The Innocent (18 page)

‘No, but Nardi has a pension, a pretty decent pension after working on the railways all his life.’

‘So?’

‘So Monica’s claiming half of it. She says he spends as much time in her house, using her hot water, her heating, her electricity, as he does in his own—which isn’t quite true—and as much time in her bed as in Costanza’s—which is. Of course, Monica has her mother’s old age pension now but her mother’s nearly ninety. She has to think of the future. She has a point, you know. It must be twenty years they’ve been together.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Monica didn’t need to stay a widow. She could have married three times over, they say.’

‘I don’t doubt it. What I can’t understand is what any woman could see in Nardi.’

‘They say he looks better with his teeth in.’

‘But he never puts them in!’

‘No. Anyway, what Costanza says is that if his pension—or half of it—goes, he goes. Hence the scrap.’

‘Hmph. I have to go. Teresa …’

He left Lorenzini standing there. He was vaguely aware of the puzzled frown that followed him but it didn’t matter. He had to get on. He was still exhausted and still upset about Esposito, but under all that, deep inside, he was now calm.

Nine

T
he chatter at table flowed around him, comforting. He felt Teresa watching him but she didn’t bother him at all, except to say every so often in a gentle voice, ‘Salva …’

‘What?’

This was because the boys were asking him something, looking at him, expecting an answer.

‘We’ll see …’ was all he could manage. And sometimes, ‘Ask your mother …’

Later, they took their coffee through and settled on the cool leather sofa in the drawing room to watch the news. He leaned back and dozed a little, always aware of the newsreader’s urgent voice. He was aware, too, of the small movements Teresa was making as she sewed beside him. Sometimes he was rocked by the train in a weary journey that went on and on and on, but when his head fell sideways it touched Teresa’s warm bare arm and he was comforted. He woke after almost an hour, refreshed. The two boys were waiting outside the drawing-room door, having been told to keep quiet because their dad had been up all night. They were still quiet but staring at him, their eyes hopeful. What did they want?

‘Mum says we can but not on our own. She says only if you take us.’

It was Giovanni talking and that was odd. Totò was always the ringleader when they were planning something—but what was it?

‘We wanted to go with everybody from school. There’s a whole gang … Mum says the final’s too dangerous because there’s always a fight afterwards.’

The medieval football, then.

‘Hmph.’

‘But we can if you take us.’

‘All right, we’ll see.’

‘Oh, Dad! You always say we’ll see, and it’s San Giovanni! It’s my birthday—and my name day and the Whites are playing and we’ve never been to the final, ever!’

‘I know. We’ll talk about it later.’ He was opening the bedroom door to go and get changed but a voice in his head stopped him.

—If you don’t water a plant, it dies. It can’t wait.

That’s what it was—Totò was there, a little boy again, at least for a moment. He wasn’t taking the lead but he was there, supporting his brother, wanting something from his dad, no longer shut in the bedroom, crying.

So he placed a big hand on the shoulder of each and promised, ‘I’ll get tickets—but for all of us, your mum as well, because we’re going to go to Lapo’s place for a good meal first.’

‘With cake and spumante after?’ Giovanni’s dark eyes became as huge as the marshal’s own.

‘Of course with cake and spumante after. It’s your birthday and your name day, isn’t it? And now let me get changed and go back to work.’

There were no windows in Lapo’s small back room, so the lamps were on, illuminating the paintings by local artists, rows of bottles on the shelves, stacks of white plates. Even so, the circles of yellow light they gave out weren’t strong and the corners remained shadowy. The pushed-back tables with only their dark-green undercloths and the solemn faces looking at the marshal gave a funereal air to the gathering. Lapo had rounded up anybody from the square who wanted to come and now he offered a glass of vin santo to everyone. At this odd afternoon hour, the room smelled only of wine stains, cigarette smoke and coffee.

‘The marshal says they’ll eventually send our little Akiko back to her family in Japan so this is a bit of a farewell gathering for her. She always liked vin santo. Now, let’s hear what the marshal has to tell us.’

‘Well, I’d better tell you first of all that I’ve been up all night, so you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit … it’s been an upsetting business, too, I know you’ll understand that … Anyway, if I’m not making myself clear, you only have to ask.’

