A Dead Man in Naples

by Michael Pearce

  ‘It will be all right, will it?’ said Bruno. ‘We don’t want anyone talking, and you know what they are in a village.’

  ‘I’ll get Pepe to take her over there and he can talk to them. They’ll listen to him.’

  ‘It would be better if no one knew about it.’

  ‘I’ll say that to Pepe too. He’s an intelligent man.’

  ‘Right, then,’ said Bruno, and came to the door.

  ‘You’ll be all right yourself, Bruno?’ said Maria anxiously. ‘You know what they are.’

  ‘I will be all right,’ said Bruno.

  ‘They’ll know you’ve been to Rome.’

  ‘I’ll tell them I went to see a woman,’ said Bruno.

  ‘It’s a long way to go to see a woman. They’ll wonder.’

  ‘I’ll work out a story.’

  ‘Just be careful, that’s all. They came here looking for you, you know.’

  ‘For me?’ said Bruno. ‘Or for her?’

  ‘For you first. Then they thought you might be with her.’

  ‘Bastards!’ said Bruno.

  ‘Just be careful, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’

  Maria came to the door with him.

  ‘It may be all right,’she said. ‘They told me to tell you that you were not to worry. It was just they had a job for you.’

  ‘A job for me?’ Bruno laughed bitterly. ‘I can guess what that job is. That’s why I went to Rome.’

  As Seymour and Chantale were going along a back street, full of bassi and children, there came suddenly a strong smell of goats. A herd appeared around a corner, filling the street completely and blocking the way. A woman leaned out of a window above and shouted. The man with the goats said something and the lead goat stopped. It probably would have done so anyway on hearing the woman’s voice. The herd stopped too.

  ‘A moment, Signora,’ said the man.

  The woman let fall a small pail on a rope. The man caught it and took it over to one of the goats. Then he bent down beside it and milked it into the pail. Then he took the pail and tied it to the rope again and the woman hauled it up.

  ‘How much?’ she called.

  The man said something but his dialect was so rough that Seymour could not understand him. The woman could, however, and put some coins in the pail and lowered it again.

  ‘At least it stays the same!’ she called down.

  ‘Everything in Naples stays the same!’ said the man, and this time Seymour could understand him.

  The herd parted and let Seymour and Chantale through and then continued on its way.

  The woman leaned out of the window again and started a conversation with a woman on the other side of the street who was hanging out some washing. She appeared to have some arrangement with a house on the other side for a clothes line stretched between the houses. The woman pulled it in, pegged out her washing, and then ran it out again so that the washing hung out over the street. There were men’s drawers, a woman’s petticoat, and a string of nappies.

  ‘Babies!’ said a voice. ‘In Naples. Always babies!’

  It was the Marchesa, on one of her lonely patrols.

  ‘And what about you, Signora?’ she said to Chantale. ‘Have you thought about making babies yet?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Chantale, startled.

  ‘There’s time enough,’ said the Marchesa. ‘For you, if not for me.’ She glanced up at the clothes line overhead. ‘And, looking at that lot,’ she said, ‘I don’t know whether to be glad or sorry!’

  She shook her head. ‘But it wouldn’t do,’ she said, ‘not for a singer. Babies and a career don’t go together. However,’ she said firmly, ‘money does.’

  ‘And that was your choice?’ said Chantale.

  The Marchesa shrugged.

  ‘I had no choice,’ she said. ‘Not if I wished to get out of the world the Foundling Hospital condemned me to.’

  ‘With hindsight,’ said Seymour, ‘looking back now: which man, no doubt of many, if things had been different, would you have chosen to have children by?’

  The Marchesa laughed delightedly.

  ‘Well, there’s a thought!’ she said.

  She considered. ‘D’Annunzio? No. As a lover, fine; as a father . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I really think not. He would have been hopeless. And what an example!’

  She thought some more. ‘Roberto? My first husband? No, not really. He gave me the title but there was not much chance of him giving me anything else. The line was pretty exhausted by the time it got to Roberto. No chance, I would say.’

