The Fallen (17 page)

“Yes. The
tenente
.”

“An honest man.”

Varone smiled. “We are all honest men,
dottore
. In our own way.” He looked back to where Paolo and Abruzzi stood. Then he said to Cioffi: “There is a small café on Piazza Amedeo called the Diplomatico. Do you know it?”

“I have seen it, yes.”

“It belongs to me,” said Varone. “I like to go there in the afternoon to have my espresso. In two days you will come to see me there. And you will bring me something. Something pretty that I can give to my wife.” He saw Cioffi glance over towards the fence. “You’re worried about Abruzzi?”

“Yes,” said the
dottore
.

“Don’t be,” Varone said. “He’s not going to be a problem for anyone anymore.”

Greaves left Naples at dawn, by mid-morning he had passed Nola and started into the mountains, and an hour and a half after that he rounded the bend on the narrow, winding road that brought him to the wide plateau, across which lay the village of Tenerello, a gathering of low-slung, flat-roofed buildings the colour of wheat that clung like a rocky outcrop to the mountainside. His heart lifted. It wasn’t unlike
the feeling he had experienced as a boy whenever he arrived at the summer home on Lake Rosseau: a sense of having returned to a place of welcome familiarity.

When he entered the village, though, he found the streets empty. Everywhere windows were shuttered. It was as if the population had left en masse, as if a hasty exodus had taken place. But Greaves knew better. The people hadn’t gone; they were just keeping themselves out of sight. It was worse, then, than he had expected. The village was afraid.

He turned the car into a narrow side street that led off the main square. Partway along, a painted sign overhanging a doorway on the left announced the Carabinieri station. Greaves pulled to the side of the street and sounded the horn. The station door slowly opened and a nervous face peaked out. It was a young policeman; aside from the
brigadiere
, he was the garrison’s sole officer. He looked the length of the empty street, and then along the vacant rooftops of the buildings opposite, before he stepped out onto the pavement, making sure that the pistol he held in his right hand was plain for Greaves to see. He came towards the car.

Greaves opened the driver’s-side door and stepped out, and when he did, the young policeman tensed, his right hand rising slightly from his side, until he realized it was Greaves and he relaxed again.

“We didn’t think you would come,” he said.

“Well, I have,” said Greaves.

The policeman stood and regarded Greaves a minute longer, and then he turned his head and shouted back towards the open doorway behind him.

After a moment, Francesco Maglietta emerged, a wide grin stretching out his thick moustache. He had a napkin that was darkened by a spot of grease tucked into his shirt front. He removed
it and wiped his hands. “Our saviour has arrived,” he said, and came over to Greaves and kissed him on the cheeks. “It is good to see you again so soon.”

“It’s good to see you too, Francesco,” said Greaves. “Though I’d rather the circumstances were different.”

“You and me both. You’ll stay the night, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Good.” Maglietta clapped him on the shoulder. “Now come inside and let me show you this terrible villain we have captured.”

The Carabinieri station was a simple room, large, with a stone floor and bare walls that had small, boxy windows cut out at eye level. The only furniture was a desk pushed back into the corner and a plain table with two straight-backed chairs. On the table were a basket of bread and cold chicken and a bottle of wine.

Maglietta went to the desk and opened a drawer. He took out another glass and filled it for Greaves, then replenished his own. “
Salute
,” he said.

They drank a toast, and then Greaves said: “So, where is this prisoner you’re so desperate to get rid of?”

Maglietta nodded to the far side of the room, where the door to a cramped storage closet stood open. Inside, shackled to a chair, was a boy of perhaps sixteen. He sat with his shoulders hunched.

“That’s him?” Greaves said, noting his ungainly adolescent frame, all knees and elbows, and the liberal scattering of acne across his cheeks.

“Doesn’t look like much, does he? But that didn’t stop him from killing a man. Isn’t that right, you little shit?”

The boy lifted his gaze. The uneasy expression on his face made him seem even younger to Greaves, and he didn’t like to think of how he was going to get on in the communal cells at Poggio Reale prison.

