Thirty-Two
Giuseppe held Lucia for a long time, pressing the fingers of one hand against the top of her back and holding her against his chest. From their first kiss, they’d had some kind of electrical bodily connection. He could feel the current running between them now, feel the intensity of her love vibrating in every place they touched. She kissed him deeply, turned, and walked away, saying, “I love you so much, Uncle,” to Donato, and nothing else. Giuseppe stood there, watching her go, trying to find a way to measure the force of her affection, the depth of it, trying to imagine a place she wouldn’t go with him, an expression of love she wouldn’t be able to summon. He’d been romantically involved with three women before meeting Lucia, three very nice-looking, very fine young women. Though he’d never made love with them, there had been a real compatibility there—in terms of personality, intellectual interest, physical attraction. But he’d never met anyone with Lucia’s capacity to love. It was almost visible in her, sometimes calm and mild, other times fiery, something so much a part of her that it seemed to emanate from her eyes. He watched her, hoping she’d turn around and show him those eyes, offer one last gesture of support or affection, but she turned the corner onto Via Fontanelle and was gone.
A thought appeared and reappeared in his mind like a needle being drawn through a piece of cloth, dragging after it an old thread of shame, piercing him, then leaving a sour feeling. Piercing him again. He hadn’t fought in the army, hadn’t been able to save his parents. And now his girlfriend was protecting him, taking the risk of delivering his map to a woman she barely knew, a risk that carried with it the very real possibility of torture and death.
And his job? To hide.
Once, not long after the burial of his parents, still tormented by grief, he’d confessed these feelings to his uncle: men were fighting; he wasn’t fighting. Was he then not a man? Men were often loud and aggressive; he didn’t like being loud and aggressive—just the opposite, in fact. Was he then not a man? His father had made a living laying stone, a man’s work; he, Giuseppe, filed documents and advised scholars.
His uncle had listened with his head slightly lowered and without making eye contact at first. Then he’d raised his eyes, peered into Giuseppe’s, and said, “The danger here is that, in trying to prove to yourself something you do not need to prove, you will behave in a way that is untrue to you, and place your soul in danger.”
Now, watching Lucia turn the corner and disappear, Giuseppe did what he could to banish the dirty strand of thought. He tried to tell himself that the courage of kindness was his manhood. That his true identity was rooted, not in violence, aggression, and hatred, but in kindness. He was half-convinced.
For another hour, he sat there with his uncle—the smell of smoke and stone dust in the air, the sound of fire engines, the raw, creeping sense of terror at knowing their city was very likely in the process of being destroyed, building by building. Though he didn’t want to believe what Lucia had told him about the proclamation, Giuseppe found himself looking up and down the street for German army trucks or soldiers. Would he run if he saw them approaching? Would he stand and fight? Should he go to Lucia’s father, as she’d begged him to do, and ask for a hiding place, a gun, the protection of some Camorra killer?
There was a second explosion, larger, farther away, a muted ba-boom-boom-boom that reminded him of the days of the Allied bombings. His uncle turned his head in that direction and muttered something under his breath, a prayer or a curse, Giuseppe couldn’t tell. “I may have to hide, Uncle, if they start arresting young men.”
His uncle nodded. “Hide until the eruption,” he said, and Giuseppe let the words hang in the air between them.
After another few minutes, he helped Donato up the stairs and fed him. (A feast: rice with a few boiled baby carrots, all of it gifts from the people who visited the hunchback and, in exchange for his wisdom, brought what amounted to offerings.) Though it really wasn’t necessary, when his uncle went to the bathroom, Giuseppe waited outside the door in case there was a problem, and then walked with him to the bedroom and kissed him good night because Donato liked to go to sleep not long after darkness fell, early in winter and late in summer. (Nature meant for this to happen, he insisted.) There was water in the pipes. Giuseppe cleaned and dried the dishes, forks, and glasses, set them on the counter, closed and fastened the window shutters, then sat for a time, wondering what he should do. No more explosions broke the night quiet. He sat in his father’s armchair and, in the yellow lamplight, tried reading a few pages of a favorite book—Lampedusa’s The Leopard. For a little while, captivated by the novel’s rich language and depth of feeling, he was able to focus on the words—Their certain marriage, though not very close, extended its reassuring shadow in anticipation on the parched soil of their mutual desires. But the needle kept piercing him. The residue of shame wouldn’t leave: Lucia was resisting, he was hiding.
He placed the bookmark (one of his father’s old playing cards), set the novel aside, and turned out the light. Starting the next evening, Lucia had warned him, there would be a curfew. Martial law. Anyone found with a knife or gun, anyone resisting the proclamation in any way: shot dead. Every young man must report. If he went to the Archives, the Nazis would come for him, load him into the railed back of one of their trucks, carry him and others at gunpoint to the train station, and ship them north. God knew what they’d require of him there. God knew what they were requiring of the Jews who’d already made that trip. He’d seen them himself, families huddled outside the Napoli Centrale train station surrounded by soldiers with raised rifles, carrying small children against their chests and cloth bundles in their hands. They were being sent north to work, the Nazis claimed. But no one had ever received a droplet of news from this “north.” Friends, neighbors, coworkers—no one had gotten a telegram, a letter, or a phone call from Germany talking about the conditions there or asking about things at home.
Death camps, they were, then, not work camps. It would be the same for him and his friends.
The only option was to do what Lucia had asked him to do. Go to her father. Ask for help.
He stood, and quietly, in order not to wake his light-sleeping uncle, went through the door, down the steps, and out onto the street. A memory followed him as he moved, haunting him, mocking him. He knew where Lucia’s father lived because she’d taken him there. Once, one time, two months ago. “He can be gruff,” she’d warned as they walked along holding hands. But when he was finally introduced to Aldo Pastone, Giuseppe realized that gruff was the wrong word. Ice was the word, colder than cold. A scarred, blocklike face and powerful body. Camorra friends. Little interest in his daughter, it seemed, and even less in the man she loved. Aldo had met them at the door, holding one arm against the jamb at shoulder height, as if to block even the idea of them entering his dark lair, or as if there were someone inside he didn’t want them to meet. He’d shaken hands, at least, with a crushing grip, run his eyes across Giuseppe’s face, and then looked at his daughter and uttered this line of love: “Why did you come?”
Giuseppe remembered the route—down Toledo and west toward the warren of the Spagnoli. Even though, now that the bombings had stopped, they weren’t required to keep their houses dark, there were few lights in the windows and fewer people on the streets. He could sense the moon rising behind him—full, it would be on this night—but not yet see it. One or two older men straggling home late from a day job somewhere in the countryside, their backs bent and their clothes filthy. One or two women grasping to their chests small paper or burlap bags—containing rationed food, no doubt, or something purchased at outrageous prices on the black market—and keeping their eyes down. It was unusual, on such a long walk, not to see German vehicles or soldiers, but Giuseppe supposed they were resting in their barracks at this hour, preparing for the hard work of capturing Italian men.