Enrico turned around and looked at his friends uncomprehendingly. Pepe already had his iPhone out, and was the first to drop it into the bag. Luca, Giovanni and Rocco followed. Ruggiero delayed a little, carefully pulling out his phone, giving Enrico all the time he needed to see what he was supposed to do, then dropped it into the bag. He nodded at Enrico, trying to communicate to him the need for silence and obedience.
His hints weren’t enough.
‘My aunt wants me to call her. She said I have to call if I’m not going straight home after practice.’ He slid open his phone. ‘I’ll call her now, tell her we’re going to the bar. She won’t mind.’
Ruggiero stepped forward and plucked the phone from Enrico’s hand, and tossed it towards the coach who opened the mouth of the plastic bag wide to catch it on the fly. The coach turned quickly on his heel and walked away from them, saying, ‘I’ll see you kids later.’
Pepe was already on his motor scooter, gunning the throttle, checking his lean face and the fit of his sunglasses in the rear-view mirror. Luca clambered on behind him, but Pepe hit him hard in the throat with the heel of his hand, knocking him sprawling to the ground. Luca stood up, dusted himself down and laughed, like it had been a rehearsed stunt. Rocco, who had the other scooter, nodded to Giovanni, who climbed aboard, and they were off, leaving a swirl of dust and a scent of fuel behind.
Pepe said something, his words drowned out by the rip and roaring of the scooter motor as he revved it. Then he let go of the throttle and spoke into the sudden silence, ‘Enrico, get on.’
Enrico looked in panic at Luca, who turned away in disgust, then to Ruggiero, who shrugged. Finally he found his voice. ‘Thanks, Pepe, I can walk. It’s only ten minutes.’
Pepe turned off the motor, dismounted and moved towards Enrico, who retreated behind Ruggiero.
‘You don’t want to ride from me?’
‘I can walk.’
‘Yeah.’ Pepe looked down the hill and over the half-built run-down houses. ‘You’ll be there in ten minutes, right? No detours.’
‘No detours,’ promised Enrico.
Pepe ignored him. ‘Ruggiero, you’ll see to it, won’t you?’
Ruggiero said, ‘I’ll bring him straight there. Along with myself.’
‘You need a scooter to get around on. What are you waiting for?’
‘My mother thinks it should be my father who gets it for me.’
Pepe nodded. ‘That’s good. When is he getting back?’
‘I don’t know these things, and I don’t ask.’
Pepe stared at Ruggiero, before giving him the slightest of nods, imperceptible to the others. Then he jerked his head and Luca, nervously laughing and fingering his throat, climbed aboard again, and they left.
Ruggiero took Enrico by the elbow and propelled him forwards. ‘Come on.’
They set off down the hill together. Almost every house they passed had added a second floor years ago, but none of them had ever completed the work. The most advanced were those that had managed to put up pillars and a roof, but no walls, giving the buildings the look of having been gutted by bombing. Some homeowners had ambitiously begun work on a third level. Twisted steel rebars protruded from every roof. Everything was still in the early stages of construction and in the final stages of decay. Enrico hesitated for a moment as they passed the intersection leading to his house where he lived with Aunt Rosa and Uncle Pietro, but Ruggiero gave him a push. ‘We were told to go directly. They took our phones. We’re not to talk to anyone. That has to be clear even to you.’
‘What have we done?’
‘I don’t know, Enrico. Probably nothing. Maybe it’s someone else who’s done something, or just a test of obedience. Or maybe it’s some sort of preparation for the festivities on September 2nd or tactics, like Coach said. We’ll find out.’
‘I’m worried something’s going to happen. Why did they take our phones?’
‘To make us disappear for a while.’
‘My aunt will be worried sick if I don’t contact her,’ said Enrico. ‘Sunday lunch. You know what she’s like.’
Ruggiero nodded. Zia Rosa, as he also called her, though she was not his aunt, lived her life in a state of fretfulness and, according to Enrico, slept no more than three hours a night, though how sleepy Enrico would know that was a mystery. Perhaps Enrico’s uncle, the strong-smelling and slow-witted Pietro, had told him, but if so, that would mean he would have had to speak, which is not something Ruggiero had often heard him do.