“It’s his prick that got us into this mess,” Maglietta said. He went
to the closet and ran a hand over the boy’s head, ruffling his hair. “Or was it love, my friend? Because you know that is what gets us into the worst trouble.” He glanced back at Greaves. “The neighbour’s daughter, only twelve years old, but a fetching little thing. Someday she will be a beautiful woman. Not that this one will ever know it.” He tugged gently on the boy’s forelock. “He went to her house in the middle of the night, drunk on Strega. Made such a fuss—throwing stones at the shutters, calling her name out, saying things to make a grown man blush. He woke the whole family. When the brother came outside to clear him off, our little man here takes a swing. Only he forgets that he still has the bottle in his hand. He hits the brother square on the temple. The poor bugger was dead straight away, before he even hit the ground.”

Greaves looked at the prisoner again. He had such thin arms: the shackles seemed as though they might slip over his wrists. There was very little of the man he might one day become in his face; he had the eyes of a frightened child.

“What do you think?” Maglietta said. “A story fit for the San Carlo?”

“Might be too much even for the opera,” Greaves said.

“Yes, you may be right.”

Maglietta came back to the table and poured another glass of wine. He drank it off in one swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I feel bad for the little bastard,” he said.

Greaves felt sorry for him too. An accident was all it was, and yet it would end up costing him his entire future.

“But enough of that,” Maglietta said. “Let’s get you to the house. Cordelia and the girls are waiting. You’ve brought them gifts, I hope.”

“Of course I have.”

“Good,” Maglietta said with a laugh, “because I told them that you would.”

Cioffi stood by the wash basin cleaning sick from the front of his shirt with a damp cloth. The smell of sour lemon and the acrid tang of spoiled wine filled the air. He stopped what he was doing and leaned over the toilet bowl and retched again, but there was nothing left in his stomach to bring up. The
limoncello
, the bottle of Chianti, the stale biscotti that he’d forced down after leaving the Villa Comunale, had already been spilled across the porcelain, as well as over his shoes and on his pants leg. He wiped the bits of vomit from his shoe tops. When he stood up again, a wave of dizziness struck him and he had to grab hold of the basin to steady himself. He was sweating and there was a sharp pain in his bowels. He desperately wanted to be sick again, desperately wanted to spew the rottenness from his guts. He breathed quick, shallow breaths.

He could hear Lello moving about the apartment, from the
salotto
and into the kitchen, then along the corridor to the lavatory.

“Aldo?” he called. “Are you in there?” He opened the door.

Cioffi dipped the cloth into the basin again and wiped at the stain on his shirt front. “What do you want?”

Lello looked at the mess he’d made. He hesitated, and then said: “I’ve come to tell you that I want you to leave. I want you to find someplace else to live.”

Cioffi watched his friend’s reflection in the mirror, but Lello would not meet his gaze.

“And where do you propose that I should go?” he said.

“I don’t know. I just know that you can’t be here anymore. Not after what happened yesterday. I don’t know what you’ve become, Aldo.
I will always love you, I will always be your friend, but I cannot be around you.”

Cioffi’s head sank. “When?”

“I will give you until next week to find something, but after that I want you gone.”

Lello closed the door and shuffled back down the hallway. After he’d gone, another spasm stabbed Cioffi in the belly and he doubled over. For a brief instant he considered that it might be his appendix; perhaps it had swollen and was ready to burst. And then he thought how that useless little organ could explode and fill his abdominal cavity with its poison, choking the life out of more vital organs: his kidneys, his pancreas, his hardened liver.

Then the spasm passed, and with it some of the dread he’d been feeling since that morning. He wet his hands and ran them through his hair, then looked at himself in the mirror—his eyes jaundiced, his skin papery.

He thought:
I have nothing left
.

The soldiers had grey, washed-out faces, scruffy beards, and hollow eyes. They stood about in shirt sleeves, staring vacantly, exhausted. One, with the smooth features of a man who keeps himself indoors, tried to goad them into a cheer, but fatigue, and perhaps something else, stifled their enthusiasm. The headline flashed on the screen: MARINES REST AFTER SEIZING STRONGHOLDS IN THE MARSHALLS. The next caption, which followed a scene of stretcher-bearers carrying wounded along the gangplank of a hospital ship, proclaimed low casualties, but Luisa expected half-truths; she had lived too many years in a propaganda state to believe what was said in newsreels.

