The Haunted Martyr

by Kenneth Cameron

  ‘They’ve gone mad,’ Maltby said. He was hoarse. ‘They’re savages.’

  It was a carnival; it was a mêlée. A man stumbled away from the crowd, in his hands most of one of the small carved figures; it had been broken off at the legs. Another man tried to snatch it; there were curses. Three women were fighting over something else, one falling to her knees and hugging it to her fat breasts; the other two struck and kicked her, but she fell on whatever it was she had and they couldn’t roll her over.

  Denton heard the crowd roar again. Part of another beam came down. From inside, he could hear the sounds of pounding, of ripping, of nails screaming as they were pulled out of the oak.

  Maltby had tears running down his cheeks. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why?’

  Michele ’l ubriacon’ came out of the dust and scuffling. His tongue was lolling, wriggling. He seemed to be trying to do some sort of dance around the woman on the ground. It became a pantomime of finding her, astonished, trying to help her rise, suffering the rejection of his help—what sense did it make? He began to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ in clear British English. Some of the crowd, unable to get into the shoving masses around the two beams, watched him and laughed. Women imitated his crude dance and raised their skirts at him, and he paraded forwards and backwards, thrusting his pelvis out and almost falling.

  The donkey cart moved slowly out of the courtyard, an old man in a soft hat and no coat beating the animal with a heavy stick. Another that had been waiting in the street came in; more plaster and wood came down; the air became thick with dust. The crowd got angry because no more figures were thrown to them.

  At half after eight, a slick-looking young man who Maltby said was ‘the estate agent’s man’ came out of the Palazzo Minerva and got up on a cart and announced something that Denton couldn’t understand. Two clots of well-dressed men who had been lounging back against the buildings moved forward. They all seemed to know each other. The crowd fell back for them. The slick young man pointed up at the window.

  The life-sized crucifix, feet first, was being pushed out. Denton thought they were going to throw it down, but they had it tied by the ends of the crosspiece and held it suspended just below the window. The crucified Christ looked down at the crowd with a pained frown.

  ‘Autentico!’ the slick young man was shouting. ‘Veramente a l’originale! Fata per gli mani del’ defunto Fra Geraldo! Chi mi dare mille lire? Mille? Mille? Cinque cento?’

  ‘Christ, it’s an auction.’

  ‘It’s a damned sacrilege!’

  The first bid was twenty lire. Denton thought of bidding but wondered where he would ever put such a piece—and why. It went for a hundred and sixty. Christ was lowered on the ropes and one of the well-dressed men tried to carry it off but needed the help of the others, who laughed at him, so Christ was leaned against the Palazzo Minerva until the auction was over. Maltby said, ‘I can’t stand any more.’ He looked at Denton, in his face a plea for something, and, not getting it, walked away.

  Then came the stations of the cross. Some of the well-dressed men wanted them to be sold in lots. Some didn’t. The slick young man sold them by threes. The first lot went for sixty lire, and some of the well-dressed men started to drift away. He sold them one at a time, for forty, twenty, twenty, seventeen lire. He sold a pair for fifty and the last three for forty, then a few of the larger carvings from the beams, the grotesques and the soldiers and the Jews, in a single lot. He jumped down from the cart. Well-dressed men were going in several directions, some with a half-life-sized figure of the tortured Christ or the sorrowing Christ in his arms. Several of them who had bought nothing helped to carry the crucifix, which disappeared around the corner, headed for the Via Toledo. Another sackful of broken plaster cascaded down the walls and landed more or less in the donkey cart. Men and women began to fight over whatever they could find in it.

  Feeling his disgust like a coating of the filthy dust that had been stirred up by the feet of the mob—clothes, skin, eyes—Denton turned away and walked towards the narrow street. There, however, leaning in the shadow by the open gate, was Dottor Gianaculo. His small eyes looked dulled by the scene, as if he had consciously turned off some internal light. His fat face was slack and colourless in the shadow. He watched Denton approach but gave no greeting.

  Denton said in his now rough-and-ready Italian, ‘A displeasing spectacle.’

  The policeman’s eyes shifted to the crowd again. His shoulders moved with what might have been a belch, was perhaps some grunt of ironic comment. He said, speaking slowly so that Denton could follow, ‘One of the guardie told me they were destroying the house.’

