The Fallen (24 page)

He took his hand away and brought hers to his lips. He softly kissed her fingers. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will.”

Then he turned and walked out of the courtyard.

The electric torch sat on the low table between them, its beam pointed towards the ceiling. The rest of the
salotto
was plunged into shadows. A recent proclamation from the military government had reinstated the nightly blackouts. Things were going badly for the Germans in the north, and it was thought that they might step up their strikes on the city in response, even though the longer flights from bases in Bergamo and Modena put their bombers at greater risk. There was a growing fear among the people that the sense of hope which had started to sweep through Naples—a belief that their long suffering would soon end—would be snuffed out by a last-gasp raid that would kill them in their sleep.

Cioffi expected as much. For him, at least, that was how things
went. He took a chunk of bread from the loaf Lello had put out, and a piece of hard cheese. There was fruit as well—plums in syrup, and brandied cherries. And wine: a bottle of sweet Lacrima Christi. Everything had been donated by those loyal to the cause: the baker, the cheese maker, the wine merchant, all of them good socialists. The small feast, Lello said, was in celebration of their long friendship. He wanted Cioffi to know that he wasn’t angry with him anymore, that he forgave him his shortcomings.

“You will always be like a brother to me,” Lello had said to him, “but I can’t be around you anymore. Not if I am going to do the things that I need to do, not if I am going to help to change things. The time has come for Napoli to start taking care of itself, and I don’t mean Neapolitan crooks taking over from the American and British crooks. I am talking about the people of this city looking out for one another. We are coming out of a dark time, where it has been every man taking care of himself alone—individual survival. But we have a chance now to be better than that. The fascists are gone, and soon the soldiers will be gone too. And then it will be our time, and—who knows?—what begins here may spread north, and one day through all of Italy.”

Cioffi liked hearing his friend give speeches. It reminded him of the years before the war, when Lello was passionate, when he would stand on his chair in the Gambrinus and shout down the blackshirts and call on all of the drinkers to march with him into the street, all the way to the steps of the Prefettura, where he would scrawl I FRATELLI UNITI on the pink stone walls. He missed that Lello.

“I’m glad things have worked out for you, Aldo.”

Cioffi savoured the sharpness of the cheese. That afternoon he had visited the apartment house on Via San Sebastiano. A flat with three rooms would be his the day after next. He had only to wait for the
portiere
to put out the family that was currently living in it. He smiled now at his friend.

Lello lifted the bottle of wine and refilled both of their glasses. “To new beginnings,” he said.

Cioffi held up his glass. And they toasted like they used to do.

They sat on the terrace of a small café on Piazza Gagliardi, sipping cappuccinos and sharing a plate of
zeppole
. Luisa did not have Parente’s sweet tooth, but in honour of the Feast of San Giuseppe she ate the pastry. It was important, Augusto had said to her, that things get back to normal. Doughnuts and a new suit of clothes to mark the saint’s day was a start. Augusto had on the waistcoat that had been made for him from the Red Cross blanket, and Luisa wore a short, tapered jacket cut from the same material, with a neat row of pearly buttons down the front.

Back to normal? she thought. She didn’t think she knew what that meant. Could anything be called normal anymore? Perhaps, to look at them, one might think that there was nothing out of the ordinary: two people enjoying a spring morning. But what, she wondered, of the two people themselves? What about them was commonplace? Augusto, fading away, not sure anymore of who he was; the museum, which had been his breath and soul, had become a palace of deceit. And what of herself? She who had, for eight years, pledged herself to him, stood loyally by his side, guarded him from those who sought to impose themselves upon him—she had been his confidante, his protector, and, in her grief, his ersatz daughter. And yet, in the blink of an eye, it seemed she was willing to throw it all away. She had protected
Aldo—why? She’d tried to convince herself that in protecting Aldo she was really protecting Augusto, but that wasn’t true. The truth of it was, she saw advantage. She knew, in some dark corner of her brain, that protecting Aldo would bring benefit—even if, at the time, she had no inkling of what that benefit might be.

