The Haunted Martyr

by Kenneth Cameron

  The kids loved it. While they laughed and shrieked and pointed, Denton leaned into the theatre and tried to see through the back curtain, behind which the puppeteer would be standing. He said, ‘Beppe—è tu?’ He had pulled the name from the depths of his memory—the night in the cellar of the Casa Gialla, the little man who had worked the puppet of the lady ghost, the Scuttini boy trussed up to die.

  The curtain parted a few centimetres. An eye appeared. ‘Si signore, sono qui.’

  Denton knew the voice, thought he had recognised it in Pulcinella’s. It was indeed the little puppeteer he had caught in his cellar. He said, ‘Non più dei mal’orme, eh.’ No more ghosts, eh?

  The puppeteer started to say something, but Pulcinella whacked Denton on the upper arm with his baton and asked him what he was doing, putting his big nose into his house.

  Denton said, his Italian beginning to fail him, that he was looking for Pulcinella’s wife. This brought on more whacks, more words, more laughter. Pulcinella threatened him; Denton made a pistol of his finger and shot him. Pulcinella fell, mortally wounded, then sprang back up and blew Denton a kiss. Denton walked off, and the kids applauded and shouted, ‘Texas Jack!’, and women who had come out of their houses stared at him. He found the next flight of stairs and started up, smiling.

  He met Gianaculo at a café because the inspector had sent him a note. It was not a place that Denton knew, close to the questura with rather cold, brutal service that he thought might come from serving mostly cops. Gianaculo was at a small, not very clean table, a cup the size of a baby’s fist in front of him. It was already empty and he was signalling for more. When Denton sat down, Gianaculo said, ‘Michele ’l ubriacon’ is dead.’

  Denton didn’t try to hide his surprise and some other reaction—hurt? Resentment?

  ‘Somebody found him on the beach at Cannavaciuolo.’

  ‘Drowned?’

  Gianaculo’s fat shoulders shrugged; his waistcoat pulled up to reveal a little of his shirt. ‘Drowned, drunk, who knows?’

  Denton asked for coffee with grappa, perhaps reminded because of Michele. ‘Why are you telling me?’

  ‘You interest yourself in him.’ Gianaculo gulped down his second tiny cup. ‘You have DiNapoli looking for him.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  Gianaculo’s eyes showed a possibly malicious satisfaction. ‘DiNapoli, who else?’ He smiled without parting his lips. ‘DiNapoli has not told you he is a police informer? Mmmm. Well, DiNapoli is not so bad. You know he is a criminal?’

  Frowning, Denton said, ‘Was. In the Stati Uniti. Deportato. He told me.’

  Gianaculo’s mouth pulled down at the corners; the lower lip pushed up in the middle, as if to say, Fancy his telling you! Gianaculo said, ‘You know he is a criminal; and you do not understand he is therefore an informer? I am so sorry, signore. Yes, little Vincenzo is one of ours. Do not think too badly of him—he has to make a living. We require that he come to the questura once a week because he is a criminal; as long as he is there, he might as well tell us what he knows.’

  Denton felt choked. ‘He informs on me and the signora?’

  ‘What is there to tell? You are admirable people.’ He patted Denton’s arm. ‘Do not be hard on DiNapoli. He reveres the lady. He has his own kind of honour.’ He sat back and stared at nothing, and said, ‘He looks for some other people for you, too.’

  ‘Kids who were in the English church choir molti anni fa.’ Long ago.

  Gianaculo tipped his head back. ‘Fra Geraldo again? Kids. His ghosts, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You cannot leave it?’

  ‘Can you?’

  Gianaculo clapped his hands together as if they were the halves of a book. ‘The magistrato says fermata.’ Closed.

  ‘Then why do you tell me about Michele ’l ubriacon’?’

  Gianaculo smiled his fat, faintly oriental smile. He let his hands fall open again. He dropped some coins on the table. ‘Tell me what you learn if DiNapoli finds any of the kids.’

  ‘Was Michele killed?’

  Gianaculo pushed out both lips. ‘Michele was a walking corpse. You saw him. But maybe somebody helped him get where he was going.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘The fish have the evidence.’ He started to walk away and turned back. ‘Did DiNapoli tell you he informs about you to the Scuttini, too?’