  ‘Only the one room so far.’

  The eyes turned back to Denton. ‘I was here almost from the start.’ He took something from his pocket—a triangle of plaster, a screaming mouth and chin painted on it. ‘Memento mori.’

  Behind Denton, a louder scream rose above the noise of the crowd. It was a scream of rage, not pain. Denton turned. A woman was struggling with a ragged man; she had her hand in one of the pockets of his too-big overcoat. Denton recognised the coat and the brimless hat just as the struggle reached its climax: the woman tried to kick Michele and he clouted her in the head. She reeled back from him and fell and began to bellow. Michele turned to run and, seeing Denton, tried to stagger around him. Clutching something to his chest, he dodged, almost fell, and said in Nnapulitan’, his thick tongue like a snake in his toothless mouth, ‘She was robbing me!’

  Gianaculo, still leaning against the wall, said, ‘She was—I saw it.’ He sounded amused.

  ‘There—there! He saw it!’ Michele leered, put his tongue out. The woman, who had got up, was screaming at another woman, who was laughing at her.

  Michele came closer to Denton. His sour smell reached Denton’s nose, then the smell of wine. He grinned, waggled the tip of his tongue, and held up the thing the woman had tried to steal.

  ‘Dièci lire,’ he said.

  It was another piece of plaster from one of the walls. Denton recognised the figures on it, the naked boys pulling on the rope to strangle the tortured man. Denton wanted it, but he thought it was obscene to pay ten lire—half a working man’s weekly wage. ‘One lira.’

  ‘No, no!’ Michele hugged it against his chest, said something in Nnapulitan’ to the policeman, who chuckled. ‘Ten. Eight!’ He grinned and put out his tongue and then tapped the plaster triangle and said, ‘It’s me!’ He waggled his tongue and widened his eyes.

  Denton grabbed him. Michele instinctively pulled the plaster away, but Denton wasn’t after the plaster; he put his big hand around Michele’s left wrist and dragged him to the street. The drunkard began to howl, laughing as he did it, cackling and wailing as Denton pulled him down to the corner and across the adjoining street to a mean little café that had two rusted tables against its wall, one on each side of the doorway.

  Denton pushed Michele down into a chipped wooden chair. ‘Caffè!’ he shouted. ‘Due caffè!’

  ‘No, no—grappa—grappa—!’

  An ageing man appeared, coatless, tieless, but his collarless shirt buttoned up under a waistcoat. He looked at Michele with contempt, then at Denton, and seemed to make a decision. He raised his chin and disappeared.

  ‘Grappa,’ Michele said again.

  Denton sat opposite him on a chair that seemed to have only three good legs. ‘Shut up,’ he said in English. He looked at Michele’s eyes. ‘How drunk are you?’

  Michele did the tongue-and-eyes thing again and said in fair English, ‘Not drunk enough. Give me six lire, I get truly drunk.’

  ‘What did you mean, the painting is you?’

  Michele tittered. ‘I lie.’

  ‘Why is it you?’

  ‘I din’t mean it. I sinned.’ He giggled, then wagged his obscene tongue. ‘Is jus’ a little scugnizzo.’

  ‘Who was torturing—hurting—Fra Geraldo. Did you hurt Fra Geraldo?’

  Michele put the triangle of plaster down on th
e unsteady table, slowly turned it so Denton was seeing it right side up. Denton looked past him and saw Gianaculo leaning at the corner of the building, arms folded, face ironical.

  Michele was wiping his hands on his greasy overcoat. The coffee came; he drank his in a gulp and shouted for grappa; Denton said no and told the man to bring another coffee. Michele howled, then slumped in his chair.

  ‘Did you ever torture Fra Geraldo?’

  He got a sly smile. ‘I whip him sometimes.’ He grinned and waggled his tongue. ‘He like me to whip him. Also, he wash my feet. Ever’ Pasqua, he wash my feet.’ He opened his mouth wide and stuck his tongue out as if he were going to swallow something huge—Denton, the detective, the world. ‘“Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these…”’ He giggled. ‘I am the least of these.’

  ‘When you were a scugnizzo—’

  Michele hugged himself and rocked back and forth and shook his head quickly.