The men wore grey or black cotton coats, aprons, overalls. Santini’s hair was tied back with the usual bit of rag.

He scanned their faces, those close to him that he could see properly, those behind in the shadows. There was still some diffidence there, he could feel it, but they were listening. They were giving him a chance. So, he planted his big hands squarely on his knees and began. ‘I know a lot of you must have thought I was trying to keep Esposito’s name out of this. Some of you were even understanding about it and very discreet. I couldn’t see it at the time but I want to thank you for that now, for your trust, I mean. You relied on me to do the right thing and when I didn’t, well … you felt let down. So for those of you I haven’t said this to already, I didn’t know about Esposito and Akiko. I can only ask you to believe that. If you don’t …

‘He hadn’t been with us all that long. When you live in barracks you’re cut off from old friends back at home, from your family. You can’t be on familiar terms with the men you command …’

The next bit was difficult but he was determined to say it. He took a sip of the vin santo, which he didn’t want and could ill afford to drink in his exhausted state. ‘I wish … I’d have liked to think he could have confided in me, but these are delicate matters and maybe he thought I wouldn’t understand. Maybe he thought I was too old. Anyway, he didn’t confide in anyone—he didn’t confide in me. Now he’s dead. You’ll have seen that on last night’s news and—though they didn’t say it in so many words because there has to be an autopsy and so on—we think he killed himself.’

Some discreet murmurs, a scraped chair, a loud voice:

‘But did he kill Akiko?’

‘What are you on about? He wanted to marry her!’

‘No, no. He’s right. The question has to be asked. The marshal knows that and he’ll think no worse of us for asking.’

‘What do you know about it?’

‘Let him finish! We’ve all got work to do!’

The marshal waited until they’d shouted each other down and seemed ready to listen. He, too, had work to do but he was all quiet inside now and moving steadily forward. He had to satisfy their curiosity about Esposito’s death and then listen to what they could tell him. He coughed and the last mutterings died down.

‘As far as I can piece it together, what happened was that Esposito was given leave to go home to Naples and visit his mother.’ He had to be honest with them. He didn’t want to say it but he needed their trust and, this way, they had to give it to him. ‘He’d told us his mother was ill. It wasn’t true.’

More murmurs, but nobody ventured to comment on that. It had worked. Any diffidence had melted. They gazed at him now like children being told a story.

‘He took the train for Naples, as he’d said he would, but he got off it in Rome. Given the lie he told us about his mother, we have to think that he always intended to do that. He went looking for a friend of Akiko’s. He was very agitated and, according to the friend, he said nothing much other than “It’s all over.” Some of you may have known that Akiko was expecting a child. Although she didn’t go through with it, she had planned on an abortion. This all makes things look very bad for Esposito, I realise that, but I hope now you’ll believe that nobody’s trying to cover anything up here.’

He paused and glanced at Peruzzi. Most of the men in the room turned to look at him, too. He had taken care to inform Peruzzi about everything before the others arrived, mindful of his heart condition. Things had to be done in the proper order, smooth and steady. Even so, when he’d first heard it all, Peruzzi had been obliged to sit down, his face pale.

—Oh, no … an abortion, no. She must have known that wasn’t the answer.

—Yes, I think she did. Her friend in Rome said she was upset. Very upset.

—Hours and hours she sat there working and tears were dropping on her hands. Hours and hours … And no wonder. She couldn’t tell me. A girl needs her mother …

‘Hmph.’ The marshal didn’t go into that.

Now, Peruzzi remained still and silent, looking down at his hands. The other men turned their attention back to the marshal’ story.

Lapo’s wife, in her white apron and cook’s hat, was leaning against the doorway of the lighted kitchen, listening too.

‘He was missing for some days. That was because Akiko’s friend—whose name is Toshimitsu—was away. He’d gone to Tokyo for a wedding. Esposito hung around in Rome, waiting. We don’t know yet where he stayed.

When Toshimitsu got back he tried to calm Esposito down but it did no good.’

‘So why did he kill himself ?’

‘Out of remorse, of course! Because he killed her, didn’t he?’

‘You don’t know that! How can you know that?’

