Hell's Gate

by Laurent Gaudé

  The Kiss of Grace

  (August 2002)

  I head back into the bowels of the city. I’m not afraid any more. Naples is here, at my feet, and she will keep me hidden. I can take my time. Toto Cullaccio must still be screaming in the cemetery. I imagine I can hear him. I picture him waving his stumps at the sky, blood running down his sleeves, scaring the cats, rats and clouds away. My sweet, bloody victory. My horror, my disfigurement. I’m happy. I took two fingers with me. I didn’t plan to, but I needed proof of my success. One finger for Grace, another for my father.

  I drive slowly in the evening air, leaving Cullaccio to writhe like a three-legged beast who can no longer walk. He looks like the figures I see at night. I’ve spent so many nights fighting off the wild creatures which claw at my mind, trying to devour me. He has the same awful face as those spirits. For twenty years, those faces have haunted my sleep. I didn’t shudder when I saw Cullaccio’s face contorted in pain, because I’m used to it. I’ve seen souls more tormented than that. I come from a place where Cullaccio’s cries wouldn’t even be heard. There was so much groaning and wailing there, so much ugliness and fear, the thought of it still makes me shudder.

  Naples seems quiet. A beautiful, sleeping city, rocking gently like the boats in the harbour. There’s nothing to be afraid of now. I feel calm. The police won’t catch me and nor will Cullaccio’s men. I’ll disappear into the backstreets like a cat slinking along the side of the road. I’m glad I didn’t kill Cullaccio. He’ll go to hell helpless, treading uncertainly, shaking like an old man, the wounds on his hands barely healed. He’ll sink into those depths bearing the mark of my vengeance, and that way everyone will see that he belongs to me, that I’ve made him my monster.

  The car keeps moving along the avenues, heading down towards the port. I breathe calmly. I want to see Grace one last time before I go. I can’t go to the café to hug my father – the father who’s still alive –without putting him in danger. But I can go and see Grace. I know where to find her. The roads of Naples gradually open up to me, like trees in an enchanted forest parting to let me through.

  There she is, right in front of me. It wasn’t hard to find her – she’s in Piazza Carmine, where she always is. I look at her tenderly. Grace, my tired, loving aunt. Grace, my shy, haggard mother. Her lips are starting to droop. She wears so much make-up. For twenty years she’s worked the streets. For twenty years, she’s borne the weight of Naples, heard its muffled cries. They’ve called her names, mocked her broad shoulders, her deep voice, her heavy stride and large hands, but they’ve kept her close, even paid her for sex, however revolting they claim to find her. Grace has smiled through it, the same sad smile for the past two decades. Although they’d never admit it, she’s been there for them, and they love her for it. She knows them and never gives up on them, even now. For how much longer will you be the black Virgin of the port, Grace? Will you ever be seen shuffling along the streets like a little old lady? The years go by but you keep coming back, made up like a faded diva. Grace.

  I stand facing her and she waves me into a corner so that we can talk. She kisses me the way you kiss a child. I’m the son who’ll never take after her. The son she never had.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asks.

  I tell her calmly that I’m leaving. She seems surprised, but doesn’t ask questions.

  ‘I’ve started,’ I say.

  ‘Started what?’ she asks, mildly curious, as if I were telling her about a school project.

  ‘Getting my revenge,’ I say, as I take one of Cullaccio’s fingers out of my pocket. Look, Grace. I show her. It’s the finger he shot with. For twenty years he’s got off scot-free. Not any more. He’s squirming in pain, howling like a dog.

  ‘What have you done?’ she asks, her face suddenly seized by fear.

  ‘I’m leaving.’

  I drop the finger on the ground. I didn’t bring it for her to hold on to. It’s not a keepsake. I just wanted her to see it. I’ve dropped it on the pavement like a scrap of paper or a piece of rubbish. If Toto Cullaccio is scattered around in bits, his body parts feeding the pigeons and rats, that’s fine by me.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Grace asks, clutching my hand.

  I look at her, surprised. I thought she’d have guessed.

  ‘To look for my father,’ I say.

  She stares hard at me and then says something which catches me off guard.

  ‘You won’t find him. Things like that don’t happen more than once.’

