The Fallen (6 page)

As Paolo loped back across the soggy yard, his torch beam dancing on the puddles, Varone laid an arm over the abbot’s shoulder. He drew the old monk close to him. “Do you know, padre, that boy takes his
nonna
every morning to the church of Santa Maria della Concezione to make confession. He was even an altar boy there when he was younger.”

“He is a good man, then,” said the abbot. “A good man with a good heart.”

“Oh, yes. He is a good man with a good heart. And if I told him to, he would come back and break your neck, and he would not even think to ask me why.”

The abbot shifted nervously. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I just thought you should know,” Varone said.

His family had a summer home on the shores of Lake Rosseau, three hours north of Toronto. It had a sloping, manicured lawn—tended by a local man who also watched over the place in the winter—that descended gently to the water’s edge, where a large cedar dock had been built, stretching out from the shoreline and big enough to accommodate a suite of wooden deck furniture. On sunny afternoons
his family would take lunch there, the meal prepared and brought down from the house by the two women his mother hired each season to look after the cooking and the cleaning. In the evenings, after the tempestuous summer storms to which the area was prone, he would go down to the dock with his father and grandfather—three generations of Greaves men—to watch the sky clear and reveal its dazzling patchwork of stars, always more brilliant than they were in the city. Their re-emergence overhead had always calmed him, always made him feel secure again after the afternoon’s deluge.

But watching from the balcony of his room on the second floor of the palazzo as the stars reappeared through the breaks in the clouds did little now to pacify Greaves. Clear night skies over Naples always meant the possibility of another raid.

He lit a cigarette and felt in his pocket for the letter. Earlier that day, Major Woodard had been to Field Security headquarters at Castellammare for a briefing, after which he had collected the section’s post, which he had distributed at evening mess. There was something for everyone: Sergeant Bennington opened a meerschaum pipe from his wife that was meant to have arrived at Christmastime; Sergeant Jones received a letter from his fiancée, Gwendolyn, telling him about an American airman she’d met who also came from a place called Bangor; Corporal Blair got a package from his mother with playing cards, a cribbage board, and a box of stale toffee; Corporal Philbin also got a package, but his came from his younger sister and contained three pairs of knitted socks, one red, one orange, and one mauve; Sergeant Roylance received a membership renewal from a golf course outside Liverpool where he hadn’t played a round since late spring 1939; and the major got statements from the Lloyds Bank about the accounts that he didn’t trust his wife to manage.

Greaves’s letter was from his father—he’d recognized the Massey-Harris Co. livery on the envelope. He had written from his office, and likely, Greaves imagined, had dictated its contents to his secretary. But when he opened the letter and removed the single sheet of company stationery, it was not the crisp Remington typeface he’d expected, but rather his father’s thin, spidery hand.

Greaves held the letter up so that it caught the faint yellow glow of the hurricane lamp that leaked through the shuttered doors. He read:

Dear Son,

I am wondering why it is that we have not yet had word from you. I have written several times now, and can only suppose that for some reason my letters have not found their way to you. I hope that this is the case. In the meantime, I have been in contact with Colonel Cosworth, one of Harry Crerar’s adjuncts, who assured me that matters have been handled with the utmost delicacy and that you have been placed with a British unit, though its whereabouts he could not say—it was, he told me, a question of security. He went to pains, though, to put me at ease. As far as Colonel Cosworth is concerned, what happened in Sicily was not your fault. Fog of war, as he put it—a man cannot be held responsible for such things. And as for afterwards, he assures me that it will not stand as a mark against you. In such situations, there are great stresses upon a man. But you can and must rise above whatever it is that is troubling you. It will be difficult, I have no doubt, but it is not impossible. Walter Hopkins, you remember him, fought at Passchendaele, and Frederick Barnes was in that horror at the Somme. And yet these men, and others I am acquainted with, have managed quite well despite their experiences. Time heals, Thomas. Soon enough we
will all move on and this whole business will be behind us. Have faith, son. Always,

Your Father

Greaves folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope. He studied the return address and thought of his father’s corner office on the third floor of the Massey-Harris Co. building and all the times he had stood there, staring out at the trains as they rumbled past, the bells ringing as they crossed over King Street, making for some far-off place in the West—for Manitoba, for the Prairies of Saskatchewan and the mountains beyond. All of those places that, as a child, he had so badly wanted to see—all of those places that he now felt he never would.

