Man on Fire (3 page)

Pietro had called him at his mother's house in Positano just after midnight to tell him that a stranger had arrived. A man called Creasy.

Guido watched as the man's features became defined. Five years, he thought, and there's been a change. A year earlier someone passing through, he forgot who, had told him that Creasy was going downhill and was drinking. The light now showed the empty bottle.

He sat slumped in the chair, his body slack, somnolent, but he was not asleep. The eyes, heavy-lidded in the square face, looked down the hill as the light turned the terraced houses into clear shapes. Then the face turned and Guido stepped out from the shadows.

"Qa va, Creasy."

"Qa va, Guido."

Creasy pulled himself up and stretched out his arms and the two men embraced and laid cheek to cheek and held each other for a long moment.

"Coffee," said Guido, and Creasy nodded, but before letting him go held the smaller, younger man at arm's length and studied his face. Then he dropped his hands and sat down.

Guido went to the kitchen, deeply troubled. Creasy really had let himself go and that indicated things were very wrong, for he was a man who had always kept himself well, always cared for his body and his appearance. They had last met just after Julia's death.

The memory added to Guido's troubled mood. But then Creasy had been well, looking hardly older than when they had first met. As the coffee warmed, Guido calculated: twenty-three years, it would be, and Creasy had always seemed ageless fixed at a young forty. He calculated again. Creasy would be nearing fifty now and looked it, and more. What had happened in those five years?

The last time, Creasy had stayed two weeks, silent as usual, but his quiet presence had given Guido strength when he needed it, putting a link back into a broken chain.

The sun was over the circling hills as he came back onto the terrace, and Naples was waking up, the noise of traffic dull but distinct. A warship lay at anchor in the bay and, beyond it, a large liner showed its stern. Guido put the tray on the table and poured the coffee and the two men sat quietly, drinking and looking at the view.

Creasy broke the silence.

"Did I interrupt anything?"

Guido smiled wryly.

"My mother, having one of her mysterious and periodic illnesses."

"You should have stayed with her."

Guido shook his head. "Elio will arrive this morning from Milan. She gets these bouts when she feels we're neglecting her. It's not so bad for me, only forty minutes' drive, but it's a hell of a nuisance for Elio."

"How is he?"

"Good. They made him a partner last year, and he had another baby, a son."

They sat in silence again for several minutes. An easy silence, only possible between good and long friends who don't need talk to hold the link. The liner was almost over the horizon before Guido spoke.

"You're tired. Come on-I'll find you a bed "

Creasy roused himself. "What about you? You haven't slept all night."

"I'll nap after lunch. How long can you stay?"

Creasy shrugged. "I have no plans, Guido. Nothing on. I just wanted to see you, how you were."

Guido nodded. "That's good. It's been too long. Have you been working?"

"Not for six months. I've just come from Corsica."

They had been walking to the door, but, hearing this, Guido stopped and looked a question.

Creasy shrugged again. "Don't ask me why. I didn't even see anyone. I just happened to be in Marseilles and on an impulse jumped on the ferry."

Guido smiled. "You did something on an impulse?"

The smile was returned, tired and wan. "We'll talk about it tonight. Where's that bed?"

Guido sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Pietro to get back from the market. The pensione had only six rooms, but it was busy, and at lunch and dinner they had a good local trade. Julia had started that, quickly building a reputation for simple, well-cooked food. Her Maltese-style rabbit stew had become well-known in the district and she had soon mastered the local dishes. After her death Guido had carried on and found to his surprise that he too had a touch. The clientele had stayed, first, perhaps, out of sympathy, but later because of the merits of the food.

Guido wondered what had happened to Creasy. He had never been easy to understand, but Guido knew him better than anyone. He doubted it could have been a woman. In all the years there had never been a woman to affect Creasy in more than a passing way. Even twenty years before, when Creasy had taken up with a French nurse in Algeria. Guido thought that she had been special, but after three months she had moved on.

"It's like trying to open a door with the wrong key," she had remarked to Guido. "It goes into the lock but it won't turn."

Guido had repeated the remark to Creasy, who had just said, "Maybe the lock's rusty."

Guido also doubted that Creasy had been involved in any event which had traumatically marred him. After a lifetime of events that would leave few men unmarked, Creasy had always been just Creasy.

He lay sleeping now in Guido's own rooms. After ten minutes Guido had looked in on him. He had lain on his side, the sheet at his waist in the heated room, and Guido had examined him covertly. The body was slack with a faded tan and all the scars were old scars. The back laced with faint pale weals which curved round to each side of the stomach. The small puncture marks under the left ribs. The backs of the hands mottled with the marks of old burns. He knew that underneath the sheet one leg had a badly stitched scar above the knee, stretching almost to the groin. The face had not escaped, a thin scar going vertically from the right eyebrow to the hairline, and another, smaller, on the left side of the jaw.

They were all familiar to Guido and he knew their histories. There was nothing new. The body of the sleeping man had been much abused, but that abuse had never before been self-inflicted.

Pietro interrupted his thoughts, coming into the kitchen with two baskets under his arms. He stopped in surprise at seeing Guido.

"I expected you later in the day," he said, putting the baskets on the table.

"An old friend," said Guido, standing up and peering into the baskets.

Pietro started to unload the fruit and vegetables for Guido's inspection.

"Some friend, to bring you from your mother's sick bed so quickly."

"Some friend," agreed Guido. "He's sleeping now."

