Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - Alba

In Italy, where local governments seem incapable of coming up with original street names, there must be tens of thousands of Via Romas. This particular one was in Portici, a suburban comune of Napoli on the southern sweep of the Bay’s curve, and the place where Mina found herself living when as an English teacher she theoretically had the whole globe to choose from. Nobody had ever heard of Portici, though if she translated the name of its adjoining commune, Ercolano, into the anglicized Herculaneum, most of her friends at home remembered enough of their history lessons to go ‘ah!’. Each day tourists trooped from the station down to the scavi - the excavations of the thriving little Roman town which, along with its more famous cousin, Pompei, had been so perfectly preserved for future curiosity one day in 79AD. Both Portici and Ercolano – the present day community as opposed to the scavi – were in the evacuation zone should Vesuvius erupt again. To Mina the cone was a constant presence, though the locals – her flatmates for example - seemed to display little interest in it, as only people who have grown up in the shadow of history can.
Via Roma was an inconsequential street, even by Portici standards. It ran right off Via Universita, the main drag leading to the Scavi, and steeply down for a few hundred metres almost to the sea. At this point on the bay there was no beach and a little-used railway line made sure that even the shoreline was inaccessible. A guidebook carrying visitor would note the high kerbs of the pavement, interrupted frequently by the gated entries to residences. That and the rubbish overflowing the communal bins; a result of waste disposal being contracted out, and like almost all activity where money could be made in Campania, attracting the tentacles of organized crime.
On a clear Tuesday morning in early October the sun rose behind the cone, casting delicate light on the crumbling stonework of the Via Roma. Napoli sees itself as having a special relationship with the sun. No matter the chains of poverty, violence or simple stagnation that trap its denizens year after year, decade after decade, the sun will shine, and the city will live on. A white haired man emerged from a doorway, climbed into a rusty fiat and drove off up the hill. A cat slipped between the bars of a metal gate and looked both ways before trotting seawards in the lee of the wall. A tall woman with a low fringe wearing faded jeans hurried to one of the gateways and dug in her jacket pocket, eventually finding a key which she used to gain access to the garden and disappear out of sight

'You work this morning?'
'Aye. You Maggie?'
‘Yes. Maybe we see each other.’
Maggie was spreading the ubiquitous chocolate paste on her bread and smoking a morning cigarette.
‘Was there enough hot water last night?’
‘Eh?’
Sometimes Maggie couldn’t understand Mina’s university Italian. She’d picked hers up working and was used to the Napoletano dialect. Mina got the message across, miming standing shivering under freezing water, and Maggie laughed.
'Non ti preoccupare'.
A favourite phrase – don’t worry. Maggie had worked twelve hour shifts in a Korean assembly line, sleeping in dorms with the other hands, and years before that she’d been a stewardess for Mongolia’s national airline. She’d married a Mongolian TV cameraman, had children and then divorced him. Most of what she earned she sent home for her daughter’s studies. She’d come to Napoli via Frankfurt and Genoa, and now she worked as a badessa; housekeeper for a wealthy family who paid her without the taxman getting in the way. She pocketed a hundred and fifty euros a week, which worked out as just under four an hour. The same family employed Mina as a tutor for their two children at twenty euros an hour, which was why they might see each other later that day, Maggie making the coffee that Mina would be offered.
'See you later then.'
'A dopo.'
A rectangle of light spread across the floor of the garage as she raised the door. Well it was still here at least. Her beloved cinquecento – with its bash as a badge of the city where traffic rules had no application. She knocked on the back window then clicked the doorlatch open. The garage was a tight squeeze and she felt wary suddenly. What if she poked her head in and he grabbed her, knowing she had the keys now - what a temptation a car could be if the contents of her handbag had been enough the night before.
If you’re in there show me your hand.
For a few seconds there was no movement, then his fingers curled out, ET-like, followed by his face, smiling, beardless and surrounded by a fuzz of Afro.
'Hey Signorina, how you doing?'
'Buongiorno. How did you find sleeping in the back of a cinquecento?'
'Notbad notbad. Nice car. You needing to drive now yes. Don’t worry, I be on my way.'
'Where’ll you go?'
'I’m thinking Rio or London. Which you recommend?'
'Rio sounds nice.'
'Guess I’ll go there then.'
He swung his long athlete’s legs round, climbed out the car and sidestepped past the dusty shelving on the lock-up's wall until he was next to her. He offered his hand and she shook it, remembering the before when they were crouched opposite one another panting.
'Goodbye. Thank you.'
'Good luck.'
He started walking across the courtyard.
'Who were you running away from?'
'What?'
'Last night, you said people were chasing you. Who? Why?'
'It don’t matter.'
'Come on. I don’t want my would-be mugger to walk out my life just yet. I thought for a while you might get me in the papers at least.'
Before she could argue herself out of it, he was in the car and they were driving towards a bar and a strong cappucino.