Street Boys (11 page)

24

STAZIONE ZOOLOGICA E ACQUARIO, NAPLES
SEPTEMBER 26, 1943

The zoo and the aquarium, once considered the most beautiful and prestigious in all Europe, stood in near ruin, their frescoes and underwater world blasted into mounds of cracked cement and dust piles by the bombing raids. Rivers of dirty water flowed down the sides of the walls and flooded into the main hall of the aquarium, serving as a haven for rats and human waste. The structure had been funded in 1872 by Anton Dohrn, a young German with a love of nature, and constructed by A. von Hildebrandt to be a home to species that swam only within the cool waters of the Gulf of Naples. Prior to the war, it was a place of pride for Neapolitans and a favorite visiting place for school children out on a day trip.

Four Nazi soldiers were sitting in a circle on the cold bare cement floor of a darkened tunnel. They had moved into the city earlier that day, coming down from the hills, one of the heavily armed advance teams sent in by Colonel Von Klaus to assess any trouble brewing on the streets of Naples. The units were to set themselves up in choice locations that would allow them to inflict the most amount of damage in the least amount of time. They were each equipped with three cases of dynamite, six dozen high-impact grenades, scope rifles, two flame throwers and a bazooka.

“We could look for a drier place to hide,” one of the soldiers, Hans Zimmler, said. He glanced behind him, at the water building up and the large rats swimming in debris. Zimmler, like many of the soldiers under Von Klaus, was a young but experienced fighter. He had served with the colonel since the early days of the campaign, when Nazi victory was considered a divine right. “That water level keeps rising, it could pose a problem for us.”

“That’s why no one will look for us here,” a second soldier, Eric Tippler, said. “From this stairwell alone we can cover both the entrance and the exit. Plus we have a clear view of the streets below. We can target anyone in our sites up to three hundred yards.” Tippler was in his mid-twenties, the long scar running down the right side of his face the result not of a wound but of a botched birth. He was the sort of man who thrived in wartime, finding solace in the eye of a rifle scope, pleasure from the pull of the trigger and the death of an enemy.

The other two soldiers, equally as young, as experienced and as deadly with a weapon, remained silent, content to let Tippler and Zimmler argue over the mundane issues of position. They sat with their backs against a stone wall, rifles resting across their laps, helmets tilted over their eyes, indifferent to the conversation around them. They were there to cause harm to the enemy. Anything else was merely a distraction.

“Our weapons are of no use to us if we can’t keep them dry,” Zimmler said. “It’s better to move now than to wait until we’re in the middle of a fight.”

Tippler shrugged. “The water is from a busted pipe. It should rise another inch, maybe two at the most, and we can use it to our advantage. We can hear as well as see anyone coming at us from behind. And if the rats are a concern, we can always just shoot them. This is the best place for us and where we should stay until the colonel has completed his task.”

Zimmler thought about it for a few silent moments, then nodded. “I’ll look for a ground-level place to set up the flame thrower. We’ll move the bazooka to the highest point we can find. The grenades we should scatter throughout the middle. This way we can attack from all levels.”

Tippler patted Zimmler on the shoulder and smiled as he saw that the other two soldiers were now sound asleep. “You and I go to the roof,” he said. “We leave our two lazy friends down here to catch up on their sleep and keep the rats company. We’ll set up our target scopes and find the best places to rest our rifles.”

“Same wager?” Zimmler asked. “One cigarette to a kill.”

“I’ll leave that up to you.” Tippler grabbed his rifle, gear, three large packets of shells and headed up the dark hallway. “Just remember our last bet. You were so far behind, you had to borrow smokes to pay me.”

“I had the sun, you had the shade,” Zimmler said. “It’s not an excuse. Just a fact.”

“It won’t matter who has the sun side this time,” Tippler said as he and Zimmler walked up the dark hall together, their heavy gear clanging against the sides of the stone walls. “From the looks of this city when we came in, I think the only targets we’ll be aiming at will be statues and rocks.”

The two boys stood in the darkness and watched the soldiers walk past. They slipped out of the emptiness of the large tank, once a watery home to rare species of fish. Their bare feet slid on the gelled surface as they braced themselves against deadened leaves and shrubs. The two had been living in the barren aquarium for three weeks, finding it a safe refuge from the nightly bombing assaults and a convenient place to store their stolen food and meager items of clothing. Giovanni Malatesta, fifteen, and Frederico Lo Manto, fourteen, had been living on the Naples streets since the early spring.

