The Fallen (10 page)

“Yes, that is what I am asking.”

“Why not just talk to your uncle yourself?” said Greaves.

“You, he trusts,” said Cioffi.

“And you, he doesn’t?”

The
dottore
shrugged. “I am afraid that I have used up most of the goodwill he had for me.”

Looking at him in his ragged coat, his trousers held up with a length of twine, his bare feet in his battered shoes, Greaves didn’t doubt that he had used up the goodwill of a great many others too.

“I don’t know,” said Greaves. “If your uncle feels the way you say he does, I’m really not sure that my talking to him is going to change that.”

“Please,
tenente
,” Cioffi said, and pressed his hands together. “I am desperate. There is nothing for me. I have no way to make a living.”

“But you’re a doctor.”

“In name only, and hardly that. There are a thousand men like me in Naples—men with titles but no qualifications. And I have been branded by false accusation. I have a police record.”

On that account, the
dottore
was telling the truth. Greaves remembered reading the entry in his file.

“I don’t think I can help you,
dottore
. That accusation, false or not, is still on record. It’s unlikely that you would pass the vetting procedure.”

“But you could take care of that for me, couldn’t you,
tenente
?”

“You mean I could look the other way?”

Tears began to well up in the
dottore’s
eyes. “I have nothing,
tenente
. This is the only hope left to me.”

Greaves was uncomfortable. He found the
dottore’s
display embarrassing. “I tell you what,” he said. “I’ll be speaking to your uncle later today. I will mention our conversation to him.”

Cioffi’s face brightened. He took hold of Greaves’s hand and pumped it excitedly. “Oh, thank you,
tenente
. Thank you.”

“I am going to leave the decision up to him,
dottore
, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. If I’ve learned anything about your uncle, it’s that he’s stubborn. If he does not want you, I’m not going to push it.”

“Of course,
tenente
. I understand.”

Greaves stood up. He ordered the
dottore
another drink and then paid the barman.

“And how will I know his decision?” Cioffi asked. “Should I come see you again, perhaps?”

“Why don’t you give it a day or two,” Greaves said, “then drop by the museum. If the
carabiniere
lets you in, then you’ll have your answer.”

Aldo Cioffi crossed Piazza dei Martiri towards Via Santa Caterina. His stomach was settled considerably now that his head was swimming with drink. It was like the comfort of a warm blanket on a cold, damp night.

Things had gone well.

He stopped outside the window of a butcher’s shop near the Ponte di Chiaia. On the other side of the glass a collection of wooden bowls had been laid out in the display case. He saw intestines and chicken heads, a liver that looked too small to have come from any reasonable sort of livestock, and a mound of sweetbreads that glistened and attracted flies. Cioffi thought of the donkey Maggio had killed—it would have been so much better fare than what was on offer here.

After a moment, he sensed someone standing behind him. He looked up and saw the young man’s reflection in the butcher’s window. Cioffi recognized him from the taverna. He turned around and smiled. “I haven’t any money,” he said, “if that’s what you’re after. It was my friend who bought the drinks. And if you must know, he is with the security police. So, I suggest—”

“What’s your name?”

“My name?”

The young man took hold of Cioffi’s elbow and squeezed tightly. “I asked you a question.”

Cioffi could not keep the grimace from his face. It felt as if the bones in his arm might shatter. His fingers began to tingle. “My name is Aldo Cioffi,” he said. “Dottore Aldo Cioffi. Please, sir, you are hurting me.”

The young man let go of his elbow. Then he turned and walked away. He crossed over the street and disappeared down a side alley. Cioffi massaged his bruised arm and looked about. No one seemed to have taken any notice. He wasn’t even certain himself what had happened, but he knew that no good ever came from strangers approaching you in the street. His sense of fear came in a cold wave of nausea and he shuddered, the
limoncello
churning in his guts, stirring up the foul residue of the urchins. He turned back towards the butcher’s shop window and retched a puddle of vomit onto the pavement at his feet. The stink of his sick made him retch again.

There was a banging on the glass, and he looked up to see the
macellaio
standing there in his bloodied apron, waving him away.

Cioffi wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and straightened up. The
macellaio
shook his fist. Cioffi watched him a moment, then looked off again in the direction the young man had gone.

