66
PARTI SAN REVIEW
had not forgotten it at the time, but I was also maintaining the proper dis–
tance £1-om someone else's private matters. "
"Good for you,
bravo.
And then Melton returned ti'om England .. ."
"Ten days later, in mid-September. He was in worse shape than be–
fore his departure. He hardly paid attention to anything that was said, his
head bent over his chest and his eyelids lowered. When you spoke to him, he
would start up as if £1-om sleep or reverie. He was petulant with Patano. The
term that probably described his cond ition most precisely was "embroiled,"
but embroiled in what? In any case it was something he could not or did not
want to get disentangled from.
As
someone standing on the sidelines and not
knowing what it was about, I found the situation hard to bear. I decided to
stop going to Villa Melton, but I did not keep this resolution very long. Mal–
colm called on the morning of October 16th to ask me
to
lunch. There was
such urgency in his voice that I cou ldn 't say no. It was a sunny day, almost •
summery; there wasn't a trace of autumn in the air. After lunch Patano
suggested we go down to the rocks on the shore below the terrace, and he
saw
to
cleaning up the table himself andjoined us a quarter of an hour later. I
lay down in the shade in a hollow between the rocks, Malcolm and Tom
were sitting on a small bench on the fl at rock platform. The bay was empty
at that time of the day - it was about four in the afternoon. Suddenly a
speeding motorboat shot out from behind the headland from the direction of
Procida; when it came level with the villa it made a sharp turn in our direc–
tion and gradually reduced speed. It slowly approached the little inlet at the
foot of the rocks but kept the engine running. Malcolm and Tom got up fi-om
the bench and looked down below. Then Patano gave Malcolm a violent
shove, pulled him down on the rocks and covered him with his body. A shot
rang out. The motorboat spun half a round, again gathered speed and raced
off in the direction ofCapri. I leapt out of the hollow, and the two of them got
up from the rocks. Malcolm clasped his friend in his arms. Over and over
again he stammered out Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.' That makes you
smile?"
"Pay no attention, please. I couldn 't hold back a sm ile at that truly
moving scene."
"And at my naivete. Yes, I can't deny that. I can see now that the
whole thing was probably staged, but at the time I had the same reaction as
Malcolm."
"Melton 's faith in his young compan ion was restored. He stopped tor–
turing and flailing himselfwith doubt and uncertainty."
"So much so that life in the villa was idyllic again. When Patano left. the
villa a week later never to return , Malcolm's idea was, I suspect, that some–
how he had to make recompense (or his behavior and pay for that ultimate
