Crime at the Tennis Club

About the middle of the winter the committee of one of the best-known tennis clubs in our town decided to give a grand Gala Ball. The committee, which consisted of Messrs. Lucini, Mastrogiovanni, Costa, Ripandelli and Micheli, set aside a certain sum of money for providing champagne and other drinks and refreshments, and for the hire of a good band, and then went on to draw up a list of those who should be invited. The members of the club belonged for the most part to the class which is commonly called the upper middle class; they were all of them the offspring of rich and respected families and — since one has to have a job of some kind — they all carried on the appearance, anyhow, of some profession or other: and so it was not difficult to assemble, from amongst relations, friends and acquaintances, an adequate number of names, many of which were preceded by titles of nobility of secondary importance but nonetheless decorative that would later give an aristocratic luster to the event in the society columns of the newspapers. At the last moment, however, when there was nothing left to be done but send out the invitations, there suddenly arose — as generally happens — an unforeseen difficulty.

"How about the 'Princess' — aren't we going to invite her?" asked Ripandelli, a young man of about 30, handsome in a somewhat southern style, with glossy black hair, black eyes and a dark, oval face with perfect features; he was known for his resemblance to one of the most celebrated of American film stars and was quite aware of this and made use of it to make an impression upon women.

Mastrogiovanni, Lucini and Micheli approved the idea of inviting the Princess; she would provide an extra bit of fun, they said, possibly the only bit of fun; and with loud bursts of laughter and mutual backslapping they reminded one another of what had happened last time: how the Princess had had so much champagne that she was quite drunk, and someone had hidden her shoes, and she had been forced to wait until the last guests had left so that she could walk out in her stocking feet...

It was only Costa — bird of ill omen, as they called him — the tall, ungainly Costa with big tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on his long nose and his thin cheeks never properly shaved — it was only Costa who protested.

"No," he said, "let her stay at home this time, the Princess ... I had quite enough of her at the last dance. If you want some fun you can go and pay her a visit, but don't do it here..."

His companions rebelled and told him exactly what they thought of him — that he was a spoilsport and a fool and that, in any case, he didn't own the club.

They had been sitting for two hours in the little committee-room and the air was thick with cigarette-smoke; it was warm and damp in the room on account of the fresh (continued on page 66)The Tennis Club(continued from page 63) plaster of the walls and they were all wearing thick sweaters of various colors under their coats. But outside, projecting across the panes of the window, could be seen a single fir branch, so still, so melancholy against the gray background of the sky that there was no need to go over and look out in order to see whether it was raining. Costa rose to his feet.

"I know," he spoke emphatically, "I know your intention is to play some kind of dirty trick on that unfortunate woman ... Well, I tell you once and for all — you're mean cads and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

"Costa, I thought you were more intelligent," Ripandelli declared, without moving from his place.

"And I didn't think you were so evil-minded," replied Costa; he took down his overcoat from its hook and went out without saying good-bye. After five minutes' discussion, the committee decided unanimously to invite the Princess to the ball.

• • •

The ball began a little after 10 o'clock in the evening. It had been raining all day and it was a damp, misty night; down at the far end of the suburban avenue in which the clubhouse stood could be seen, in the dim distance between two dark rows of plane-trees, a glow and a confused movement of lights and vehicles as the guests arrived. In the vestibule a hired manservant relieved them of their coats and wraps, and then the women in their light evening dresses, the men in tail coats, all moved on, talking and laughing, into the large, brilliantly lit ballroom.

This room was of considerable size and reached up to the full height of the building: a gallery with a blue-painted wooden balustrade ran around it at first-floor level, and out of this gallery opened a few small rooms which were used as dressing rooms and for the storage of game equipment. An enormous chandelier in the same style and of the same color as the balustrade hung from the ceiling, and attached to it, for the occasion, were festoons of Venetian lanterns stretching away to the four corners of the room; the wainscot was also painted blue; and at the far end, fitted in underneath the corner of the little staircase leading to the floor above, was the refreshment bar, with its bright-colored rows of bottles and its shining coffee machine.

