The Fallen (22 page)

She left the window and went to her own mirror and looked at herself. Maria’s dress was too big in the bosom for her, so she had tied a white silk sash about the waist to gather in the extra material; it drew together uncomfortably at her hips. She had wanted to wear something subdued. The best she could manage was this mauve silk with white buttons down the front.

There had been a moment earlier, in the café, when Thomas caught her watching him. She was sitting across the table and hadn’t realized until he glanced over at her that she had been staring. His smile embarrassed her. The English sergeant had noticed her brief loss of composure and mistook it, she thought, for something else. He said that he had always found Sorrento a romantic place. He told her that he had come to the town with his wife after they were married. He had said this in front of his mistress, who, if she’d understood, seemed not to care.

Luisa said to him: “We will have separate rooms.”

“Of course,” he told her. “I understand.”

But Luisa didn’t know how he could, when she did not understand herself.

The actors were brightly attired in reds and greens and whites that reflected almost painfully in the stage lights. It was a cartoon-like landscape: cookie-cutter tenement houses with laundry strung between balconies, thick-wheeled papier mâché drays pulled by costumed donkeys, a cardboard sun splashing its floodlit rays. Romanticized stage poverty—such gaiety for such a sad story: love lost, love doomed, love traded in back alleys, or bartered away, and always with mournful songs. “Santa Lucia.” “‘O’ Sole Mio.” Why was it, Greaves wondered, that these people seemed to sing of nothing but heartbreak? Why was it forever calamity? Perhaps, he decided, it was simply the way it was. Perhaps love was something that did not last. Perhaps they believed that love was only a fleeting sensation, like the pain of hunger or the satisfaction of a good meal.

Greaves had not known which of the women was Maddelena until she was pointed out to him. During the dancing of the tarantella,
Roylance leaned across and said to him: “There she is, my capricious Capri girl.” Her platinum hair was hidden beneath a brunette wig and her face was garishly painted: kohl around her eyes, her cheeks rosy, her lips an exaggerated rosebud.

Afterwards, though, in the café, Greaves found her somewhat disappointing. Without her costume and makeup, without the dark wig, Maddelena looked worn down. It was as if she had aged years in the span of hours, as if she were the older, harried sister of the woman he had met that afternoon in the Piazza Tasso.

Around them, the café bustled with the after-theatre crowd. The air was filled with laughter and the sound of clinking glasses, but Maddelena was soon bored. She no longer had an audience and so grew restless and fidgeted as Roylance talked of his love of the theatre.

“Do you know,” he said, “that Henrik Ibsen lived just round the corner from here? This is where he wrote
A Doll’s House
. Can you imagine that? What a dreary play to be thought up in such a wonderful little town. He really must have been a miserable codger. Then again, he was Norwegian. I can’t imagine they’ve got a lot to be happy about, what with all that snow and not seeing the sun for half the year.”

Roylance took the bottle of wine and topped up everyone’s glass. Then he toasted their being there. “I’ll tell you this much: I feel sorry for you lot, stuck back there in Naples. The filth and corruption—it’s bloody horrible. I’ll gladly while away my days here, thank you very much. I’d be happy enough if I never left.”

But Greaves thought that there was something forced about the sergeant’s enthusiasm. In Naples he’d been cordial enough but always rather distant. His manner was very professional, and even the others, Bennington and Jones in particular, had joked about him, called him the company man. But now, after four weeks by himself in Sorrento, the solitude seemed to be getting the better of him. And to Greaves, his
effusiveness for the place was like a compensation, as if he were tying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince them.

Finally, Maddelena had had enough. She leaned over to him and said: “
Mi sono stancata. Possiamo andare a casa
?”

“But it’s early yet, darling.”

“
Lo so, ma mi sono stancata
.”

Roylance was clearly let down, but Maddelena would not be convinced. He got up from the table and helped her on with her wrap. “There is a wonderful little nightclub,” he said to Greaves. “It’s cut into the cliffside below the central square. I had thought to take you, but it seems Maddelena is too tired. I hope you don’t mind.”

