The Power of Five Oblivion (26 page)

A whole family lived here, several generations all sitting round a table together, lit by the oil lamp that was the only source of light. Most of them were adults but there were also children … two girls aged about four and six. They had all looked round as Giovanni had come in. They were obviously surprised and disturbed to see Pedro.

The door had been opened by a thin, serious-looking man with long grey hair and a beard. He was wearing a thick cardigan, a scarf and a flat cap. He slammed the door quickly, then grabbed hold of Giovanni and began to speak to him in fast, barely audible Italian. Pedro stood waiting, dripping on the wooden floor, aware that the rest of the family was still watching him. The man was angry, frustrated, but Giovanni held his ground, explaining what he had done. Eventually the man turned to Pedro.

“You speak Spanish?” he asked. He was speaking fluent Spanish himself.

“Yes.” Pedro nodded.

“Are you from Spain?”

“No. Peru.”

The man was astonished by this. “I also speak your language,” he said. “A long time ago I used to be a professor of languages here at the university. That was before they closed it down. It is now used for housing. My name is Francesco Amati. You need to dry yourself.”

He snapped at one of the women, who hurried into the next room, returning with a blanket which she draped over Pedro’s shoulders. Pedro folded it around himself. Meanwhile, Giovanni had stripped off his own shirt and was drying himself energetically with a tea towel.

“I expect you are hungry,” Francesco said. “Giovanni tells me that you have been a prisoner for a long time. You can join us. Please, sit down.”

It seemed that Giovanni had won the argument and now that the man had acknowledged it, the whole family was prepared to accept him. They shuffled aside to make space for Pedro at the table and he found himself being served warm soup and bread, which he wolfed down immediately. The soup was thin and the bread hard but after a month of prison rations, they tasted delicious.

“We will tell you about ourselves,” Francesco said. “But first there are some things I must know about you. Your name is Pedro. Is that right? Why are you here in Naples?”

“I didn’t mean to come here,” Pedro said between mouthfuls. He wasn’t sure how much to tell these people. It wasn’t just a question of whether he could trust them or not. It was simply that he wasn’t sure how much of his story they would believe. “I was taken prisoner in a church, or maybe a monastery, about thirty minutes away. They brought me here in a helicopter.”

“Why?”

“Because they think I can hurt them.”

Giovanni said something in Italian and the older man muttered a few words in reply. “Can you hurt them?” he asked.

“If I can find my friends. There are five of us…”

A much older man on the other side of the table leant forward and spoke rapidly, in a low voice. Pedro heard the word
“cinque”
repeated several times. The Italian for five. He looked at the other people around the table: two women, two younger men, the children. They all looked similar and he guessed they were part of the same family but that wasn’t what united them. They were all survivors. There was nothing left for them in the outside world. Everything, for them, boiled down to these three rooms.

The old man finished talking. Francesco turned back to Pedro. “I am Giovanni’s uncle,” he said. “His father was my brother but he is dead. This man –” he glanced at the man he had just been speaking to –”is my father. That is my wife, her sister and the two girls are her children. We are lucky because we still have this place to live in. My older brother, Angelo, works in the harbour, where he has a boat. He used to be a fisherman, but of course there are no longer any fish. And Giovanni is a kitchen boy at the Castel Nuovo, which is where they were keeping you. They treat him badly but he is able to bring home food and they also pay him, and it is only thanks to him that we can live.

“At first I was angry that he brought you here. The police will be looking for you now. If they find you here, it will be the end of us all. But Giovanni tells me that he heard them talking about you. He said that they were afraid of you, that you were their enemy – and that is why he brought you to this place.”

“Why are there so many people in this city?” Pedro asked. “What are they all doing in the streets…?”