She looked over at Augusto, watched as he wiped a crumb from his bottom lip. He had no idea what she’d done. If he found out, would he understand? Would he forgive her?

He looked back at her now. “Are you thinking of him?”

“Who?” she said.

“Thomas. Your face looked sad and I thought that perhaps you were thinking of him.”

Luisa smiled. “I’m not sad. And I’m not thinking of him. I was thinking of us, you and me, and what will happen after this is all done.”

Parente reached out and took her hand. “And what have you decided?”

“I have decided that we will be fine,” Luisa said.

Already, it had become easier to lie to him.

Cioffi waited beside the Monument of the Martyrs as the funeral procession made its way through the square towards the church on Via Poerio. He was sober and twitchy, and he didn’t like it.

He watched mourners crowd round the rough-hewn plank coffi n that was borne aloft by four pallbearers, old men who struggled under its weight. Through the open end of the box he could see the corpse’s feet, turned at an awkward angle and swaddled in dingy grey rags. Dried flowers were piled high on top of the coffin and brittle stems fell to the ground as the pallbearers stumbled along. These were gathered up by the phalanx of black-clad women who followed, weeping,
clutching rosaries and handkerchiefs and faded pictures of the young man dressed in a dark suit, his hair combed smartly to the side. Cioffi muttered a prayer under his breath.

Then, through the cortège, he saw the
tenente
. He waited until the last of the mourners had gone before he crossed the road.

“Where are we going?”

“There is a small café,” Cioffi said, “in Piazza Amedeo.”

“Are we expected?”

“He will be there,” said Cioffi.

“I don’t want you around when I speak with him. Just point him out to me and then go.”

“But
tenente
—”

“Don’t argue with me,
dottore
. That’s the way it’s going to be. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Cioffi.

“Good. And later tonight, at six o’clock, I want you to come back here. I’ll be with the others at evening mess, but I’ll make sure that the service entrance in back is left open. You’ll come in through there and go up to my room on the second floor. It’s at the far end of the corridor. Go there and wait for me. I’ll have something for you. Do you promise that you will be there?”

Cioffi nodded. “I promise.”

“All right, then. Let’s go and meet your friend.”

Varone noticed how the man did not move his hands when he spoke. He kept them flat on the tabletop in front of him.

“As far as I can tell, no one really seems all that bothered. I’ve spoken to a fellow at the port and the chief clerk at 21st General Hospital, and they seem to be of the mind that it’s the way things are.”

The security policeman spoke in a rush, as if he worried that if he didn’t get his words out, better judgment might swallow them up again. He still seemed somewhat uncomfortable with the decision he’d made.

Varone studied his face. He was young—younger, Varone assumed, than he actually looked. Mid-twenties, perhaps, no more. There was the impression that his features had been worn away, so that he seemed a person who was less than he’d once been. He was clearly a man who suffered horrible dreams.

“Tell me, Tenente Greaves,” Varone said, “this man at the port, who was he?”

“I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I choose not to mention his name. Suffice it to say, he was a man in a position to know of what he spoke.”

“Of course,” Varone said with a shrug. He wondered if it was the Irishman, and decided that it must have been; he couldn’t imagine Mangan letting any of the other port officers field such inquiries.

He sipped his espresso. “Now perhaps you will forgive me,
tenente
, if I ask you what any of this has to do with me?”

Greaves cleared his throat. “I need medical supplies. Antibiotics and saline and penicillin and whatever else you might be able to get your hands on. And I need it as quickly as possible.”

Varone nodded thoughtfully and scraped a fleck of dirt from under his fingernail. Ten minutes earlier, when the
dottore
had shown up at the café with the young security policeman, he hadn’t known what to expect. The appetites of such men were often unpredictable. To look at him, with his tired eyes and sunken cheeks, Varone would have guessed that he had a taste for morphine. The talk of 21st General Hospital had him thinking the same. And the last thing that Varone wanted was to be tied to a
drogato
. But he had this one all wrong.
By the sound of it, he had something of the Samaritan in him. And Samaritans were sometimes more bother than they were worth.