The Princess, who was not a princess at all but, so it was said, merely a countess (it was also rumored that once upon a time she had moved in high society and had been banished from it because of some ugly story of adultery, elopement and financial ruin) arrived soon after 11 o'clock. Ripandelli, who was sitting with a group of ladies opposite the wide-open door into the vestibule, saw the well-known figure — short, rather squat, with feet turned outward like a web-footed bird — as, with her slightly bent back turned toward him, she handed her cloak to the manservant. "There we are," he thought, and, his heart filled with exultation, he went across through the dancing throng to meet her, reaching her just in time to stop her slapping the face of the manservant, with whom, for some futile reason of her own, she had picked a quarrel.

"Welcome, welcome I" he called to her from the doorway.

"Ah, Ripandelli, come and deliver me from this brute!" she said as she turned toward him. The Princess' face was not beautiful. From beneath a forest of curly hair, cut very short, her black eyes, round and beset with wrinkles, shone out livid and wild-looking; the nostrils of her long, sensual nose were full of hairs; her wide mouth, its lips painted and age-roughened, was unceasingly lavish of brilliant, fatuous, conventional smiles. The Princess dressed in a manner that was at the same time showy and shabby; over her out-of-date dress, with its long skirt and a bodice so tight that the two long, meager swellings of her bosom caught the light, she had thrown a black shawl embroidered with birds, flowers and arabesques of every possible color — in order, perhaps, to conceal an excessively low neckline; and across her forehead she had tied a band, from beneath which her rebellious hair escaped in all directions. Thus adorned, and laden with artificial jewels, she made her entrance into the ballroom, peering ahead through a silver-rimmed eyeglass.

Luckily the turmoil of dancing couples prevented her being noticed. Ripandelli steered her into a corner. "Dear Princess," he said, assuming an impudent tone of voice, "whatever would have happened to us if you hadn't come?"

The deluded expression in her eyes showed clearly that she took quite seriously any stupid thing that was said to her; but out of coquettishness she replied: "You young men try to hook all the women you can ... and the more you catch, the better for you. Isn't that so?"

"Shall we dance, Princess?" asked Ripandelli, rising. He led her on to the floor. "You dance like a feather," said the young man, as he felt the full weight of her body pressing heavily on his arm.

"Everyone tells me that," answered the shrill voice. Crushed against Ripan-delli's starched shirt front the Princess, palpitating, seemed in a ravishment of ecstasy. Ripandelli became bolder. "Well, Princess, when are you going to invite me to your house?"

"I have a very small circle of friends," replied the unfortunate woman, who, notoriously, lived in complete solitude; "only the other day I was saying the same thing to the Duke of L. who was asking the same favor of me ... a very limited circle of carefully selected people. One can't be too careful nowadays, you know."

"Ugly old bitch," thought Ripandelli. "No, no," he went on, aloud, "I don't want to be invited with everybody else. You must let me come and see you in an intimate sort of way ... perhaps in your bedroom."

This was an audacity, but she accepted it without protest. "And if I invite you," she asked, in a voice that was tender and a little breathless owing to the emotion of the dance, "will you promise me to be good?"

"As good as gold."

"Then I'll allow you to take me home this evening ... You have a car, haven't you?"

The dance was finished now, and, as the crowd passed slowly into the refreshment room, Ripandelli mentioned a little private room on the first floor, where a bottle of champagne awaited them. "This way," he said, indicating the staircase; "up here we shall be able to talk more intimately."

"Oh, you're a rascal, you are," she said, hurrying up the stairs and threatening him with her eyeglass; "you think of everything."

The little private room was a small place with rows of white lockers round the walls, in which rackets and tennis balls were usually kept. In the middle, on a table, was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. The young man closed the door, invited the Princess to sit down, and immediately poured her out a drink.

"To the health of the most beautiful of princesses" — he stood facing her as he gave the toast — "and the woman I think about night and day!"

