‘And so what?’ interrupted Matteo impatiently.
The professor took his time before replying. He did not want to let himself be rushed by Matteo’s ill temper.
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that Frederick II declared war on death? … No? … That doesn’t surprise me. No one knows that. But it’s true. He descended into the Underworld with his army. He went in through the Càlena Abbey passage, in Gargano, one night in summer 1221, with thirty thousand men. The descent took five hours. I know that. I read it. Five long hours during which soldiers disappeared behind the thick walls surrounding the abbey and did not reappear. He had given battle. Fiercely. He wanted to kill death. That is why, much later, he built the Castel del Monte, an octagonal building that dominates the countryside and the sea. Castel del Monte, his tomb for eternity. He wanted to ensure he could not be taken. And death did not find him. It was never able to consume him. It is said that he can still be seen, on certain summer nights, diving into the water, in the middle of Peschici Bay or off the coast of Trani, with all his warriors ready at his side. He’s continuing his war.’
Everyone had been listening with a kind of childlike wonderment.
‘I’ve never heard of such a thing,’ murmured Grace.
‘That’s why he was excommunicated,’ the professor went on. ‘In 1245. Pope Innocent IV did not want him associated with Christianity and wished to make him appear possessed.’
‘And you?’ asked Matteo. ‘You know things no one else knows?’
He had asked the question with the eagerness of a child, avid to learn something that would relieve his pain.
‘I know that death eats at our hearts,’ replied the professor, looking Matteo straight in the eye. ‘This is true. I know that death lives in us and grows and grows throughout our lives.’
Matteo felt as if the professor was speaking about him. He shook his head like a tired horse. ‘You’re right,’ he said. Everything was coming back to him. Tiredness. The weight of mourning. He wanted to get rid of all that, if only for a moment, like removing a heavy cloak of suffering and putting it on the ground. And then, without really knowing why, he began to speak. Without stopping. Without looking up. The three men in the café were silent and no one interrupted him. He spoke in order to empty himself of the lava that was burning his soul.
‘I should have killed a man today. Toto Cullaccio. I had him in my sights. He was right there looking down the barrel of my gun, and I lowered my arm. I don’t know why. He is the man who murdered my son. A little boy of six, dead in my arms before I could say a word to him. When I think of my son, of his life cut short, when I think of mine stretching uselessly into eternity, I do not understand what it is all about. The world is small and I will be like a prisoner tearing my flesh against its walls. So he did well, your Frederick II. And too bad that he was excommunicated. That means nothing! There is nothing to fear anywhere. The heavens. The Pope. Nothing. You know why? Because the heavens are empty and everything is upside down. I had hoped for punishment for the murderers and paradise for the innocents. I really did. I hoped for that. With all my soul. But men wreck everything and they have nothing to fear. That’s how the world is. And you know what is left for us?’
He turned towards Garibaldo and Graziella, as if appealing for everyone’s opinion, but, as no one replied, he went on, ‘Only one thing is left for us. Either courage or cowardice. Nothing else.’
Then without waiting for a response and with the haste of someone who regrets having given himself away, he nodded at the little group and left.
VIII
Giuliana’s Night
(September 1980)
When he got home and pushed the door open, Matteo knew at once that Giuliana was waiting for him, despite the lateness of the hour. He went into the flat. She was there, as he had imagined her, sitting at the living-room table. For Giuliana, time had crawled by horribly slowly. She had wondered what was happening. She had tried to imagine the scene of the murder, the moment that Matteo had fired. Then she had begun to worry. He was still not home. Perhaps something had happened to him? There was nothing she could do but wait. If only day would break. If only her husband would return or something would happen. If only the telephone would ring or the police would knock on the door. In the end, she resigned herself to the wait, sitting at the table, promising herself she would not move until something happened.
When she heard the key in the lock, she smiled, but did not move. She was desperate to see him, so that he would tell her everything, and she would hug him and bandage his wounds, filled with happiness at revenge exacted. But when she saw him, the colour drained from her face. He was in front of her and his shirt had no bloodstains on it. And she could see straight away from his embarrassed demeanour that nothing had happened, but she could not help asking, ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Matteo, lowering his eyes. There was an awkward silence. He knew what she was thinking. That it was not an answer. That it was not what she expected from him. That she would want nothing more to do with a man whose courage extended only as far as disappearing for hours and then returning tired and sheepish. Her pent-up rage would not be satisfied by that.
Her jaw stiffened. The longer the silence stretched the more cowardly Matteo felt. Then, just to say something, so that she would look at him with something other than reproach, he asked her in a childish voice, ‘Did you know that Frederick II was excommunicated?’
