Earthquake I.D.

by John Domini

  “I know, I know,” she went on, “where do I get off, worrying that the kids might get hurt? It’s tangled logic, I realize. But, tangled, Father, that’s where I live.”

  Anyway she was glad the children had something else to occupy their wondering heads. During these five or six days since the Refugee Center, Barbara imagined, the last thing on the kids’ minds had been whatever trouble they sensed between the two ends of the dinner table. To them the ‘rents must’ve always seemed on the prickly side. Jay and Barb must’ve seemed like another part of the Greater New York Immigrant Bicker, the spectrum from Lucy and Desi to Tony and Carmela. And now that Barbara was through with the role, she was sick of it, she’d come to notice that there’d been a few advance indicators. There’d been a significant disturbance or two over the past year, and the kids had picked up on these, the way they made the family gyro wobble. Back in Bridgeport, in the months before the trip, everyone from JJ down to the twins had preferred to hole up at home. In the case of the oldest boy, this had put a dent in his social life; the girls at his high school used to come up with all sorts of ideas for a Saturday night. But these days, in Naples, what JJ felt for Romy was much more of a show than the varsity co-captain had ever put on in the States. With no more than a hug and a bit of a backrub, he and the gypsy could send tremors through the thick camellias of mid-June. A valuable distraction.

  Cesare yawned, flagrantly. “Well, is that it? You came banging at my door to tell me you’re tangled? Tell me in rather a tangled fashion, I might add.”

  “I’m saying it’s been that way for years. Everybody else, they’ve been free.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, signora. Don’t talk to me about lack of freedom until you come down to dell’Ovo. Down in the castle, don’t you know Mrs. Lulucita, you might well find the fulfillment you seek. I daresay Christ is there.”

  “Maybe,” Barb said. “But so’s our busy Lieutenant Major.”

  “Well, when your husband came…”

  “Tell me, at some point or another, did Kahlberg and Jay go off somewhere? Somewhere alone, behind closed doors? I bet they did.”

  Cesare lifted his chin, his wattles. “Signora, I ask you formally. Have you any proof that your husband is involved in some secret arrangement with NATO?”

  She didn’t bother shaking her head. “Listen, whatever’s going on between those two, what it’s saying for me is, God didn’t send me the hunger strikers. He sent me this girl, Romy. He sent me Romy and whatever she has to tell me about my family and the weirdo in the ice-cream suits.”

  “The girl is simply a lost sheep. She was lost and now she is found.”

  “All right, but after that, why’d she turn around and find us?”

  “Signora, you see the hand of God in this? You’re the mother of a healthy young man, one who finds himself in southern Italy in springtime. You should be grateful it’s a girl such as this, a girl of some shall we say practicality. Heaven help your Junior if he’d fallen instead for one of the pampered rich kids around this neighborhood. One of Berlusconi’s Army, don’t you know.”

  She took the man in, his black and gray itself a penance, on a hot afternoon. Nettie had taught Barbara a thing or two about Cesare’s order; she’d taken vows with the Maryknoll Sisters before coming out of the closet. The brotherhood was one of the most orthodox. You weren’t supposed to find a Dominican carrying condoms. On top of that he had the Dublin schooling, Jesuit, steel-trap.

  “Listen,” she said evenly, “here’s the news. Kahlberg’s not content with spreading nasty rumors, anymore. He wants me to put my foot down.”

  The priest’s narrowing eyes revealed a new set of crow’s feet.

  “That was today, I’m saying. Mr. Lieutenant Major Mojo gave me an order. ‘Tell that boy the little whore has got to go.’”

  This morning’s visit had been to the ruins under San Lorenzo Maggiore, one of the foremost downtown churches, with at least five layers of edifice on the same spot: Postwar on Baroque on Gothic on Roman on Greek. The liaison man had used the word “palimpsest,” dropping his Southern accent in order to enunciate precisely, then pausing to eyeball Chris. But the second-oldest had wanted to see the place, and Barbara too. It was jam-packed yet vaulted stone like that, temple on church mounting far over her head, that tended to exercise her God-muscle.

  “But,” she said now, “this morning Romy told us there’s neater stuff right across the piazza. Napoli Sotterraneo, there.”