“That is a significant request,” he said. “For something like this—if it could be done—it would be a large debt.”

“I expect that it would.”

“How would you pay for this?”

“Before I answer, you should know that there is a stipulation.”

Varone smiled. “You seem quite certain that we can do business.”

“I’m confident, yes.”

Again, Varone thought, he had misjudged him. Anxious as he might appear, it did not seem that he was having any doubts after all.

“All right, then,
tenente
. What are your stipulations?”

Greaves leaned forward with his elbows propped on the table. “You are to forget about the museum. And you are to forget about Aldo Cioffi.”

“The
dottore
?”

“Yes. Forget about him and all the rest. Your deal now is with me.”

“You are asking me to forgo a sizable profit. The museum is like a treasure trove. I could live off it and nothing else.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Greaves said. “Sooner or later the authorities would step in. Not even the Carabinieri would let you get away with that for too long.”

“You might have a point. But in the meantime, I could do quite well for myself.”

“What I have to offer you could prove much more valuable.”

Varone stroked his chin. “Really? And what is that?”

Greaves lifted a hand from the table and laid it flat against his chest.

“Me,” he said.

“You?”

“I’m sure you can appreciate how beneficial I could be to a person in your line of work. Think about it: no more front-line checkpoints to worry about, no restrictions at Capodichino airfield or at the port. Clearance to go anywhere in the city. Your very own field security policeman—all the doors of Naples would be open to you.”

Varone finished his espresso and gently replaced the small cup on its saucer. He pursed his lips and nodded. “I think, maybe, something can be arranged.”

When Greaves opened the door to his room, he found the
dottore
waiting for him. He’d half expected—had Cioffi bothered to show up at all—that he would already have left. It was nearly eight o’clock by the time Greaves was able to slip away from the others. The major had arranged a little send-off for him, and after mess had passed around cigars and opened a bottle of French brandy. Sergeant Jones broke out a deck of cards, and dealt hands of penny-a-point fives while they drank and smoked and told stories about their time together in the city. He had finally managed to slip away after bowing out of a round early.

Now he crossed the room, opened the balcony doors, and stepped outside. He lit a cigarette. Cioffi hovered behind him in the doorway.

“Come out,
dottore
,” Greaves said. “The others are busy downstairs in the library. No one will see you.”

Cioffi stepped out onto the balcony but stayed back from the railing. Greaves offered him a cigarette.

“No, thank you,
tenente
.” He spoke in little more than a whisper.

The sun had dipped below the buildings on the far side of the square and everything was cast in shadows. That was how Greaves thought of Naples: a place that was murky and indistinct, where things
looked one way but were actually the other. The truth of the matter was in constant flux in Naples. The city could be depended upon to be undependable.

“
Dottore
,” he said, “I want you to do something for me.” He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew an envelope. On the front of it he had written:
Major Andrew J. Woodard, FSO, 803 Field Security Section
. “I want you to go to Luisa tonight and give this to her. There is a note for her inside. Tell her to read it. It will explain everything.”

Cioffi took the envelope and slipped it into his inside pocket. “I’ll make sure that she gets it.”

“And tell her that she should stay home tomorrow. She shouldn’t go to the museum and she shouldn’t go to the hospital. Make sure you tell her that too.”

Cioffi nodded. “And what about you,
tenente
?”

“Me? Don’t worry about me. I can look after myself. You, on the other hand,
dottore
—you’re going to need to watch out for yourself. You got mixed up with some pretty serious characters, and I can’t imagine that they’re going to be too happy with you.”

He went inside and found his satchel. From the side compartment he took out a thin roll of military scrip. He brought it back and gave it to Cioffi. “It’s all I could get from the counter-intelligence fund. It’s what we use to pay the informants. You take it and use it to get yourself away from Naples for a while.”

There was a noise from below the balcony. Sergeants Bennington and Jones, along with the major, had come out into the courtyard, cigars and snifters in hand. Cioffi stepped quickly through the balcony door.