The Fallen (5 page)

Parente swivelled in his chair. On a small table behind his desk was a field stove that Greaves had brought him on an earlier visit. He lit the flame beneath a battered tin
caffettiera
. “Luisa has found a foul chicory brew that she insists on calling espresso. Will you join me in a cup?”

“Of course.” Greaves came and sat in the chair opposite Parente. “I’ve got something for you,” he said, and took two small brown parcels from his satchel. He set the parcels on the desk. “It’s sugar.
I thought you might keep one for yourself and trade the other. You could probably get some meat for it, if there’s any about.”

Parente picked up the parcels, held them out in front of him—their paper stained with grease marks of whatever they’d held before the sugar—and compared the weight. “This is very good of you, Thomas. Thank you.”

“I have something for Signora Gennaro as well.”

“For Luisa?”

“Yes,” Greaves said. “A peace offering of sorts.” He rummaged through the satchel and took out the music box. He reached across the desk and gave it to Parente.

“This is a lovely gift, Thomas.” There was a twinkle in the old man’s eye. “But I am afraid she is not here for you to give it to her.”

“Yes, I know. I thought you might do that for me.”

Parente frowned. “If you are going to buy a woman a gift, you should at least give it to her yourself.”

“I don’t know if she would take it from me. But I do know that she will from you.”

Now the old man smiled. “You are learning, Thomas.”

This attention he paid to Luisa amused Parente. In the month and a half that Greaves had been coming to the museum, Luisa had shown him little more than scorn, and at times outright hostility, but he had been nothing but polite in return. “Courtesy,” Parente had said to him at one point, “can be a most damning quality, because it can be so easily dismissed.” More than once Greaves had considered that it was indeed her animosity that stirred his fondness for her. Perhaps it was her censure that he craved? Perhaps it was her contempt?

Parente put the music box to the side. “I will make certain that she gets it.” Then he took the boiling coffee from the stove and filled two cups. “Would you like sugar?”

“No, I’m fine,” said Greaves, and watched as the old man opened one of the parcels and added three pinches of sugar to his coffee, then closed it up again and put it with the other into the drawer where he kept his pipe. “So you’ve had a visit from the Americans.”

“Yes,” said Parente. “A colonel from something called the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section. He and General Clark are going to safeguard our treasures for us.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“I have always been wary of those who come offering help when it has not been asked for.” Parente sipped his coffee. “He wants a complete inventory of the museum’s holdings.”

“That sounds like quite a job.”

“It will be. I will have to hire extra staff and they will need to be vetted.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. Put together a list and I’ll take care of it.”

Parente sipped his coffee and made a face. “I could boil water from the gutter and it would taste better than this.” He put the cup down on the desk. “I’ve had enough.” He reached for his cane and then struggled out of his chair.

Greaves quickly got up and came around the desk. “Maybe you should rest a bit longer,
professore
.”

“Nonsense. I’m too old to rest. Besides, there are some lovely mosaics that we’ve just brought up from the vaults. I want to show them to you.” He held out his arm to Greaves. “And if I get tired, you can help me along.”

The smell of the place still got to Luisa: a mixture of lye and human waste—a sewer stink that stayed on the skin. She refused, though, to put her handkerchief to her nose to ward off the stench. She would not
do that to those confined to the narrow, iron-framed cots—sometimes two to a bed—that lined the darkened corridor. She would not add to their humiliation.

This was the worst of the wards in Ospedale del Santo Sepolcro. It was the ward that housed the most elderly patients—the ones who, in the face of the disease, had the weakest of natural resistance to fend off the more devastating symptoms. Its atmosphere was further burdened by the smallness of the windows in their thick leaded frames set high up on the wall, which killed the sunlight and left only the candles on the bedside tables to prick the gloom.

The water in the pitcher she carried was still warm from boiling, but she took it to each bed, filled a cup, and held it to parched invalid lips. Luisa knew the course of the affliction all too well: the vivid rash, the worsening fever, the rapid beat of a weakening heart. Twice she had suffered through each stage—first with her mother and then, so soon after, with her father. And sometimes she would get lost looking into the face of a dying old woman or a dying old man, and see one of them looking back, as if for a brief moment they had returned to her.