"Here's to your health too!" she replied, bewildered and excited. She had dropped her shawl now, and her shoulders and bosom were displayed. The thin back might have been that of a woman still young, but in front, where the edge of her dress slipped downward with every movement, first on one side and then on the other, the discoloration of the yellowing, wrinkled flesh revealed the ravages of advancing age. Ripandelli, his head resting on his hand, was now gazing at her with two falsely passionate eyes.

"Princess, do you love me?" he asked all of a sudden, in a voice full of emotion.

"What about you?" she replied, with remarkable assurance. Then, as if over (continued on page 80)The Tennis Club(continued from page 66) come by a temptation too strong to be resisted, she stretched out her arm and placed her hand on the back of the young man's neck. "What about you?" she repeated.Ripandelli threw a glance at the closed door; they must have begun dancing again now, he could hear the rhythmic tumult down below.

"My dear," he answered slowly, "I long for you, it's driving me crazy, I'm incapable of thinking or speaking sensibly ..." There was a knock at the door; and then the door opened and Lucini, Micheli, Mastrogiovanni and a fourth man of the name of Jancovich burst into the room. This unexpected fourth was the oldest member of the club, a man of about 50 and already going gray; in figure he was ungainly, with a long, lean, melancholy face, a thin nose, and two deep ironical furrows running down his face from his eyes to his neck. An industrialist, he made a lot of money; he spent the greater part of the day at the tennis club, playing cards; and at the club even the younger men called him by his Christian name, Beniamino. Now, as soon as Jancovich saw Ripan delli and the Princess, he gave, as had been arranged beforehand, a cry of pain and raised his arms above his head.

"What? My son here? And with a woman? And, what's more, with the woman I love?"

Ripandelli turned toward the Princess. "Here's my father," he said; "we're lost!"

"Get out of here!" went on Jancovich in his colorless voice. "Get out of here, you unnatural boy!"

"Father," answered Ripandelli haughtily, "there is only one voice I shall obey, the voice of passion."

"And you, my love," went on Jancovich, turning with a sad, dignified expression toward the Princess, "don't let yourself be taken in by this rogue of a son of mine; come to me instead and lean that charming little head on the breast of your Beniamino, who has never ceased to love you."

Biting his lips hard to prevent himself from laughing, Ripandelli flung himself upon his so-called father, crying out: "You call me a rogue, do you?" There followed a fine scene of wrath and confusion. Jancovich on one side, Ripandelli on the other, held back with difficulty by their friends, pretended to make every possible effort to get at one another and come to blows; cries of "Hold them, hold them, or they'll kill each other" rose above the tumult, together with ill-suppressed bursts of laughter; while the Princess, terrified, cowered back into a corner, her hands clasped together. At last it became possible to calm the two raging antagonists.

"There's nothing to be done about it," said Lucini, stepping forward. "Father and son in love with the same woman: the only thing is for the Princess to make her choice."

So the Princess was asked to give judgment. Undecided, flattered, worried, she came out of her corner with her usual swaying walk, one foot pointing this way, the other that. "I can't choose," she said finally, after a close examination of the two competitors, "because ... because I like you both."

There was laughter and applause. "And me, Princess-do you like me?" asked Lucini suddenly, taking her round the waist. This was the signal for a kind of orgy: father and son were reconciled and embraced each other; the Princess was made to sit down in the middle of them and an abundance of drink was pressed upon her. In a few minutes she was quite tipsy: she was laughing and clapping her hands, and her hair, standing out round her face, made her head look enormous.

The men started asking her sly questions. "Somebody told me," said Micheli at a certain moment, "that you're not a princess, that you're really nothing at all, just the daughter of some little pork-butcher: is that true?"

She was indignant. "That was a slander, and no doubt whoever told you was the son of a pork-butcher himself ... I'd have you know that before the war there was actually a Prince of the blood who sent me a marvelous bunch of orchids, with a note; and the note said: 'To my dear little Adelina from her Gogo.' "

These words were received with shouts of laughter. These five men-who allowed their mistresses, in private, to call them by such names as Nini or Lulu, my little cherub or my little piggy-wig-seemed to consider the nickname of Gogo and the pet name of Adelina as being the height of absurdity and stupidity; they held their sides, they ached with laughing. "Ah Gogo, naughty Go-go," they kept on saying.

