The Fallen (8 page)

“Please,” the widow implored. “I only want to see it.”

Luisa took the bundle of cloth from beneath her arm and held it out. When Signora Ciccione grabbed at it, she pulled it back. “I’m sorry,
signora
,” she said. “There isn’t enough. This will feed only my cousin and me.”

The old woman gave her a fierce look. “Why don’t you let the
puttana
feed herself?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Luisa.

“I hear her. I hear her through the ceiling. With the soldiers. In the afternoon, when you are gone away. Rutting like a pig.” Signora Ciccione’s tongue flicked through the wide space in her teeth, licking the soft pinkness of her bare gums. “Maybe you are the same, eh?”

When she laughed, the sound rattled in her throat and she began to cough. Luisa watched her, sickened by the sight, as she leaned to the side and spat a thick wad of rheum onto the ground.

“That’s not true,” Luisa said.

“Everybody knows,” said the old widow, and tipped forward on the chair. “They talk about her. They talk about how you brought a
prostituta
to live under your roof.” Signora Ciccione laughed again. “But she will need to be careful, that one. She’s not such a peach anymore. Not so juicy. Maybe soon she’ll spread her legs for the
negri
in the alleyways, with her back to the wall like the rest of the street sluts.”

Before Luisa had even realized what she was doing, she stepped forward and struck the old woman hard across the face. Signora Ciccione cried out and put a bony hand to her jaw. A drop of blood appeared on her thin bottom lip and her cloudy eyes filled with tears.

“I’m so sorry,” Luisa said.

“You filthy bitch.”

“Please,” said Luisa, and held out the stale loaf to her. “Please forgive me,
signora
.”

The old woman grabbed the bread and stuffed it under her shawl and struggled to her feet. “You shame your mother’s memory. Thank God that she is not here to see what you have become.” Then she turned and hobbled through the gate.

The Port Authority office was abustle with clerks rushing about and ships’ crew waiting to be debriefed and supply officers shouting across
one another in an effort to get their cargo either loaded or unloaded before the next man. It was the chaos of a harassed beehive, and Greaves wondered how anything managed to get done. He had shown his credentials to a red-faced clerk behind the reception counter and been told to take a seat against a far wall and wait to be called.

It was another half-hour before the door to one of the smaller offices opened and a young man stepped out. The clerk went to him and they spoke. The young man looked over towards Greaves and nodded his head. Then he came from behind the counter and held out his hand.

“The name’s Michael Mangan,” he said. “I’m one of the assistant port officers—one of the many.” He spoke with a soft lilt and it was obvious that he purposely shaved the rough edges from a harsher northern Irish accent. “My man here tells me you’ve got some questions need answering, lieutenant. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” Greaves said. “My FSO thought I should come by and have a word about—”

“Yes, yes,” Mangan interrupted. “Missing medical supplies. I’ve been told.”

The clerk was at the young man’s elbow again. “Excuse me, Michael, but we’re having some problems with one of the dredgers.”

“What is it?”

“The captain is refusing to take her out. Says that yesterday he was almost sunk by a frigate coming across his bow.”

“You might mention to him that’s why he’s to be out there. And if it doesn’t set with him, tell him we’ll be more than happy to find another man to sail his barge while he cools his heels in the brig.”

“You want me to threaten him with charges, Michael?”

“I do, yes.”

The assistant port officer turned his attention back to Greaves. “Sorry about that. We’re after trying to plough a few more channels
so we don’t have ships running into one another. This may well be the biggest harbour in the south of Italy, lieutenant, but I’m afraid it’s not half as big as we need.” He put a hand on Greaves’s shoulder. “Why don’t we go into my office and get a little peace.”

The office of the assistant port officer was as tidily arranged as the port officer himself. The desk was orderly and the logs on the shelves behind were neatly set out and labelled so that they could be quick to hand. A window opened onto the port itself, and through it came a soft breeze that carried the smell of brine and diesel.

“Would you like a drink, lieutenant? A whisky, maybe?” He poured the glasses without waiting for Greaves’s reply. “I’d like to say that you caught us on a busy day,” he went on, “but pretty much every day is a busy day. I’ve got fifteen ships at anchor, clogging up the harbour waiting for a resupply of food and water, while four hospital ships are stuck out in the bay because they can’t get in until I get these others out.”

