The Castello Restaurant’s back room, Aldo thought, when he’d left the pew and was mimicking the others and crossing himself with holy water at the marble font near the doors. Forni’s lieutenants would be there, Zozo first among them. If they approved of his decades of work, they’d find something new for him now, with the port ruined and the Allies rumored to be closing in. If they wanted him out of the way—for any reason, sensible or no—they’d have Ubaldo Dell’Acqua kill him, an assignment the monster would fulfill without the smallest twinge of guilt or regret.
Stepping into the morning sun, adjusting his expensive felt hat, Aldo spotted Rita there in the crowd. For some reason, the sight of her—black hair, almond-brown skin, huge, dark eyes—caused him to remember the monsignor’s sermon. God’s supposed forgiveness. Aldo didn’t know about that, but he knew that the woman he visited every week had a kind of street holiness to her, the ability, no matter what he’d done in his life, to make him feel like a good man. As he walked toward her, she turned a beautiful smile in his direction, and a thought occurred to him: But I’ve never been baptized.
Fourteen
Full-bellied for a time, with the horrific scene of that morning still burning like a dark secret behind his eyes, Armando let the others go off on their own explorations while he headed toward the Vomero with Tomaso.
Of the boys in his coro, Armando felt closest to Tomaso. While not the oldest or the largest, the two of them were the quickest, the most daring, maybe the smartest, and the only two who admitted to being virgins. It was possible—likely, even—that at least one of the others was lying, that the stories of glamorous introductions to the world of sexual pleasure were embellished, maybe completely made-up. Still, the details seemed accurate (and how was he to know if they weren’t?), and the expressions on their faces as they told their tales made Armando, even when he was sleeping in the corner of a cold alley or in his secret place at the tire company warehouse, dream of delicious foods and warm baths.
He and his coro met up every day and roamed the city, from Sanità to Chiaia, from Materdei to Poggioreale, from Arenella to Vasto, but there were certain favorite places that always seemed to draw them. The Castello Restaurant’s waiters, for example, would sometimes leave food near the side door in a covered dish, so that was a regular stop. And on their rounds through the Vomero, he and Tomaso would always swing by the Café Sangiuliano, one of the eating places that had remained open. The owners, an elderly couple named Lena and Salvatore, would usually have a bit of food set aside for them. The café’s offerings were limited now to polenta with a few wild mushrooms, watered-down coffee or tea, white rice with olive oil, and the occasional plate of horsemeat, rabbit, or fish. Nazi officers had requisitioned a house on the same block—simply thrown the owners out and moved in—and they would sometimes occupy one or two of the café’s outdoor tables, which had the effect of keeping other customers away. Whenever Armando and Tomaso saw German soldiers at the Sangiuliano, they did whatever they could to torment them.
But Armando wanted more than that now, more than torment: after what he’d witnessed this morning, he wanted revenge.
As they climbed the hill from the stadium and sauntered toward Piazza Vanvitelli, Tomaso winding a newly discovered length of yarn around his wrist, both of them alert for all possibilities, Armando noticed a German officer sitting alone at one of the Sangiuliano’s tables. The sight of the uniform lifted the memory of the dead girl into his inner eye and almost made him vomit. He and Tomaso glanced at each other, the only signal either of them needed. The officer had taken off his black-lidded hat and set it on the table. He was sipping from a cup, apparently waiting for his food. While Armando hovered nearby, creating a distraction by singing a Neapolitan song—“C’e La Luna”—loudly like a crazy boy begging for coins, Tomaso crawled up behind the officer’s chair and tied the loop of twine loosely around the chair leg and the officer’s ankle. A second later, Armando, still singing, ran past, grabbed the hat, and he and Tomaso sprinted to the corner and were gone. Behind them, they heard the crash of a falling chair and angry German words that meant nothing to them.
Safe in a favorite hiding place where the mouth of a storm drain had been cut into an ancient stone wall, they sat examining their new acquisition, turning the souvenir this way and that, handing it back and forth. Unlike some of the others they’d seen, this cap had a band of thin green thread along the top and what appeared to be a metal sunburst above the lid, two narrow braids of rope there. The boys took turns trying it on and guessing what the insignias meant. “Worth anything?” Tomaso asked.
Armando shook his head. “A pistol would be. Next time, we should try for the pistol or a knife. But this”—he twisted the cap around on his head and angled it down rakishly over one eye—“a gift, maybe. For Nanella.”
“Or for a girl so we could have sex with her.”
“We?” Armando said, and his friend laughed.
For a little while, sitting there making sure the coast was clear, Armando thought of telling his friend about what he’d seen, about the terrible events of the morning. Twice, he opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Watching from the bombed-out building, he’d been afraid, and he was ashamed of being afraid. But it was more than that. Bad as the German occupation was, before this morning, part of him had been able to laugh at the soldiers with their turtle-shell helmets and muddy language. Not anymore, not now. Now some strange new feeling was boiling over inside him, in his brain and belly, in his hands. He’d used the word hate before, many times; now he knew what it actually meant.
He thought about the way his day had started, on the puddled porch in the Chiaia. He wondered what it felt like to have your legs broken, wondered who the scary man and the red-haired woman might be, and what the pistols would really be used for. “To kill Nazis,” the man had said. The words filled Armando with a peculiar excitement, an excitement that wrapped itself around the fear and shame and hatred inside him, holding it there, preserving it. He wondered if the ugly man was sane. The Nazis had tanks, machine guns, rifles, huge wheeled artillery on the Capodimonte Hill. They lined up Neapolitan grandparents and little girls in the center of the city and killed them in cold blood. They sped through the streets and strode down sidewalks like owners, like gods, superior, untouchable . . . and red-haired Italian women were going to kill them with pistols?
Instead of describing the murders to Tomaso—he did not want to relive that scene—he told him about the ugly man on the porch, and the pistols, and he said, “That’s where I got the money for our food.”
Tomaso kept his eyes on the street, pretending to be unimpressed. “People are stealing rifles all over,” he said. “People are hiding Jews. People are making hand grenades.”
“We should get some.”
Tomaso nodded, kept his eyes forward. “Who was the ugly guy, do you know?”
“He told me his name. Zozo Forni.”
At last, Tomaso turned and looked at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
Armando shook his head.
“You don’t know who Zozo Forni is?”
“Sure, I know,” Armando said, even though it wasn’t true. “Everybody knows him.” He didn’t like his friend’s tone of voice, and didn’t want to hear any more on the subject. He had gotten the money for their food, not Tomaso. He was the one who’d delivered pistols that would kill the Nazis. He took the soldier’s cap from Tomaso’s hands, slipped it up under his T-shirt, and walked out into the street, unafraid. Tomaso followed and let the subject drop. They made their way back down the long, zigzag staircase that led to the Spagnoli and went looking for the rest of their friends.