  She thought again.

  ‘You know, this could go on for a long time,’ she said.

  ‘Alessandro?’

  ‘Alessandro? Hmm. He would clearly have loved it, of course. Indeed, he suggested it. “But haven’t we left it a bit late?” I said. “A few years ago, perhaps.” But, you know, even then . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘“Why add to the bastards already in the world?” I said to him. “A son might turn out like you.” That angered him. “Or a daughter?” he said. “Mightn’t she turn out like you?”

  ‘I have to admit that was a consideration. I wouldn’t wish a fate like that on any poor girl.’

  She shook her head again. ‘So Alessandro, no. On reflection, definitely no. So who then? Surely among the many men I have known there must be somebody? Of course, my standards are high. Speaking theoretically, that is.’

  She gave a little, delightful laugh.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I think in the end it would probably come down to that little Englishman.’

  ‘Scampion?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The one you gave the lottery slip to?’

  ‘You should have seen his face when I gave it him. It was as if I had given him – well, let’s say myself. He would have given me pure devotion. Well, that’s something you don’t come across very often, and I certainly never have. Not pure.

  ‘But the thing is, he would have offered that to our children as well, and that’s what you want. That’s something Alessandro would never have been capable of. He would have loved them, yes: but possessively, greedily, jealously. But disinterestedly? For themselves alone? I think not. They would just have been an extension of him. The poor little buggers would never have had a life of their own. And suppose one of them had been like me? Always kicking against the pricks. And that, of course, brings me back to Alessandro . . .

  ‘No, Lionel – a misnomer of a name if there ever was one – wouldn’t have been like that. He would have been a proper father. Such as I never had.

  ‘And, just think about it,’ she continued, though, excitedly: ‘I could have left them with him while I went out and got on with my life. Safe in the knowledge that I was behaving responsibly. Because certainly they would have been better off with him than they would have been with me. No, little Scampion it is. Definitely.’

  On an impulse, Seymour said: ‘Would you like to meet some admirers of yours?’

  ‘Not much,’ said the Marchesa.

  ‘They go back a long time. To the time when you first started singing opera in Naples.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s different.’

  He took her to the snail restaurant.

  ‘I wonder what they’re like now,’ she said, almost wistfully.

  ‘Would you like to try some?’

  ‘Why not?’ said the Marchesa.

  The carpenter and the acquaiolo were sitting at the table. They looked up, stared, and then jumped to their feet.

  Ernesto reeled, then recovered.

  ‘You honour me,’ he said, ‘Margareta.’

  ‘Margareta!’ said the Marchesa. She smiled. ‘So I am not entirely forgotten, then?’

  ‘You will never be forgotten!’ said the snail-shop owner, fervently.

  The carpenter was still staring.

  ‘This cannot be true!’ he said.

  ‘He said he had seen you,’ said
the acquaiolo, ‘but I did not believe him!’

  ‘You have come back to us, Margareta,’ said Ernesto.

  ‘I should never have left,’ said the Marchesa.

  ‘It was only right that you should take your talent to the world!’ declared the carpenter.

  ‘The world!’ said the Marchesa. She shrugged. ‘The world is not that special a place.’

  ‘But your voice,’ said the acquaiolo, ‘that is special!’

  ‘No longer,’ said the Marchesa. ‘It grows old, as we all grow old.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ they all cried in unison. ‘You will never grow old, Margareta. Not in our hearts.’

  ‘Thank you!’

  She laughed. ‘But even hearts grow old.’

  She sniffed. ‘But do the snails grow old?’

  She sniffed again. ‘Can I try some?’

  Ernesto, hand shaking, ladled some into a bowl and then watched anxiously.

  The Marchesa tasted, reflected, and then tasted again.

  ‘They do not grow old,’ she pronounced. ‘They are as I remember them. Or,’ she said meditatively, ‘even better.’

  ‘It’s the water,’ said Ernesto. ‘They want to change the water. To bring it in, in pipes. But my water comes from Alberto here, and it is special.’