The Princess, intoxicated and highly flattered, distributed smiles and glances and taps with her eyeglass in every direction. "Oh Princess, how funny you are!" shouted Lucini right in her face, and she-just as though he had paid her a compliment-laughed. "Oh Princess, my Princess," sang Ripandelli sentimentally; but all of a sudden his face hardened: he put out his hand and mercilessly grasped her breast. Red in the face, she struggled to free herself, but next moment suddenly laughed again and cast such a glance at the young man that he at once released his hold. "Ugh, what a flabby breast," he cried to the others, "it's just like squeezing a rag ... What about undressing her?" Now that the program of jokes was more or less at an end, this proposal met with great success. "Princess," said Lucini, "we've been told that you have an extremely beautiful figure ... Well now, be generous and let us see it. Then we'll die content."

"Come on, Princess," said Jmuovich, in his serious, bleating voice; and without more ado he put his hands on her and started trying to pull the shoulder straps of her dress down over her arms. "We can't allow you to keep your lovely body hidden any longer ... that lovely little pink and white body all full of dimples like the body of a little girl of six ..."

"Oh, you shameless creatures!" said the Princess, laughing. But, after a great deal of insistence, she consented to lower her dress halfway down her bosom: her eyes were shining and the corners of her mouth were trembling with pleasure.

"It's true I have a nice figure, isn't it?" she said to Ripandelli. But the young man made a grimace, and the others exclaimed that it was not enough, they wanted to see more; and Lucini gave a tug at the top her dress. Then-whether it was that she became ashamed of displaying her already middle-aged body, or that a flash of consciousness, penetrating the fumes of wine, showed her to herself as she actually was, flushed and disheveled, her breast half bared, surrounded by brutalized men in that little white room-all of a sudden she began to resist and to struggle: "Leave me alone, I tell you, leave me alone!" she commanded, trying to release herself. But the sport had excited the five men. Two held her by the arms, while the other three pulled her dress right down to her waist, exposing a torso yellowish and puckered with flabby sallow breasts.

"God, how ugly she is!" exclaimed Micheli; "and what a lot of clothes she's got on! She's all bundled up with clothes ... she must have at least four pairs of drawers on ..." The others were laughing, exhilarated by the spectacle of this unattractive, angry nakedness, and were trying to free her hips of their encumbering mass of clothes. This was not easy, for the Princess was struggling violently; the crimson face beneath the fleece of hair was pitiable, so clearly did it express terror, desperation and shame. But this resistance on her part, instead of moving Ripandelli to pity, irritated him like the spasms of a wounded beast that refuses to die. "You ugly bitch, are you going to stay still or not?" he shouted at her suddenly, and, to give force to his words, he took a champagne glass from the table and dashed the iced wine over the unfortunate woman's face and chest. The (continued on page 133)The Tennis club(continued from page 80) abrupt aspersion gave rise to a plaintive, bitter cry and a frenzied burst of resistance. Somehow or other she managed to free herself from the hands of her tormentors and, naked to the waist, waving her arms above her head, her hair darting out like flames, her disordered mass of clothes trailing downward from her hips, she hurled herself toward the door.

Astonishment, for one moment, prevented the five men from acting. But Ripandelli shouted, "Catch her or she'll be out in the gallery!" and they threw themselves, all five of them, upon the woman, whose escape had been barred by a precautionary locking of the door. Micheli seized her by one arm, Mastro-giovanni round the waist, Ripandelli actually by the hair. They dragged her back again to the table. Her resistance had infuriated them, and they felt a cruel desire to beat her, to stick pins into her, to torment her. "Now we want you naked," shouted Ripandelli into her face; "naked — that's how we want you." She stared at him with terrified eyes, still struggling; then, all at once, she began to scream.

