Hell's Gate

by Laurent Gaudé

  In front of the church, a young woman was holding a crystal candelabra in her arms, as you would hold a baby. The entire city was outdoors in the dark, in the middle of the rubble and broken flowerpots. Here and there some groups had a candle. To entertain the children, old people played the accordion. Some were laughing as though it might be the last night of the world.

  The four men and the child walked a little way through this topsy-turvy landscape. They instinctively knew, without having to be told, that the door to the tower, down there by the port, had been buried, that no one would ever be able to descend again and maybe it was to make sure of this that death had shaken the earth with such rage. They knew they would never tell anyone about that night. They knew that in the days to come Garibaldo would report the disappearance of Matteo, who would be for ever counted among the people killed in the earthquake. They also knew they would never say anything to the child. What child of six could hear such a story and make sense of it? They were certain that the child’s memories of the Underworld would fade, and they would invent some story to explain the disappearance of his parents. They would raise him between the four of them. Garibaldo would give the boy a home with him at the café because he had the space. Grace would watch over him with the fondness of a shy aunt, but one who was ready to make great sacrifices for her nephew. As for the professor and the priest, they would be in charge of his education until he reached adulthood so that Matteo’s sacrifice would not have been in vain.

  They were now walking the streets of Spaccanapoli and looking at the destruction the earthquake had wrought. Although they felt that they had caused the disaster, they kept silent. They thought that the old world was dead and that they would have to accept their new lives. They would raise the child, all four, in friendship, in spite of their age and the demons they all struggled with.

  Finally they joined a group in Piazza San Paolo Maggiore. They brought two benches from the church to feed the fire that was threatening to go out and settled down there, protecting the child, who had not said a word and who looked around, goggling at the world he was rediscovering, this strange world where everything was shattered and fallen down. They warmed themselves at the flames of the pyre and began to sing old Neapolitan songs with the musicians. They sang so that the music would drown out the noise of the earth and Matteo, wherever he was, would hear their distant melodies. So that he would know that all was well, that they were with the child and that for Pippo life was about to begin.

  XVII

  My Blank Letter

  (August 2002)

  I stop the car at the pump and turn off the engine. A young guy comes over to fill it with petrol. I stretch my legs, breathe in the night air. There’s not a pretty thing in sight. These are the outskirts of Foggia, a large, flat city at the foot of the Gargano massif: a dull suburban landscape of endless petrol stations and depressing buildings, a sprawling, ugly place with no obvious centre. I’m in the middle of nowhere and I don’t know where I’m going. I’m shaky, unsure of myself, suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness. I thought my mind was firmly made up. I thought tonight was my chance and now I don’t know if I can go through with it. My legs are unsteady – I’m not as strong as I thought. I can’t get Grace’s words out of my head. My mother. I saw the name of her village on a road sign. Cagnano. I know that’s where she comes from. My hands are shaking. Have I come all this way to find her? Can I have somehow meant to drive straight to Cagnano, without admitting it to myself? No, it’s my father I’m looking for. My father, and him alone.

  I’m driving tonight to make up for my shortcomings. I’m going not to Cagnano but to Càlena, where the dead can hear the living. This is the place where Frederick II made his descent into the Hereafter. I’m going to Càlena to tell my father I’ve found the strength to look for him. It’s my turn to go down and find him. I want to make up for the mistake I made the day Zio Mazerotti died. I find it hard to think about that night in January 1999. Garibaldo came to tell me the old priest was dying; it was only a matter of time. From his deathbed, he had asked for me to be woken and brought to his side. We opened the trapdoor and went down into the cellar, following the tunnel beneath the road to reach the church. The old man had not left the building in six months. Garibaldo had warned me some time before that Mazerotti’s health was deteriorating and the end was near, but for days and weeks he stubbornly clung to life. A year earlier, the professor had been found dead in a car parked on the beach, stark naked, with his hands on the steering wheel and no signs of injury – as much an oddball and enigma in death as he had been throughout his life. We gave him a family burial. That was the last time I had seen the priest. He led the ceremony with the resignation and sadness of an old man weary of seeing death carrying off his loved ones but never quite making up its mind to take him.