  ‘—did you sing for Fra Geraldo?’

  Michele stopped rocking and shaking his head and stared at the piece of plaster, still hugging himself. Suddenly, he put his head up and began to sing in English. ‘God save our gracious queen—’ His voice, roughened by alcohol and time, held nonetheless a trace of sweetness, like a ghost of perfume left in an empty bottle.

  ‘In the English church? Did you sing in the English church?’ Michele frowned as if he didn’t really know or couldn’t remember. He turned away and stared into the street, his depraved face blank.

  Denton took out a five-lire note and put it on top of the plaster. When Michele tried to snatch it away, he pulled it back and held on to it. ‘There was another boy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Another boy.’ He tapped the plaster, the painting of the two boys. ‘His name began with E.’

  Michele shook his head.

  ‘Yes. E. What was his name? E—?’

  Michele, never looking at Denton’s eyes, stared at the plaster. He slowly put out his shaking right hand and touched the boys with his fingertips. ‘Edouardo,’ he whispered.

  ‘Edouardo. What was his family name? Edouardo—?’

  Michele was shaking his head very fast and murmuring, ‘No, no.’

  ‘You and Edouardo tried to kill Fra Geraldo.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Have you seen Edouardo, Michele? Now, I mean—maybe in December, maybe when the presepes were for sale—maybe you took Edouardo to the old man’s palazzo and sang as if you were boys again to frighten him—’

  Michele burst into one of the Neapolitan street songs that he sang for coins, very loud, as if he wanted to drown out Denton’s voice. Then, catching Denton off guard, he grabbed the five- lire note and ran into the street, where he stumbled and almost fell, then righted himself and ran off.

  Gianaculo pushed himself off the wall, came to the table and sat in Michele’s chair, keeping his hands off the table where Michele had touched it. He looked at Denton, their eyes holding, neither speaking. Finally, Gianaculo called for coffee and took out a box of cigarettes. He lit one and pushed the box and the matches across the table. Denton lit one, waited while the coffee was put down, said in fractured Italian, ‘That was a terrible scene this morning. Fra Geraldo attracted violence, even when he was dead.’

  Gianaculo said, his eyes slitted against the rising smoke, ‘You still think the old man was killed.’

  ‘It looks not.’

  The dottor shook out the match and blew smoke out the side of his mouth. ‘The English detective and his magic liquid? That’s nice. Very modern.’ He turned sideways to Denton and stared out into the street. He wore his hat at an angle, the brim turned up on one side, and Denton realised for the first time that Gianaculo was a vain man despite his fatness. Gianaculo said, ‘I, too, think he was killed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I do not like it that he fell down and broke his neck. It has a smell.’

  ‘Did he have enemies?’ He remembered that he had asked the question before.

  Gianaculo was speaking Italian, but he spoke slowly and Denton got it. ‘We all have enemies. The people on each side of the Palazzo Minerva, maybe. He used to shout at them because of their noise. He was always at them about the cesspool, which he said got into the wells, and of course he was right. Half the landlords of the Old City hated him because he was always at them about their buildings. Some of the great ones of the Church hated him because he practised poverty and charity and made them look like the fat-arsed hypocrites they are. The Church is always asking for money; Fra Geraldo was always giving it away. Yes, he had enemies. Would one of them kill him?’ He shrugged.

  ‘Maybe the Church hired the Camorra to do him in.’

  Gianaculo grunted. ‘The Church have their own guappi if they need them.’ He looked into his cup, empty except for the thick mud at the bottom, and shouted for another. ‘You know the old man was setting up a charity for when he was gone? Maybe he knew something was going to happen.’

  Denton didn’t want to reveal what he had learned from the old man’s ledger. ‘What kind of charity?’

  ‘A clinic in each of the four worst sezioni, they say. Free food for the old. People to go around and teach sanitation in the fondaci.’

  ‘That would take a lot of money.’

  ‘He had a lot of money. So they say. He was a good old man, but he was crazy. All the money in Europe wouldn’t change Naples.’

  They sat until Gianaculo had finished his third coffee and then they walked towards the Via Toledo. Gianaculo put his arm through Denton’s in the Italian manner. The dottor walked with his head back, his paunch forward, seeming to present himself to the world for admiration. He said, ‘You interest yourself in some curious characters, signore.’ They stopped at a corner. Gianaculo looked around with apparent pleasure. ‘Che bella città.’ He began to steer Denton across the street, moving them both deftly around a pile of horse dung.