  Denton stared. Gianaculo smiled, perhaps sadly, perhaps merely cynically. ‘He does it to stay healthy, you know? If he doesn’t, they break his hands. His hands, at least.’

  Without Janet, he slept strangely, some nights waking at midnight and lying there until morning, other nights sleeping at a depth that frightened him. The dog slept in his room, first on the floor and then on the bed. Old dreams came back, all that unresolved detritus of a life. One of the dreams was familiar and inevitable—his wife, a horse, her last walk to the meadow with the lye bottle. He didn’t dream of trying to save her and failing, however; perhaps he had accepted his failure.

  Some nights without Janet, he woke and got up, then prowled that part of the house, the red room and the corridors. The building was silent, without the creakings and whispers of a wooden house. He was the only one on that floor; the remaining housemaid had been moved upstairs by the housekeeper ‘to keep an eye on her.’ The dog trotted along behind him. He looked down into the gardens, all grey and black now in moonlight. He tried to read, gave it up, went back to bed and slipped almost unwillingly into something like sleep, brief dreams from which he jerked awake, only to sleep again and then dream at length.

  He and Fra Geraldo were in the chapel. They were painting one of the panels, the old man working on a foreground figure at the bottom, Denton higher up, painting one of those vignettes in the middle distance. Denton was finishing a picture of a puppet booth. He had painted the scugnizzi who surrounded the booth, naked imps with gleeful, nasty little faces. He was working on the puppet in the little theatre’s opening, a Pulcinella with the traditional black mask but a policeman’s costume instead of the loose white smock. He and Fra Geraldo were talking in Italian while they painted. When he woke, however, it all dropped away and left nothing, like a wall that crumbled and gave a clear view of an ocean and sky that met in foggy greyness. He remembered something about speaking Italian, and then that, too, was gone.

  It was still dark beyond the window. Denton got up, sipped a little water. What had he been dreaming? Something about Italian. The chapel; it came to him like the flash of a gun at night, almost vanished; he grasped it, held it. The chapel—the chapel—

  Il poliziotto fa la commedia.

  It was all a puppet show?

  His walks got longer, mostly without DiNapoli, who stayed away now and whom Denton no longer trusted because of what Gianaculo had told him. Denton wrote to Janet almost every day. She did not write to him.

  Then DiNapoli told him that he’d found somebody who claimed to be one of Fra Geraldo’s choirboys.

  ‘“Claims”?’

  ‘He looks too old. He’s a old man. Plus you got the name Gianni Formoso; this guy’s name’s Giorgio.’

  ‘Close enough.’ But he was wondering if it was a fake, like so much else here—somebody seeing money in it. And he was wondering if DiNapoli had already told Gianaculo, and if so what Gianaculo would do. Could he trust Gianaculo? Could he trust DiNapoli, for that matter? Could he trust anybody?

  ‘Dis guy, he works at the statue foundry in Orientale. He don’t get home till seven and he says don’ come to his work, they don’ like it. He wants five lire to talk to you.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll come tomorrow night. Or he can come here.’

  In fact, they met in an enoteca near San Giovanni del Mare that was as close to a Dickensian dive as Denton wanted to get. DiNapoli was nervous, said ‘maybe they should have brought a couple strong guys wit’ us’; Denton was less worried, carrying his sword stick, but wished he could have carried a gun as well. The place itself was all right insi
de—low ceilinged, dark, the only light three kerosene lanterns hung on nails driven into the cement between the rough stones of the walls. Wine barrels stood on trestles behind a bar of rough boards laid over sawhorses. There were some benches and stools, no tables.

  Giorgio Formoso indeed looked older than Denton thought one of the choirboys should look, but people aged fast in the vicoli of the lower city. Formoso was bald, his scalp shiny and blotched; he had a big white moustache that drooped like Denton’s but was stained with tobacco—he had a cheap cigar in his mouth and two more in the pocket of his short jacket. His nose was big, but round and not sharp like Denton’s, a drinker’s nose, perhaps, with one reddened eye to match, the other visible only as milky white under a drooping, scarred lid. He was drinking red wine from a thick-walled glass and had a half-empty carafe on the floor beside him.

