The Fallen (14 page)

“I thought as much,” said Major Woodard. “Well, I’m afraid it’s going to have to be you that goes, lieutenant. You’re familiar with the area, and if it’s bad, I’m sure the
brigadiere
would like to see a face that he recognizes. Besides, the fact of the matter is that I haven’t anyone else I can send.”

“I understand,” said Greaves.

“You’ll have to take the staff car. There’s no way you’ll get a prisoner on the back of a motorbike.”

“When do I go?”

“Unfortunately, I’ve had to send Corporal Philbin on an errand down to Ravello. He won’t be back until late this evening. So, your friend will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Then I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, lieutenant. That would be best.”

Greaves watched as Major Woodard wandered back to the window and looked out again at the square. The crowd that had gathered to try to steal rations from the truck continued to loiter, but there was no sign of the boy with the broken fingers.

“I wish I were home,” the major said quietly, as if to himself. “I wish I were anywhere but here.”

For a time, after her parents died, whenever Luisa looked at Parente, she imagined him in their place. For more than half a dozen years already he
had been a surrogate. Her own father, who’d worked his whole life in an accountancy firm, had neither the time nor the inclination to nurture his only daughter’s boundless curiosity. And her mother had wanted for her only what she’d had herself: a steadfast, if listless, husband and a family. They had been against her taking the job at the museum, and only a visit from Augusto himself—who saw in the schoolgirl, whom he’d interviewed alongside young men just graduated from the university, a longing for knowledge—had finally convinced them.

More than his assistant, she became his pupil. At his side she learned of ancient things: disappeared civilizations, dead beliefs in dead languages. It was as if he had opened up his mind for her, pushed the doors wide to the vault of his knowledge; and wandering through all that he knew was as enlivening as wandering through the ruins themselves. It was an adventure for her. So much so that, when her mother got sick, and then her father too, she felt as if she really didn’t know them anymore, and that brought with it a terrible remorse. And then, when they were gone, her first thought was to replace them. She almost convinced herself that she could. She wouldn’t go home to the empty apartment—that small set of rooms, tucked up under the eaves of the building, which still smelled of them. Instead, she envisioned herself going home to Augusto’s apartment on Riviera di Chiaia overlooking the seafront, where the noise of the water would drift in through the open windows while she made their dinner, and then, afterwards, she would rub his stiff joints with liniment before she pulled back the blankets on his bed and got him settled, turning out the light as she left to go to her own, smaller room at the far end of the corridor, with its high, narrow bed with the lace-trimmed canopy. She knew it was all empty fancy, a whimsy born of grief and guilt: a dream into which she fled to hide from the ache of being left on her own.

“Are you all right?”

She looked up from the ledger in her lap. Parente had come from behind his desk and stood now next to the sofa.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Are we making progress?”

She shrugged, and then reached for the other ledgers on the low table in front of her. She flipped through the pages. “It will take another week, perhaps two. There are the vaults still to go through, and we haven’t yet begun with the bronzes or the Farnese collection.”

“Any concerns I should know about?”

Luisa frowned. “There are some discrepancies, some mosaics that cannot be accounted for. Small pieces, mostly, but they may have been missing for some time.”

“I see.”

“We should have been more careful, Augusto,” she said, recalling the chaos of trying to secure the collections during the attacks that had preceded the arrival of the Allied armies. Then Augusto had been so concerned with protecting the larger pieces—the statues in the main-floor galleries and the paintings on the mezzanine, the priceless glassware and Pompeian frescoes—that the storage of more minor pieces went unsupervised. It had been an error in judgment, but at the time neither of them expected that the museum would survive the violence of the bombardments.

“We did what we could,” he said. “Nobody can ask more than that.” He took the ledgers from her and laid them on the table. Then he sat down beside her on the sofa. “Luisa,” he said, taking her by the hand, “I’m worried about you.”

“What do you mean?”

He smiled. “You take very good care of me. You always have. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

“Augusto,” she said, looking him straight in the eye, “why are you talking like this? Are you not feeling well?”