He reached into his pocket and took out his cigarette lighter. He touched the flame to the corner of the envelope. It caught quickly. He held the letter between his fingers and watched it burn, charred bits fluttering off in the breeze and falling like dying fireflies into the courtyard below.

A convoy of troop trucks passed, splashing rainwater from the potholes across the pavement. Cioffi stepped back to avoid the spray. He waved a fist at the last truck as it moved off. The soldier standing in the open tailgate grinned and showed him a middle finger.

The water soaked through Cioffi’s broken shoes. He looked around him. He had come as far as the university. Across the road from him was the darkened facade of the main building. Seeing it, he thought of another day when soldiers in trucks had crowded the boulevard, though then it had been Germans, not Americans.

On that day the trucks had not driven past. Instead, they had stopped and the soldiers had climbed down and begun to herd the people together. They pushed everyone into the roadway and set up barricades to pen them in as if they were so much livestock brought to market. After that another truck, with a flatbed, arrived; on the back of it was a newsreel camera. A German officer came forward and climbed the steps of the university. He wore a smart grey uniform, freshly brushed and with polished buttons that gleamed in the late summer sun. He spoke to the people through a megaphone, warning that there were traitors among them. On his signal, a man was taken from the front of the crowd. He was led up the steps and bound to a pillar near the entrance. There was a look of bewilderment on his
face as the ropes were tied, as if perhaps he thought it was some sort of ruse. On the flatbed truck, the newsreel camera focused on the German officer as he repeated his claim, in stilted but formal Italian, that there were traitors in their midst. There was only one way, the officer told the people, with which these traitors would be dealt. Then he put the megaphone aside and took his pistol from its holster. He placed the barrel of the pistol against the base of the man’s neck. The shot sounded like a whip crack, and the bullet, which tore a plum-sized hole in the man’s left cheek, erased the expression of bemusement from his face. Slumped against the ropes, his body jerked twice, shuddered, and then was still. Even from where he stood at the back of the crowd, Cioffi could see the spray of blood that sullied the officer’s meticulous uniform. After this, the German calmly retrieved his megaphone. He pointed towards the newsreel camera that now panned over the crowd. His amplified voice commanded: “
Adesso applaudite
.” Slowly people began to clap their hands. The officer shouted for them to applaud louder and soldiers moved through the crowd, sticking the butts of their rifles into the ribs of those who did not show enough enthusiasm. Cioffi clapped his hands together as hard as he could; he clapped them until they throbbed. “
Bene
,” the German officer had said. “
Bene
.” Then he had his men set fire to the university.

It was a dangerous time in the days and weeks after Marshal Badoglio agreed to the armistice. The Germans, always cool, had turned from ally to enemy in the blink of an eye. They brought their cruelty to the streets. At best they ridiculed you; at worst they tied you to a post and shot a bullet through your face. But while they were there, Cioffi had managed all right. His training had made him an adept forger, and he had paid his way supplying bogus medical certificates to the prostitutes in the German enlisted men’s brothels. A girl couldn’t work in any of these establishments without a clean bill of health—
the Wehrmacht didn’t want their
Oberschützes
going home syphilitic. But when the Americans arrived, they brought free enterprise with them, and for the brothel business that meant the Camorra, and they didn’t bother with paperwork. So with the forgery business dried up, Cioffi went, along with so many others, to offer his services to the liberators of Napoli, confident that his knowledge of English would land him an interpreter’s post, perhaps with the Red Cross or maybe even the Rockefeller Institute. That was how he found that his name was on a list. Ten years earlier he had been denounced as a Marxist. The statement against him was still in his police records, and suddenly Cioffi found himself
persona non grata
. There was no room in the new bureaucracy for a Communist.

He looked again at the scrap of paper in his hand. It had been more than a week since he’d met with Abruzzi, but the day before, word had come to him by way of Maggio: he was to get another coin, a real one this time, and bring it to an address on Corso Umberto Primo.

When he found the place, it was a small
ristorante
. Inside, the cramped dining room was busy, most of the tables occupied by soldiers who looked up as he stood in the open doorway. One, sitting at a nearby table, his eyes glassy and his lips stained with wine, shouted at him: “In or out, ginzo. Make up your mind.”

