather than at the end of the week, and once and for all be done with the pest.
    That night, after returning to his room from an unpleasurable walk in the Trastevere—he had a headache from too much wine at supper—Fidelman found his door ajar and at once recalled that he had forgotten to lock it, although he had as usual left the key with the desk clerk. He was at first frightened, but when he
tried the armadio in which he kept his clothes and suitcase, it was shut tight. Hastily unlocking it, he was relieved to see his blue gabardine suit—a one-button jacket affair, the trousers a little frayed on the cuffs but all in good shape and usable for years to come—hanging amid some shirts the maid had pressed for him; and when he examined the