“That’s fine,” Greaves said. “We’ve had a pretty full day ourselves. We might just head back to the hotel.”

“Nonsense,” Roylance said. “I won’t have you calling it a night on my account. This is a lively place after dark. You should have a wander round. If nothing else, you should make a visit to the public gardens below Piazza San Antonino. If the stars are out and if the wind is down, you’ll see two skies—one above and one below. But really, you must have a look for yourselves.”

They did not stay long at the nightclub. When they arrived, it was crowded, so they ordered their drinks standing at the bar. An orchestra of American servicemen played swing music and the dance floor seethed, rising and falling like a disturbed pool of water, waves of dancers breaking over the white-clothed tables that ringed the floor. The air was close. The low stone ceiling was damp with condensation; it dripped. Luisa could smell the odour of her own sweat. When his lips brushed her ear, she wished that she had used more of Maria’s talcum powder under her arms. Did
she want to leave? he asked. Would she like to go somewhere else? She said yes.

So he took her to a
gelateria
in a cobbled laneway beside the Duomo. The lights were bright inside the shop; there was no blackout in Sorrento. Soldiers lined up with their women, Neapolitan girls mostly, though she recognized accents from farther south, from Amalfi and even Salerno. She felt uncomfortable among them, much as she had at the Gambrinus, and asked him if they could leave.

They walked the streets. Once, pushing through a crowd that had gathered outside a café, their hands touched. He held on to hers a moment, as if to make sure he did not lose her in the crush, then let go of it again once they were free of the crowd. He apologized afterwards.

They had not discussed going to the public gardens, but that was where they found themselves in the end. She had thought that the
inglese
was talking nonsense, but as they leaned against the iron railing that ran atop the cliff’s edge, she saw that there were indeed two skies: one pristine, exact, the stars like pinpricks in a rich black cloth; the other wavering, slightly out of focus, like the work of an Impressionist painter. And yet it was difficult to judge where one began and the other ended, difficult to decipher whether it was the sea reflecting the sky or the sky reflecting the sea. It was almost, she thought to herself, like looking into eternity.

A cool breeze blew and he took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. His hands lingered a moment, then he stepped away from her. He looked out over the water.

“You’ve never asked me what I did before I came to Naples,” he said.

“Perhaps I don’t want to know,” she said.

“Is that true?”

There was something in his voice that made her uncertain. She hesitated, then said: “Were you in battle?”

“I was, yes.”

“Was it very horrible?”

He shook his head. “No, not at first. To tell the truth, in the beginning it was quite exhilarating, almost like the games we played when we were boys.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It sounds ridiculous, I know. But there was something rather intoxicating about the whole situation.”

“You liked it, then?”

“I think so, yes. At least, for a time I did. We landed in Sicily at the beginning of July, near Ragusa, then made our way north. The Germans had pulled out, moved into the mountains. We had a few skirmishes, but nothing of real consequence. In most of the villages we were given a hero’s welcome. People came out into the streets. They gave us food and wine. That’s what made it all so appealing, I suppose. But it wasn’t real. I mean, those first couple of weeks, that wasn’t really what war was like. It was more like a performance of war, like tonight at the theatre was a performance. There were hints of what it could be like, but we really hadn’t had a taste of it, not yet. Of course, we didn’t know that then. We thought we were kings of the battlefield.”

“But you found out that you weren’t,” Luisa said.

“Yes. We found out.” He was quiet a moment. “I was what’s called a Forward Observation Officer. It was my job to direct the fire onto the enemy positions. Once I had established a target, I would radio to the artillery batteries in the rear—the big guns, 105-millimetre howitzers mainly—then I would make readjustments, that sort of thing. We prepared to make an assault on a place called Agira, a town in the mountains north of Masseria. We had to come at it across a wide
plain. The unit I was with had the job of attacking the left flank. We knew it would be different from the other towns. The Germans were dug in there, and we were scared. I was scared. We moved out after dark. The night was so black—no stars, no moon. We couldn’t find our markers, we got lost. When the initial barrage started on the right flank, we weren’t where we were supposed to be, and I panicked. I found my wireless operator. He was just a kid, but he knew better than I did. He tried to stop me, tried to tell me that we were out of position, but I wouldn’t listen to him. Intelligence reports had said that there were supposed to be tank emplacements off to our east, so I called in the coordinates to the Fire Direction Centre. But there weren’t any tanks there.”