  Denton gave him the five lire and pulled over a stool, then another while DiNapoli was getting them wine. Denton looked around, met the stares of the other three customers, answering them look for look, theirs hostile, his neutral. He said, ‘Buona sera.’ They didn’t answer.

  ‘They are all right,’ Formoso said in Italian.

  ‘Not pleased by strangers.’

  Formoso shrugged. DiNapoli brought their wine and sat between them where he could translate. He’d warned Denton that Formoso spoke dialect, although the few words Denton had heard so far had been Italian.

  Denton raised his glass, as if in a toast or greeting; Formoso simply looked at him with his good eye, head slightly turned. Denton drank. He said, ‘You were one of the choirboys at the English church?’

  Formoso nodded. He seemed to be rationing his words. ‘What was the choirmaster like?’

  Formoso shrugged. Denton said, ‘Old? Young?’

  ‘Young.’

  ‘English?’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘Good to you?’

  Formoso shrugged again.

  Trying not to show his irritation, Denton said, ‘Did you live with him?’

  Formoso shook his head, drank off half the wine in his glass. ‘This was a long time ago, signore. I was a little kid. You think I remember everything from when I was nine years old? Do you?’

  ‘Where did you live?’

  Formoso looked at the men near the bar, as if they might know where he had lived, then said, ‘We lived in some rooms. Eight of us, with an old woman. She cooked and slapped us around. Sommers came every day and taught us.’ He pronounced it So-mairss.

  ‘Taught you what?’

  ‘Singing, what else? Singing in English.’ He put his head back and sang ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ in a surprisingly high voice, the English only slightly accented. ‘That you don’t forget.’ Then he drank the rest of the wine from the glass and reached down for the carafe. ‘The words meant nothing. He cared about the voice and the pronouncing, you know?’ He poured himself more wine. ‘I could have been singing about how great the devil is, for all I knew.’

  ‘Did you sing in the church on Sundays?’

  ‘Never.’

  Denton was surprised. He said so. Formoso, who had not smiled yet and seemed likely never to smile, said, ‘He told my father we would be a year learning.’ He shrugged. He drank.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Sommers went away.’

  Denton waited for more; nothing came. ‘Why?’

  Formoso shrugged.

  ‘Was there trouble?’

  ‘What trouble?’

  ‘Did the boys make trouble?’

  Formoso stared over Denton’s shoulder. ‘He was paying our fathers for us. My father said if I did not do well, if I was trouble, he would find real work for me. He meant he would sell me to one of the metal shops, they used boys and they died from the stuff they breathed, or they got burned. I knew he meant it. Anyway, we ate good; I remember that; the old woman smacked us around, but she was a good cook and sometimes we got meat. And he brought us cake sometimes. I remember that.’

  ‘Then why did he go away?’

  Formoso drank. He drank his mouth full and held the wine, puffing out his cheeks and his upper lip, then swallowed noisily. ‘I was nine years old.’

  ‘He took two boys with him. Edouardo and Michele.’

  Formoso’s eyes swung to meet Denton’s, then went to DiNapoli. ‘You already know these things, why do you ask me?’

  ‘We know some things, not all things.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that. But maybe…Edouardo and Michele.’ He narrowed his good eye until it showed as little as the injured one. ‘They were his favourites.’

  ‘Did he touch them?’

  Formoso went through the same look, first at Denton, then DiNapoli, and then he muttered something to DiNapoli in dialect. DiNapoli said, his voice weary, ‘He wants more money.’

  Denton handed over another five lire, then, when Formoso shook his head, five more. DiNapoli frowned.

  ‘Did Sommers touch the boys?’

  ‘I never—’ Formoso puffed his cheeks and upper lip out, although there was no wine in his mouth. He looked miserable, then angry, as if memory had brought up something he didn’t want to face—and couldn’t talk about. ‘There are things you forget. Some things, too, you did not understand back then.’

  ‘Did he touch Michele and Edouardo?’

  Formoso frowned and shook his head, as if that was something he didn’t know.

