She decided to take a roundabout route and walked toward the Spagnoli neighborhood, a detour that would take her past the Ristorante Il Castello, where her father could sometimes be found. Set on a slope that led upward from the Centro toward the Vomero district, the Quartieri Spagnoli—the Spanish quarters—was a maze of narrow streets and alleyways and, even in wartime, usually a jumble of activity: kids running in the street kicking soccer balls made of taped-up cardboard, or digging through piles of rubble looking for treasure—a flashlight, a fountain pen, a pocketknife. This evening, though, for some reason, the Spagnoli seemed strangely quiet. She saw a few old men and women sitting in chairs on the sidewalk, staring blankly at what was left of their world, their wrinkled faces bathed in the day’s last light and reflecting a sorrow so deep, it seemed nothing would ever be able to erase it. At an intersection, one horse-drawn cart came toward her, the ribs of the horse pushing out from its shrunken belly, the cart itself empty, the man in the seat looking like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. A skeleton leading a skeleton, Lucia thought, and she wondered if he was on his way to fetch a casket and carry it across the city to Poggioreale for yet another burial.
She wasn’t really expecting to see her father—it was more a hopeful impulse than anything—but as she turned onto Via Speranzella, she thought she did see him there, far ahead, a man in a dark leather jacket just at the corner of the main road, Via Girardi. She decided to draw closer and make sure. Even if it did turn out to be her father, she knew there would be no conversation, or none of substance, or that she might decide not to call out to him at all. Still, a ferocious curiosity drew her on, something she could feel in her midsection. The truth was that she knew very little about the man who had fathered her, and nothing at all about her mother—except her first name, Vittoria. When she was a small child, her father had found a series of women—lovers, friends, hired help; Lucia would likely never know—to care for his daughter. She remembered countless nights when he hadn’t come home, when the woman of the month would cook for her, read to her, tuck her into bed, all the while making up reasons why Aldo couldn’t be there. That he was involved in important work. That he was visiting a very sick friend. That he’d gone to Rome or Milan on business—a weak lie for a man who never spent a night away from the city of his birth.
Lucia had a handful of memories of spending time with her father, and she cherished them like emeralds or rubies. Once, he’d taken her on a fisherman friend’s boat to the island of Capri, where they’d ridden up to the city on a funicular and had pizza and gelato. Once, he’d brought her by train on a day trip to Rome, and they’d seen the Pope being driven through the city in a magnificent car. A few times, when one of the women hadn’t been available, her father had walked her to school or accompanied her home after classes.
As she grew older, as she made the slow, difficult transition from girl to young woman, her father had drifted even further away, into his duties, his meetings, his friends, his secrets. The first time she’d found the courage to ask about her mother, his face underwent a terrible transformation, the eyes squeezing into slits, the lips twisting down, the voice turning into a growl. “She’s gone,” he’d said. “Dead. Don’t ask again! There are some things a person should never talk about!” That odd and terrible response had been enough to keep her from asking a second time, and made her wonder if her father was telling a lie. But when he wasn’t around, driven by a visceral curiosity, she’d taken to asking the women about her mother. None of them knew anything or, if they did, they pretended not to. A mystery woman, Lucia decided she must be, and as she moved through the teenage years, desperate for the guidance of a mother figure, she concocted all kinds of imaginary explanations: that her mother wasn’t dead at all but alive, a prostitute, a nun, a gypsy. Or her favorite: that her mother was actually a princess, Princess Vittoria, and her parents, a European king and queen, had so hated her choice of the uneducated Italian Aldo Pastone as a boyfriend that they’d forced her to give away the love child and never speak of the girl again.
In one early conversation, Giuseppe had asked her what had brought her mother and father together, where they’d met, why they hadn’t raised their daughter as a couple, how and when Vittoria had died. Lucia had no answers. Before the most recent chapter of the war, a few months that had turned her father from a prosperous port boss into a man who had to sell pieces of furniture in order to eat, she’d promised herself she’d find the courage, and the right moment, and demand that he give her at least a few facts. She did try, but it had led only to another explosion and the worst argument they’d ever had. She’d left his apartment the next day, found, with Rosalia’s help, the inexpensive basso, moved her things there, swore she’d stop speaking to her father forever and try to stop wondering about the woman who had brought her into this world. It took him less than one day to find her, and about that long for her to change her mind about her wondering. He knocked on the door, handed her a small package of food, and stood there, looking as if he wanted to say something else. “Come in, Father,” Lucia had said, but he pressed his lips tight, turned, and walked away.
Little by little, they’d managed a tentative reconciliation. She refused to move back in with him, and he’d changed apartments, but she met him now, every few days, accepted his gifts, asked about his health. He was spitting blood from time to time, looking hungry. With all the other pain that surrounded them, the last thing she wanted was to provoke another fight.
Even so, the desperate curiosity remained, an unquenched thirst. Not a day passed when she didn’t wonder if, in spite of what her father said, her mother was still alive, someone she passed on the street. Or if she might be living far away, in Sicily, in Calabria, in the northern mountains, wondering about the man she’d once loved, and the girl she’d abandoned.
When Lucia turned another corner, there he was, far ahead of her, recognizable by his fierce walk.
A Nazi soldier passed her, going in the opposite direction, and offered a pleasant hello. She nodded once, turned her eyes down, hurried on.
She kept herself at a good distance from her father, staying close to the buildings in case he turned around. But he didn’t turn around. Hands in the jacket pockets, head slightly bowed, he went along at a steady pace, like a man thinking through some great problem, a man who didn’t want to be bothered. Halfway to Via Pasquale Scura, he stopped at one of the few working street-food stands in the city. She stopped also, hid behind a light pole, watched. He was making a purchase—she couldn’t see what. He handed over something, money perhaps, though with her father you never knew, and the man in the stall handed something to him in return, a paper bag. Her father tucked it under one arm and went on.
When she reached the stand, she saw that the man there was offering roasted chestnuts, but at twenty lire for half a kilo! A ridiculous price. She loved chestnuts, but in peacetime they were one-tenth that cost. She walked on, wondering if the chestnuts might be a gift for his lover.
A left turn onto Via Splendore, then right, onto a narrow alley, a vico with no name on the corner, then onto Vico dei Bianchi near what remained of the Spirito Santo church. Lucia hurried to make up ground and then stood at the corner and watched him turn left into a house in midblock. The door, painted bright yellow, opened and closed. She made a mental note—Vico dei Bianchi, the yellow door, the two-story building with no balconies but what appeared to be a terrace on the roof. She stood for a few minutes, wondering if he had a woman there, or if he was just visiting another of his Camorra friends, then she turned and went on her way.