  “Neater stuff? The Sotterraneo’s been closed since the quake, Mrs. Lulucita. Closed for good reason.”

  “Yeah, but can you imagine how it sounded to my kids? All these caverns and cisterns and tiny passageways. Romy said it’s like Indiana Jones down there.”

  “Please. The figure who comes to my mind is Dante.”

  “Well, Father, give or take an obscenity or two, that’s just what Kahlberg said.”

  At some point her gaze had shifted to the po-mo altar. The red flecks of stone or ceramic recalled the NATO man’s aggravated face. “The only people who’d been down there lately, he kept saying—well I believe he called them lowlife scum.” Shouting and gesticulating, Kahlberg had let his jacket fly open. He hadn’t cared if anyone saw his shoulder holster. Barbara, even after he’d punched the remote to open the van doors, could only sit and stare for a minute or so. She took in his carrying on, strange as it seems, with a distinct touch of envy. She could’ve used a tantrum herself

  “He said that the girl was scum too,” she went on, turning again to the priest, “scum lowlife and a born crook. And a menace, he said. The man put his finger in her face and screamed that she was trying to lure us into a, a compromising situation.”

  The liaison had fallen into Orgspeak, the final elastic binder on his self-control. Barbara had to wonder what would’ve happened if there hadn’t been an audience. Various non-combatants had gathered at the bottom of San Lorenzo’s steps, jogging up behind the NATO van (a smaller model, a Fiat, for the trip into the old downtown). The usual needy ten or a dozen, with their medallions—but if there hadn’t been so many witnesses, would the family have seen some gunplay?

  “You know,” she added after a moment, “it’s strange that Jay should wind up working with a guy like that. Because Jay’s your basic open book. I’m saying, when the Jaybird’s upset, he might not come up with the right words, but you always know pretty much how he’s feeling.”

  The priest went on frowning.

  “But don’t you see, our friend from NATO, he’s just the opposite, he’s got a ton of talk but zero information. Don’t you see he’s been a spook, for two weeks now? I’m saying, that girl, this morning, she got the closest I’ve ever seen anybody get to the naked truth about Officer Kahlberg. And all she did was, she surprised him.”

  The girl had popped up beside the liaison man before he’d finished handing over the day’s papers. “The rest of us were still in the van. Chris makes some crack to JJ, ‘where’s your girlfriend?’ And then like that, there she is, right there next to our NATO mojo. Can you believe she jumped right in there between the guys who have to check Silky’s papers? That gypsy, she must’ve known one of those two Italians is there for protection. One of ‘em’s got to have a gun, you know? But she jumps right in.”

  “Are you suggesting, do you mean…” The old man’s eyebrows, white and fluttering, might’ve been another variety of Naples tassel. “Was this espionage again, Mrs. Lulucita? The girl was trying to catch the officer off guard, so that she might discover something?”

  Now there was a question. The morning’s uproar, for Barbara, had concerned other sorts of secrets, the personalities in play. Now the old Jesuit had to wait while she tugged at an armpit. Finally: “I can say this, the two Italians there, the ones that had to check our authorization, they didn’t like the girl either.”

  The Italians might’ve come here from the Office of Antiquities, but they lost control as badly as the Lieutenant Major. Angrily they’d shoved her away, and fo
r a moment Romy had somebody’s hand at her throat. A minute or so later, after Silky had popped the van doors—he’d wanted the family to know what he thought of the girl—the Neapolitans were still shouting at her in dialect, threats or obscenities or both.

  “I’m telling you, Father, Cesare, I thought we were going to see gunplay.”

  Eventually the bureaucrat on the scene, along with his security man, had disappeared back into San Lorenzo. Before they had, however, they’d scowled blackly down the steps at the folks waiting for Paul. Now that Barbara thought about it, she might even have seen the American officer restrain the two. This had happened earlier, just after Romy had taken the men by surprise. Barb might’ve seen Kahlberg slap an extended arm across his cohorts.

  Her chosen priest, meanwhile, took care to raise a different possibility. Kahlberg and his fellow-officials might’ve had reason to keep the gypsy at a distance. “If the girl is indeed some sort of crook, they had good reason. Since the terremoto, don’t you know, there’s been no hotter contraband than stolen or forged papers.”