  ‘Then why did he go away?’

  Formoso shook his head. ‘How do I know? I didn’t even know he’d gone away until a long time after. Something happened. Nobody talked about it, or I do not remember. Sometimes he would take one or two boys to the church so they could hear themselves sing there. One day, he came back—he had been there with Michele—and Sommers was mad, ugly. I think that was the day he shouted at us. Then one day, it must have been after that, they told us to go home.’

  ‘Did the boys talk about what happened?’

  Formoso poured himself more wine. ‘Michele didn’t talk. But I knew later, it was something about the priest at the English church.’ He looked at Denton with one old, sin-weary eye. ‘Now, I know what it was, I suppose. You know.’ He looked at DiNapoli. ‘You know.’

  ‘And you all went home, and that was the end of it?’

  ‘The priest came to our basso and said thank you, I remember. He paid my father some money—I didn’t see that, but my father told me. My father beat the shit out of me and he said it was my fault and the priest had not paid enough. I don’t know how much he got. I remember my father saying he was going to the English church to get more. I think the priest told my father not to say anything to other people, because that’s what my father told me, to say nothing. He said if I talked about it he’d kill me because there would be no more money. I didn’t know what he was talking about.’ He shrugged.

  ‘And the other boys?’

  ‘I never saw them again, did I? We were from all over Naples, as far away as Torre Annunziata, Pozzuoli; how would we see each other? I saw one, what was his name—Dio, I lived with them a long time, it seemed like a long time then, and I can’t remember the names. Anyway, one of them, a few times in the street; he lived in Vicaria, like me. But we didn’t talk.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘How would I know? I haven’t seen him in twenty years—thirty. Maybe he died. It’s like I told you, it was over. We were kids, you know—a year later, we forgot, we were bigger, we were different. I was working by then.’

  ‘In the metal shop?’

  Formoso nodded. ‘My father said it was my fault I wasn’t at the singing school any more; he needed the money; he put me out to work.’ He pulled his left arm out of his jacket and pushed up his shirtsleeve and showed a burn scar the length of the forearm, the swell of the muscle gone, only puckered skin remaining. He touched his bad eyelid.

  Denton waited, thinking of what else to ask, and said finally, ‘You know Michele ’l ubriacon’?’

&nbs
p; ‘I know he was that Michele from the singing school, yes. I never talked to him afterward, though. Once, when he was a scugnizzo, I saw him, I waved or something and he ran away.’ He was pulling down his sleeve, working his arm into the jacket. ‘Michele was never right in the head, I do remember that. I think he was born peculiar. But he had a good voice, and he was a good-looking kid. Pretty, you know. But even before he started drinking, he was peculiar. He’d laugh at things weren’t funny, and he’d say the wrong thing, like he was talking to somebody else. He was crazy.’

  ‘And Edouardo?’

  Formoso raised his carafe and looked into it, frowned to see it was almost empty. DiNapoli took it from him and poured his own wine in. Denton handed his glass over, and DiNapoli did the same with it. Neither of them had tasted the wine.

  ‘Edouardo was…a guappo, you know? A tough guy. Little, but tough. Ten years old, tough. He hit the other kids a lot. He hit me, but I was big and I could hit him back. Edouardo had been on the street since he was four. Truly! He was one of those guys, even that young, you know—they know everything. He knew about girls, you know? He knew how to get on the right side of Sommers.’

  ‘He was a foundling?’

  Formoso paused, as if to think. ‘No. It was Michele was from the foundling hospital; Edouardo was just from the streets. He had a family, but they didn’t want him. I don’t know how I know that.’

  ‘So when Sommers went off, he took the two boys who had no families.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And he came back to Naples—you know that? And he bought a house in Spagnuoli? And he had the two boys living with him for a while?’

  ‘I didn’t know that. I only knew later, lots later, that he was back. I didn’t know anything about boys.’ Formoso seemed frightened now, eager to separate himself from that knowledge. ‘I saw him on the street, somebody said, “That’s Fra Geraldo.” I recognised him. But I didn’t care. I remember, I recognised him but I couldn’t think of his name. Later, the name came to me, but—so? Why would I care?’ He sounded defensive.