Now he laughed. “I am a seventy-two-year-old man, Luisa. My back hurts, sometimes I get dizzy, and after I climb a flight of stairs I have to stop and catch my breath. Every time I cough, I think I am going to have a heart attack.”

She pulled her hand away. “Stop that. It isn’t funny.”

“Yes, I know, I know. But this is what I’m talking about. You spend all of your time worrying about me, when the person you should be worrying about is yourself. All of this”—he swept his hand through the air—“all of this means nothing. It doesn’t matter. It is you that matters— you and the world that goes on outside these walls. But you shut yourself off from that world. You always have. And that’s my fault.”

“You’re talking foolish,” she said to him, and stood up from the sofa. “Now please, Augusto, we have a lot of work still to do. The men will be back from their lunch soon, and I want to be through with the ceramics on the third floor before we leave for the day.” She walked to the door. When she turned back, he was still sitting on the sofa. “Well? Are you coming or not?”

Augusto shook his head and sighed. “You’re very stubborn, my darling.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Maybe too stubborn for your own good.”

Roviale’s
Scenes of the Last Judgment
took precedence on the wall behind the magistrate’s bench. In the gallery, a commotion had started: there were shouts, a slap, then two women fell to the floor in a scuffle. The sweet-faced boy of eighteen being led from the prisoner’s box wept openly while the MPs who guarded the courtroom moved to separate the two women.

Abruzzi leaned towards him and said: “What do you think?”

“I think it is ironic,” replied Cioffi, looking up at the mural. “I would not want to face the judge with that over my head.”

“I’m not talking about the painting,
dottore
,” said Abruzzi. “I’m talking about the boy.”

He shrugged. “Loving two women can only get a man in trouble.”

Abruzzi laughed. “Loving
one
will do that.”

Cioffi looked at him, at his sharp-edged face, and wondered if he could actually know such a thing. He could not imagine Abruzzi loving anyone. He had the cold eyes of one to whom affection, even simple fondness, is a foreign concept. He’d come up from the streets, been a small boy who had to fight his way out of the gutter. How could he have known anything but the intricacies of fear?

The women were escorted out, and the young prisoner was taken through a side door to await transfer back to Poggio Reale prison. The magistrate, an American colonel with grey, brush-cut hair and a wearied expression, was busy shuffling paperwork, while the consuls, also army officers, chatted to one another and waited for the next case to be called.

“These Americans,” Abruzzi said, nodding towards the court officers, “they like to go on about Justice being blind. What do you think about that?”

“I think Justice doesn’t exist,” said Cioffi. “At least not in Naples.”

Abruzzi smiled. “And you would be right,
dottore
. Now, what have you brought me?”

Cioffi reached into the pocket of his shabby coat and removed a small bundle. He glanced around before he unwrapped the stained handkerchief.

“What is it?” Abruzzi asked, unimpressed.

“It is Egyptian. A statuette.” Cioffi lifted it closer. “A dog.”

“I don’t see a dog. All I see is a rock. A rock that I could find on any beach in Naples.”

“No, no. Look closer.” Cioffi touched his dirty fingernail to the carving. “Here is its snout. You can see the ears too. The piece is corroded, I warrant, but that shows its age. It is made from quartzite and comes from the time of the pharaoh Akhenaten.”

“Akhenaten, eh?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Is it valuable?”

“To the right people,” Cioffi said, “it is very valuable. There are collectors who would pay a great deal to have something like this. I used to know a man in Rome. He knew others, in Switzerland. But perhaps you already know of someone.”

Abruzzi nodded. “Yes,
dottore
. Don’t you worry, I have someone in mind.”

A side door to the courtroom opened and there was a buzz in the gallery as the next defendant was led in. Abruzzi slipped the carving into his pocket, then he said to Cioffi : “This is the one I’m interested in. I think you might be interested too.”

The man in the dock was a sad-eyed fellow with sparse, grey-flecked hair and pronounced jowls. The magistrate had the charges read into the record. The main telephone line in Piazza Mercato had been cut, and the defendant stood accused of possessing the copper wire with the intention of selling it on the black market. The indictment included a charge of sabotage.

