The Namesake (32 page)

He kicked at the stupid door till it opened. He was not going to be able to push the car out of the ditch, and revving the engine to get it out would simply draw a large audience. By now he was not even sure he knew how to break the lock without breaking the whole thing and whether he should have attempted this to begin with.

It would be more manly to await his fate at home and defend his mother and brother there. Passing by the gate he looked up to Enrico’s house, and this time what seemed like an afterimage of Zia Rosa was watching him from behind the window. He almost lifted his hand to wave. If she had seen him, the next time he sat at the kitchen table eating one of her meals, she’d give him a significant look and say nothing, then, as he was leaving, she would ask him if he had anything he wanted to tell her. That had been her method when she had discovered his unconfessed misdemeanours in the past: a broken window here, a missing jar of Nutella there, or that dangerous excursion into the collapsing outhouses at the end of the garden when he had gone rat hunting. He never had anything to tell her, but appreciated the gesture and her discretion.

By the time he reached his house, he was beginning to rethink the experience. It could never have been her. It was too dark and too far for him to have seen her face at the window as he was passing on the road. His imagination was playing tricks on him, because it was 4:15 in the morning, and his brain had decided to go back to dreaming without telling him. And now, finally doing as his mother had asked him, he lifted two suitcases from their car and took them back into the house, expecting her to be there waiting fearfully and angry at his delay, but there was no sign of her. He put them down quietly in the hall so as not to waken her, and went back outside to collect the other things from the car.

It was on his fourth trip in that he heard his mother’s voice, speaking softly as if from far away. He moved quickly and quietly to the kitchen door, then walked in suddenly, catching her unawares. She swung her body sideways away from him, and clasped the phone closer to her ear. She seemed to express a few words of gratitude and clicked the phone shut and slipped it with mock casualness into a kitchen drawer. It was 4:35 in the morning and she was making or receiving secret calls. He felt he had a right to know.

‘Who was that?’ demanded Ruggiero.

‘None of your business.’

‘Of course it’s my business.’ He went over to the kitchen drawer. His mother shrank away for a moment as he approached her, which gave him a hard, righteous feeling of gratification for a second or two, before it was submerged by a sudden wave of panic, followed by sadness as he realized that she had just ceased to be the all-knowing source of total love on whom he could always depend. She should not be shrinking from him, she should be reaching out to him, pulling him into her embrace, and telling him everything would be fine. But as he looked at her, he realized that was what she was hoping for from him, which angered him all over again.

He opened the drawer, pulled out the phone. ‘I’ve never seen this before,’ he said.

‘No?’ She was still trying to sound casual.

‘Who did you call, Papà?’

‘Nothing to do with you.’

‘It’s everything to do with me.’

‘You are not the only child in this house.’ She sat down at the table, brushed the back of her hand over its grainy surface, then rubbed it against her own cheek. ‘You didn’t wipe the table like I asked you, Ruggiero. You never do as I ask.’

‘Who?’ Ruggiero demanded again. ‘Was it a local call?’

‘No. Not local. Is that Robertino crying?’

‘No, not yet. But if you don’t answer, then I’m going to bed,’ said Ruggiero and went upstairs.

His mother was still downstairs. Maybe she was making more phone calls, appealing for help, for he knew that was what she had been doing. He was ashamed of her, but he wanted her to succeed, too. He wished his father were there to tell him what to do next.

Over five days in March, in the middle of which they celebrated his fifteenth birthday, his father had begun by telling him things he already knew, calmly and so slowly that he began to feel impatient. He was a
giovane d’onore
, the son of a man of honour. Ruggiero almost rolled his eyes at this. He knew whose son he was. He had an idea of where he fitted into the hierarchy, but he lacked the absolute precision of others like Pepè and even Enrico. They knew who should respect them more, who less, and who they need not even consider as entitled to an opinion, which included more than half the class and all the teachers, except for the coach. But in six visits over two years, his father had slowly started unpacking small and mostly unwelcome surprises, things Ruggiero thought he knew, but hadn’t. First, a
giovane d’onore
did not automatically become inducted into the honoured Society at the age of sixteen.

‘I know that,’ said Ruggiero, aggressive because he had failed to hide his surprise. ‘Everyone knows that.’

‘We may postpone the date, because study is also important.’

‘I’ll be the only one.’

‘Once in, you’ll move up quickly. There is no rush. I want to make sure that you are suited to it.’

This made Ruggiero angry, but his father had been unmoved. ‘First I shall test your mettle. When we are certain about what you can do, then we can let others conduct the initiation rites. Think of it like knowing the answers to an exam beforehand.’

‘How will you test my mettle?’

‘Good question. I hope the occasion does not present itself too soon. But it will eventually.’

Another day, his father told him, ‘Don’t always look for explanations. Sometimes there aren’t any.’

‘Explanations of what?’

‘Anything. A disappearance, an accident, an earthquake, a sudden violent death, the tragic killing of an innocent man. Don’t look for explanations.’

On his second to last day before leaving, his father had told him that the important thing was to persuade people. ‘When you are persuading people, you must not distinguish between friends and enemies. Everyone must be persuaded. You yourself must be persuaded.’

‘What if it’s not true?’

‘Your belief makes it true. If you believe something to be true, then it becomes true.’

He didn’t really get that bit. Nor did he quite understand his father’s claim, on the morning before he left for Germany, that things that were equal could also be different.

‘Like what?’

‘If I gave you two fifties,’ and here he handed him two 50-euro notes, ‘is that the same as my giving you five twenties?’ and here he handed him five 20s. ‘Or ten tens?’ This time he handed him nothing.