Pietro was curious. He had worked for Guido for four years, ever since Guido had caught him stealing the hubcaps off his car. He got a severe beating and some questions. Then, learning that he had no home, Guido had taken him back to the pensione and given him a meal and a cot under the stairs.

He hadn't known then, and didn't know now, that Guido had seen himself at the same age.

Guido always treated the boy much as he had on the first day-gruffly, always abrupt, and without the least sign of affection. Pietro, in return, retained his original cheeky, disrespectful attitude. Both knew the affection that existed, but it never showed. It was a very un-Italian relationship. Over the years, Pietro had developed into a practical right arm for Guido and, with the help of two aged waiters who came in to serve lunch and dinner, they ran the small pensione between them.

In spite of living with him for so long, Pietro knew little of his past. Guido's mother came to the pensione on rare occasions and was garrulous and had talked about Guido's brother and his family in Milan, and about Julia, who had died five years before. But she was strangely silent about Guido's own past. Pietro knew that he spoke perfect French and passable English and Arabic, and assumed he had traveled widely.

He never asked questions. Guido's reticence had rubbed off on him.

So the new arrival puzzled him. When the bell had rung just before midnight he had assumed that Guido had returned early. The big man standing under the light had appeared menacing at first.

"Is Guido in?" he had asked. Pietro had noticed the Neapolitan accent.

He had shaken his head.

"When is he coming back?"

Pietro had shrugged. The man had not seemed surprised by this lack of cooperation.

"I'll wait," he said and brushed past the boy and walked up the stairs and out onto the terrace. Pietro considered for a few moments and then followed him. He felt he should get angry, demand an explanation, but the feeling of menace was gone. The man was sitting in one of the cane chairs that were scattered about. He was looking down at the lights of the city. His manner and demeanor reminded the boy of Guido.

He asked if the man wanted anything.

"Scotch," had come the reply. "A bottle if you have it."

He had brought the bottle and a glass, and then after some more thought had just asked the man his name.

"Creasy," he answered. "And you?"

"Pietro. I help Guido here."

The man had poured the Scotch, taken a sip, and looked hard at the boy.

"Go to bed. I won't steal anything."

So Pietro had gone downstairs and despite the late hour phoned Guido at his mother's. Guido had said, "Alright, go to bed. I'll be back sometime tomorrow."

They were preparing lunch when Guido surprised the boy by suddenly remarking: "He's American."

"Who?"

Guido pointed at the ceiling. "My friend. Creasy."

"But he speaks perfect Italian-Like a Neapolitan."

Guido nodded. "I taught him."

Pietro's surprise continued as Guido went on to talk at length. "We were in the Legion together, and afterward-until eight years ago, when I married."

"The Legion?"

"The Foreign Legion," Guido said. "The French one."

The boy became excited. For him, as for most people, the words conjured up all the wrong images: sand dunes, remote forts, unrequited love.

"I joined in 1955 in Marseilles." Guido smiled at the keen interest on the boy's face. "I was in for six years."

He stopped chopping at the vegetables and his normally impassive face softened slightly at the memory.

"It wasn't like you think. It never is. They were good years-the best."

It was the arrival of Creasy and the boy's obvious curiosity that triggered Guido's memory and took him back to 1945. Eleven years old. A father dead in North Africa. A six-year-old brother, always hungry, and his own hunger. A mother whose faith and fatalism were such that her only answer to catastrophe was to pray, harder and longer, in the church at Positano. Guido had no such faith. He had walked the fifty kilometers to Naples. He knew the Americans were there and so food was there.

He became one of the army of scroungers, and discovered a gift for it. He had a keen intelligence, and what he couldn't beg, he stole. He quickly established himself, with a corner of a cellar to sleep in, among half a dozen other urchins, and he learned the ways of the Americans, their weaknesses and generosities.

He learned which restaurants they ate in and which bars they drank in, and the brothels and the women they sated themselves in. He learned the best time to beg: when drink had fueled their generosity; and the best time to steal: when sex and desire diverted their attention. He learned every bend and corner of the narrow, cobbled streets, and he survived. Once a week he walked the coast road back to Positano, carrying chocolate and money and tins of meat. Elio no longer went hungry and his mother prayed and lit candles in the church, her faith justified, her prayers answered. Hunger and necessity are poor teachers of morality.

A society that cannot provide the basics of life does not get its laws obeyed. Guido never went back to live in Positano. Naples was his school, his breadbasket, and the horizon of his future. First he just survived, living like a rodent on the refuse of the city; after the mere fact of survival, his intelligence took him on. By the time he was fifteen he led a dozen others like him, organized into a gang that stole anything that couldn't be bolted or cemented down. Childhood simply passed him by. He knew nothing of children's games, of childlike emotions. "Right" was first survival and then possession. "Wrong" was weakness and getting caught. He learned early that boldness was the key to leadership. Others watched and waited, and when they recognized boldness, they followed.

The Americans liberated the city and they liberated crime. Under the Fascists, first Italian and then German, the criminals had lean pickings. Without the protection of fair, democratic, and therefore pliable justice, they lost their power. Even the biggest and most highly organized criminals had been shot or thrown into jail, and many innocents as well. The Americans released the innocents, and the criminals with them. Justice and crime returned to Italy hand in hand.

By the early 1950's the organization had clicked back into place. Prostitutes, many of them coerced by hunger, were brought under control. The bosses assigned districts, designated pimps, and took their percentages. The wartime damage was repaired. Marshall Aid funded the reconstruction, and the bosses took their cut. Restaurants and shops and taxis and landlords began making profits again and the bosses protected them against criminals and were naturally paid for the service.