  As we entered the church, the smell hit me. I recognised it straight away: the sharp, slightly sour tang of the world below us. Zio Mazerotti had set up his bed right in the middle of the nave. The place was a total pigsty, with the shopping bags Garibaldo dropped off each morning strewn about between the pews. It had been five years since the church served any official purpose. Mazerotti no longer had the will or the energy to lead any kind of service and the Vatican had decided the church should undergo extensive renovations. Garibaldo often said this was what saved Zio Mazerotti – he would definitely have ended up being thrown out otherwise. Instead, in some faraway office, a faceless official had decided that Santa Maria del Purgatorio was to be restored, and that sealed it. The builders came to cover the façade with scaffolding and were never seen again. Some said Naples had come to the old priest’s aid with the miracle of its sluggishness. The works never resumed and Mazerotti was able to arrange things as he pleased. A large black wooden bed took centre stage. Books were scattered over the marble flags and the only lighting came from candles.

  As soon as I saw him, I knew he really was dying. His body was reduced to skin and bone and his strength was fading. He was as skinny as the strays that wandered the port, the dirty sheets he lay in were the same yellowish colour as his skin, and his glassy eyes seemed to be searching for invisible shadows. He was gasping for air. As I drew closer, he gestured to Garibaldo to prop him up slightly, and asked him to tell me everything. Grace lowered her eyes to hide her tears as Garibaldo began to speak. Choosing his words carefully but leaving nothing out, he told me the truth he had kept from me for so many years. I felt a huge sense of relief. I wasn’t crazy after all. I really did remember the Underworld. I hadn’t just been seeing things. For years, my sleep had been disturbed by cries and visions of tortured gargoyle faces. I had ended up telling myself that these were nothing but the inventions of a twisted mind, punishment for some forgotten sin. No. I really had come back from the other side. And I had passed through crowds of screaming ghosts, scratching at my face and whispering their horrible moans in my ears as I went.

  When Garibaldo stopped talking, Zio Mazerotti gathered the last of his strength to tell me he was dying and if I had a message for my father, he would deliver it to him. I was stunned. Garibaldo handed me a pen and paper. Several minutes went by. Mazerotti, Grace and Garibaldo looked away so as not to put me off.

  I gave the sheet of paper to Zio Mazerotti. His corpse-like arm took it and, much to my surprise, slowly tore it to pieces. ‘What is empty here is full there,’ he said. ‘What is torn here is whole there.’ I remember his commanding voice boomed around the nave, in spite of how weak he was. He asked Grace to put the pieces of the letter inside his pockets. Then he said it wouldn’t be long. I didn’t understand what he meant. We all looked at one another slightly questioningly, none of us knowing what to do next. When we turned back, Zio Mazerotti was dead. I looked at him. He was taking my torn-up letter with him in his pockets. What is empty here is full there. I imagined my father down there reading my letter. A letter in which I had been incapable of writing a single thing. A blank page, without so much as a signature. That was what I had given
Zio Mazerotti. That was what he had taken with him to deliver proudly to my father. I couldn’t do it. What could I have said? What could I possibly tell those eyes that watched me even in death, the man to whom I owed everything?

  I couldn’t do it, Papà; forgive me. That’s why I’m driving today, heading as fast as I can towards Bari. That’s why my shirt is still covered in that pig Cullaccio’s blood. I’ve made up my mind to write that letter. It’s taken me three years. I wasn’t strong enough before. Forgive me. Three years. But now I’m driving. Nothing can stop me now, Papà. I’m here to show you signs of life. All my hesitations and doubts must be left behind on the forecourt in Foggia. It starts now. I’ve already wasted too much time.

  XVIII

  Alarm Bells

  (December 1980)

  Giuliana put her bag of shopping down on the ground in a panic. The telephone was ringing in her apartment. She felt around in her pocket for her keys. The insistent ringing commanded her to do it quickly. She felt she had to hurry as the phone call was probably from Naples.