Giovanni was the only son of a grocer and his seamstress wife. His father, emotional and politically driven, had embraced Mussolini’s vision for a new Italy from the very start, hearing in the dictator’s words an escape route to respectability for Naples. He proudly wore his Fascist black shirt every day, working behind the counter of his small store, its shelves crammed with the freshest produce, oils, cheese and olives in the neighborhood. His wife, much less political than her husband but just as eager to step up to the better end of life, was given more work than she could handle by the men of the regime, trusting her steady hand to alter and adjust their pants, shirts and dresses. As the Fascist dream of domination gave way to the reality of an inevitable loss, Giovanni’s parents were among those singled out as traitors to Italy. One quiet spring afternoon, while their son was at school, their home was broken into by partisan rebels and both were shot dead in the middle of a late lunch of lentil and pasta soup.

Frederico had lived with his grandmother since he was an infant, left behind by a father who died in a bar fight and a mother who succumbed to lung cancer. There was little food and even less money for the old woman and young boy to share, but they managed to survive, finding comfort in each other’s company. They did their best to live as normal a life as possible, given the rapidly changing events. Frederico went to school each day and was the evening altar boy for the seven o’clock mass at San Lorenzo Maggiore. There, at any point in the service, he could look up and see his grandmother seated in a straw chair, partly hidden by a marble column, black rosary beads wrapped around her frail fingers. His grandmother, hobbled by arthritic legs and poor circulation, searched the stores and black market alleys for scraps of food and unwanted items she could take home and convert into a meal. It was an existence neither felt would get better and both feared would only grow worse. Their joint prophecy proved true when on her way back to their second-floor, one-room apartment, Giovanni’s grandmother was felled by a massive heart attack. She died with her back on the wet cobblestone streets, her pale blue eyes staring up at a cloudless sky.

Giovanni could see the stretched-out legs of the two sleeping soldiers, an open crate of grenades by their feet. The main floor of the aquarium was steeped in shadows, the voices of the other two soldiers echoing down from the upper floors. “They sleep like the dead,” he whispered to Frederico. “We can take some of their grenades. They won’t even know we were here.”

“We need food,” Frederico said, his voice barely audible. “Not bombs.”

Giovanni brushed away the sweaty strands of black hair that ran across his forehead and put a hand on Frederico’s thin shoulder. “Those bombs are worth more than food,” he said. “Now stay quiet, grab as many as you can hold and then come back to the tank. If they should wake, you make a run toward the entrance.”

“They’ll fire on us,” Frederico said.

“Just run close to the water and as fast as you can,” Giovanni said. “And never look behind you. By the time they steady their aim, we should be outside.”

“What about the other two?”

“They’re too far up to be of any concern,” Giovanni said.

“We can’t stay here now that the Germans have moved in,” Frederico said. “With or without grenades.”

“We’ll move down deeper,” Giovanni said. “Back into the zoo. We can hide inside the old lions’ caves. From there, we can keep our eyes on the Nazis.”

“Should we try to grab their rifles, too?” Frederico asked. He stretched his head forward and saw one of the rifles hanging down loose off one of the soldier’s legs.

“Just the grenades,” Giovanni said. “Only take what they won’t miss.”

Giovanni was flat on his stomach, inches from the sleeping German soldier, his right hand inside the open crate of grenades, his left palm down and gripping onto the ridges of the curved step. The soldier was moaning softly, deep into his first restful sleep in weeks, as Giovanni slid past the heel of his boot and pulled out two grenades from the crate. He held the bombs at the thick end and began to inch his way back toward safety. Frederico stood across from Giovanni, keeping an eye on both soldiers, making sure neither stirred. He bent his knees and reached a hand into the open crate, careful not to slide on the wet step. He also pulled out two grenades, held one in each hand and moved slowly back toward the ruin of the aquarium. On his fifth step, his right foot gave way and he fell forward, landing with a low grunt on the base of the stairwell, the darkness his only shield. He held the grenades above his head and stared up at Giovanni. His friend reached over and took the grenades from his hands and then stepped back. Frederico looked down behind him, saw the soldiers still asleep, eased himself to his feet and moved back into his hiding place. “You did well,” Giovanni said to him, trying to keep the more excitable boy calm.

“We were lucky,” Frederico said. “I think one of these grenades would have to go off to wake those two.”

“We could make another run at more,” Giovanni said. “We have four. Eight would be even better.”

“We’ve used up enough luck for one day,” Frederico said.

Giovanni looked over at his friend and nodded. “Do you think the lions’ caves will smell as bad as the fish tanks?”

“They smelled bad when the lions lived there,” Frederico said. “I don’t think they’ve changed that much.”

They walked out of the rear of the broken aquarium exhibit and up toward the barren cages of a once-vibrant zoo. Each held the grenades carefully in hand, moving free of sound, turning only to give a wayward glance at the sleeping soldiers behind them.

