The Fallen (21 page)

“What do you mean, ‘inconsistencies’?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” Colonel Romney led him to the far side of the table, where he flipped through the pages of one of the ledgers then rummaged through a stack of paperwork and found his notes. “It’s nothing too serious, really, just a few smaller objects that appear in the catalogue but can’t be accounted for. It could be nothing. Perhaps you moved them, lent them out, maybe, and forgot to make a record.”

“That is unlikely,” Parente said.

“It’s something else, then.” The colonel shifted the ledger so Parente could see. “As I was saying, it’s nothing substantial, at least not in the grander scheme of things. Some coins and cameos, an Egyptian statuette.”

“It’s not possible,” Parente said. “I know these pieces. I have seen them myself. They are here in the museum.”

Colonel Romney shrugged. “So you say,
professore
, but my men have checked and double-checked and they can’t find them. Trouble is, though, there’s not a lot we can do to help you out. If these pieces were of more consequence, say, wall paintings or mosaics, or one of the sculptures, it would be different. Maybe you should think about having a word with some of your own people.”

“Yes, of course, colonel,” Parente said as he looked down at the open page of the inventory ledger. He recognized Aldo’s handwriting. “Thank you. I will do that.”

A cloud of dust hung in the air over the ancient arena, kicked up by the scuffling feet of the English soldiers as they chased the ragged leather ball across the makeshift pitch. They were from a detachment of Royal Engineers stationed at Torre del Greco, and they’d brought with them from their barracks a set of collapsible goalposts strung with camouflage netting. Once a week they descended upon the amphitheatre to play a soccer match that lasted the whole of an afternoon.

Luisa wondered aloud if it was such a good idea.

“They do far less damage than some of the others,” Moccia said.

The others he referred to were the Americans, who, it turned out, were rather too fond of collecting souvenirs. Earlier, they’d come across two GIs on Via dell’Abbondanza who were whittling away a piece from a wall painting above the doorway of a shop. When Luisa
made to say something to them, Moccia stopped her with a gentle hand and said: “It’s better not to start anything. The MPs will be on their side.”

“But it’s a punishable offence,” Luisa said. “They told us so.”

“That was for show. Now, if it were you or I chipping away keepsakes, it would be a different story. The city is theirs for the time being.”

He had seemed, she thought, resigned to the fact. And now, with the
inglesi
and their soccer game, he was full of boundless enthusiasm. “Next week,” he said, “we are going to play them. It’s been arranged. The site workers against the engineers.”

Just then, one of the soldiers shouted up to where they stood on the terrace at the far end of the stadium. “Hey, Cosimo, mate. I hope you’re taking notes.”

“Who was it that won the last two World Cups?” he shouted back. “I can’t remember.”

The soldier laughed. “We’ll see about that on Tuesday,” he called out before chasing after the ball again.

Cosimo Moccia proved an entertaining guide, just as Luisa knew he would. She was glad they’d found him. And she could tell by the wide smile on his face that he was glad as well. He had taken quickly to Greaves, and had walked along much of the time holding him by the elbow and talking, in his rapid-fire manner, about the excavations, explaining to him the history of each building they stopped at. Neither did he miss an opportunity to be mischievous. When they came out of the House of the Moralist, he pointed out some Latinate graffiti scratched into the soft limestone wall. “You see what is written here, Thomas,” he said. “
Myrtis bene felas
. Do you know what that means?” He didn’t give Greaves a chance to answer. “It means: ‘Myrtis gives good blow jobs.’” His laugh rumbled in his chest. “So you see, things
have not changed very much. Men are still crude.” Then he nodded towards Luisa. “And women still blush.”

On the floor of the amphitheatre, the players were taking a break. They congregated around the temporary goalposts at the far end of the pitch and drank greedily from their canteens.

“Come,” Moccia said. “We’ve seen enough here.”

He led the way down to the tunnel that ran beneath the seats of the arena. In the dark interior of the amphitheatre the air was cool and dank. Outside, the sun had risen high in the clear blue sky and the heat was noticeable. Winter was behind them now, Luisa thought, and she found herself becoming uneasy about what spring was to bring. Her sense of the future was more uncertain than it had ever been, and she wondered how much that had to do with Greaves, and how much had to do with the fact that soon the war would be moving on to the north.