“Do you know him?” Abruzzi asked.

Cioffi shook his head. “Should I?”

“Well, he is a
dottore
too. An abortionist. He takes care of the girls in our brothels. Protects our investments, you might say.”

“Then you’ve come to help him?”

“Help him?” Abruzzi laughed. “No, I have not come to help him. I’m the reason he’s here.”

The defence counsel entered a plea of not guilty. “I have depositions, sir,” he said. “Sworn statements attesting to the defendant’s character. He is a respected physician. He’s been assisting the Red Cross at the typhoid clinic in the Ottacalli district, sir.”

The magistrate impatiently held out his hand. “Give them to me.”

The counsel began to search the papers spread over his table. He opened one string file then another. “If I could have just a moment, sir,” he said. He rummaged in his attaché case, began to empty its contents onto the seat of his chair.

Cioffi noticed now that the prisoner stared at Abruzzi and that Abruzzi stared back.

“It is interesting, isn’t it,
dottore
, how a man will cling to his pride when he has nothing left.”

The magistrate said, “I’m waiting, counsellor.”

“Yes, sir. It’s just that …” The officer sighed and shook his head. “I can’t seem to find the documents, sir. I’m afraid they’ve been misplaced.”

The prisoner’s cheek twitched slightly. His stare faltered.

In a hushed voice Abruzzi said: “I don’t think that the papers are going to be found.”

“Begging the court’s indulgence,” the counsel said. “Perhaps I could have a continuance until I can locate the affidavits.”

“There’s no room on the docket for a continuance. Let’s hear the case. If the documents turn up, we’ll revisit it then.”

There was a murmur in the gallery and someone shouted. The magistrate called for the heckler to be removed. As the MPs began to make their way towards the man, whom Cioffi recognized from the
ristorante
on Corso Umberto Primo, another disturbance broke out on the other side
of the courtroom. The magistrate motioned the court interpreter to the bench and told him to advise the spectators that he would clear the room if order was not restored. Half-heartedly, the interpreter relayed the message. No one paid him any mind. Then, over counsel’s protests, the magistrate ruled summarily against the defendant: a sentence of three years and a fine of three hundred thousand lire were imposed.

The prisoner shuffled, head down, out of the dock. Abruzzi waited until he had been removed from the courtroom, then he took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Cioffi.

“You see,
dottore
,” he said, “it is best not to disappoint me.”

Cioffi folded the envelope and slipped it into the lining of his coat, then looked towards the door through which the prisoner had been taken. “What did he do?” he asked.

“Something I suggest you avoid,” said Abruzzi. “He developed a conscience.”

Parente steadied himself against the low railing and gazed down on the cork and clay city—Pompeii, rendered in painstakingly precise miniature. His eyes roved, from the Temple of Apollo to the Temple of Jupiter, from the Grand Teatro to the Gladiators’ Barracks. In his thoughts he wandered through the Forum to the Law Courts and on again to the Macellum, the market where meat and fish were sold and where the money-changers plied their trade. He roamed the city in his mind: along Via dell’Abbondanza, past the House of the Tragic Poet and the House of the Moralist, until he reached the Stabian Baths, and from there on to the Amphitheatre, where the beasts were slaughtered for the entertainment of the masses—tigers and lions and giraffes and elephants, brought across the sea from Africa.

It nearly broke his heart to see it there, lying at his feet as if he were a god—a tired, old god fallen from grace, a god corrupted and corporeal. His wars in heaven had become wars of the flesh. His body had become his greatest enemy. It had been months now since he’d last gone to the ruins. Any overseeing that was to be done he now left to Luisa, because it was almost too much for him even to climb the stone roadway to the Porta Marina: he would find himself out of breath and tormented by his searing nerve before he managed even to reach the gates of the ancient city. And with each passing day he grew more convinced that standing there at that railing was as close as he would ever come to setting foot again in that place he loved so much. His Pompeii was this now: a glorified diorama.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Parente looked up to see Greaves standing in the doorway to the exhibit.