The Fallen (12 page)

The interpreter bowed politely and then, in a harsh voice, told the young woman to get herself back onto the street where she belonged
because his American friends weren’t in the business of hiring whores.

The young woman wiped away her tears. She gathered herself and strode through the waiting room and out into the corridor.

Pleased with himself, the interpreter cast an eye about the room. He noticed Luisa watching him. “What are you looking at?” he demanded.

In precise but accented English, she answered: “A coward.”

This caught the captain’s attention. “What did you say?” he asked her.

Luisa felt Maria squeeze her leg, and she let her unfriendly stare linger a moment longer on the interpreter. Then she said: “It is nothing. I wonder only when my cousin will be called.”

The captain picked up the clipboard from the corporal’s desk. “What’s the name?”

“Maria Rosetta Bello.”

He ran his finger down the page, and then frowned at the corporal. “I should already have seen this woman.”

“Is that right,” replied the corporal, unconcerned. “My mistake, I guess.”

“Well, I’ll see her now, then.” He dropped the clipboard onto the desk. “If you’ll follow me, Signora Bello.”

He turned back into his office. The interpreter stood holding the door as Maria got to her feet and smoothed the hem of her dress. She touched her hand to her hair and then looked anxiously at Luisa.

“Don’t forget this,” Luisa said, and handed her the
tenente’s
letter. “Just give it to them. And if they ask what it was that you were doing before, you tell them that you were an assistant at the Museo Archeologico and you lost your job because of cutbacks. Mention Augusto’s name. They can contact him if they wish. He will speak on your behalf.”

Maria hugged her and Luisa felt the flutter of her heart and smelled the delicate tang of her perspiration.

“I’m frightened,” Maria said.

“You’ll be fine,” said Luisa. “I will be right here waiting for you.”

Maria let go of her embrace and took a deep breath. Then she turned and walked into the office, ignoring the fawning welcome of the interpreter, who glanced once more at Luisa before closing the door.

Quonset huts stretched the length of the Mostra fairgrounds, at the far end of which stood the whitewashed exhibition hall, looking like a shrunken Moorish palace complete with minarets and palm-shaded gardens. Mussolini had built the complex to house the world’s fair, but the war had scuttled his plans. Looking about, Greaves thought they could be in Oran or Mers el-Kébir rather than on the outskirts of Naples.

“I liked North Africa better,” said the chief clerk. He was glad to be out of his office and wandering the compound with Greaves. “We were at Bou Hanifia then. Great place. It was a resort hotel. You could lie on the beach, go for a swim—sip drinks and dance with French ladies.”

“It must have been nice,” Greaves said.

“There wasn’t much action then. We were just pretty much sitting around waiting. But here …” He shook his head. “Here, we’ve got them coming in from Cassino and the Liri valley, and now Anzio too. Not to mention all the ones getting themselves stabbed or shot down in the city, fighting over women and booze. And that’s part of the problem, lieutenant. The more we’ve got coming in, the more supplies we’re going to need to fix them. That means bigger shipments,
and when you’ve got bigger shipments … I mean, Christ Almighty, lieutenant, this is Naples. If it isn’t nailed down, then someone’s gonna steal it. You should know that.”

They passed by two white-coated army surgeons who stood smoking cigarettes beside an empty oil drum.

“Mostly it’s the morphine they’re after.”

“Any idea who it is that we’re talking about?” asked Greaves.

The chief clerk shrugged. “Could be anybody. There are some small-time operators who steal from the storerooms or the wards—orderlies, nurses, even some of the doctors probably. They off-load it to guys in Piazza Garibaldi, I suppose. But that’s to be expected. Happens in any hospital, even stateside. The stuff you’re talking about, though, that’s different. Diverting entire shipments, hijacking loads—that’s organized, that’s Al Capone stuff. That’s the ginzoes.”

They stepped into one of the Quonset huts. The smell of the place was immediate: the sour pong of infection mingled with the sharp scent of liniments and salves and the earthy fragrance of the human waste collecting in bedpans and catheter basins.