Greaves telephoned the museum from the section office. He suggested to Parente dinner at Zi’ Teresa’s on the seafront, where they could discuss the list of possible employees. He invited Luisa Gennaro to join them.

He met their car at the causeway that led out to the marina and had the MPs shift the barrier so that they could drive through; a private car left at the curbside on the Lungomare would not last long before it was stolen.

The restaurant was crowded with military personnel—mainly officers from the Free French Naval Forces, who seemed to have commandeered the eatery as their unofficial club.

Parente appointed himself as Greaves’s guide to the wonders of the
local cuisine. They sampled a number of specialties, beginning with Spaghetti con le Vongole, followed by Frutti di Mare, Pesce all’Acqua Pazza, and Sartù di Riso. To drink, it was two bottles of Lacrima Christi. “The tears of Christ,” Parente said, “and as sweet as heaven.”

Greaves went through the curator’s list as they ate. There were only a few names that had to be struck off—fellows whose desperate situations had seen them run afoul of the law on too many occasions. They whittled the list down to ten men who passed muster. All of them had worked for the
professore
at some time in the past, and Parente felt they could be trusted.

Afterwards, while they were drinking real coffee and sipping honey grappa, Greaves said: “By the way, I spoke to your nephew this afternoon.”

“You talked to Aldo?” said Parente.

“Yes. We had drinks at the Bar Vittoria.”

“How is he?”

“He’s had better days,” said Greaves. “He wanted me to speak with you. He knows that you’re hiring men. He wants a job.”

“And he could not ask me himself?”

“I got the impression that he thought you wouldn’t see him.”

Parente shook his head and looked out of the window to where the beggars had gathered on the quayside. There was a woman, middle-aged, wearing a dark habit, and gathered around her were a number of children dressed in rags.

“He should have come to me.”

Luisa, who had remained quiet all through dinner—aloof, almost, Greaves thought—now put her hand on Parente’s forearm. “You do not have to help him, Augusto,” she said.

Parente raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Then he nodded towards the window. “Look at them out there, Thomas,” he said.

Greaves saw the collection of unfortunate things: some club-footed, others with twisted spines and malformed limbs. One of them, a blind girl of perhaps seven, sat off on her own, feeling the ground for bits of stone that she then put into her mouth.

“When the Americans arrived,” Parente said, “there was a banquet held at the Palazzo Reale in honour of General Clark. It was a tribute to the man who had come to save our poor city. When they asked him what it was that he wished to eat, he told them that he would like to eat fish. After all, we are famous for our seafood. But, you see, the harbour was still mined and all the boats had been ordered to stay in port. So, instead, they went to the Stazione Zoologica. Unfortunately, the aquariums had already been emptied. You must remember that the city was starving. The only thing left was a single baby manatee. So it was butchered and cooked with garlic and tomatoes. And the general ate it. He and his staff—his colonels, his majors, his captains—between them they ate the entire manatee. I was there—I watched them with my own eyes.” Parente sipped his coffee and sighed. “So, you see, Thomas, this is what you need to know about Napoli: some people get to eat fish, and some people do not.” He patted Luisa’s hand. “She does not like it when I tell that story, because whenever I do, it means that I am going to do something foolish.”

Luisa pulled her hand away from Parente’s and stared coldly at Greaves. “Why are you doing this?” The note of accusation in her voice caught him off guard. “What has he done to deserve such generosity? Has he turned someone in to you? Has he agreed to inform on old friends? What?”

“It’s not like that at all,” said Greaves. “He seemed a little down on his luck. I just thought I might be able to help him out.”

“Is that what you do,
tenente
? You are the good Samaritan?”

Her anger seemed all out of proportion to him. He had somehow insulted her, but in what way he did not know.

She stood up from the table. “I have a cousin,” she went on, glaring down at him. “She sleeps with soldiers for favours. Her husband has left her and gone north with the Germans. She was thrown out of her home. Would you help her too? Or is it just thieving drunks that you pity?”

“Please, Luisa,” Parente said.

She ignored him and began to gather together the scraps of their meal and put them into a folded napkin. “It will be curfew soon,” she said to Parente. “I will wait for you outside.”

As she left, the old man smiled in apology.

“She really doesn’t like me, does she?” Greaves said.