‘Sure. Five times twenty is the same as two times fifty.’

‘Well, you’re wrong. They are different acts.’

‘OK,’ said Ruggiero, resolving to think about it later.

‘That money is for buying treats, not for clothes, shoes or any necessities,’ his father had said. ‘If you need new clothes, your mother will pay.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I want you to spend three-quarters of what I gave you on buying things for your friends. If I’m not back by June, your mother will give you another
€
200. Three-quarters of the total on your friends, right?’

‘OK.’

‘And take good note of who always lets you buy and who never lets you buy for them. Beware of both extremes. The ones in the middle, who let you buy sometimes and then treat you sometimes, are more trustworthy.’

‘Right.’

‘But don’t rely on just that. There is never just one trick, never just one answer.’

‘Supposing something bad happens?’ He had not meant to sound so childish and helpless. The words just tumbled out.

‘If something happens, your mother will let me know, and I’ll get here.’

Or had he imagined that response?

He unbuttoned his shirt, and stood there bare-chested, thinking of the car in the ditch, the opened gate. He often practised trying to overcome the feeling of vulnerability that being bare-chested gave him. Logically, it made no sense, since a knife or bullet wound inflicted through a shirt was exactly the same as one inflicted on bare skin, and yet he could not help feeling that it would be worse.

His mother had stopped moving around downstairs. In the next room, Roberto sighed in his sleep. The effect was always comical when he did that, the sigh sounding so world-weary.

A foot scraped on the gravel outside the house. It was an unmistakable sound, the same that his own feet made day after day. Ruggiero froze. Downstairs he heard a click, then a thud. It was the back door being opened. Walking on his toes, paying attention to his arms to make sure they did not bang into anything, he made his way over to his bedroom door, and listened. There would be at least three of them. He had heard no car. He thought he heard a gasp and a muffled thud. They must be using knives. His mother could be lying in a pool of her blood. He ran to his bed, and in one movement swept his hand underneath, spun around, and faced his bedroom door. In his hand he held a small black throwing knife that he hadn’t learned to throw yet.

The house was in utter stillness. Ruggiero stretched towards his bed to reach his pyjama top, but could not get to it without moving, and he found his legs were rooted to the floor. With enormous effort, he forced himself forward, away from his bed, towards the door. His left leg was trembling uncontrollably, he breathed in deeply, and the vibrations abated. He needed to talk to the killers, tell them to leave Roberto, or tell them that if they could murder an infant, it should not be with steel, which served other purposes.

‘A knife, a sword, a cutlass: these are called “white” weapons because they are associated with the noble warfare of knights. They demand skill and put the user at risk. A gun is a black thing that does not do this,’ his father had told him once. ‘But of course there is no honour in using a white weapon on an infant or a woman.’

But another time he had offered a different explanation, saying a knife was white when the light of the sun glanced off the flat of the blade.

Ruggiero’s puny black throwing knife reflected nothing. Gathering courage, he quietly slipped out his door across the hallway and into his little brother’s room, which smelt of talcum powder and bread. If his mother was alive, she should be here protecting Roberto. And she should be trying to protect him, though he would protect her. He sat down in the dark beside the cot, choked back his tears, and waited.

He heard a footfall on the stairs. The first step was quiet and careful, but the next were louder and more careless as they drew closer, and there were other feet coming up the stairs behind that and more behind that. At least three of them. Five perhaps. He could not count or reason.

Ruggiero touched the side of his brother’s sleeping head. The temple was still soft, and the child’s brain was pulsing with innocent thoughts beneath. There were voices in the hall outside. He went over and placed himself in front of the door, and pushed his chest out. He realized he had gone completely numb from his feet to the bottom of his neck, and it made no difference in the end if he was bare-chested or not.

They checked his room, and there was a surprised grunt as they found it empty.

Now the door was swinging open, and Ruggiero stood up. He put his arms behind his back and braced himself.

The man who entered the room strode over to Ruggiero, embraced him hard, kissed him on the side of the neck, combed his fingers through the boy’s hair, then pushed him back, and looked at him in admiration.

‘Were you in here defending your brother?’

‘Yes, Papà.’

‘No need now, my courageous son. I am here.’

37

Positano

Konrad Hoffmann was swimming deeper and deeper into the unplumbed depths of a restaurant fish tank and his voice streamed upwards in an angry buzz of bubbles to pop loudly but meaninglessly as they reached the surface, and Blume, observing that this was all far-fetched, especially the bit about the fish tank being bottomless, deep and dark, decided to wake up and grab at his mobile phone. He opened his eyes as he brought it to his ear, shocked to see daylight. If he had been asked to guess, he would have said he had been asleep for an hour at most.

‘Maria Itria has called for help. For real this time. She called Magistrate Arconti at around 4:30 this morning, but did not answer a call that he made later. After thinking about it for a bit he called me,’ said Caterina on the other end of the line.

It gave him such an unexpected lift to hear her voice first thing after a stupid dream about . . . red fish or something, that he was not sure he had understood the content of her message.

‘Caterina? Wait . . . go through that again.’

‘Curmaci’s wife. She called for help last night.’

‘She called you?’ Blume shook his head. ‘Sorry, dumb question, I was asleep just now.’

‘She called Arconti and said if something happened to her husband, she would be willing to turn state witness. Then she said she wanted police protection and an escort the hell out of there. Since then, her phone has been off. Arconti told me and I’m telling you. It’s six in the morning, you’re usually awake at this time, not that that was a consideration. The woman and her children are in trouble. Your trick has become self-fulfilling, and now she really is willing to reach out to the authorities.’