She said nothing, her lips parted. Her eyes expressed neither anger nor consternation. She was simply thinking how her husband was now a stranger to her and how infinitely far apart they had grown. She said, ‘No,’ almost in spite of herself. No. She did not know that. She had never even thought that there would come a day when they would discuss it. And she probably did not want to know anything about Frederick II and the Pope, because all that concerned her, on that nauseous night of sadness, was whether she would one day have the head of the man who had torn her son from her, whether her husband would have the strength one night to come home a little paler than usual, still out of breath from his long run in the streets of their district, with the blood of the murderer on his shirt. There was no room for anything else in her. And he understood that the instant she said ‘No’. He knew that he would not be able to describe the strange hours he had spent in the café in the company of those three men with whom he had shared a moment of his life that he did not understand. He would not be able to explain how that time, now that he thought about it, had been perhaps a kind of happiness, or, at least, the respite he had vainly been seeking during those months of defeat and grief. He had felt good, at peace and able to forget himself. He would have loved to describe this to Giuliana, but he did not. She would have laughed. Or struck him.
Giuliana stood up suddenly. She came and went from one room to another, showing no haste or emotion, just a resigned determination, which gave every movement she made an air of finality.
‘Giuliana,’ he said, softly, because her coldness was frightening to him.
She stopped between two bedrooms and said to him, ‘I would have washed your shirt. I wanted the water in the bath to turn red with blood so that I could soak my hands in it. But you did nothing, Matteo. You came back here and you brought nothing with you.’
He knew that there was nothing he could say. He had promised to kill the man and had not done it. But he didn’t want her to look at him like that, with that air of repulsed disgust.
‘Giuliana,’ he repeated. He wanted to tell her she could rely on him, that everything could still go on, that he would find a way. She did not let him look at her with tenderness.
She said in a hard voice, ‘It will always be between us, Matteo. Until the end of our lives. What you did not do.’
Then, without hesitating, she went into the bedroom and pulled a suitcase onto the bed – the same one they had used ten years earlier for their honeymoon in Sorrento. Matteo watched her sadly. She took some underwear, a few pieces of je
wellery, some things from the kitchen and from Pippo’s bedroom, but he didn’t know which things, because he did not have the strength to follow her there. It took her no more than twenty minutes to assemble her life’s possessions.
She was leaving. Because, from the moment he had pushed open the door with that expression of resigned fatigue, she had seen, with absolute certainty, that there was nothing more for her in the flat, or in their relationship that she could lean on. She wasn’t annoyed with Matteo. What could he do? It was time to leave and that was that. There was nothing to be said. It would make no sense to reproach him. They couldn’t do anything for each other any more, except wound each other by being together, with their painful memories and their secret tears.
In just half an hour she was ready – suitcase in hand, a raincoat over her shoulders. He had not moved. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stop her. For him also, deep down, her departure seemed the natural conclusion to this long day. The logical outcome of those long months of grief they had endured like silent and obedient workhorses.
They looked at each other in silence. Talking seemed pointless. What could they say? Neither of them was at fault. Neither of them had taken the decision to part like this. It was simply down to their misfortunes. Life had dealt them a terrible blow and there was no way now for them to recover.
She raised her hand in a small gesture – as if to caress his cheek – signifying that she did not blame him for anything and that at that moment of her departure she wanted to recall the tenderness they had shared – but she could not complete the movement and her hand stayed suspended in mid-air, before falling with the slowness of the defeated back to her side. He must have understood her last attempt to reach out, because he had a strange smile on his lips – more of gratitude than joy – then he let her pass.
‘She’s leaving,’ he thought. Giuliana, his beloved wife; Giuliana, the mother of his son, her love destroyed; Giuliana, more courageous than he, because she was doing what had to be done whilst he had not had the strength. Giuliana, whom life had abused, who should have smiled for thirty more years, then withered gently away, without violence, like a little apple still beautiful with the patina life bestows when it has been kind. Giuliana had become ugly, so suddenly, with empty eyes and drawn features. Giuliana who was turning her back on her life without a moment’s hesitation. ‘She’s leaving.’ He smelt her perfume for the last time and let her pass. Giuliana had just left him, with the unfinished gesture of a woman who regretted not being able to love any more.