  I know she won’t stop me leaving. She won’t try to stand in the way of what I want, but I’m surprised she’s against the idea. I thought she’d be pleased I’ve finally worked up the courage to make the journey. It’s taken me twenty years, after all. There’s nothing left to say. I plant a gentle kiss on her cheek and hope she understands that this is my way of telling her that I love her. Grace. Mistress of the port. Wife to every scumbag and joker who spends his summer nights pissing away his pathetic life.

  ‘He’s not the only one who’s been in hell for the past twenty years.’

  She says this as our cheeks touch. Her smooth voice gets inside my head. I step back, confused. ‘Who?’ I ask.

  ‘Your mother,’ she replies without a smile, without any expression, only an aura of calm. I look at her and she looks straight back at me, holding my gaze. She waits for me to say something. I smile.

  ‘You’re the only mother I have,’ I say as I turn to leave.

  VII

  Garibaldo’s Café

  (September 1980)

  ‘Now I won’t be able to go home,’ thought Matteo, forlornly retracing his steps.

  He felt exhausted, empty. ‘I’m a coward,’ he murmured, looking at the ground, ‘a coward, and nothing can save me.’ A few minutes earlier he had aimed his weapon at the man’s face. A few minutes earlier, time had stood still and then, without him knowing why, he had lowered his arm and the man had fled, disappearing round the corner with the speed of a cat bolting at the sound of a firecracker.

  He would have liked to sit down on a bench or on the steps of a church so that time would go by, so that he could wait, doing nothing until his strength returned, so that he could forgive himself, so that his humiliating feeling of shame would pass, but it began to rain and he had to find somewhere to shelter. ‘I’ll drive until I don’t have a drop of petrol left,’ he thought and hurried back to where he had left his car.

  That night he drove all over Naples, randomly taking whichever routes presented themselves, without trying to work out where he was, or where the road he was on led, finding he was suddenly at a monument or square that he knew well but that he had not expected to loom up at that moment, thinking he was elsewhere in the city. He drove and the city was nothing but a succession of red lights, then green lights, then red ones again.

  At one point that night, without especially meaning to, he ended up at the port. He liked it here. The streets here had the same air of silent sadness that he felt. There were no people, no shops. He lowered the window to breathe the salty air from the far-off sea. The engine ticked over as he waited for the light to turn green. He turned it off. There were no cars in sight and he wanted to hear the noises of the night around him.

  That was when a woman appeared. He had not seen her coming. She had emerged from nowhere and she was breathless. She leant against the window. For a brief moment he thought she was going to proposition him – she wore eye make-up and lipstick. In spite of the fact that the night was warm, she wore a heavy red coat with a fake-fur collar. He raised his hand in a gesture of refusal but she didn’t give him time to speak.

  She said, in a voice he found unnaturally deep: ‘Santa Maria del Purgatorio Church, please … On Spaccanapoli.’

  He was about to say that he wasn’t working, that she was going to have to find another taxi, because, that night, he wasn’t interested in taking customers, didn’t care if people were in a hurry to get somewhere, didn’t care either about churches or what was g
oing on, but again she was too quick for him.

  She said, with a sort of nervous urgency in her voice: ‘Hurry, I have to get to confession.’

  That left him speechless. It must have been four in the morning. Here the two of them were in a district that was as ugly as a dead dog on the side of the road and she was talking about church and confession like a little boy in a hurry to do a wee, as if she could barely contain the words that threatened to spill out at any moment.

  He sat there stupefied by the woman’s sudden appearance, and she opened the back door and climbed into the car. Then, rather than fight to force her to get out, rather than have to talk to explain that he would not be taking her anywhere because that night he was anything but a taxi driver, rather than do any of that, he settled himself in his seat and set off.

  As they bowled along in silence, from time to time Matteo glanced in the rear-view mirror. There was something strange about her, but, not being able to put his finger on what it was, he circled it like a cat around food that has an unfamiliar smell.

  She had opened her bag and was redoing her make-up. Looking at her more carefully, Matteo could immediately see that she was trying to get rid of traces of blood that she had at the corner of her mouth and to cover a bruise on her forehead with powder. He did not ask her about it. He wasn’t interested. He was not in danger, he felt no threat and that was all that counted. He couldn’t have cared less if she had been involved in a fight.

  When he arrived in front of the church and turned the ignition off, she leant forward and started talking in a solicitous voice. Again he was surprised by her voice. He felt her breath on his shoulder and he understood, from the way she was speaking, that she was trying to be ingratiating and friendly.

