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“Well, tell us a little about the movie,” said Cantabile.

“I’ll try. Just to see how good my memory is,” I said. “The thing started with Amundsen the polar explorer and Umberto Nobile. In Mussolini’s time Nobile was an Air Force officer, an engineer, a dirigible commander, a brave man. In the Twenties he and Amundsen headed an expedition over the North Pole, and flew from Norway to Seattle. But they were rivals and came to hate each other. On the next expedition, with Mussolini’s backing, Nobile went it alone. Only his lighter-than-air ship crashed in the Arctic and his crew were scattered over the ice floes. When Amundsen heard of this, he said, ‘My comrade Umberto Nobile’ —whom he detested, mind you—’is down at sea. I shall rescue him.’ So he chartered a French plane and filled it with equipment. The pilot warned him it was overloaded and wouldn’t fly. Like Sir Patrick Spens, I remember saying to Humboldt.”

“What Spens?”

“Just a poem,” Polly told Cantabile. “And Amundsen was the fellow who beat the Scott expedition to the South Pole.”

Pleased to have an educated dolly to brief him, Cantabile took the patrician attitude that drudges and bookworms would give him what trifling historical information he needed.

“The French pilot warned him, but Amundsen said, ‘Don’t teach me how to run a rescue expedition.’ So the plane rose from the runway but it fell into the sea. Everyone was killed.”

“Is that the picture? But what about the guys on the ice?”

“The men on the ice sent out radio messages and these were picked up by the Russians. An icebreaker named the Krassin was sent to find them. It cruised among the floes and rescued two men, an Italian and a Swede. There had been a third survivor— where was he? The explanations given were fishy and the Italian was suspected of cannibalism. The Russian doctor aboard the Krassin pumped his stomach and under the miscroscope he identified human tissue. Well, there was a frightful scandal. A jar containing the contents of this fellow’s stomach was put on display in Red Square with a huge sign: “This is how fascist imperialist capitalist dogs devour each other. Only the proletariat knows morality brotherhood and self-sacrifice!”

“What the hell kind of movie would this make,” said Cantabile. “So far it’s a real dumdum idea.”

“I told you.”

“Yes, but now you’re sore at me, and you’re glaring. You think I’m a moron, in your department. I’m not artistic and I’m unfit to have an opinion.”

“This is only background,” I said. “The picture, as Humboldt and I worked it out, opened in a Sicilian village. The cannibal, whom Humboldt and I called Signor Caldofreddo, is now a kindly old man and sells ice cream, the kids love him, he has an only daughter who’s a beauty and a darling. Here nobody remembers the Nobile expedition. But a Danish journalist turns up to interview the old guy. He’s writing a book about the Krassin rescue. The old man meets him in secret and says, ‘Leave me alone. I’ve been a vegetarian for fifty years. I churn ice cream. I am an old man. Don’t disgrace me now. Find a different subject. Life is full of hysterical situations. You don’t need mine. Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace.’ “

“So the Amundsen and Nobile part of it is worked around this?” said Polly.

“Humboldt admired Preston Sturges. He loved The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and also The Great McGinty, with Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff, and Humboldt’s idea was to work in Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, and even the Pope.”

“How the Pope?” said Cantabile.

“The Pope gave Nobile a large cross to drop on the North Pole. And we saw the movie as a vaudeville and farce but with elements of Oedipus at Colonus in it. Violent spectacular sinners in old age acquire magical properties, and when they come to die they have the power to curse and to bless.”

“If it’s supposed to be funny, leave the Pope out of it,” said Cantabile.

“Backed into a corner, the old Caldofreddo flares up. He makes an attempt on the journalist’s life. He pries loose a boulder on a mountainside. But then he has a change of heart and throws himself