First she uttered a hoarse cry, then another like a sob, and finally, unexpectedly, a third of extreme shrillness, a piercing "Ay-eee!" Micheli and Mastro-giovanni, frightened, let go of her. As for Ripandelli, possibly it was only at that moment that he became conscious, for the first time, of the seriousness of the situation in which, with his companions, he had become involved. It was as though an enormous hand had squeezed his heart — with all five fingers, as one squeezes a sponge. A terrible rage came over him, a bloody hatred for this woman who had now flung herself against the door again: shouting, he showered blows upon her with his fists, and he himself, at the same time, was smitten with a black sense of hopelessness, with the kind of anguish that says, "There's nothing to be done, the worst has happened, better accept the inevitable ..." He had a moment's hesitation; then, with a hand that did not seem to belong to him, so independent of his will power did it appear, he seized the empty bottle from the table and brought it down with his full strength, just once, on the nape of her neck.

She sank to the floor across the doorway, in a manner that left no doubt as to the efficacy of the blow, and lay on her right side, her forehead against the closed door, her clothes spread round her like a heap of rags. Standing near her, the bottle still in his hand, Ripandelli concentrated the whole of his attention upon her back. At the level of her armpit there was a mole the size of a lentil; this detail, and perhaps also the fact that her thick mass of hair rendered her face invisible, made him imagine, for a second, that he had struck someone quite different and for quite a different reason — for instance, some splendid-looking girl with a perfect figure whom he had loved too dearly and in vain and upon whose inanimate limbs he would throw himself weeping and remorseful, bitterly remorseful, and whom it might perhaps be possible to bring back to life. But then the torso gave a strange jerk and abruptly turned over on its back, showing the woman's bosom with one breast Tailing in each direction and- horrible sight — her lace. Her hair concealed her eyes ("luckily," he thought), but her mouth, half open in a curiously expressionless way, reminded him all too vividly of certain slaughtered animals that he had seen as a child. "She's dead," he thought calmly, at the same time frightened by his own calmness. Then he tinned and put the bottle back on the table.

The other four, who had sat clown at the far end of the room by the window, looked at him uncomprehendingly. The table in the middle of the room prevented them from having a clear view of the Princess' body: they had seen only the blow. Then, with a kind of cautious curiosity, Lucini rose and, leaning forward, looked toward the door. The thing was there across the threshold. His companions saw him turn pale. "This lime we've gone a bit too far," he said in a low, frightened voice without looking at them.

Micheli, who was sitting in the farthest corner, rose to his feet. He was a medical student, and his privileged position in this respect gave him, as it were, a feeling of responsibility. "Perhaps she's only fainted," he said in a clear voice; "we must bring her round ... wait a moment." He look a half-full glass from the table and bent over the woman's body, while the others formed a group round him. They watched him as he passed his arm under her back, then lilted her and shook her, and poured a little wine between her lips. But her head swung from side to side, her arms hung lifelessly from her shoulders. Micheli laid her down on the floor again and put his ear to her chest. After a moment he raised himself again. "I think she's dead," he said, still flushed from the effort he had made.

There was silence. "For God's sake, cover her up!" suddenly cried Lucini, unable to take his eyes from the body.

"Cover her up yourself!"

Again there was silence. From down below the sound of the band came distinctly to their ears; but now it was more subdued, it must be a tango they were playing. The five men looked at each other. Of them all, only Ripandelli was now silting down. He was staring straight ahead of him, his shoulders bent, his head in his hands: he could see the black trousers of his friends forming a circle round him, but they were not close enough together, so that it was impossible not to see through the spaces between them the prostrate mass of the body lying against the white-painted door at the other side of the room.

"What a mad thing to do," began Masirogiovanni as though protesting against some ridiculous idea, turning at the same time to Ripandelli; "with the bottle! ... whatever came over you at that moment?"

"I had nothing to do with it," said someone in a trembling voice. Ripan-delli, without moving, knew it was Lucini who spoke. "You're all witnesses that I was sitting over at the window."