Cioffi looked around. He did not see Abruzzi, though Maggio had told him that he would be there. He was about to leave when a heavyset man came from the back of the room. He had hunched shoulders and a slight limp, and his nose was mashed to the side as if it had been broken many times. He paused a moment and glared at the drunken soldier, then said to Cioffi: “Are you the
dottore
?”

“I am, yes,” said Cioffi nervously.

“Follow me.”

The man led him past the tables and through a swinging door. They went through a sweating kitchen thick with the stink of sour fish and burnt dough to another door that led into the back alley. Abruzzi was there, sitting at a makeshift table rolling dice with another man, who bore a striking resemblance to the first. He looked up at Cioffi, then he waved a dismissive hand and the other two disappeared back inside without a word.

Abruzzi motioned to the vacant chair. “Have a seat. Would you like a drink?” He reached for the bottle of wine at his elbow. “But of course you would.”

Cioffi took the wine. He quickly drank it down and shyly held out the glass for more. Abruzzi pushed the bottle across the table.

“Help yourself,” he said, and settled back in his chair. “You have something for me, I hope.”

“I do, yes,” Cioffi aid, and reached into his pocket. He passed the coin to Abruzzi, who turned it over in his hand then ran his thumb along the surface. “It’s real,” said Cioffi.

“Oh, I have no doubt,
dottore
. You are too smart a man to pass off a fake to me.” Abruzzi held the coin up between thumb and forefinger. “Now, tell me, who is this?”

Cioffi swallowed another mouthful of wine. He leaned forward and looked closely at the coin. “It is Vitellius Germanicus,” he said.

“Vitellius Germanicus, eh?”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Cioffi. “He reigned for only a short time. In the Year of the Four Emperors. He was cruel and gluttonous, and it is said that he starved his own mother to death. He was defeated by the Flavians and executed in Rome. They cut off his head.”

Abruzzi nodded. “You know your history.”

“It is our history. That is what my uncle always told me. The history of Italia is the history of us. He said that we should learn
from it, so that when we repeated the same mistakes, we would know why.”

Saying the words, Cioffi could hear his uncle’s voice in his head, and for a moment he imagined again the endless childhood hours spent in the old man’s company, wandering the museum, floor by floor, gallery by gallery, exhibit by exhibit. It had been a convenient arrangement for all involved: It gave his father the freedom to fixate on his business and his mother time to take afternoon lovers. His bachelor uncle took pleasure in having an empty vessel into which he could decant his arcane wisdom. As for Cioffi, who on his own would explore the back corridors and the underground vaults and the other dark places where he was not meant to go, it gave him a taste for theft. The first, he recalled fondly, was a small hair clip made of polished bone that he traded to a boy at school for the chance to watch his sister take a bath.

“And did he tell you?” Abruzzi asked. “Your uncle—did he tell you why it is that we repeat the mistakes of our past?”

Cioffi smiled. “He says that it is in our nature. That we cannot deny our appetites any more than a dog can deny his.”

Now Abruzzi smiled too. “He has a point,” he said, and slipped the coin into his breast pocket. “Did you have any trouble with the Carabinieri?”

Cioffi had waited until the policeman guarding the front entrance went to the taverna around the corner on Piazza Gagliardi for his morning drink and then slipped into the museum. He made his way quickly through the darkened corridors to the storeroom on the ground floor where the surplus coinage was kept; the museum had far more pieces than could ever be displayed. He went quickly through the shallow-drawered cabinet, selecting a shiny piece that he was sure would impress Abruzzi. When he came out of the front doors again,
however, he found that the guard had already returned to his post. “What are you doing?” the policeman demanded of him. A paralysis of fear had gripped Cioffi. He tried to speak, but could only manage an indecipherable stutter. “Who told you to come today?” said the policeman. For a moment Cioffi was convinced that Abruzzi had the man watching him. “Nobody,” he said. “Nobody, nobody,” parroted the guard. “Nobody tells anybody anything in this city. Well, you can go back to your nobody and tell him that the
professore
is not interviewing for the positions until tomorrow.” “The positions?” Cioffi said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To hire on for the inventory?” Cioffi nodded. “Yes, of course. The inventory.” The policeman studied him a moment, then said, “You don’t look the sort the
professore
would take on, but then, who knows with that crazy old fool.”