“They are refugees.” Francesco muttered to his wife and she rose from the table, returning with the pot that held the soup. She ladled out another bowl for Pedro. The children looked at the food longingly and Pedro felt a twang of guilt, knowing that they were being refused. “Naples is overrun by refugees,” Francesco went on. “They have come from the south of Italy, to avoid the floods, and from the far north because of the food shortages. There is fighting all over Eastern Europe and so they have escaped from Romania, Slovenia, Croatia – bringing everything they have with them in the hope of starting a new life. Some of them have come from as far away as Africa and India. Every night, hundreds of them die on the streets of this city and when the winter comes it will be even worse. There are huge camps out in Aversa and Arienzo – tens of thousands of people – but the authorities do not really want to help them. They would prefer them to die. Some say the camps are there to help them on their way.” He paused. “You don’t know any of this?”

Pedro shook his head. “No. I don’t understand. What you’re saying … the world isn’t like that!”

“What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about the world that I knew. I saw the newspapers. I saw television. There was nothing about any fighting…”

“There are no newspapers and how can there be TV when we have no electricity?” Francesco examined Pedro carefully. “What you are saying is mad and I do not know if we should trust you. But Giovanni says that they are afraid of you and that is enough. We must help you. And my father, who once studied theology in the University of Rome, becomes interested when you talk about the five of you.”

“Cinque!”
The old man repeated the word again, vigorously nodding his head.

“But whoever you are and whatever reason you are here, you cannot stay in Naples. That is the first consideration before all else. I have to think about the safety of my family. You may believe it would be impossible to find you in a city with so many poor people who have no addresses and no identities. You even look Italian. But you have no idea what you are about to unleash. If you are who my father thinks you are, the police will tear down whole buildings and drag away everyone inside them to find you. And any one of the people who saw you tonight will be glad to sell you for the price of a meal. So far they have been slow because they did not expect you to find a way out of the Castel Nuovo. Unlike Giovanni, they did not know about the old sewer system. But soon it will begin and by then you must be gone.”

The old man spoke again and Francesco raised a hand, silencing him.

“It is too dangerous for you to travel by land. There are checkpoints everywhere. But we can talk to Angelo. He has the boat. He can take you up the coast to Rome and there are friends there who will shelter you. All that matters is that you leave here as soon as you can.”

Pedro tried to take all this in. The trouble was that it was all happening too quickly; first the prison, then the escape, Giovanni, the nightmare of the sewer, the city and now this family, sitting in the half-light of an empty flat, telling him what he had to do. Nothing added up. Naples was a big European city, a place where people went to art galleries and smart restaurants. He had seen pictures of it in magazines. But this Naples seemed to be nothing more than a giant camp for refugees – and all these things that the man was talking about … flooding and wars. Whatever Francesco was telling him, Pedro had watched television when he was in Nazca with Matt and Richard. They had read the news and surfed the Internet. There had never been anything about any of this. Why were the schools closed? And how could a boy as young as Giovanni end up working in a kitchen? In Lima that might be possible, but not here. Was this man lying to him? He surely didn’t have any reason to and he genuinely seemed to want to help. But nothing he had said had any connection with the world that Pedro knew.

Only one thing was certain. He couldn’t leave. Not on his own.

“I have to see Scott,” he said.

Giovanni had understood nothing of the conversation but the mention of the name caused him to look round sharply. “Scott?” Francesco asked.

“He was a prisoner with me. He’s my friend. I can’t go anywhere without him. I certainly can’t leave him with them.”

“Is he in the castle?”

“Yes. He was in my cell but then they took him away. I have to go back for him…”

Pedro hadn’t touched his second bowl of soup, which had gone cold in front of him. He was still hungry but he slid it towards the two girls, who glanced briefly at Francesco for permission. He nodded and they began to eat greedily, attacking the bowl with their spoons.

“You broke out of the Castel Nuovo by a miracle and only because you happened to meet my nephew. He brought you across the city to one of the few places where you would be safe. And you want to go back?” Francesco laughed briefly. “You’re out of your mind.”

Giovanni leant forward and began to ask his uncle questions. Francesco answered him briefly. Pedro heard the name Scott mentioned and Giovanni scowled. They talked for what seemed like a long time until finally the older man turned back to him. “This friend of yours is the same age as you? A dark-haired boy? An American?”

“Yes.”