At that moment, it was her mother gazing up at her through the tired and pleading blue eyes—eyes so frightened and confused at not understanding what was to come. Then she heard her name called and turned to see Benedetto standing at the foot of the bed. Benedetto Serao—what a marvel that at forty-one years old and with all that he had seen, his face was as smooth and handsome as when he was twenty-five. Twenty-five and the fetching young
dottore
who suffered her childish attentions whenever he came to visit his lonely aunt who lived in the flat next door to her family’s.

“It is late, Luisa. You should go. Augusto will be worried.”

“I have only a few more, and they’re so thirsty.”

“I will see that they are taken care of.”

He came and took the pitcher from her and put it on the side stand. And when he put his arms around her, Luisa felt the strength of his ropy limbs. An embrace so much like her father’s—so constricting and so safe—that she hoped he would never let her go.

“Why do you come?” he said. “Why do you put yourself through this?”

She pushed him away. “It helps, Benedetto.”

“Does it? To me it seems like you are doing penance. But there is nothing for you to feel guilty about. You must know that.”

“I know that being here makes them feel closer. As foolish as that may sound to you.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. But really, it is late.” He took her by the elbow and began to lead her back along the row of cots. “Let me get one of the orderlies to walk with you.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Please, Luisa. It’s getting dark. At least part of the way. Augusto would never forgive me if I let you go on your own.”

They had reached the end of the corridor. She looked back at the cramped beds. The bodies lying in them looked like heaps of dirty linen. She hated that she could no longer remember in which her mother had died, and in which her father.

“All right, Benedetto,” she said. “Part of the way.”

Salvatore Varone stayed beneath the portico of the abbey and out of the rain. The uneven ground of the yard began to flood in places and mud bubbled from beneath the paving stones. The man guarding the gate, his nephew Paolo, was swallowed up by the wet night. Only the flare of his cigarette end showed where he stood. For almost an hour he had been waiting for the truck to arrive, though he hadn’t uttered
a single word of complaint—not like the others, who had slunk back under the tiled roof of the loggia to keep dry.

The abbot, standing beside Varone, fretted that something had happened, that there had been a problem with the Americans. He told Varone that there would be nothing he could do if they came; he would not be able to turn them away. “And this is holy ground,” the abbot said. “It is no different than San Francesco di Paola or the Duomo.”

Varone looked at the old monk, ridiculous in his dark brown cassock, like a woman dressed for bed. He plucked the crucifix, carved from the hard wood of an almond tree, hanging from a tether around the abbot’s waist. He said, “You think maybe you have made a deal with the devil, padre?”

“What will you do if they come to arrest me?”

“Nothing,” said Varone.

“Then I think, perhaps, I have.”

Varone let go of the crucifix. “You should have more faith, old man.”

The abbot pointed an angry finger. “Do not mock the Church.”

“I am not mocking the Church, padre,” Varone said. “I am mocking you. Now, stop talking.”

He hated being out in the rain as much as the rest of them, but he knew it had to be done. He suffered the abbot, and the weather, and the late hour to show the men who worked for him that his business was still his business, and any ideas that might be brewing had best be reconsidered. It was difficult now to know who was looking for opportunity and who was not, which one could be depended on and which might be the one who had decided his turn had come. In the few short months since the Americans had arrived, Naples had been transformed: for those who knew how to work their advantage, the city was like an orchard at harvest, the fruit fat on the tree and ripe
for picking. With so much to be had, the temptation was often hard to resist, and Varone understood very well that greater betrayals began with smaller deceits. The men needed to understand that he was watching them—he and Paolo.

A thin whistle sounded through the din of the rain. Paolo signalled with a flash from his electric torch. Varone could hear the truck now, the deep growl of its engine in lowest gear as it climbed through the streets of Montecalvario. This section of Naples, poor as any in the city, was laid out in a network of laneways and alleys and narrow cobbled roads that climbed the hillside towards Castel Sant’Elmo. Varone knew them as well as he knew the faces of his own daughters, and as he listened to the truck approach, he told himself: Now it is coming along Via Matteo, and now along Via D’Engenio.