It was Jancovich, the oldest of them all, with his melancholy face and flat voice, who answered him. "Yes, yes," he said, "argue that point, my dear chaps, as to who it was and who it wasn't ... Then right in the middle of this interesting discussion someone will come in and we shall all go and finish our argument in some other place."

"Well, we shall go there in any case," said Ripandelli somberly.

Jancovich made a gesture both violent and comic. "This chap's mad," he said. "Just because he himself wants to go to prison, he wants everyone else to go there too." For a brief instant the whole of his thin face was deeply furrowed by laughter. "Now just listen to what I say."

"???"

"Well now ... The Princess lived alone, didn't she? So it will be a week or so before her disappearance is noticed. We'll go down now and dance, and behave as if nothing had happened ... When the ball is over, we'll get her into my car and take her right away somewhere, outside the town. Or perhaps ... perhaps we could throw her into the river. Then it'll be thought that she killed herself. She lived all alone ... in a moment of depression ... these things do happen. In any case, if people ask us where she is, we'll say that she left the room at a certain moment, and has not been seen since. Are we all agreed?"

The others turned pale with fear. The woman was dead — that they knew: but the idea of having committed a crime, of having killed someone, and of being on that account in a stale of guilt, had not yet entered their minds. They felt they were Ripandelli's accomplices merely in the matter of amusement, not of murder. The suggestion that the corpse should be thrown into the river brought them abruptly face to face with reality. Lucini, Micheli and Mastrogiovanni protested, declaring that they had nothing to do with it, that they did not wish to have anything to do with it, that Ripandelli must extricate himself as best he could.

"All right then," answered Jancovich. who had been mentally calculating the legal possibilities of the position, "that means that we shall all meet again, in court: Ripandelli will be found guilty of murder, but we nonetheless shall get a few years each as accessories to the dime." They were silent, in consternation. Lucini, who was the youngest of them all, was white in the face, and his eyes were filled with tears. Suddenly he shook his fist in the air, "I knew it would end like this," he cried; "I knew it ...Oh, if only I had never come!"

But it was only too evident that Jan-covich was right. They had to come to a decision: at any moment someone might come in. The opinion of the oldest man present was approved and, all of a sudden, as though they wished to stifle thought by action, all five of them started with alacrity to eliminate all traces of the crime. The bottle and glasses were locked up in a cupboard; the corpse was dragged, not without difficulty, into a corner and covered with a large towel; there was a small looking-glass on the wall and each of them went over and examined himself to see if he was clean and tidy. Then, one after the other, they left the room; the light was turned off, the door locked and the key taken by Jancovich.

The ball, at that moment, was at the height of its brilliance. The room was crowded, there were clustering groups of people seated round the walls; others were perching on the window-sills: in the middle the multitude of dancers swirled hither and thither: a thousand "shooting stars" were flying from every direction and people were pelting each other with little multicolored balls of cotton-wool; from each corner came shrill and strident sounds of toy whistles and pasteboard pipes: balloons of every color were swaying amongst the paper streamers hanging from the chandelier, and every now and then one of them would explode with a sharp pop, as the dancing couples competed for them, struggling to snatch them from one another and crowding round anyone who had preserved his own balloon intact. Laughter, voices, sounds, colors, shapes, the blue clouds of tobacco smoke — all these to the bemused senses of the five men who leaned over the balcony and gazed down from above into the luminous cavern, became fused into the golden haze of unattainable Arabian Nights festivity creating the effect of a paradise of irresponsibility and frivolity which to them was lost, forever lost. Whatever efforts they might make, their thoughts them back, forced them again into the little room full of lockers, with the wine-glasses on the table, the chairs in disorder, the window shut, and, on the floor in one corner, the corpse. But at last they pulled themselves together and went down the stairs.

"Now 1 do beg of you," said Jancovich, as a final injunction, "be animated, dance, enjoy yourselves as though nothing had happened." Then, led by Mastrogiovanni, they all five went in and mingled with the crowd, indistinguishable now from the other male dancers who, dressed like them in black and holding their partners in their arms, filed past the platform on which the band played, in the slow rhythm of the dance.