Giovanni began again but Francesco held up a hand, warning him to be silent. “You cannot see him,” he said. “You are mistaken about him. He is not a prisoner in the castle. He is a guest. He sleeps in a fine room with sheets and everything he could want. In the day he walks out in the streets of Naples and although he is accompanied by guards, they are there only to protect him. He can go where he likes.”

“No. You’re wrong.” Pedro shook his head. “That’s not possible. That’s not Scott.”

“I am not wrong.” Francesco was deadly serious. He rested his fists on the table and spoke softly, as if he didn’t want the rest of his family to hear. “Listen to me, Pedro,” he said. “Giovanni works in the kitchen but sometimes he has to serve food in the dining hall. That was what he was telling me just now. He was there two nights ago. They had a banquet, a whole load of important people eating the best food and drinking fine wine. There was a man from America there, some sort of big shot. But he wasn’t at the head of the table. Do you know who was? It was Scott Tyler. Is that right? He was wearing black trousers and a black shirt. And they all raised their glasses to toast his health. That was when Giovanni heard his name.”

“No.” Pedro refused to believe it.

“Giovanni, whose father was a doctor and who should be at school, works fifteen hours a day in that place. He sweeps and he cleans and does everything he is told and they beat him for the slightest reason. You see his face? Maybe he’ll show you his back and you can see the whip marks. Two nights ago, he bowed in front of your friend, as he had been told to do, and took the dirty plate from him. And when he thought nobody was looking, he scraped the food that was left into his own mouth. But Scott saw him. Scott smiled. It amused him. He thought it was funny.”

“I have to see him,” Pedro said. “You don’t understand. They did things to him. They hurt him. But Scott isn’t like that. He isn’t what you think.”

“So you’re just going to walk back in and ask to meet him?”

Giovanni was glaring at him. And Pedro understood why he was angry. The Italian boy had risked everything to help him escape and had brought him back to his own family because he believed in him, and because he thought that in some way Pedro could help fight back against the people who ruled over the city. But Pedro was repaying him by calling him a liar. Everything he had done was being thrown back in his face.

Could he be wrong about Scott?

Could his friend have joined the other side?

Pedro sighed. He turned to Francesco. “I have to see Scott because there is nothing any of us can do without him,” he explained. It had been a long time since he had spoken his own language at such length. “Obviously I can’t go back into the castle but if he is free, as you say, perhaps he can come to me. I don’t want to put any of you in any danger but I cannot leave here without seeing him. He is one of the Five. You seem to know what that means. We can’t do anything without him.” He thought for a moment, then glanced at Giovanni. “Is there any way that Giovanni could pass him a message? Maybe there is somewhere in the city, or outside it, where the two of us could meet. Somewhere safe. I’d have to make sure that he was on his own, but whatever you may think, I know he wouldn’t hand me over to them. All I need is to talk to him for a few minutes. After that, I’ll go anywhere you want.”

Pedro had to wait while Francesco translated all this for Giovanni. The older man, Francesco’s father, cut in a few times and one of the women joined in too. It was clear that nobody around the table was happy with what Pedro had proposed. Finally Giovanni spoke. Once again, Pedro was impressed by how confident he was. Nobody interrupted until he had finished.

“Giovanni thinks he can do what you ask. Tomorrow they change all the sheets and it’s his job to carry them down to the laundry room. That means he will go into Scott’s bedroom. Do you understand that? To change the sheets for him, like a servant.” Francesco paused. “And you realize that if they find out that Giovanni is helping you, they will kill him. He has been in the Castel Nuovo for two years and he has seen many other servants die. One of them was found stealing food. He was taken out and shot.”

But you can’t just kill people like that, Pedro thought.

Instead he said, “I promise you. You can trust Scott. He’s playing a game. It’s not what it seems.” Francesco translated again. Giovanni nodded. Pedro was relieved. It had been agreed.

“We will have to think of somewhere safe for the meeting,” Francesco said. “The police are certain to be looking for you and that will make it doubly dangerous. I still wonder why we are doing this, why we are endangering ourselves for you.”