When they emerged again into the sunshine, they came upon an old man pushing a handcart. His wrinkled face was framed by a shock of white hair, and his smile showed a mouthful of rotten teeth. On his cart was a tin bucket, and in the bucket a block of melting ice. He had a bowl of barely ripened lemons and a small stack of cones made from twisted bits of old newspaper.

Greaves went to him. “How much?
Quanto?
”

“
Cinquanta lire
,” the old man said.

He asked for three and the old man took a scarred carving knife from his jacket pocket and began to scrape away at the ice. He put the shavings into the paper cones, then halved two of the lemons and squeezed their thin juice over the top of each.

“
Grazie
,” Greaves said, taking the cones from him.

“
Prego
,” replied the vendor. And then he laughed, a consumptive rattle that seemed to shake his entire body. He pointed towards Vesuvius and said, “
Presto la montagna erutterà
.”

“Is that right?” said Greaves. He passed one cone to Luisa and another to Moccia. “This fellows says that the mountain is going to erupt soon.” He took a bite of his ice-lemon. “Do you think he knows something that we don’t?”

Luisa put a hand on his forearm and then quickly withdrew it again. “Ignore him. He is just a crazy old man.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Moccia as he scraped his teeth over the cone. “Sometimes we ignore the elderly at our peril. I’d have thought you would’ve known that. Augusto says as much to me every time I speak to him.”

“You’re still afraid of him, aren’t you, Cosimo?”

“Out of my skin,” said Moccia with a smile. “If I weren’t, I would have run away from this place a long time ago.”

They made their way once more along Via dell’Abbondanza, stopping briefly at the crumbled dwelling called La Casa del Moralista. “This is my favourite place in all of Pompeii,” Moccia told Greaves. “It was the home of a wine merchant. But you see here.” He pointed out several slogans written on the walls of the triclinium. “He was also an advocate for temperance. I love the idea that it was profits from selling wine that paid for the paint to write these mottoes. I always wonder if he appreciated the paradox of his beliefs. Or maybe, after all, it was simply a joke.”

When they came again to the Forum, where the streets of the ancient city converged and the broken colonnades of the temples of Jupiter and Apollo looked like a harvest of dried bones left to bleach in the sun, Moccia bade them goodbye. He shook hands with Greaves and then hugged Luisa tightly. “Next time, don’t stay away so long,” he said to her. “I miss looking at your pretty face.”

After they parted, Luisa led the way along a narrow road that took them outside the city walls. It followed a gentle slope towards a house
on a hillside. She had decided on the Villa of the Mysteries the night before. She wanted to take Greaves somewhere that was close to her heart. It was the place to which Augusto had brought her years before, when she first came to work with him and when he still made regular trips to the ruins. He had taken her by the hand then and stood her before each panel of the magnificent fresco that had given the villa its name. He told her that he thought of her as the initiate.

Luisa did not take him inside at first. Instead, they sat in the garden which overlooked Pompeii and ate the lunch that he’d packed—wine and cheese and bread, and canned meat that he apologized for but that she savoured as if it were chateaubriand.

“He’s quite a fellow, isn’t he,” Greaves said, removing the jelly from the beef before he put it on a heel of bread and popped it into his mouth. “I don’t know if I’ve met anyone quite so cheerful since I arrived here. It’s almost contagious.”

“He wasn’t always like that,” Luisa said.

“Really?”

She shook her head. “His brother was killed during a bombardment. He was the site director at Herculaneum. It very nearly destroyed Cosimo. They were very close. I think now he tries to be happy so that he won’t think about it.”

“He must feel very down sometimes. Does he have other family?”

“He has a wife and a son. But they are in the north, with his sister in Milan. He sent them there before the Americans came. He did not want them to be caught in the fighting.”

“Is he in touch with them?”

“He used to pay a woman to smuggle letters through, but she was caught several months ago. I think she is in Filangieri prison now.”

“And has he had any word from his wife since?”

“Not that I know of,” said Luisa. “But I am sure that she is fine.”

“I hope so,” said Greaves.