  “I realize that, Cesare. Don’t you think that’s what Kahlberg said?”

  Using his position at the top of the stairs to face down John Junior—the boy had leapt from the van—the liaison had loudly reiterated what everyone knew already. The quake had left a lot of people without documents, important documents. And don’t you think, he’d gone on, a known criminal associate like this would love to procure some fresh papers for her friends’? With one hand he’d swept back his fallen hair, and with the other he’d stabbed a finger at the gypsy. Fresh documents, easy to fix? Barbara, for her part, had preferred to look at Romy. Once she’d recovered from getting flung across the church fronting, the gypsy had sneered and stiffened her back like the Goddess of War. On your knees, puny NATO Man.

  “I know what I saw,” Barbara told the priest. “And if that girl was trying to catch Silky at something, she did it.”

  On top of that, Romy had seemed determined to rub it in. The first time the Lieutenant Major paused for breath, the girl had cut off any retort from JJ’s with a sweeping gesture, almost the pose of a model, tossing her head and extending one arm. She pointed across the piazza to the boarded-up entrance of Napoli Sotterraneo. When she spoke, she addressed the youngest on the scene, the twins, all the while acting as if Kahlberg weren’t standing within reach of her frail throat. Oh, there’s a place you girls really want to see. Romy dropped her warrior look, too; she put on a wide smile. Napoli Sotterraneo, totally neat stuff, not another dumb old church. Like, all these caves and secret passageways .

  The gypsy might’ve fallen in love, the kind of love an adult had to stand back and envy, a thing of the spirit and yet powerful enough to raise blisters. But she hadn’t forgotten how to tease.

  Like, who needs all this dumb old paperwork.

  “This morning,” Barbara told Cesare, “that girl, whatever else she was up to, she had her fun. She made a game of it, Freak Out the White Man.”

  “And you admire her.”

  She laughed, briefly. If she couldn’t have a tantrum, if she couldn’t do whatever it was Romy had done—whatever—she might as well laugh. When she let her head drop back against the pew, the small thump felt good, actually. A reality check. “Cesare, that girl, this morning, you’d have admired her too. Don’t you see how it helps to talk about it? Don’t you see how much you help? I’m saying, she got to that man so bad, he stormed off”

  “Stormed off? The officer left you?”

  “Well, first, he gave me an earful.” The little whore has got to go. “An ultimatum, is that what you’d call it? Kahlberg told me, if Romy was part of the deal,” if you insist on treating this trash like a member of the family, “then he wasn’t going to arrange any more excursions. The Lulucitas, he said, we’d have to do without, what was it? ‘The benefits that the Organization offers.’”

  “The… benefits? The obscene cornucopia of Empire, he intends to cut you off?”

  “That was today, Cesare. He said it was the Organization or the girl.”

  “Oh, the fellow’s a Master of the Universe.” The lines on the priest’s face deepened. “The rest of us, all the children of God, we’re cast out of the garden.”

  “But you hear what I’m saying? We stayed there, the rest of us, in San Lorenzo.”

  “Yes, and good for you, Mrs. Lulucita. Furthermore, let me assure you, I appreciate that you came here and told me. I understand your irritation with this, this Lieutenant Major.”

  “Well, we stayed, we had Chris. We had the girl too, she knows a lot…”

  Barbara let the story drop, losing herself at the wooden ceiling, a classic ceiling for any church without a dome. Slat-thin panels, railroad-tie rafters. In her mind’s eye lingered other sets of lines, the stone fittings where the roof of one ancient sanctuary, beneath San Lorenzo, met the floor of the next generation above it. Then there were the seams across Cesare’s face. The man’s voice sounded seamy too. He was repeating himself, prompting the mother: “The girl, you admire her.”

  There was some echo she hadn’t noticed before. She thought of the strays Cesare had taken in, the two clandestini camped out in his church cellar, a simple hollow compared to what she’d seen downtown. Then with her next blink all today’s lines came together, they knotted so that their ends stretched off to the echoing cool corners of the stone. And Barb had an idea. The notion triggered a flashing along her spine, a trembling, yet at the same time it cleared away the fog or whatever it was that had clogged her spirit since Paul’s second miracle. Yes, and she’d needed a church in order to get to this point, never mind whether it had a dome or not. Yes—she knew what she had to do in order to prove that Silky and Jay had a deal.