  ‘The snails are special, too,’ said Alberto modestly. ‘Ernesto gathers them every morning, early.’

  ‘I would like some more, please,’ said the Marchesa.

  ‘Well, that was all right!’ said the Marchesa, pleased, as they walked away. ‘So they still remember me! I told you, didn’t I, that they were my people?’

  ‘You did,’ said Seymour. ‘And that Naples was your place.’

  ‘It is,’ said the Marchesa. ‘Still.’

  ‘And yet you have also said something different: that Naples was an awful place, the last place you wanted to come to when you were exiled.’

  ‘Be sent to,’ corrected the Marchesa. ‘By my bastard husband. There is no contradiction. I love Naples and I hate it.’

  ‘Why did your husband send you here?’

  ‘Because,’ said the Marchesa, ‘he knew that I would hate it.’

  ‘And that you loved it and would find old friends here.’

  ‘You don’t know my husband!’

  ‘I’m beginning to. I was wondering if he asked you to look them up. And give them a message.’

  The Marchesa looked at him.

  ‘Oh, ho!’ she said. ‘Is that the way the wind blows?’

  She looked at him again. ‘No, he didn’t give me a message to deliver. And if he had, I wouldn’t have delivered it. Any message. From him or to them.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘All that was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘That was one of the things I wanted to put behind me. And I had never really had much to do with it. The Hospital kept me away from things like that. And then when I went to Venice I was out of their reach. Of course, when I started singing professionally, I couldn’t entirely escape it. Especially when I sang in Naples. But someone like me was always handled with kid gloves, if I was touched at all. I knew about the other side, of course, as everyone who grows up in Naples does. But I wasn’t close enough to it to know anyone . . .anyone I might give a message to.’

  She shook her head. ‘The only thing Alessandro told me when I left was to go and dig a hole in the sea.’

  There was a sudden bustle in the pensione and baskets appeared full of children’s clothes.

  ‘What are we doing to do about all this?’ said Giuseppi, gesturing towards the baskets.

  ‘Get Matteo to carry them on his cart,’ said Maria.

  ‘Wouldn’t that tell people that Jalila is moving?’ asked Francesca. ‘And then couldn’t they find out from Matteo where she had moved to?’

  ‘We could ask Matteo to say nothing,’ said Maria, doubtfully.

  ‘Matteo is a blabbermouth,’ said Giuseppi.

  ‘I can walk,’ said Jalila.

  ‘With all this stuff? And with the children?’

  ‘I must leave the stuff behind,’ said Jalila determinedly.

  ‘I will go with you,’ said Giuseppi. ‘I can carry it.’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ said Maria. ‘And, anyway, wouldn’t that give the game away, too?’

  ‘I know!’ said Francesca. ‘Let’s get Giorgio to carry it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that amount to the same thing?’

  ‘No,’ said Francesca. ‘Giorgio is not as close to the family as Grandfather is. And also . . .’ She thought. ‘Couldn’t we pretend it was something to do with the race? Giorgio is working on that already. He could borrow the cart, put Jalila’s things in it and then put something to do with the race on top. Some of those water skins, for instance. He could say he was taking them out to places along the route. And he could go separately, not with Jalila, and so no one would connect them.’

  Maria looked at Francesca approvingly.

  ‘That’s a good idea, Francesca,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll go and get him,’ said Francesca, and ran off.

  Jalila sat down on a chair.

  ‘Biscuit!’ said the little boy.

  ‘Come with me,’ said Maria, taking him by the hand and leading him off into the kitchen.

  The little girl came up to Chantale.

  ‘Can I touch your hair, Signora?’ she whispered.

  ‘Can I touch your hair, Signora?’

  Chantale bent her head.

  ‘Why should it be like this?’ said Jalila, bewildered. ‘What have I done? What has Bruno done?’

  Seymour had been asking himself that, too. What had Jalila done that the Camorra should so suddenly have turned against her? Giuseppi and his friends taking their name in vain, the pension, surely all that was nothing to them? The fact that she was an Arab? But that didn’t seem to have mattered much in practice in Naples. It hadn’t mattered much to Alessandro in bringing her here in the first place –

  He stopped.