  ‘I have a little problem,’ she said.

  He looked up at her in the rear-view mirror but said nothing.

  She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I don’t have any money on me.’

  He did not reply. He was annoyed by it all. It was all beside the point. He was not the slightest bit concerned about the sum of money she owed him, but she took his silence for anger and hastened to add, ‘Here’s what I suggest. I go in and confess—’

  ‘At this hour?’ interrupted Matteo.

  ‘Yes, yes, don’t worry, it’s all arranged … So, I’ll go into the church and you can go and have a drink opposite. When I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whatever you’ve had.’

  Matteo turned his head. Opposite the church, there was a kind of pedestrianised arcade. There were a few shops, a greengrocer, a tailor. And he was surprised to see there was also a little bar and that, in spite of the lateness of the hour, there were lights on inside.

  ‘There?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I know the owner. He’ll put everything on my tab. Is that all right?’

  Matteo did not answer, but he did put the handbrake on. He did not know why he was going along with it. It was not for the sake of the money she owed him. Perhaps it was just to pass the time, and because he was desperate for a drink and did not have the energy to go home.

  They both got out of the car. He watched her go up the steps of the church and knock on the heavy bronze door. A very long time passed. He smiled. This was all ridiculous. No one went to confession at this hour of night. He was about to return to his car and leave her to her lie, demonstrating that he did not want her money, when suddenly, to his great surprise, the door opened a little and the woman disappeared with a faint tapping of sharp heels on marble. So rather than go back to his car, rather than go driving round the city for hours, he decided to stick to what they had agreed and pushed the door to the café, which opened with a dragging sound like an old dog yawning.

  The café was empty. Or almost. As Matteo entered, he saw only one customer, sitting at a table at the back. He was a well-built bald man in his fifties whose features Matteo could not make out because he was bent over a pile of papers that he was studying with great concentration. His table was covered in sheets of paper, files, pens and newspaper cuttings. At the bar, a tall man was slowly wiping half-clean glasses. He looked tired.

  ‘What can I get you?’ asked the owner.

  ‘A glass of white wine,’ replied Matteo, wondering why the man had kept the café open. It was four in the morning. There was only one customer, two now, which wasn’t nearly enough to justify keeping the place open. ‘Strange world,’ Matteo said to himself, thinking no more about the reasons for the late opening. He drank his wine. Then he ordered a second glass. He drank so as not to think about anything, and the others in the café did not break the silence that had settled over them so completely that he felt as if you could actually see it floating in the air like layers of dust.

  He jumped when, almost an hour later, the door opened. The woman he had dropped off by the church in the square had just walked in. He had totally forgotten about her and was surprised by the warmth with which she came directly over to him. ‘There you are!’

  She nodded a greeting to the owner and boomed at him, ‘Garibaldo, everything this gentleman has drunk and will drink tonight is on me.’

  Then she went up to Matteo and held out her hand. ‘I didn’t even introduce myself: Graziella. But I prefer to be called Grace, American-style; it’s more chic.’

  And she laughed uproariously as she shook Matteo’s hand. That was when he understood. What had intrigued him in the car, what he hadn’t been able to identify or name, was now obvious. ‘She’s a man!’ he thought. That explained her deep voice, her coarse features, her stature and her excessive use of feminine gestures.

  ‘Matteo,’ he replied curtly then looked down. He didn’t wish to be rude, but he hoped she would go and get a drink for herself, leaving him to his silence.

  ‘Don Mazerotti is a saint,’ she said and Matteo understood that he would not be left in peace, and that, short of getting up and leaving, he was going to have to talk to her.

  ‘If he heard your confession in the middle of the night, he must be!’ he murmured without really believing what he was saying.

  ‘Exactly!’ agreed Graziella, taking a comb from her bag and rearranging her hair. ‘He’s the only one, you know, the only one in the whole of Naples, who welcomes us.’

  Matteo didn’t know what she meant by ‘us’ but he preferred not to ask.

  ‘If you knew how many churches have thrown me out as if I were depraved … He never does that. Never. Even though it causes him problems. They want to hound him out of his church. That’s why he locks himself in. But we’re here for him; we won’t let that happen, will we, Garibaldo?’

  She nodded conspiratorially at the owner, who replied, half amused, half weary, ‘True enough, Grace. We won’t let a man like Don Mazerotti down.’