They entered the silent piazza and headed towards the bar. Two empty chairs and a tin table sat next to the door, which was covered in a heavy bead curtain. A faded chart showing ghostly Motta ice creams and smudged prices still quoted in lire was nailed to the wall.
‘It’s already closed for the afternoon,’ said Enrico in relief. ‘The scooters aren’t here. They must have gone home.’
Maybe Enrico was right. Mr Basile’s bar and gelateria kept irregular opening hours. On any given afternoon it could be closed while its owner sunned himself on the white sand. Closed meant unoccupied by Basile or Salvatore. They never locked the bar, because no one for any reason would ever think of taking anything from it, not even a glass of water, without permission. Basile loved the sun. It had burned him deep brown, caused melanomas to prosper on his back, and wrinkled the skin of his face, but still he went, the only sunbather on the horseshoe-shaped beach, sitting in front of the half-built villas, rusting metal cages, breeze blocks and paralysed cement mixers, soaking it all up.
He never swam in the bright blue waters of the sea in front of him, just lay there all afternoon, smiling up at the sky, his wife dead these ten years, his three sons lost in 1991, the year the war between the Cataldo and Cordi families finally ended.
Ruggiero realized Mr Basile would have told the others not to park their scooters in front of the bar, which explained the empty piazza. Just as he was about to point this out to Enrico, the bead curtain parted and Basile’s faithful ancient retainer, Salvatore, thin and sprightly, waved the two boys inside.
Walk in if invited, even if you know. His father had told him that that was the sign of true courage. He would have felt better if his father were here now. But all their fathers were abroad, in Milan, Turin, Spain, Slovenia and Germany. He was not alone in being alone.
With Enrico right behind him, Ruggiero brushed the beads aside with the back of his hand, and stepped inside the dark bar.
18
Locri
They had been inside the bar for an hour and a half now, and no one had said anything to them. The only absolute if unspoken condition was that they remained there until told they could go. Ruggiero watched as Enrico made his way through the pistachio ice cream, then quietly offered him his, saying, ‘I haven’t touched it.’
Enrico waited impatiently until Ruggiero had put the ice cream in front of him, then set to it like he was being chased. Ruggiero thought no one had noticed, but then Salvatore, who served at the bar without anyone ever thinking of him as a barman, came over.
‘You don’t like Mr Basile’s ice cream?’
Enrico raised his eyes for a moment, smiled sleepily at them both, then returned to spooning the sweet green cream from the wafer cup into his mouth.
‘I’m just not hungry,’ said Ruggiero.
‘It was a generous gesture. What sort of ingrate would turn down a gift from Mr Basile?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ repeated Ruggiero, knowing, without being able to do much about it, that he was speaking in a tone of detached contempt for Salvatore, and that this would do him no favours. He could have said more. The ice cream was bright green and over-sugared. Its sweetness made him gag. The bits of nut that Basile left in to give it a natural taste were surrounded by crystals of frost, and chewing through them felt like a chore. Ruggiero could remember when the gelateria was run by Pino Nicaso, a man who knew his trade and then was pointlessly put out of business by Salvatore and Basile, bringing to an end the only happ
y place in town.
Salvatore left them alone and did not, as Ruggiero had feared, return to force-feed him one of Basile’s special treats.
The other kids had started playing table football. Abandoning Ruggiero in the corner, Enrico went up to join in, but was made to watch instead, and then pushed roughly aside by Luca who blamed Enrico’s flab for getting in the way and allowing Giovanni to score.
Pepe had chosen to play the poker machine, and remained impassive as the machine dealt him hand after hand in defiance of all rules of fairness and statistical probability. He had a thunderbolt design shaved into the back of his crew cut. He kept his face turned towards the screen and away from his companions, but Ruggiero knew the screen also had a mirror effect, and he was watching them as they stole surreptitious glances at his back.