  ‘I heard that Michele, but I did not understand the English. He sang for Fra Geraldo when he was a boy?’

  ‘Michele had a special place with Fra Geraldo. Washing his feet, being beaten by him—“the least of these my brothers”. He talked to me about—I don’t know the word in Italian—atonement.’ He tried to turn it into an Italian word. Gianaculo suggested several, none of which sounded right to Denton. At last, Gianaculo murmured, ‘Ah, espiazione, si—espiazione! Parole religioso. Ma certo.’ Expiation, yes—a religious word. But of course. For some reason, he chuckled. ‘So he makes espiazione and debases himself to the worst human being he can find. Like Christ with the lepers. Che pazzo.’ What a loony.

  ‘He also carved presepe figures of Michele every Christmas. He was making a record of Michele’s…I don’t know how you say “to go downwards”.’

  Gianaculo took his arm again. ‘You think Michele killed him?’

  They came to the corner of the Via Toledo. Denton stopped there. He said, ‘No, but I think Michele might know who did. I think that he thinks so, too.’

  Gianaculo detached himself and looked up at the buildings opposite, his eyebrows raised. He tapped Denton on the chest. ‘Not enough yet to go to the magistrato. But you tell me everything if it happens, yes?’ He smiled his cynical, weary smile. ‘Remember, signore, I am the detective.’ He touched his hat-brim in salute and waddled off.

  CHAPTER

  19

  With Janet gone, the domestic economy of the Casa Gialla started a gentle crumbling, like damp plaster in an old house. The Wednesday lunches ended; the socialists and communists came no more. Assunta said that her husband had forbidden her to come any more to a house with only a man in it ‘because of his honour’. Janet had left him written instructions to go on paying Assunta, so he supposed he would; however, he took the matter to DiNapoli for advice. DiNapoli’s answer was to install an elderly woman as housekeeper. At once, Assunta’s husband’s honour was satisfied and she returned; however, Sirena, the more sluggish of the two housemaids, left because the housekeeper told her she did
n’t work hard enough.

  DiNapoli became moody. Denton had explained why Janet had left, but DiNapoli seemed not to accept it. He seemed to take her going as a personal hurt. They all did, in fact.

  The rector of the English church was not English but Australian, and not a prissy country parson but a scarlet-nosed football fan. Denton wondered but didn’t ask how he’d washed up in Naples, thought that perhaps ‘washed up’ said it all—some error somewhere behind him. Whatever his past, the Reverend Mr Porter tried hard to be cheerful, although the nose kept suggesting that he’d be even more cheerful if they could adjourn somewhere for a pint.

  ‘Library? Yes, we’ve a library. Cheaper than Tauchnitz is what keeps it going. A Debrett’s? Absolutely—it’s the bible of a few of my parishioners, which isn’t to say that the Bible isn’t their bible, ha-ha. Fra Geraldo? Yes, I think I knew he was a duke or somewhat, but as he wasn’t a parishioner I didn’t pay much notice. He was Papist, wasn’t he?’

  Denton murmured that Fra Geraldo had once been choirmaster in this very church. ‘His name’s on the wall.’

  ‘Really! Shows what you don’t notice when you’re thinking of Sunday dinner.’ When Denton had pointed out the name, the rector said, ‘Gerald Sommers, well, there you are. Long before my time. I’ve been here four years, so I’m still the new boy. Some of the older ones still call me Mr Semple, who was my predecessor. Can’t get used to having an Aussie at the helm. Records? Records of the choir? Well, if the roaches and the mice and the wet rot have spared them, I suppose we might have records, but I don’t know what sort of records we’d have kept of the choir. Children? We’ve had boys in the choir, if that’s what you mean, sons of parishioners, you know—those high-pitched voices, can’t say I much care for them, but many people do. If you mean records of who was in the choir, I suppose we keep something of that sort. Mrs Bridges would know. I’ll just have a word with her—that’s the library through there, the shelves against the wall under the window—and I’ll find you in there with Debrett’s, shall I?’