  ‘Jalila,’ he said, ‘you sent a letter to someone in Rome. What did you put in it?’

  ‘My thanks,’ said Jalila, surprised. ‘It was to my patron. My thanks for bringing me here. I had written before, of course, to do that, soon after I arrived. I had used the same letter-writer as I knew he could do it. But this time I was thanking him for the money he had sent me through Signor Scampion. I should have thanked him before. For that and for Signor Scampion’s kindness, when he was so unhappy himself. About the war. I told Signor Alessandro that. I said it was the action of a good man who could think of others. And I said how cruel it was that he should have died in the way that he did. God would not let it go unpunished. That was all I wrote, Signor Seymour. That was all.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jalila went off hand in hand with her children.

  Giuseppi wanted to go with her but Maria shook her head.

  ‘People are used to seeing her wandering about with the children,’ she said. ‘If they see you with her they’ll wonder why.’

  ‘Just part of the way,’ Giuseppi persisted. ‘To make sure she gets out of the city safely. The first part is the dangerous part.’

  Maria shook her head.

  ‘Not you,’ she said. She thought for a moment.

  ‘Bruno?’ she said.

  Then she shook her head again.

  ‘Not Bruno,’ she said. ‘They may be watching him. I know they say it’s all right between him and them now, and he says it’s all right. But I don’t trust them. And while it may be all right for him, it’s not all right for her. Best leave him out of this.’

  Chantale suggested Seymour.

  ‘And I could go with him,’ she said. ‘People are used to seeing us walking around and they wouldn’t think anything of it. And they don’t associate us with Jalila.’

  That was thought acceptable and, soon after Jalila left, Seymour and Chantale set off after her, keeping a discreet distance behind. They followed her to the edge of the city and watched her start o
ut on the white, dusty road that led through fields and olive trees to the distant hills where the village was. There was nothing in either dress or appearance – she was no browner than the occasional man she passed working among the olive trees – to distinguish her from any other woman going out from the city to visit relatives in the mountains. It came to Seymour that she fitted in. Or would do, if only they would let her.

  ‘I am beginning to think,’ said Miss Scampion, ‘that perhaps it would be as well if I returned to England.’

  ‘I think you may be right, Miss Scampion,’ said Seymour. ‘It would be better to have family and friends around you to support you.’

  ‘Here everything I see reminds me of Lionel.’

  ‘It cannot but be painful.’

  ‘I have been staying on,’ said Miss Scampion, looking hard at Seymour, ‘in the hope that I would see whoever was responsible for his death brought to justice.’

  ‘I think that time may not be long deferred, Miss Scampion.’

  ‘Do you really think that, Mr Seymour?’ she said sharply. ‘Or are you just telling me that to fob me off?’

  ‘I really think that.’

  Miss Scampion sighed.

  ‘If I could be sure,’ she said. ‘If only I could be sure.’

  ‘I think you can be confident.’

  ‘There is something particular that makes you say that?’

  ‘There is.’

  ‘Will it be soon? But perhaps I shouldn’t ask you that.’

  ‘I expect the police will shortly be in a position to charge someone with your brother’s murder. Of course, it could be months before he comes to trial.’

  ‘It would be enough,’ said Miss Scampion, ‘to know that someone was being charged. I would feel that I had fulfilled my promise. I promised myself, you see, – I promised Lionel – that I would not leave Naples until I had seen the man who murdered him being held responsible.’

  ‘I think that time might not be far distant, Miss Scampion.’

  ‘Then I can leave. And perhaps I should leave.’

  ‘Perhaps you should.’

  ‘I think of Lionel every day,’ she said, ‘but, you know, I am becoming more and more confused. It was all simple once. We were so contented together. I thought I knew him as well as the palm of my own hand. But lately I have come to feel . . . to feel that I did not know him as well as I thought I did. There were things . . .’