Twenty
When Giuseppe arrived home, he didn’t see his uncle in front of the house, and didn’t see the rusty metal garden chair in which he usually sat and received visitors. A neighbor must have brought the chair inside. His uncle was probably up in the apartment, writing in his notebook . . . or maybe the Germans, knowing of Donato the Hunchback’s value to the people of the city, had taken him away as one of their perverse punishments. They slaughtered the innocent, they buried people alive, they burned libraries and blew up apartment buildings and raped women. He hated them with every fiber of his being.
He mounted the three flights of steep stairs, the soles of his shoes scuffing dusty stone, opened the door, and was happy to find his uncle there, sitting at the kitchen table filling his precious notebook with tiny script. Though Donato rarely spoke about it, Giuseppe knew that his uncle was writing an informal history of the war in Naples, documenting the day-to-day struggles, and planned to mail it to his brother, Orlando, who’d emigrated to America before the war. No doubt, if the Germans discovered it, the notebook would be enough to condemn Donato to execution, but he was a fearless man, a seer, a sage. As was the case with all male hunchbacks, Neapolitans considered him to have been particularly blessed by God, and he sat out in front of the house every day when the weather allowed, and let himself be touched by strangers. He loved Lucia as much as Giuseppe did, and she loved him in return.
In order to look up at him, Uncle Donato had to lean far back in the chair. “Hai notizie,” he said, as if he knew.
“Yes, I have some news.” The water was running on that day. Giuseppe poured himself a glass from the faucet, checked to see that it wasn’t cloudy, and sat opposite his uncle. He described the visit of the limping German officer, the manure, the threat of being taken north, his made-up story about epilepsy, everything but the lovemaking with Lucia. His uncle listened silently, attentively, expressionless. “And then on the way home, Uncle, on Via Scalzi, I heard a commotion of motorcycles. I hid in a doorway. A German armored car raced past, surrounded by the motorcycles, swastika flags flapping, a man standing up in it like a king. I thought, at first, it might be Hitler.”
His uncle blinked, then nodded as if he’d already heard that particular piece of news. Giuseppe waited. There were times when his uncle seemed to be looking through his nephew’s skin and the bones of his forehead, directly into his brain. The man ate very little, said perhaps a hundred words a day, and yet, bringing food and small gifts, people came from all over the city not only to touch him, but to consult with him on all kinds of issues—medical, marital, spiritual—secretly these days, stepping into the shadows when the Germans drove by. He could see now that there were two apples on a plate at his uncle’s elbow. That would be their evening meal, that, the potatoes Lucia had given him, and a small bag of fresh figs on which Giuseppe had spent half a week’s salary.
“There will be an eruption,” his uncle said, slowly and quietly, but with his usual air of certainty, as if he had plucked the truth from his private orchard and was presenting it, indisputable, for his nephew’s consumption. “This will happen very soon. You will be asked to play a role.”
“The volcano? Vesuvius?”
His uncle shook his head and went back to his writing, a dismissal. But then, eyes downcast, tip of the pencil touching paper, “I love you as I loved my brother and sister, and I thank you again for taking care of me.”
Later, with the apple, one small boiled potato, two figs, and two glasses of water in his belly, Giuseppe removed his clothes, turned off the lamp, and lay in his dark bedroom, listening. Normally at this hour on a warm, late-September night, there would be voices in the street, the sounds of forks against plates, of corks being pulled from bottles, children playing, women singing, accordion notes, the steady muttering of engines on Via Salvator Rosa. Normally, the city was a festival of noise. Now, all was silent. Then one pop, perhaps a block away, a strange sound. Perhaps another Neapolitan had been shot.
A few seconds passed, and Giuseppe heard raised voices, too far off to decipher the words or language.
And then what sounded like two or three people running along the street below his windows, a door slamming shut. Silence. He waited, listening for more, but the night did not speak.
Half the time, his uncle’s predictions were correct. Half the time, they were not. An eruption. Eruzione. Unless he was speaking metaphorically, which Uncle Donato sometimes did, it could mean Vesuvius. His uncle had said that he, Giuseppe, was supposed to play a role in this eruption. What role exactly? Helping people flee? Rescuing documents? Bandaging burned limbs?
He became aware of an engine in the street, certainly a German truck this time. No other vehicles would be out after dark. Brakes, slamming doors, the hurried slap of boot soles, as if the soldiers were chasing someone, or running to hide. One more pop, much closer now, but were they shooting or being shot at? He heard a voice right below the window, a single German word, shouted: “Vorsichtig!” Then the truck revving up again, tires on the paving stones. The soldiers gone, the night quiet.
Vorsichtig.
He thought it meant careful. He’d have to remember to ask Lucia.
Twenty-One
Rita wasn’t surprised when she answered the knock on the door and saw Aldo there, the old scar on his left cheekbone, package under his arm. But the look on his face—sorrow, regret, worry?—wasn’t typical of him, not when he visited her, at least. Not at all. In fact, over his decades as an orphan, a street boy, a prisoner, a dockworker, and then a man who worked for Giovanni Forni, Aldo had learned to keep all expression from his handsome face. The fine forehead and beautiful dark eyes, the straight nose and dimpled chin—he managed the muscles there the way her downstairs neighbor, Joe, managed the muscles of his fingers when he sewed. She’d seen Aldo at times when he was in physical pain, times when he’d just had a stretch of luck at the docks and made a sack of money (he’d always bring her a special gift then), times when he was worried about Lucia to the point of being unable to sleep, but very little of that ever showed on the features of his face. She had to draw it out of him with hours of companionship, with talk, a meal, wine, lovemaking. Even then, there were times when what he was actually feeling appeared only in a parting few words the next morning. “Going to the hospital later for this pain when I breathe,” he’d say. Or “Lucia’s office has been taken over by Austrian Nazis.” Or, removing a small gold brooch from his pocket, “Things have been good lately—here, take this.” And then out the door he’d go. She’d give him a moment to hurry down the stairs, and then she’d step over to the window and watch him walk away, striding along with his arms held out from his body as if a thief were about to reach for his wallet.
He has tight control over his heart muscle, too, she often thought, as she watched him go, and it filled her with sadness. She knew that heart of his, knew what he felt for his daughter, and suspected what he might feel for her. But he was afraid to show any of it, afraid that the hard men he’d dealt with all his life would see it as weakness and make their assault on his livelihood. Maybe, she mused, that’s what jail time in boyhood does to a man. That’s what having no parents does: for the rest of your days, you walk through the world feeling like a hungry dog with a piece of meat in its mouth, turning your head this way and that, worried every second that it will be taken away.