  Since the day after the earthquake, she had been trying to reach Matteo without success. She had telephoned at all hours of the day and night. No one answered. She had finally called the helpline for the families of the missing. The municipality of Naples had set up the service to help everyone who had not had news of their loved ones. On the fifth attempt she had managed to speak to someone. The man had noted Matteo’s name and promised to call her back once he knew more.

  It was now twelve days since the earthquake had ravaged southern Italy. Everyone had had their fill of images of the catastrophe and the ensuing misery. She, like everyone else, had looked in horrified silence at the pictures of desolation. Endless collapsed buildings and women in tears. Streets heaped up with indescribable mountains of stones and debris, as far as the eye could see. The dazed faces of policemen who did not know whom to help first. Naples was disfigured. Avellino had been reduced to a heap of dust. Giuliana had watched these images and imagined her apartment ripped apart. The walls fallen in, the floor collapsed. She imagined Pippo’s bedroom roofless, and the street below a mass of rubble, looking as if it had been hit by a bomb. She was in no doubt: this cataclysm was a new attempt to destroy her. So that nothing of her would be left at all. Her son had been killed, her love reduced to nothing, and her house and city destroyed. Every part of her had been brought down. What had she done to deserve such punishment? She did not know. She had studied the images, in silence, barely able to breathe, and it felt as if blows were raining down on her. Life was hounding her into her grave. It was tormenting her, tearing her apart and sadistically scattering the fragments. What would be left after this of Matteo and Giuliana? Nothing. Two people who had never harmed anyone and had simply tried to create a tiny bit of happiness in their little lives. Naples was dead. The city had the swollen face of a car-accident victim. Dust stuck to blood on the walls. Everything had fallen.

  The telephone was still ringing. She had put her bag of shopping down abruptly and two oranges had rolled out and past the front door. She got her keys out and opened the door. But instead of rushing over to grab the receiver she stopped. The regular ringing which filled the room took her back to that morning in the Grand Hotel Santa Lucia. The same insistent ringing. The same race towards the announcement of disaster. She would run over and pick up the phone and the pain would crush her. The telephone, whether ringing from Naples to Cagnano, or in the corridors of the hotel, or in her own home, always came to devastate her life, her poor life, ever more ugly and frayed.

  ‘Hello?’

  Finally she had picked up. She sat in the armchair, still wearing her coat.

  The voice at the other end of the phone spoke slowly and kindly. It asked her name. Are you Giuliana Mascheroni? Yes. And you made a request for information about Matteo De Nittis? Yes. Then there was a silence as if the man at the other end of the line was preparing himself before launching in to deliver the words she feared. He said that Matteo was on the missing list. That he had probably died on the night of 23 November when his building had collapsed in the first tremor. In any case, that was what had been reported by a man named Garibaldo, the owner of a café in the neighbourhood, who had been there at the time …

  ‘Hello?’

  Giuliana said nothing. When the man finished his explanation, he must have thought for a moment that she had hung up, because he said her name a second time. Then, when she replied distantly, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry to ask you this but what relation are you to the missing man?’

  She did not reply. She had lowered her arm. The receiver on her lap continued to emit sounds: ‘Signora? …’ She did not hear the rest. She wearily replaced the receiver on its cradle. It was exactly the same. The Grand Hotel Santa Lucia – Pippo’s death. Cagnano – Matteo’s death. The telephone and the desolation that crushes you with its weight as if trying to bury you in the ground.

  XIX

  Càlena Abbey

  (August 2002)

  There’s a warm breeze. I’ve arrived in Càlena and parked on the patch of gravel outside the abbey. It’s a calm, quiet night. The wind rustles through the olive trees. The abbey stands silent and sombre. I walk around the perimeter wall. It’s too high to see over into the courtyard. The thick wooden door is padlocked. It’s like an abandoned fortress.

