But the mood dried as quickly as a shallow puddle on an August day. By then, eight o’clock on a Friday night, news had spread of the arrival of the Nazi colonel and about the new rules he’d announce the next day, and, though they pretended otherwise, Armando knew that all four of them were worried what it might mean.
“He’s going to make us all dress up like Nazi soldiers, and he’s going to kill anyone who refuses,” Roberto said.
“Doubt it,” Tomaso told him. And then to Armando, “Where’s the hat anyway? What’d you do with it?”
“I left it.”
“Where?”
Armando shrugged. “I’ll let you have it for a while. Have you eaten?”
Tomaso nodded. “Not much.”
“Nothing for me,” Roberto said.
“Me also,” Antonio chimed in. “Nothing.”
Armando held up the coin. “This will get us something. What’s open?”
“The Sangiuliano.”
“Let’s go.”
They set off toward the Vomero, alert as foxes to the stirrings of the night: a seagull crying out, a man scolding a child, from far off, in the direction of the Arenella neighborhood, a strange echo, as if someone were snapping a stick at regular intervals.
“Shots,” Roberto said.
This time, no one disputed him.
They walked in a loose formation, spitting, swaggering, looking from side to side as if seeking out enemies to snarl at, attack, destroy. From off to the east came a deep, muted boom that echoed through the streets like thunder. They all flinched and then pretended they hadn’t.
Thirty-Four
As she hurried through the Naples night, key in hand, Lucia realized that she was walking along the same route Giuseppe had taken to work for the past six years, though not, of course, in the light of a rising moon. Because he loved the city, and loved places in general (it was part of the reason he’d decided to make his map), he’d described the route to her many times: west along the main road—Santa Teresa; down Enrico Pessina into the Centro and as far as Piazza Dante, where he’d first asked her to have dinner with him, then south along Tribunali as far as Via San Gregorio, a right turn there, down the curving Vico Figurari, to the door of the National Archives.
She held the key in her left hand, her lucky hand, and could feel that her palm was coated in sweat. The nervousness had such a hold on her that, until she’d actually set foot on the square and started approaching the statue of Dante at its center, she failed to notice the clique of German soldiers standing around two motorcycles in the corner to her left. They were everywhere, everywhere. You couldn’t look out your window, walk three blocks; you couldn’t sit in a piazza watching the sunset without hearing their trucks or seeing their uniforms or feeling their eyes upon you. Too late now—if she made a sharp right turn, they’d see her, sense her fear, and it would draw them like hungry wolves. Instead, she decided to walk as close to them as would seem reasonable. Go past them, through the dark, covered passageway at Porta Alba that led toward Piazza Bellini, then down Tribunali as far as San Gregorio.
She went along steadily, heart slamming in her chest. She glanced up at them, then away. Very strange—the soldiers were standing close to each other, two of them with rifles at the ready, conversing in low tones. From the years of their presence in the city, she knew their habits well enough to sense the oddity of the scene. Usually they’d be spaced farther apart, standing tall, fearless. And if they were speaking to each other, their voices would be loud, as if they assumed no Neapolitan would understand their language, or as if they didn’t care. She wondered if the arrival of the evil colonel had cast fear into their hearts, too. Or if it was something else.
As she walked past, one of them whistled at her between his teeth. She heard the word Dirne. Whore. She kept walking, same pace, eyes up and forward, the slippery key against her left palm, a slow-burning anger in her belly. When she stepped into the covered passageway—in better times, it had been busy with booksellers and strolling couples; now it was dark and quiet as death—she listened intently, worried one or more of the soldiers would be following. But she was alone, out the other side into moonlight again, past the church of Purgatorio ad Arco with the brass skulls—polished by a million touches—that stood on concrete posts in front of it. She ran her palm over one for good luck, then turned right onto San Gregorio, then right again on the curving, downward-sloping Vico Figurari, and right a third time at the end of it. There, directly opposite the ancient church of San Filippo, stood the square bulk of the Archivo building. Just then she heard the loud report of a motorcycle engine and wondered if one of the soldiers was following her after all. But the noise faded in the opposite direction, and only a single pair of footsteps—her own—echoed against the walls.
Ten meters shy of the door, she paused, pretended something had gotten into her shoe. She leaned against the building and bent one leg up behind her, took off the shoe, and shook it. There was only silence at first, then a sound, repeated eight or ten times, that might have been shots in a distant neighborhood. She lifted her head and listened. One more report, from off toward Arenella, and then, in the quiet that followed, she was at the Archives’ front door. The lock stuck, as Giuseppe had said it would, but she worked the key for a few seconds, opened the door, and closed it quickly behind her. In the lightless hallway, she had to stop and breathe deeply until she’d calmed down.
Without turning on a light, she crept past what had once been the desk where visitors registered. She felt her way along a row of stacks. The watchman was long gone, the cleaning people gone; the books she touched had a coating of dust on their spines. At the end of the row, she waved one hand around and found the iron railing, worked her way carefully to the edge of the top step, her eyes adjusting somewhat, the stairs faintly illuminated by moonlight from the one large window, unbroken, undamaged, cut into the exterior wall between the basement and first floor.
From there, it wasn’t difficult to find the desk where Giuseppe worked, and from the desk, easier still to locate the place where he told her he’d hidden his map: squeezed between mattress and wall in the maintenance room where they’d made love. For a moment, she rested one hand on the mattress, for luck, then she drew out the map as tenderly as if it were filled with fresh eggs. Two-thirds of a meter long. As wide, in its rolled form, as the drain at the bottom of her kitchen sink. At first she tried to push it up under her long skirt, along the outside of her left thigh. But that made walking difficult, so she tugged free the hem of her blouse and slid the paper tube up the side, against her ribs. If she tucked the blouse back into her skirt tightly enough, the map would stay in place and she could swing her arms in a more or less normal gait.
The touch of the map seemed to cause a physical reaction, as if it were coated in acid. A small confusion took hold of her, a gust of doubt. For the trip back upstairs, she decided to remove her shoes so as to make absolutely no sound. What sense did that make? There was no one in the building. But she did it anyway. She decided, too, as she slipped into the shoes again at the top of the stairs, not to take the time and make the noise required to lock the front door: no one would come here at night, and if they did, what difference would it make now? Giuseppe wouldn’t return, and who would want to steal the books and documents that remained?