‘He wanted to marry her, for God’s sake. You don’t suddenly up and murder somebody when you want to marry them!’

‘What about her threatening an abortion? What about that? Any man would be upset. That could have done it, am I right, Marshal?’

‘How can he know that? Whose child was it, that’s the point.’

‘Come on! We knew Akiko!’

‘You hadn’t eaten a kilo of salt with her, as they say. You never know with people—I mean, what about this chap, whats-his-name, in Rome. How do we know it wasn’t his, if she went running to him?’

‘Shut up!’

‘I’m just saying, that’s all. She wouldn’t be the first—’

‘Shut up!’

The marshal let them shout until one particular nuisance—a man in glasses whom he’d never seen before and who had clearly never spoken a word to Akiko—had been silenced.

‘After that, Esposito boarded the Naples train … yesterday morning.’ It seemed so long ago but it was only yesterday. It didn’t seem real, either, when he tried to tell it, because it felt more like he was recounting his nightmare.

‘The train had been travelling for something like ten minutes when, according to witnesses, Esposito left his seat very suddenly. His fellow passengers said he looked wretched, as though he were going to be sick. Somebody said:

—We thought maybe he had a hangover, that he was still drunk, even, because he looked as though he didn’t know where he was.

‘They all remembered that he made a sort of noise as he lurched out of his seat. Some said he was starting to vomit and others said it was more like a groan or a sob. He locked himself into the lavatory. A lot of people heard the shot. There was blood coming out under the door. Somebody pulled the emergency cord. It took some time before the door was broken down. He’d shot himself in the face. They couldn’t do anything to help him. He was already dead.’

When the marshal stopped speaking, there was silence. Seeing that they were moved and knowing that their defence would be some cynical crack that would break the spell, he filled the silence himself. ‘Esposito was the only son of a widow, so you can imagine that she … I shouldn’t be telling you any of this so don’t, for God’s sake, tell anybody you heard it from me because I’ll deny it. Are we clear on that?’

The critical moment passed and they were soon shouting each other down about who had seen Esposito and who hadn’t.

‘No, no, no! Ask Peruzzi. His hair was black.’

‘I’m telling you I saw him waiting for her outside the workshop.’

‘You saw no such thing. He only ever showed up here once and that was when she’d already disappeared. Am I right, Peruzzi?’

‘Yes. The day before the marshal came round, asking the same questions.’

‘So that was the day I saw him.’

‘Well, he wasn’t waiting for Akiko then, was he, since she’d already gone!’

‘How was I to know who he was waiting for? I’m just saying I saw him, that’s all. I’m just saying. I think he was wearing a leather overcoat.’

‘What leather overcoat? What leather overcoat? In May! He was in uniform, Peruzzi said. You’re talking rubbish! Shut up, for Christ’s sake!’

There was always somebody ready to be convinced they’d seen whatever ought to have been seen, especially if there was the chance of saying it on the television news. The self-styled witness had a raucous voice but the others formed a chorus to shout him down and the small room rang with their din. Lapo’s wife retreated into her kitchen. The marshal made no attempt to restore order and quiet. He only ducked his head below the level of all the shouting faces and gesticulating arms to catch the eye of Santini who was sitting in silence behind a table a little to his right.

The marshal spoke in almost a whisper to make himself heard below the shouting. ‘You saw him, didn’t you?’

Did Santini hear or lip-read? In either case he nodded.

‘In uniform?’

The marshal signalled to him and touched Peruzzi’s arm. They moved into the front room which was just as small but where there was daylight and they could distance themselves from the strident polemic.

‘So you two are the only ones to have seen Esposito, the day before I came round asking about Akiko. Is that right? And you said to me yesterday morning, didn’t you, Santini, that he was in uniform.’

‘Yes, but he didn’t speak to me. I just saw him go into Peruzzi’s.’

‘And you, Peruzzi, you were so angry with me that first time because I came asking the same questions he’d already asked: I don’t know where she is! How many more of you do I have to tell? Isn’t that what you shouted at me?’

‘I don’t remember. She’d gone and I was angry.’

‘But you told him she might be in Rome, or even Tokyo, like you said?’