Across the yard, Paolo lifted the bar from the gate and pulled it open. The stubborn iron hinges screeched in protest. A few moments later the truck appeared, its headlamps extinguished. Paolo shone the torch at the windscreen and the driver shielded his eyes. Then he pointed the beam to a spot on the far side of the yard where he wanted the driver to park.

The truck rocked on the uneven ground and slopped water down from its canvas tilt. When it came to a stop at the far end of the yard, Varone called to the men sitting out of the rain to get to work. They slowly left the shelter of the portico.

“You would think they were going to melt,” Varone said to the abbot.

Paolo, standing now at the back of the truck, dropped the tailgate. He climbed inside while the others milled about, their collars turned up against the wet. Paolo’s torch cast shadows on the slick canvas. Then the light went out.

He jumped down from the tailgate and told the men to start unloading the truck, then came across the yard. As he spoke, Varone watched the crescent scar that rose from the corner of his mouth and made it look as if he were wearing a crooked grin.

“Some is missing.”

“How much?”

“I counted eight crates. We were supposed to get sixteen.”

“Do you know the driver?”

“Yes, I know him. He’s okay.”

“Bring him here.”

As Paolo made his way back to the truck, Varone turned to the abbot. “Don’t worry, padre. You’ll still get what you were promised. I am a man of my word, after all.”

The driver was a slight man in his forties with a balding head and eyes that bulged from his hollow face. He wore a padded twill jacket and gloves with the fingers cut out.

“Well?” Varone said. Paolo nudged the man with his elbow. “Go on. Tell him what you told me.” The driver bowed his head slightly. “I was stopped by some men,” he said in an uncertain voice. “In the road behind Ospedale Ascalesi.” “Yes,” Varone said. “And?” “One of them had a knife—” “Look at me when you’re speaking,” Varone interrupted. The driver slowly lifted his gaze. “Go on,” said Varone. “One of them had a knife.” “He …” The driver hesitated. “He put it to my throat.” He showed

Varone the red mark on his neck, a small nick beside his Adam’s apple, where the blade had broken the skin. Varone nodded. “Did you tell this man who the cargo belonged to?”

“I did, yes. I said: ‘This cargo is the property of Signore Salvatore Varone.’”

“And what did this man say?”

The driver spoke softly now: “He said to tell you that it was the cost of doing business.”

“And you made no effort to stop this man from stealing from me.”

The driver looked worriedly at Paolo, then again to Varone. “He would have cut my throat,
signore
. I am sure of it. I have a wife and three daughters.”

Varone shrugged. “And what makes you think that I won’t cut your throat?”

A whimper slipped from the driver’s lips and his shoulders sank. He began to tremble.

“This man with the knife,” Varone went on. “What did he look like?”

The driver described him: small, wore a dark suit coat, creme in his hair, and a face like a
volpe
, sly and narrow.

“Do you know him?” Varone asked Paolo.

“Sounds like Renzo Abruzzi. He runs a small operation in the Pendino and Spaccanapoli. Four or five guys, no more. They shake down the shopkeepers, run some prostitutes out of a
pensione
near to Palazzo Como.”

Varone sent the driver back to the truck to help with the unloading. When he was gone, he turned again to Paolo. “Do you believe him?” he said.

“I do.”

“That means that somebody talked.” Varone looked across at the truck. “Do you think it could be one of this lot?”

“It could be,” said Paolo. “It could also be one of the boys we’ve got working on the docks. Maybe it was one of the port officers.”

Varone shook his head. “If it was a port officer making a deal with someone else, we wouldn’t have gotten anything. Ask around and let me know what you hear.”

“What about Abruzzi?”

“Leave him be for now,” said Varone.

He could tell by the look on Paolo’s face that he didn’t understand. His sister’s son had an uncomplicated mind. That was what made him so reliable.

“When the time comes, Paolo, we’ll know where to find him. Now, go on and get finished with the truck so we can get out of this rain.”