Ruggiero, as sometimes happened, seemed to have become invisible in his corner. He was hungry, but for real food. A Sunday meal prepared by his mother, not the vile ice cream or, worse still, one of the stale bar sandwiches wrapped in plastic. He was bored, too. Bored with the table football and the tough-guy curses of his companions, bored with defending Enrico from attack, bored with the ugly furniture and the sly bald Salvatore, said to have used a meat cleaver to cut the arms, legs and cock off a policeman in the 1960s. The policeman, the story went, survived and lived the rest of his days in bed, though without female company. Maybe none of it was true.
Once again, as so often happened, the joshing and casual teasing of Enrico’s lack of skill had hardened and grown colder. Enrico, sweating with effort, still lost nine-one to Luca and was told to fuck off and stop wasting everyone’s time.
He came back over to Ruggiero and sat down heavily beside him like a wet seal. His arrival put Ruggiero back inside the exclusion zone in which Enrico lived. When Enrico was near him, Ruggiero could clearly see the hostility and contempt of those who looked in their direction. All he had to do was step outside the zone, away from Enrico, and the hostile looks became almost invisible again. Yet Enrico’s father Tony was both feared and respected: more the former than the latter. His uncle Pietro was at least feared. It was the contrast with them that did Enrico no favours. As to his own family, Ruggiero knew that no one quite trusted his father, his mother or him. They were regarded as excessively reserved and insufficiently local. Most of the time he was quite comfortable with it; now he felt under pressure, and he knew, even if Enrico was too dim to recognize it, that some sort of test was being done on them, not on the other kids.
The front door of the bar, closed to the public, was opened to admit a small man with dirty skin and a white beard, whom Ruggiero recognized as a friend or relation of some sort of Salvatore. He was dressed in the dark-green working clothes of the forestry protection corps, the one state uniform that it was no dishonour to wear. Ruggiero was not entirely sure of the status of the scruffy visitor, but he knew it was surprisingly high. His name was Tommasino and his job was to clear the woods of undergrowth and cull foxes. Occasionally he lit summer fires that raged for days and were reported on the national news. The burned-out land was perfect for construction developments, and the firefighting equipment and firefighters themselves were all part of a supply racket run by the locale of the town, whose boss was Basile.
‘What are all these kids doing in the bar, Salvatore? I come in here after a day’s toil expecting a quiet grappa, and I find myself in a schoolroom, or is it a Cubs’ meeting?’ He grinned, showing yellow teeth. One of his incisors was snapped in half. ‘Get them out of here.’
‘You heard him,’ said Salvatore. ‘Time to go home.’
Obediently they moved away from the table. Pepe made one more play on the poker machine, then casually walked towards the door. Enrico took larger and faster spoonfuls of ice cream.
‘Wait!’
Tommasino lifted a stinking jute bag off the floor and handed it to Pepe. Pepe glanced into the bag, and smiled, then pulled out their six phones and dropped them on the counter.
‘I happened to meet your coach,’ said Tommasino. ‘He said he was sorry he couldn’t make it and asked me to give you these, and I was happy to do a favour. Go on, take them, turn them on. You’ll need to phone your mothers and apologize.’
Salvatore motioned Pepe over to him, and whispered a few words.
The forester looked across at Enrico, who was just now finishing his ice cream. ‘You’re Pietro’s nephew.’
‘I am Tony Megale’s son,’ said Enrico, an unexpected upsurge of pride and defiance in his voice.
‘That goes without saying. I happen to know Pietro, not Tony. How about a beer?’
Enrico looked around for help, but Ruggiero, fed up with it all, cast his eyes down and looked away. He just wanted to go home. He stretched out his hand to pick up his phone, but Pepe snatched it up first.
‘Give me that,’ said Ruggiero, more bored than intimidated by Pepe’s antics.
Pepe tossed it to Salvatore behind the bar. ‘Ask him for it.’
Salvatore stepped back and allowed the phone to hit the floor in front of him. He stood there immobile, his bald head balanced like a skull on the top of his thin body. Pepe whitened and apologized, then came around the bar to retrieve the phone from the floor and put it on the counter beside Enrico’s. Then he and the other three left in silence.
Salvatore fixed Ruggiero with a stare that lasted only a few seconds, then turned his back. Ruggiero left his phone where it was.
A minute later, the silence of the piazza was ripped apart by the noise of souped-up scooters.