Parente shook his head. “It’s Aldo she doesn’t like. You she does not trust.”

“I don’t know why. I haven’t given her any reason, have I?”

“It’s not your fault, Thomas. You are a soldier, and in Luisa’s mind, that means you are the war. And it is the war that has taken everything from her.”

They watched her through the window as she approached the woman in the habit. She pressed the napkin of leftovers into her hand. As the woman kissed her cheeks, Greaves was suddenly glad that he had not brought up the music box.

Parente watched out of the passenger-side window. It was growing dark and the curfew was less than an hour away, but still the pavements were crowded. In the streets soldiers moved in packs, like wolves on the prowl. They were loud and drunk, and they commanded the roadsides, pushing others towards the curbs. Women loitered in the mouths of the alleys,
old men stood in doorways, and young boys sat on window ledges, all of them watching, all of them waiting. Waiting, Parente supposed, for the cover of dark—to do what, though, he didn’t like to imagine.

He turned in his seat and looked at Luisa. She steered the battered Berlina—the car was registered to the museum—with calm precision along the busy street. She had always been a good driver, and Parente had always preferred being a passenger.

She glanced over at him. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“You shouldn’t be so rude to him,” said Parente.

“To who?”

“You know who I’m talking about.”

Luisa shrugged. “No, I don’t.”

“To Thomas. You should not be so rude to Thomas. He is not like the others, you know that.”

“And why do you think that? Because he takes us to dinner? Because he brings you sugar and chocolate? Because he’s willing to help Aldo, who we both know is a drunk and a thief and who will always disappoint you no matter how much you hope otherwise? He is a security policeman, Augusto. And in the end, you will mean nothing to him. If they tell him to arrest you, he will do it without a second thought.”

Parente shook his head and looked out of the window again. As they passed through Piazza Trento e Trieste, he watched as a man picked the pockets of a British naval officer who was occupied by the attentions of a young woman in a floral print dress. While she rubbed her palm against the front of the sailor’s trousers, her partner lifted his billfold.

“I think you are wrong about him, Luisa,” Parente said. “I think he is different. There is something about him. It’s like a sadness.”

“A sadness?” said Luisa.

“I don’t know. I think there is good in him. And I think if you gave him a chance, you might think the same.”

Luisa did not respond. When a soldier stumbled into the roadway, she sounded the horn and yelled out of the window at him. Parente reached out and touched her hand that held white-knuckle tight to the steering wheel.

“Is everything all right?” he asked. “How is Maria?”

He felt the tension release somewhat in the grip. She sighed. “When I got home last night,” she said, “I found her with a black eye and a split lip.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” said Luisa. Then she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “It’s true what I said, though, Augusto. She is selling herself. She’s a
puttana
.”

“Are you certain, Luisa?”

“Yes, Augusto, I’m certain.”

They continued in silence for a time, and then Parente said: “Perhaps Thomas
will
be able to help.”

Luisa laughed quietly to herself. She drove the car through Piazza Francese and passed Teatro Mercandante, then down the narrow street that led to her apartment house. She pulled the car to the curb.

“Will you be okay from here?” she said.

Parente told her that he would. He climbed out of the passenger side and went around the front of the car. Luisa held the door for him. It took him a moment to settle behind the wheel. He knew that working the clutch was going to aggravate his sciatica, but he did not let on.

“Do you know,” she said, looking down at him, “sometimes you put too much faith in people.” She closed the door.

He lowered the window, reached out, and gently caught her arm. When she turned back, he said, “And sometimes,” he said, “you put too little.”

Another unseasonably warm day brought people to the Villa Comunale, where they strolled the avenues free, for a few hours at least, of the squalor of their unlit, broken homes. There was the sound of birds in the trees, and of gulls floating on the gentle breeze coming in from the bay. On a bench inside the main gates, a storyteller stood waving his arms about, and children gathered on the pavement before him, their mothers watching on. When the storyteller, a man in his mid-fifties with scruffy whiskers and a dark, threadbare suit, drew his arms up above his head, the children leaned forward, as if pulled on a string. And when he thrust his arms out in front of him, fingers wagging, and made the howling sound of a great wind, the children shrank back again, clutching themselves, and shrieked in fearful delight.