She looked at the others sitting beneath the marquee, their faces tilted so they could see the projector screen that had been set up against the garden wall. She hadn’t wanted to come, but Augusto had heard that the Red Cross would be handing out blankets and coupons for paraffin. Luisa told him both would soon be pointless now that the days were growing warmer, but he wanted a blanket so he could take it to a tailor to be cut into a pair of waistcoats. She agreed to go only after he threatened to go himself. She had been angry with him, said he was a stubborn fool, but now she felt relief at being out of the museum for a spell. Sorting the collections, everything to be checked and catalogued and organized in the galleries according to Augusto’s precise instructions, was draining work. And Augusto himself had become draining—hovering over everything, his temper snappish. It was a strain on him, she knew, having Aldo there. Each day spent waiting for his nephew to disappoint him again.

A murmur passed through the rows as the screen filled with familiar images: narrow, cobbled streets; squat, thick-stoned houses; the crying faces of women, their heads covered by dark scarves; Germans lying dead in the rubble or being led away with their hands in the air. The legend read: FIFTH ARMY PRESSES ON AT CASSINO. There were more wounded soldiers, bandaged and lying on litters on the ground, smoking cigarettes and smiling. Luisa found herself wondering about Thomas. He had said, the day before, that he wanted to help. She wanted so badly to believe him.

Generals filled the screen next, gathered about a table map in the great hall of the palace at Caserta. The title proclaimed: CLARK AND HIS STAFF CONFIDENT OF BREAKING NAZI LINES. Then the images flickered and the screen went dark while the reel was changed.

Laughter and applause greeted the arrival on the white screen of a cartoon mouse dressed in coveralls and a peaked cap and whistling
as he twirled the wheel of a steamboat. Luisa stood up. She excused herself as she moved along the crowded row to the aisle.

A Red Cross nurse, seeing her, came over. She put her hand on Luisa’s elbow and, in a slow, saccharine voice, said: “You can’t leave, ma’am. We won’t be giving out the packages until after the pictures are finished.”

Luisa stared coldly back at her. “I want a blanket and paraffin.”

“I’m sorry,” said the woman, her pink cheeks bunching up under the force of her smile. “You can’t have anything yet. Not until after the pictures.” She squeezed the inside of Luisa’s elbow and began to gently push her back along the row. “Why don’t you just go on and sit down,” she said sweetly.

Luisa shrugged herself free. She felt her face flush, and a bitter anger welled up inside her as she looked around at the others, who sat there like sheep watching the flickering screen.

She turned back to the nurse. The urge to slap her face, to pull at her bottled hair, to scratch the rosy flesh from her fattened cheeks, was almost too strong to resist. But there were soldiers in the garden, and Luisa knew that if she touched the woman, they would not hesitate to descend upon her with their batons. So she sat down again and folded her hands in her lap.

“Do not touch me again,” she said quietly, almost to herself, and stared off towards a bare space on the wall. Out of the corner of her eye, though, she could still see the whistling mouse steering his boat.

Cordelia Maglietta made a dinner of grilled mushroom, green salad, and lamb shank with risotto, followed by simmered pears served with mascarpone cheese. It was better than Greaves had eaten since he’d last been to Tenerello. Afterwards they went out to the garden, where the
arbour was lit with oil lamps, and sat in a cocoon of light and drank plum brandy and smoked Maglietta’s sharp-smelling cheroots. On a raised stone platform a brazier sputtered, its smoke curling beneath the overhang of the trellis. The night air was cool but with the suggestion of spring in it, like a faint scent carried on the wind. In the cloudless sky the stars shone dimly, the glow of the nearby lanterns drawing off their brilliance even as they flickered in the soft breeze coming up from the valley.

Maglietta, sitting in a bentwood chair, stroked his abundant moustache and mused about his inability to grow grapes on the rocky farmland. “I’ll tell you, Thomas, it is as if the ground here is cursed. It holds nothing. Every year I plant vines, and every year they wither. Shrivel up like an old hag’s bony fingers. When I came here, I was full of dreams. I was going to have a vineyard, I was going to make wonderful wine and finally stop being a policeman.”