Part 1 — II

EVERYONE had to toil up to the Père Lachaise cemetery to be present at the funeral orations. The only part of the journey that Lewis really liked was round the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, at the sight of the negro with his gold clock in his stomach over the Nègre clock factory, of the flights of flaking steps which rose and fell like switchback railways, and in their reflections beneath the curves of the asphalt reminding him of the sloping of old market gardens; of the huge Empire houses built with the stones of the Bastille, and spattered here and there by rifle s during days when history was being made.

The hearse, behind its team of horses and the coachman in soot-black, was sheathed in a dull sombreness in which only the mouths of the horses showed as damp, pink slits. Lewis watched the setting of the swollen sun tinging the spokes of the wheels, the buckled shoes of the master of ceremonies, the transparent orchids and the autumn foliage which left the scent of damp forests behind it. Suddenly Lewis felt himself seized by the arm. He freed himself with his elbow. But whoever it was returned to the attack. So he gripped the insinuated hand and kept it a prisoner in his own.

The man whom Lewis captured was a little red-headed man with scallop-shaped whiskers spread over his cheeks. A Neapolitan of the undone-trouser kind and Paris correspondent of several papers in Southern Italy, he was an exceedingly clever go-between who had lived in Paris for several years without either making a fortune or going to prison. His name was Pastafina.

Lewis knew him of old.

"Why! Its Pastafina."

"Just now walking behind you hat in hand," said Pastafina, "I studied the shape of your head. In spite of everything you have the skull of an intelligent man; so I am going to talk seriously to you."

Signor Pastifina expressed himself with as many gestures as an Italian station master trying to make a train start (at least at the time when Italian trains never did start). Not daring to smoke openly in the procession he hid his cigarette in the palm of his hand, like sentries on duty do.

According as the quarters through which the hearse passed became poorer, the flowers covering it created more and more sensation.

"He's got a fine escort," said the costermongers, nodding at the dead man, "but he's got to go all the same."

"Listen. It's just the undertaking for a gambler, a lucky gambler. For you. I was born in Naples, but my parents were Sicilian, and I've always kept in touch with Sicily. You didn't know that? Well, what you are not unaware of is that as a result of the Visocchi Law, which applies both to the mainland and to Sicily, all large estates not under cultivation were expropriated in 1920 for the benefit of the peasants. Now I have a brother, Arsenio Pastafina, who, after prospecting in Mexico and returning ruined to his own country, became general secretary of our agricultural syndicate at San Lucido. Now follow me closely; in this Sicilian commune there was an estate of about five thousand acres belonging to the ducal family of Montecervato (a branch of the Palmi family) which was about to escheat to the State. Rather than this the owner preferred to sell it at a low price, and my brother bought it from him secretly. The property is four hours' mule ride from Caltabellotta, on the south coast; you follow a track bordered by fig-trees and those laurel trees that recall the arms of the first Siculi. Not one of your healthy-looking French roads, but one of those upward sloping southern roads covered with open sores like the back of an old donkey ..."

(What with the Château d'Eau Barracks, and the pale sun caught in the network of overhead tram wires, the Place de la République was a horrible sight. Is there anything quite so out of place as this in Paris?)

" ... sloping upwards, I say, beneath the sky transparent with heat and fringed with yellowish green on the horizon. You might almost think that there was already sulphur in the air. In the distance smoke rises from some sacrifice, one knows not what ...

"Allow me to precede you along the road to show you the way.

"I will pass over the various specimens of antiquity, a Saracen castle, a Norman basilica, itself built between the limbs of a Temple of Juno. We have arrived. Behold us in a desert at the foot of stony moraines coming down from the mountains. In the distance a glittering sword blade rests on this desert: the sea. Cast your eyes down. Hardly had my brother taken possession of the property this summer, than for want of something better to do he reopened some Punic works six weeks ago, which were abandoned twenty-two centuries before. And what do you think happened? He discovered what are possibly the richest sulphur and rock salt deposits in the whole of Sicily. So far everything has been kept very quiet. My brother has only prospected the ground and taken a few preliminary precautions. Naturally he cannot develop the place himself. He quite realizes that to go into partnership spells failure, as would also leasing it; to say nothing of capital being tied up, even if he could find any. So he wants to sell outright."

Behind the hearse and the smell of the lilac wreaths surrounding the procession with a false sense of springtime, Pastafina drew a resinous looking object from the pocket of his pitch-black Raglan overcoat.

"The sample is amazingly rich; it will catch fire a yard away, and burns with a beautiful blue flame. What a find, caro mio! I have got an eight days' option. I was just off to London when I saw you."

Lewis whistled softly to himself for a minute or two, wondering whether he could find out whether any subsidiary ores were present. Then he said abruptly:

"Any trace of mercury?"

"I don't think so."

"Any barytes."

"Yes."

"What do you want for your option?"

"A thousand pounds sterling."

"When do you want to know by?"

"Now, at once. Otherwise I start at three o'clock for London by aeroplane."

Pastafina plucked out his words one by one as though they were the strings of a guitar.

Lewis took his fountain pen from his pocket and, still walking along, signed a cheque on his silk hat.

"And now," he said, "let's break the ranks as one used to at school, and go and have a vermouth without anyone seeing us."