They finished eating and packed away the basket. Then she stood up. “Come with me. There is something I want you to see.”

She took him into the villa, into the room with blood-red walls.

Within the fresco that dominated the triclinium chamber, the half-naked figure of Silenus played his lyre and beside him a woman suckled a goat. It was the narrative of a young bride’s initiation into the cult of Dionysus. Silenus appeared again, looking this time like a corrupt old man as he offered his wine to a nearby satyr. After Silenus was Ariadne, bare-breasted in repose, then Dionysus himself, his head missing along with a large section of the original plaster. The young bride, too, made her appearance here: prostrated before a flagellating angel, her veil draped over the erect phallus of the seraph.

“What do you think?” she said.

“It all seems a bit frightening.”

“Only because we do not understand it. There is nothing sinister in it.” She went to the final panel of the frieze and pointed out the figure of a woman dressed in flowing robes and seated on a cushioned chair. “This is the matron of the house. She is a priestess of the cult. If the fresco had been discovered, she would have been punished.”

“For her beliefs, you mean?” said Greaves.

“Yes. So you see, she is a brave woman.”

Luisa watched him as he approached the image of the matron. He stood close and studied her figure. “It must be such a terrifying thing to do,” he said. “Knowing that it could cost her everything.” He turned round and looked at her. “That sort of fear can destroy a person.”

“If you believe,” Luisa said, “then fear becomes secondary. To know that you are doing the right thing should be enough comfort.”

He looked again at the matron. “I suppose. But not everyone has that kind of strength.”

“I disagree,” Luisa said. “That strength is in everyone. They just have to be willing to find it.”

She stepped forward and took hold of his arm. “We should go. It is still a long way to Sorrento.”

The setting sun dazzled against the coming shadow of night and lit the chalky cliffs of the peninsula, while Naples, far across the bay, lay like a jewel caught in the failing light, a splash of brightness on the horizon, a white city. Below, at the water’s edge, chaises longues obtruded from beneath blue-striped umbrellas, and farther along, on the flat rock beach, the last sunbathers collected their towels and folding chairs as the late boats from Capri spilled their passengers onto the quayside. Watching it all from his hotel room window, Greaves could imagine that the war did not exist.

An hour earlier, they had found Sergeant Roylance having drinks with his mistress on the terrace of a streetside café in Piazza Tasso. The boy who worked for Roylance in the former travel bureau that now served as the office for the Sorrento detachment had told them he would be sitting to the right of Saint Anthony the Lesser. “
Sempre all destra di Sant’Antonino
,” he’d said.

“The boy, Niello he’s called,” said Roylance when they finally arrived at the café, “he’s a bit soft in the head, but he’s a hard worker.” Then he motioned towards the bandage on Greaves’s neck. “I’d heard that you had a rough time of it in the countryside. I’ll say this for the Italians: they are a dramatic lot. Incapable of finding the simple solution to things—too emotional by half.”

Maddelena Giordano, Roylance’s mistress, sat aloof. She was a player at the Teatro Tasso. “My Italian has improved,” he’d said to Greaves, “but it’s still not good enough for us to argue, which does make things easier.”

Luisa had seemed transfixed by Maddelena’s hair. Dyed so blond that it was nearly white, it stood in stark contrast to her thinly plucked charcoal eyebrows.

Roylance had arranged for their rooms in the Hotel Excelsior Vittoria. He kept a suite for himself on the top floor—one of the perks, he’d told them, of being the only intelligence officer in the town.

From his window, Greaves could see the faint outline of Vesuvius, hazy in the last moments of the day. It struck him as a rather solitary image: a single peak on the horizon.

In her own small room on the second floor, Luisa also stood at the window. Hers, though, looked out over a narrow street. Across the way was an adjoining hotel. Through the undraped windows opposite she could see an American officer, an older man with short silver hair, bathed in the yellowish glow of electric light. He stood before a mirror, straightening his tie. He fixed his hair with creme and put on a dark brown uniform jacket. He polished the brass on his epaulettes with his cuff. He disappeared, returning a moment later wearing a peaked cap that he adjusted so that it sat an angle. She could tell by his pursed lips that he was whistling. Then he disappeared again and the light went out.