“A typical day at the office, then,” said Greaves.

“Indeed it is, lieutenant.”

“You seem to be taking it all in stride.”

Mangan smiled. “To tell you the truth,” he said, and handed Greaves his drink, “I love it. Best bloody thing ever happened to me.” He motioned for Greaves to take a seat and then sat down behind his desk. “Tell me, lieutenant, what is it that you did before all of this?”

“I was at university.”

“Really? And what were you studying?”

“Romance languages.”

“Did you want to be a teacher, then?”

“Yes. A professor, like my grandfather.”

“Ah, a scholar, eh?” Mangan smiled. “My grandfather was a physician. My father, too. I should have been next, but I ran off and
left Belfast and all it had to offer behind. Now I’m a good little Paddy working for the British Ministry of War Transport. I’ll tell you, the look on my da’s face was brilliant when I told him. Though I don’t think he was quite as stunned as when I told him I wanted to be a poet.”

“A poet?” said Greaves.

“A flight of fancy,” Mangan answered. “Sure there’s more money in working for the British than turning rhymes.”

Greaves couldn’t help but like the man, with his ironed-out brogue and easy openness. He was struck too by his youth: Mangan had a clear, pale face, the skin reddened in places as if it was not yet accustomed to being shaved, and there was a sprinkling of freckles across his nose. And yet he seemed so composed amidst the confusion of the place.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Greaves said, “how old are you?”

“I’m twenty-one,” said Mangan. “How about yourself?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Well, there you are, then. We’re two old men ready to set the world to rights.” Mangan finished off his whisky in one mouthful and set the glass aside. “Now that we’ve got that sorted, let’s talk about these medical supplies.”

“Yes, of course,” said Greaves. “I’ve been asked by my FSO to make some inquiries, specifically about supplies that are bound for 21st General Hospital. A significant quantity of that cargo is not making it to its final destination.”

Mangan held up his hand. “Lieutenant, this port has over six hundred civilian workers. We land almost two hundred ships a week. The tonnage in cargo that passes through here on a given day would boggle your mind. We have military police that patrol day and night. They have orders to shoot looters. And still, over one-third of everything that reaches dockside disappears without a trace. You’re
asking after medical supplies. Three weeks ago we lost six four-ton lorries and two Bailey bridges—straight out the front gates and gone.” Mangan got to his feet. “I wish I could help you, lieutenant, but your guess is as good as mine. You ask me, your FSO has you chasing your tail on this one.” Then he gently ushered Greaves to the door and shook his hand. “Best of luck to you.”

Lello Conforti glanced nervously about the café. He held his drink in both hands, as if expecting at any moment it would be snatched away. There was a commotion at the bar: a drunken American soldier who wanted another bottle of whisky. The barman ignored him and continued polishing glasses. When the soldier slapped his hand down on the countertop, Lello flinched.

“I don’t know why we always come back here,” he said. “There are better places to drink. Cheaper places.”

Cioffi looked at his friend and laughed. “But it’s the Gambrinus, Lello. There’s nowhere as good as the Gambrinus.”

“It’s not like it used to be, Aldo. It will never be like that again.” Lello swallowed a mouthful of wine. “We should leave.”

“Never mind,” said Cioffi. “It is good here. Good memories.”

For Cioffi, the Caffè Gambrinus was like a moment frozen in time: the gilded mirrors, the veined marble floor, the plaster relief on the vaulted ceiling, the frescoed walls. Once, it had been the beating heart of freethinking Naples: art, literature, philosophy, and politics. What stories its walls had heard. Socialists, anarchists, and bohemians of every bent came there to drink and talk. The disgraced Oscar Wilde. Alexandre Dumas, too. And de Maupassant. In the years before the war it was the avant-gardes that crowded the tables, sipping anise and conspiring with anti-fascists, until the authorities closed it down and
rounded up the agitators. Lello Conforti had been among them. The six months he spent in Poggio Reale prison had soured him on the merits of the Gambrinus.

“The dark days are over, my friend,” Cioffi reminded him as he refilled their glasses. He nodded to the barman to bring another bottle. He knew that, for Lello, drink was the only cure for frayed nerves. He held out his glass. “To forgetting,” he said.