  I feel a great sadness come over me. I won’t scale the wall. I just want to walk. An olive grove stretches over the hillside. I sometimes think I can hear the distant sound of waves. The calm of the earth around me seeps into my veins. I’m not afraid any more. I’m not restless. I kneel at the foot of an olive tree and take out Cullaccio’s other finger. I place it on Càlena’s soil so that my father will feel it there and rejoice. I have brought it as a gift. Over the course of my journey, I’ve been desperate to get here to show him what I’ve done, to let him know his son has become a man prepared to take on the task of settling old scores. But now I’m here, I feel no joy. I put the finger down on the dry earth of Càlena and I know I won’t be descending. I wanted to find the entrance to the Underworld, to go and find my father the way he found me. I wanted to bring him back to life, but I’m not as strong as him. I’m liable to stumble and give in to doubt. Deep inside me, there’s a fear that won’t go away. And so I stay here, kneeling before the abbey, and I know that for me there will be no way in. I’m not fit to confront the spirits. They would grab me, pull me towards them, consume me, and I wouldn’t have the strength to stop them. I’m weak. That’s how life has made me. I’m a child with a wound to the stomach, a child crying in the Underworld, terrified by everything around him. Forgive me, Father. I’ve come this far, but I’m not coming down. The olive trees look on with languid smiles. I’m too little and my breath is carried off on the humid air of the hills.

  You’re dead. I’ve never said that before. You’re dead. I whisper it into the ground and the trees seem to quiver as if the words were tickling them gently. I thought the barrier between us was false: I was the living proof. I thought I would do for you what you did for me. It made me strong. I knew the secret of bringing back the dead.

  Tonight, breathing in the sea air of Càlena, I can see it’s not true. Not for me. You’re dead, my father. And I will never see you again. You’re the one telling me so. If it’s true the dead can speak to the living, that on some nights the ground around the abbey lets a few souls come out to breathe our air or murmur age-old words to the wind, maybe it really is you telling me this. After all, where else would this feeling of calm be coming from? I’m not sorry. I’m not ashamed of my cowardice. I say I won’t make the descent as if it’s an order you’ve given me, from the depths of death. We won’t see each other again. When we held one another at hell’s gate, it was for the last time. I was a child then, and you squeezed me so tightly. I would have liked to show what I’ve become, Papà: a strong young man with big hands and a steady gaze. I wish I could have felt your arms around me one last time, but you are gone and t
he ground won’t open up. I can feel you here in the wind and the distant lapping of the waves. The gnarly trunks of the olive trees seem to carry something of your scent. I’ll stay a while longer. Is there something you want to tell me? I’m here. I’m listening. I know I’m not here for Cullaccio’s finger – that’s just a miserable little lump of flesh. I came for you to tell me what you want from me. I came to be surrounded by your presence. I haven’t opened the gates of Càlena, but still I feel you all around me.

  Talk to me, Father, talk to me one last time. The wind has dropped. The air is still and the olive trees seem to be waiting expectantly. You’re here. You’re all around me. There’s no anger. You’re surrounding me with the warmth of your love. No one will succeed in bringing you back to life. The dead are dead and everything must stay in its place. I’m beginning to accept this. You gave me life twice and I’ll give you nothing in return. I have to live. And that’s all. But I can put right what has been left uncertain. I can damp down what has been left to blaze. It’s what you want. I hear your whisper in the stillness of the hills. This is what you are asking me to do. It’s not over. My mother. You’re talking about her too. You don’t use the same word as Grace, you don’t say ‘mother’, you say ‘Giuliana’, and the ground shivers as if covered in goose pimples. Giuliana, and the waves surge and crash onto the shingle. I owe you this much. Everything was wrecked, but I can give you back Giuliana. My death tore you apart. She never knew you had stayed true to her wishes. She never knew you had succeeded. Bring me back my son. That’s what she begged you to do. Bring me back my son. Against all logic. Because that was the wonderful thing about Giuliana: she would not give in to death, refused to be overwhelmed by grief, throwing it off like an unwanted garment. You did as she asked, but she never knew. I’m going to tell her, Father. That’s what you’re asking me to do. The two of you will be together again. No matter that it’s too late, that the two of you have been torn apart: you’ll be together. That is what remains for me to do. I’m not a courageous son. I would never have managed to descend to the kingdom below – my memories of it are terrifying enough. But you never asked me to. You just want her to know.