  Then she went on talking, talking a lot about many different things, frequently seeking the opinion of the owner, drinking what he served her and indicating that she wanted a refill each time her glass was empty. She spoke of the city, which was getting more and more ugly, and of the encounters you had at night that left you with the urgent desire to go to confession. She talked and talked and Matteo drank along with her. When she saw that Matteo was succumbing to fatigue and that his head was nodding forward onto the table, she took matters into her own hands and told him, ‘You need a cup of coffee, a real one. The kind that acts as a pick-me-up. Do you know that Garibaldo has a gift for making coffee for all occasions?’

  He looked at her uncomprehendingly. So she explained what she meant: ‘Garibaldo can make the coffee suit the occasion. No one knows what he puts in it, what ingredients he uses, but he knows exactly how to make coffee to suit the precise needs of the customer. He goes into the back of the café to make these coffees. He has a special percolator there, probably surrounded by a multitude of little boxes of spices and all sorts of ingredients: pepper, cumin, orange blossom, grappa, lemon, wine, vinegar, chilli powder … He prepares his mixture there and it never takes more time than preparing a normal coffee. And no customer has ever complai
ned. The desired effect is always achieved: coffee to keep you awake without sleep for three nights in a row or to give you the strength of two men, relaxing coffee, aphrodisiac coffee … He only has one rule: the person who requests the coffee must be the one to drink it. Garibaldo does not wish to poison anyone.’ Grace finished her story by saying triumphantly, ‘This is where I will come to drink my last coffee when I feel death is coming …’

  ‘It will not come. It is already here …’

  All three jumped at the sound of the voice. It came from the man sitting at the table at the back, who had looked up from his papers. His intervention was greeted by embarrassed silence.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ asked Grace, a bit put out, and, turning back to Garibaldo and Matteo, she murmured, ‘I think we’ve woken old Provolone!’

  The two men tried not to smile, because it was true that with his big bald head and no neck the man did actually resemble those cheeses in the shape of a thick sausage that were sold in grocers’ shops all over the city.

  But the stranger continued, ‘Don’t you feel it here? Death? It’s all around us, surrounding us, and no one can escape it.’

  ‘Are you an expert?’ asked Matteo in the irritated tone of someone forced to talk when they want to be alone.

  ‘Yes, in a way, I am,’ replied the man, adjusting his jacket. ‘I’m a follower of Pietro Bartolomeo.’

  ‘Who?’ demanded Garibaldo.

  ‘Archbishop Bartolomeo of Antioch,’ replied the man. ‘He died in 1311 in Palermo.’

  ‘And he talks to you at night?’ asked Grace mischievously.

  ‘No,’ the man replied calmly. ‘He’s buried in the crypt of Palermo Cathedral. There’s a beautiful catafalque. Astounding. It’s there that I had the revelation at the age of thirty-five. I was contemplating the tomb, laid out amongst dozens of others, all like boxes of useless marble, and my gaze was attracted to the sculpture adorning it. At each corner of the catafalque, faces had been engraved, and on the side of the tomb, a double door. Each side of the door was decorated with two ram’s heads. But what was astonishing was that the door engraved on the tomb was slightly open. I was stupefied. It was as if the dead man was telling us that the gate to the afterlife was ajar. I was then in a hurry to read the writings of Bartolomeo of Antioch and, when I did, my eyes were opened: the two worlds are permeable. What a revelation! Ever since, I have been studying that idea. I have analysed texts. From Orpheus to Theseus. From Alexander the Great to Ulysses. Believe me, I have searched in the furthest corners of the libraries in Palermo and Bari, finding books that have not been opened for centuries. This is true. I have looked everywhere. Nothing has escaped me. I have been all over Italy, in Naples, Palermo, Lecce, Matera. I have written hundreds of pages. But no one has read them. I am regarded as a madman. Everywhere I have been, I have received the same embarrassed, slightly mocking looks. The Dean of Lecce University actually summoned me to his office, to tell me that my work was an insult to scientific thought, would you believe, and that it would ruin my career ambitions in all the universities in the region. I was considered a fantasist. And this was long before I was discovered in the gardens by the port, my trousers round my knees, if you will excuse the expression, with a delicious boy of fifteen. But it makes no difference. I persevered. I know what I’ve read. I haven’t made anything up.’