His voice trailed off. He took a deep breath and then slowly let it out again. “It was a schoolhouse—a schoolhouse with women and children inside. They knew that there would be fighting and they had gone there to hide. They thought they would be safe, and they should have been. It was on the edge of town, away from the German emplacements. Had I not misread the map, had I listened to my wireless operator … ”

Luisa tried to read the expression on his face, but in the darkness she could see only his silhouette as he stared out at the stars reflected on the water.

“I was a wreck afterwards. I think I wanted to kill myself.”

“Why didn’t you?” she said softly.

“I don’t know.” He took hold of the railing and rocked back on his heels. “They all told me that I wasn’t to blame—my commanding officer, the men in the squad, the doctors at the field hospital where they took me after my corporal found me with my gun. They said sometimes these things happen. But I knew it wasn’t true. I dream about it almost every night. I hear them screaming as the building
burns, and it’s like I’m killing them all over again. It’s like that every time I close my eyes, and I know that it will never stop. I know that they will always be there.”

Luisa was confused by her emotions. “Why are you telling me this?”

He looked at her now. “Because I want you to know who I am. I want you to know what I’ve done.”

The sun did not shine on that side of the hotel, but Luisa knew the hour by the sounds coming from below her window: street sweepers brushing the cobbles clean, the whisk of their straw brooms against the worn stone. She reached a hand across to the empty side of the bed, gathered the loose sheets in her fingers. He’d left her room while it was still dark. She had asked him to go, and he told her that he understood. He dressed without turning the light on, and then stood a moment at the foot of the bed before moving towards the door. He did not say anything to her before he went. There was nothing left to be said.

After they made love, she had gone to the toilet and washed herself. When she came out, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette. He gave her one and she sat down next to him. She was uncomfortable in her nakedness, and uncomfortable with his, too. For a time they didn’t speak, and she thought that, even after all this, she did not understand him.

Then she told him about Aldo, about his stealing, and about Salvatore Varone. He told her that he thought he’d heard the name before.

“What can I do?” he asked her.

“I don’t think there is anything to be done. Perhaps it is all just a bad dream and it will go away.”

“You know that won’t happen. Bad dreams don’t just go away like that.”

“I know.”

Now she pulled back the blankets and got out of the bed. Her back was sore and her legs stiff. She found her robe and pulled it on, and then she went to the window and drew back the curtains.

The sun was low still and the street outside was cast in shadow. Across the way, the American officer was standing again before his mirror, though now he was dressed only in loose-fitting, drab underpants and a sleeveless vest, and he leaned in towards his reflection and studied the morning image of himself. He drew his fingers across the sagging flesh under his chin, pulled it taut, then let it go again. Luisa thought he looked rather disappointed with the prospect of himself, and she felt suddenly very sorry for him.

Salvatore Varone sat under the shade of an umbrella and sipped a cappuccino, while beside him Paolo consulted his battered notebook. A shipment of auto parts bound for a motor pool in Posillipo had been temporarily diverted to the abbey in Montecalvario.

“Who is dealing with the negotiations?” Varone asked.

Paolo told him that he’d found a man who had been a director at the Banco di Napoli who had agreed to speak with the head of the military government’s civilian liaison department. “It should not be a problem. Though his cut will be high.”

“What did he take last time?”

“Twenty-five percent.”

“He’ll want more.”

“Yes,” Paolo said. “I think as much as forty.”

“Tell the banker to offer thirty. That should get us thirty-five.”

“Working with the Americans is getting expensive,” Paolo said.

“It will only get worse. They know we haven’t much left to bargain with. Soon enough we’ll be giving them half of everything we take in.”