Outside the front door of the building, she crossed the road and walked over to the opposite pavement, put her case down and took her time looking up at the façade of the place she had lived for so long. Matteo was up there. The light was on. He must be walking about in the apartment. Or else he had sunk into an armchair. Had he come to the window they could have seen each other one last time, but he did not. Giuliana thought about him. Focusing totally on him. She tried to revive memories that might help her remember him with love, but she kept coming up against what he had failed to do. She kept coming up against his cowardice. So with a look of disgust on her face, she uttered a second curse, which was only heard by the starving cats in the area:
‘I curse you, Matteo. Like the others. Because you’re as worthless as they are. It is a cowardly world that lets children die and fathers tremble. I curse you because you did not shoot. What made you hesitate? An unexpected noise? The shadow of someone passing in the distance? Cullaccio’s pleading expression? You must have been distracted when what was needed was to be deaf to everything around you. Bullets don’t have thoughts, Matteo. You had agreed to be my bullet. I curse you because for all those years you stood at my side, discreet and loyal – but you could not prevent catastrophe and could not put it right. What use are you, Matteo? I counted on your strength. On the day of the funeral you held me tight so that I would not collapse. You always thought there was a sort of glory in enduring moments of pain with stoicism and restraint. I didn’t, Matteo. I didn’t care about that. It would have been better if my legs had given way and I had emptied all the water from my body, by crying, spitting and snivelling like a beast. You stopped me doing that because you could not really understand and you thought it would not be proper. But it is Pippo’s death that is not proper.
‘I curse you, Matteo, because you are incapable of doing anything. Cullaccio’s blood did not stain your shirt. I wanted you to recount how he had shouted and fought, and pleaded with you in vain to get you to stop. I wanted you to tell me all the little details. I hoped that would bring me some small, fragile solace, like a little breath of air on my wound. You brought me nothing but stammering excuses. I don’t want your excuses. I don’t want to begin to think that you are not up to the challenge and to despise you a little more with each passing week. The world is upside down, Matteo. And I thought that you would know how to make it right for me. But no, fathers are not strong any more. Sons die. And it is left to grieving mothers to cry with rage for what has been stolen from them. I curse you, Matteo, for the promise of vengeance you made me but then left behind on our dirty pavements.’
IX
The Ghosts of Avellino
(August 2002)
I’ve been driving for over an hour now. I’ve left Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples behind me. The motorway’s practically empty. I’m speeding towards Bari, heading up into the mountains around Avellino, and the air pouring in through the two open windows is cooler than on the coast. Heading due east over the high craggy ground, I’ll soon reach the modern buildings of Avellino. The town is the same age as me, born with the 1980 earthquake. This is where the tremors that devastated Naples and the whole of the Mezzogiorno started, where everything fell dead in a matter of seconds. I pass the exact epicentre of the blast that flattened every house for miles around. The whole place has been rebuilt in the same bland, characterless style, designed with only speed and functionality in mind. Nothing here is beautiful any more – it has lost its sheen. History was buried under the rubble. In the end, the charmless modernity of the place was the ugliest scar left by the disaster.
I cross the green hills of Avellino. I feel ashamed. I have always felt responsible for this tragedy. I can’t tell anyone – they’d think I was mad – but is it really so impossible? Garibaldo’s always repeating the story of Frederick II, as he heard it from the professor. If it’s true, is it not possible that death was provoked by our affront? That day, it shook the earth with all its rage. It swallowed thousands of men, women and children, whole families caught without warning by a collapsing roof or wall. I know it was down to me. Death sought to punish us for our disobedience, to knock down the little men who had dared to defy it. It roared in outrage. A great cloud of dust spread from Naples to Avellino. From Caserta to Matera, the roads were crisscrossed with cracks, and they were the clefts left by death’s anger.
I was born that night, going through my second birth while so many others were meeting their deaths. I screamed like a newborn. The air burnt my lungs a second time. A great roar responded to my cry. I was born, bringing tears and terror to the town.
A single quake was not enough for death. That night in Naples there were fifty-six aftershocks spreading through every part of the city, leaving cracks in the walls and uprooting the lamp posts. The Neapolitans spent the whole night making the sign of the cross, convinced they were all going to be consumed by the earth.
I’ve always had the feeling it was me who killed all those people. I carry the guilt with me. How could a life have come out of that? I can’t sleep at night. It drives me mad. I’m jolted awake. At night, I hear the earthquake victims calling me, their big eyes and twisted features demanding to know why my life was worth more than theirs, what I’ve done to be saved while they were sacrificed.
I’ve never talked to anyone about the things I see. I wake with a start and lie there under the sheets, my skin pale and teeth chattering, knowing it’s only a matter of time before the ghostly shad
ows are back and that the day is only a brief reprieve between nights. I must be mad. There’s no way I could have gone through all this and not be. I grew up without a mother but it made no difference – I learnt to live without her. I’m going to find my father. I’m the only one who can. I’m young and strong. I know the way. I have the dust of the dead inside me. They’ll recognise me and let me through. Maybe they’ll even take me to my father – he won’t have the strength to walk. I can’t wait for him to cry on my shoulder and smile to see his son return.
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