‘What about it, Enrico, will you buy me a beer?’ asked the forester, when the noise had died away.
‘I don’t think I have the money,’ said Enrico. ‘I would if I had it. Maybe I could borrow some from Ruggiero?’
‘ Figluolo mio. I am joking. I am the one who buys the beers in here, isn’t that right, Salvatore?’
Salvatore draped a damp bar cloth over his shoulder and said nothing.
‘I don’t want a beer,’ said Enrico, making to stand up then deciding to sit down again.
Ruggiero puffed out his cheeks in exasperation, and went over to sit next to Enrico, who was going to need help.
‘Thanks,’ whispered Enrico.
Ruggiero shrugged. The forester came over and sat down beside them, bringing with him a smell of wood chippings, urine, sweat and tobacco.
‘Then you’re having a grappa.’
‘I don’t drink,’ said Enrico.
‘Maybe if you learned to drink, you wouldn’t eat so much, Enrico. Salvatore, no more of Basile’s ice cream for the boy.’
Salvatore, who was bent down and talking through the serving hatch to someone in the kitchen, presumably Basile, raised a hand either in acknowledgment or to tell Tommasino to be quiet. Either way, the forester lowered his voice and spoke in a furious whisper to Enrico. ‘You don’t refuse a drink from me when I generously offer you one.’
‘Sorry,’ said Enrico.
Tommasino called out, ‘Salvatore, let’s put some water in Enrico’s grappa. Make it half water half spirit, like Enrico himself.’
Salvatore nodded. Out of a satchel, Tommasino produced some dark bread and a shiny yellow cheese studded with hot chili peppers. He started paring his cheese with a wooden-handled curved knife. Salvatore arrived with a bottle of grappa and a jug of water.
Tommasino poured Enrico a glass and sat watching as he drank it, then poured him another, then another, ignoring Enrico’s burbling protests and clicking his knife open and shut.
‘What about you, young Curmaci? Want a drink?’
Ruggiero refused with a barely perceptible lift of the chin and a slow closing of his eyelids. No one should expect him to have to speak to the stinking, unlettered forester. He chose a point behind Tommasino’s head and focused on it, allowing the forester’s murderous gaze to hit the wall behind him. If they were alone, he might have returned the gaze, see what came of it. He felt calm enough.
After half an hour, Salvator
e came over and said, ‘Enrico, you can go home now. Pick up your phone on the counter.’
‘What about Ruggiero?’
‘You can tell your aunt he was delayed here.’
Enrico tried to bring his eyes into focus. ‘My aunt will tell his mother. So wouldn’t it make more sense…’ — but he lost track of his line of argument.
‘Tell his mother, too,’ said Salvatore, ‘if you think that will help.’
Enrico reached over and grabbed the bottle and poured himself another grappa. ‘I’m not leaving without Ruggiero!’ He downed the glass in a single gulp and spent the next few minutes coughing and wiping the tears from his eyes.
Another half hour passed and now the bottle on the table was empty and the glass in front of Enrico had tumbled over. Enrico’s face was flushed, his eyes shone bright and his head was lolling from side to side. Cheese rinds lay curled on the table.
‘Salvatore?’ asked Tommasino.
From behind the bar, Salvatore nodded.
He brought over their phones and placed them on the table, giving Ruggiero a wink as he did so. Ruggiero remained impassive, and waited until Salvatore had withdrawn before picking up his phone, and standing up.
Enrico had begun moaning and muttering something incomprehensible.
The forester cackled as if at some private joke, then left the table and went up to the bar counter. ‘Young Megale has drunk too much,’ he said to Salvatore.
‘That’s fine. His good friend Ruggiero is here to look after him. The Curmacis are renowned for their loyalty. The Curmacis and Megales are old friends, working together in faraway hostile lands.’
‘Let’s hope the alliance lasts. It seems to me Enrico is as much a liability as a friend. Here, young Curmaci, what do you want us to do with Enrico?’
‘He’s my responsibility,’ said Ruggiero. I’ll look after him and take him home.’
19
Monday, 31 August
Rome
The Namesake cab-3 Page 11