25

VIA MONTE DI DIO, NAPLES
SEPTEMBER 26, 1943

The woman sat huddled in a corner of the villa entrance, her back arched to the street. She was wearing a short-sleeved black dress, a thin pair of sandals and a black ribbon held her thick brown hair in place. Maldini sat down next to her, lit a cigarette and blew a clear line of smoke up into the evening sky. He stared out at the blighted street, once lined with palatial villas and palazzi, and now reduced to a long row of shelled-out buildings. The stretch of street ended with the Gran Quartiere di Pizzofalcone, the barracks that had been built in the seventeenth century to house the Spanish troops who then ruled the city. “I would climb the walls to the top of the
caserma
when I was a boy,” Maldini said, as much to himself as to the woman. “All my friends, too. It was so important to us in those days. Now, it sounds like such a silly thing to want to do.”

The woman turned away from the door and looked over her shoulder at Maldini, her clear, oval face smeared with dirt and tears. “What do you want?” she asked, her voice soft and dry.

“A place to sit,” Maldini said.

“Why here?”

“I love this street,” Maldini said. “I walked it all the time, both as a boy and as a young man. I asked my wife to marry me in a rainstorm in front of the Palazzo Serra di Cassano. We stood there, facing that beautiful building, holding each other, both of us soaking wet and crying. There were only happy tears, back then.”

“I was born on this street,” the woman said. “My family lived at the Palazzo Carafa di Noja. It used to be down farther on the right-hand side.”

“I know the building well,” Maldini said. “Passed it many times over the years. You were lucky to have lived in such a beautiful place.”

“It belonged to my grandmother,” the woman said. “And she let me have the biggest room on the top floor.”

Maldini leaned over and offered the woman a cigarette. She reached up and took one from his pack with thin, trembling fingers. “Where do you live now?” he asked, striking a match and lighting the burnt tobacco.

“Where I can,” the woman said.

“And your family?” Maldini asked.

“My mother and father left with the Germans,” she said, fighting back the urge to shed more tears. “My two brothers are in the army. It’s been months since we’ve had any word from them.”

“But you stayed behind,” Maldini said. “Why?”

“My father didn’t want me to go with them. I had disgraced him and our family and I deserved to be punished. He said I had lost the right to die alongside an Italian.”

The woman put her head down. Maldini slid over closer and rested a hand on her back. “What is your name?” he asked.

“Carmella,” the woman struggled to say, her face still hidden by the fingers of her hands.

“And what was it, Carmella, that you did, that your father thought was so terrible?”

Carmella raised her head and looked at Maldini. “You will hate me, too. Once you know.”

Maldini leaned his head back against the hard wood of the villa’s front door. He ran a hand through the stubble on his chin and shook his head. “I have no more hate to give away,” he said. “I keep what I have for myself.”

Carmella waited until she could speak without the rush of tears. The night air around them was still quiet, the bombing attacks less than an hour away. “I spent two nights during the evacuation in the company of German soldiers,” she blurted out. “At one of the hotels near Lungomare.”

Maldini looked at her but remained silent. He had long ago resigned himself to the price of war. He learned that it extracts a fee from everyone it touches. The cost varies from one person to the next. But whatever the cost, it is often too high to bear. He had heard too many cries of anguish screamed out into the empty night to believe otherwise. In his case, the cost was most of his family and any semblance of a happy life. To the boys he had left back at the pier, their bellies filled with fish and wine, the war had won their youth, stripping them bare of the right to be free and foolish. And to the young woman he now stared at, who surrendered her passions to enemy arms, it had ripped from her the pure, innocent joy that such a night, under vastly different circumstances, would once have brought. Maldini knew all too well that you didn’t need to die in order to lose your life in a war.

“We do many things we shouldn’t do in the course of a life,” Maldini said. “It doesn’t make them right or wrong, just a part of who we are. In times like these, it becomes too much of a chore to judge others.”

“I took money from them,” she said in a soft whisper, her throaty voice childlike and wounded.

“And what do you think that makes you?” Maldini asked. “A prostitute?”

“That’s what my father said I was. A
vergonia
to our family. He said he would rather think of me dead than think of me as a whore.”

“Fathers are often cruelest to the ones they most love.” Maldini stared away from Carmella and down the slope of the empty street. “I once told my boys that real men are the ones who go into battle in defense of a cause. Now they’re both dead and I’ve lived to see the stupidity and ugliness behind my once cherished cause. I made them feel as if I was disappointed in who they were, that I didn’t think of them as men, only as boys. I should have loved them for what they were.
My sons
.”

“I don’t know what will happen to me now,” Carmella said. “I don’t know where to go, what to do.”

“We can live only in the moment,” Maldini told her. “It’s the only choice that has been left to us. And you must fight with all the strength you have to make it through to the next moment. That means for now, for tonight, you will come with me to the train station. We’ll hide there, along with the others, until the sun comes up and the bombs stop falling.”

“And then what?”

“Those are tomorrow’s worries,” Maldini said. He got to his feet and reached a hand down for Carmella.

She took his hand, stood, straightened her hair and her dress and slid an arm under his as they both began a slow walk to the main railroad tunnels in the center of the city, both looking to survive another night of war.