A woman in her mid-forties, with ruddy cheeks and a heavy bosom that strained the fabric of her pale blue uniform, looked up from a desk in the corner. While the chief clerk chatted with her, Greaves looked through the split in the curtain that divided the small nursing station from the rest of the ward. On the other side of the curtain, where the smell was much stronger, there were three rows of canvas cots, perhaps forty-five in all. Several faces turned towards him, staring blankly, and he was struck by an odd thought: it was of a photograph he had seen in a copy of
Life
magazine that showed an American Red Cross worker handing out candy and cigarettes to bedridden soldiers; there were smiles on the soldiers’ faces, as if the small gifts were enough to ease the pain of their wounds. But by the look of the men in these
beds, limbs encased in plaster, bandages wrapped about their heads, tubes draining their bodies, it didn’t seem likely that any amount of chocolate or tobacco would bring them relief.

The nurse came from behind her desk and pulled the curtain closed. “We’re not running a sideshow here,” she said.

Greaves apologized, then followed the chief clerk back out into the sunshine.

“I really don’t know what else to tell you, lieutenant,” he said. He nodded at the surrounding Quonset huts. “In the end, all that matters is that these boys here get what they need. And so far, that hasn’t been a problem. Until it is, I don’t think you’re gonna have much luck finding anything out.”

Greaves held out his hand. “Thanks for your time. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Not at all,” said the chief clerk. He shook Greaves’s hand and then wandered back off towards his office.

It had been three days since Cioffi had taken a drink, and they’d felt like the hardest three days of his life. It was worst at night, when he shivered and sweated himself to sleep on the floor in Lello’s salotto. He had bad dreams, too. Horrifying visions of being chased down darkened alleyways. He never saw who it was that pursued him, only heard their footfalls—heavy and ringing, as if they wore iron-soled boots. And always, just when he thought he had gotten free of them, Renzo Abruzzi stepped from the shadows, the blade of his knife catching a glint of light before he plunged it home, driving it deep and twisting, cutting through entrails and scraping against bone. The night before when he’d had the dream, he felt the warmth of his blood as it pooled beneath him, only to wake up a moment later to find that he had wet himself.

Being sober was a misery to him—but a misery, for the time being, he was willing to suffer. He needed Augusto to believe that he had changed. It was the only way he could get the old man to trust him enough to leave him alone. Since he’d been working at the museum, his uncle had hardly left his side. He hovered over him while he struggled alongside the others, hauling crates up from the cellar vaults and dragging them through the galleries. It seemed to Cioffi as if everything were made of stone. Even the packing straw was heavy to him. The day before, he’d grown faint while unloading a trundle cart of crated mosaics and dropped one of the boxes. It split open, but nothing, in the end, got broken.

Now, as he waited in his uncle’s office, he felt a slight dizziness again at the prospect of another day of slogging and another day without drink. He went to the desk and opened the drawer where he remembered Augusto had always hidden a bottle of sweet amaretto. Perhaps just a sip, he thought—a taste to see him through. Then he heard his uncle’s voice behind him.

“I know what you’re looking for, Aldo. I don’t keep it there anymore.”

Cioffi closed the drawer and turned around. He smiled. “Maybe some coffee, then.”

“I have some brewed,” said his uncle. “Sit down. I will bring it to you.”

Cioffi did as he was told. He watched as the old man went to the field stove and poured out a single cup. He noticed that Augusto moved more slowly today. His back was bothering him again. Cioffi had never imagined that the day could come when his uncle would not be able to take care of himself. He had always been so strong, so vibrant. An ox of a man, who scrabbled his way over the ruins long after other men the same age had retired to café terraces to bore people
with stories of their younger selves. Now his hand shook as he passed Cioffi the cup.

“You know, Aldo, I’m proud of you.” Augusto hobbled around his desk to sit down. “I didn’t think you would be such a hard worker.”

“I always knew I could be good at something, uncle.”

“Oh, you aren’t good at it,” Augusto said. “You’re a hard worker, yes—but not good.” He started to laugh. “In fact, you are very nearly hopeless.”

Cioffi set his cup down. “But, uncle—”

“Come, now, don’t look so surprised. Face it, Aldo: you weren’t built for hard labour. It’s just not in you.”