  “You wish you could be like that girl.” The priest knew her better than anyone in Naples but he hadn’t noticed the change. ‘Young again and stronger than you ever dreamed.”

  The gypsy had shown her the way, no point denying it. Even Barbara’s disrespectful posture, slumped in the pew with her dress above her knees, seemed like something Romy had taught her. The girl couldn’t so much as shift her weight without exposing some hot flesh.

  “Like Samson among the Philistines, don’t you know.”

  The mother had a different image for what the girl had taught her. She pictured a kiss full of disease, a nasty surprise for an unfaithful lover. Surprise, that was the key.

  “Mrs. Lulucita, are you there? First you wake me up and then you take a riposo?”

  Barb shook her head, rolled her shoulders, pulled an apologetic smile. But she sat up knowing what she was doing next, holding down the hem of her dress. Also she got her bearings from the old man’s strong eyebrows and nose. His looks remained potent, a good front for a protest poster or a call to the people. Now Barbara had joined him in the revolution. Telling Jay that they were through, that had been just for starters. Today the gypsy had carried her to the next level, where every action would cast enormous shadows against antique pale stone. And the kids would be safe, sure. The place was wall-to-wall security, the kids would be fine, and the fact that the mother needed them along actually bore out the seriousness of what she was up to. The children proved again and better that she was no mad housewife.

  “Is that it, then, signora? Is your soul at rest concerning today, the choice you made?”

  “Well.” She gave another breathless laugh. “Well, my soul!”

  Chapter Six

  This morning, the Lieutenant Major wouldn’t be joining them. His absence made it happen, Barbara’s plan, her revolution. After all, yesterday she’d heard the man loud and clear: him or Romy. Today then the officer would follow through. But on the other hand he’d set up the day’s itinerary a week ago now; everyone in the family had gotten the printout. The liaison man couldn’t go breaking those arrangements out of the clear blue, not while he still had others to answer to. But he could refuse to go along, depriving the Lulucitas of his “benefits.” So Barb had her o
pportunity, her surprise.

  Silky Kahlberg would learn what she’d done via the city’s murmurous website—the ojetti on the chapel walls, the bulging hammered metal, could all be receiver units. And when the officer did get the news, it would shake him up worse than Romy had on the steps of San Lorenzo. The mother would loom like a whole new ferocity, out of nowhere. Barbarian.

  Though she wasn’t about to dip her hair in blood, nothing like that. The kids would be safe. Under Cesare’s church ceiling, her inspiration had amounted to nothing more than the right place at the right time. If it worked, she would rip off all the Lieutenant Major’s masks at once, and Jay’s too. And if it didn’t? Naturally the mother had her doubts, those moments when her breasts felt as heavy and as roughly packaged as groceries for two teenage boys and three other kids besides. After she’d left the Vomero church, after one of the NATO farm-boys had as always walked her down to her home palazzo and checked out the lobby and elevator, Barbara was grateful for the few moments alone in the creaking lift. She spent the time studying herself in the mirrored door. Had the woman in the reflection in fact developed new muscles of the spirit? Strength enough to trip up the overgrown tennis brat who’d been swatting her family all over town? Or was this afternoon only another pivot of the inner whipsaw? Barbara might’ve been fooled by how tough her skin had grown, leathery, after twenty days in the Mezzogiorno. The country of permanent noon. Local women resorted to cosmetics she’d never heard of, and there were mineral baths out on the islands.

  The lift stopped and her reflection split apart. In another ten minutes Barbara was planting her idea in her children’s heads.

  Not that she had to force anything. She wasn’t the first to bring up the hunger strikers, not by a long chalk. While Barbara took the chair by the door and swapped her street shoes for house slippers, Chris sat just beyond the entry’s archway, before an IBM clone out of some valley up by the Alps—a machine provided free of charge, along with a fat and speedy internet connection. The boy had pulled up a page about the castles of Naples, and he went straight into an announcement about dell’Ovo. He knew his brothers and sisters would want to hear it. Loudly Chris explained that what was going on down by the waterfront was history in action; it was the first time in hundreds of years they’d kept prisoners in the old safe-house.