Lello, though half-heartedly, returned the salute, for he knew that they both had things to forget. For him, it was a promising law career cut short by political recklessness, because there was no place for subversives in the Castel Capuano. He’d often wondered since if his principles were worth the cost of a bright future. As for Cioffi, who had wasted his future on far less, any sense of regret he felt was tempered by the fact that he’d never really had any desire to become the physician his father always dreamt he would be.

The barman delivered the new bottle. He set it down and waited to be paid. Cioffi handed him a hundred-lire note and told him to keep the rest.

Lello watched him put the thin roll of military scrip back into his pocket. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

It was the sort of question his friend had been asking him since their days together at the university, and Cioffi answered him as he always did: “You worry too much.”

“You don’t know anything about these people you’re dealing with.”

“And you do?”

“I know them better than you think, Aldo. And trust me, if you let them down, they will make you pay.”

Cioffi wished now that he hadn’t said anything to Lello about Abruzzi. “Don’t fret. I have a plan.”

“Listen to yourself,” Lello scoffed. “You’re like a boy playing a game. If you cross these people, Aldo, they will kill you and not give it a second thought. You’re nothing to them—I hope you know that.”

Cioffi tried to ignore his friend’s concern. He lifted his glass and took a long drink. Then he said, “Tomorrow, I will go and see my uncle’s friend in the security police.”

“You are a fool,” said Lello.

“Perhaps,” replied Cioffi. “But I am a fool who is filling your belly with wine. So quit complaining and drink, before you ruin the rest of the night.”

When the nightmare first came, he would wake screaming. That was before the field hospital, before the young corporal found him with his revolver. Greaves never put the barrel in his mouth like the major had said, it hadn’t gotten quite that far, though he had considered it, indeed must have been considering it on that morning when the corporal, getting no response to calls, came into his quarters and saw him staring at the weapon in his lap. It had been the tenth night running that he’d managed no more than a few fitful hours of sleep—the tenth night running that he’d had the dream. And it was always the same. He was on a scorched mountain pass. Across the valley lay the town of Agira, a stony, sun-baked outcrop. His nose filled with the stink of dust and diesel fuel. Then darkness fell and he found himself climbing down into the valley amidst a full company of men who made their way by touch in the starless night. He stayed close to the sergeant and the round-faced wireless operator, a boy of eighteen. Somehow they lost their bearings, got turned off course, and were unable to find their markers. Then the shelling started: the barrage was timed so that they could follow it in. They moved towards the shell bursts and found a ridgeline. He huddled behind some rocks, shouted new coordinates into the wireless handset, and waited for the bombardment—a mixed salvo of high-explosive and incendiary charges that landed short, near
the edge of the village. The concussions thumped in their chests and the heat was like the noonday sun on their faces. Afterwards, there was a stretch of quiet—then the screaming started.

Greaves couldn’t say who it was that claimed he’d had the gun in his mouth. Perhaps it was the corporal, who, in his shock at having found him in such a state, had imagined the circumstance different than it was; or perhaps it was simply a case of a story that grows in the retelling. Whichever it was, or whether it was something else altogether—a disgruntled soldier, maybe, who thought he should be punished for his incompetence—the tale of his suicidal tendency became the focus of his therapy. The diagnosis was combat exhaustion, but Greaves was sure that he hadn’t seen enough combat yet to be exhausted. At any rate, the doctors, both at the field hospital and at No. 5 CGH, were pleased with his response to the lithium carbonate treatment. They pointed to the fact that he no longer awoke screaming in the night. That the dream had ended was the first step to a full recovery, they told him. What he had not told them, however, was that the dream was still there; he had simply taught himself not to scream anymore.

So now, when the nightmare came, as it did that night, he woke soundlessly and threw back the blankets, his chest seized by the familiar panic until he realized where he was: the dim outline of the dressing table and the writing desk, the hurricane lamp extinguished at his bedside—the hiss of the rain against the shutters. He lay down and covered himself again, and waited for the sun to come up. With the dawn he drifted off, and when he woke a few hours later he found that he’d slept through mess and would have to go without breakfast.