“What am I to do, then?”

Augusto got up from behind his desk and went to a high bookcase in the corner of the room. From a middle shelf he collected several ledgers bound in black leather. He brought them back to the desk.

“You will help me to inventory the collections. The heaviest thing you will have to lift,” he said, holding up a ledger, “is one of these. Do you think you can manage that?”

Cioffi came to the desk. He picked up one of the ledgers. It felt light in his hand. This, he thought to himself, must be the weight of luck.

Luisa waited outside the courtyard gate. The
tenente
, she’d been told by one of the
inglese
soldiers inside, was expected back soon. He had offered her a seat in the foyer, but she politely declined, preferring, though of course she did not say so, the street to his company.

When she heard the rumble of the motorbike coming across the square, she looked up. Tenente Greaves was not wearing his cap and his dark hair was mussed, and there was colour in his cheeks from the
wind of the ride. All of which made him look much younger to her. He brought the motorbike to a stop before her and turned the engine off.

“Signora Gennaro,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

“I came to thank you,
tenente
. For what you did.”

“Your cousin,” he said. “The new American officers’ club. Did she get a position?”

“Yes. She will start working next week. She will be a cashier.”

“That’s great. I’m glad to hear it.” He looked past her towards the courtyard, and then said: “I haven’t got anything pressing to do right at the moment. Maybe you’d like to get a drink. A coffee, perhaps.”

“I have to get back to the museum.”

“Please.” He climbed off the motorbike and began to push it through the courtyard gate. “Just let me park this and I’ll be right with you.”

He did not give her the chance to protest, and so she waited for him.

A train rumbled past the warehouse, picking up speed as it moved along the newly repaired rail lines towards Stabia and Torre Annunziata. Salvatore Varone watched it from an open doorway. The carriages were crowded; faces filled the windows—soldiers and their women, old men, families with children. People had begun to travel again, day trips to the towns along the coast. An opportunity to escape the city, if only for a few hours, for those who could afford it, was worth the inflated price of the tickets. Varone had even thought about a trip himself; perhaps he would take his wife and daughters to Positano for a few days. There was a villa there, on the hillside above the town, pink stone with a red roof, and a pool on the terrace. From the balcony off the main bedroom you could see Capri. There was a ferry in the
harbour that made hourly crossings to the island. He could take the girls and their mother to lunch in the Piazzetta in Capri Town, at the café near the Chiesa Santo Stefano, and then later to the shops along Via Camerelle. And afterwards, a taxi ride up the mountain to Anacapri and the gelateria in the small street off Piazza San Nicola. But then the train was gone and his thoughts of Capri and Positano faded. For now, his business remained in Naples.

The smell of fresh paint filled the warehouse. In a far corner, behind a low wall of emptied packing crates, a group of men worked with stencils, changing the serial numbers on the three American two-and-a-half-ton trucks that Varone’s men had stolen in those first chaotic weeks after the Allies had reached the city, when there was almost too much to take.

Varone looked over at Paolo. He was sitting on an overturned crate, absently picking at the dirt beneath his fingernails with a splinter of wood.

“And our friend from the Questura—what did he have to say?”

Paolo shrugged. “Nothing much. I don’t think he tried very hard.”

“No,” said Varone. “I didn’t expect him to. He is as frightened of the security police as he is of us. If he asks too many questions, he might find himself in Poggio Reale.”

“They would show him a fine time there,” said Paolo.

“How did you leave him?”

“With bruises.”

“Just bruises?”

“And I gave him the money, like you told me.”

“Did he count it again?”

Paolo nodded.

“Good,” said Varone. “It is always best to leave a man with some sense of dignity. If you do that, then you can own him and he will not even realize it.”

“You don’t think he will do anything?”

“Like what? Try and have us arrested?” Varone chuckled. “No, he won’t do that. He will always be a greedy man. A few bruises is not going to change that. He’ll think of it as the price of doing business— and he’ll think it is a price he can afford.”

“But we know better.”

“We always know better, Paolo.” He glanced back towards the empty train tracks. “Perhaps it’s time we had a visit with Abruzzi.”

“Do you think he will agree to it?”