Chapter 10 - Bella Vista
The word the driver of the car had used to such hypnotic effect on Ransome was in Yoruba, the language of his childhood. Only his grandparents on his mother's side had used a pure version of this tongue. His mother spoke a melange of English and Yoruba, which was the vocal mix of the music she and his father had made their careers with, or rather Fela Kuti had made them. Kuti was the Nigerian King of Afrobeat who took America by storm in the seventies with his entourage of musicians and dancers. Ransome's parents had been part of that troupe, though his father, for reasons which were never clearly stated, had fallen out with the charismatic leader. When Kuti, after returning to Nigeria, declared his Lagos commune a sovereign republic in 1974, Ransome's father refused to step inside the place. Kuti never forgave him for it. Ochikwe senior moved his family back to his birthplace of Port Harcourt, and it was in this frenzied port city that Ransome had grown into a lean adolescent, always happier with a ball at his feet than in a classroom. Not that he hadn't had the opportunity for study. While many schools in the region were dilapidated and ill-equipped, Mr Ochikwe had paid for his son to attend a private Academy run by an Anglican overseas foundation. When Ransome flunked the University entrance exams and, in a blazing row, declared he would make a career playing football, the wound of resentment between them had been wide and deep. Part of the reason he had swallowed the agent’s bait so completely was his obsession with proving Mr Ochikwe wrong. He was surprised when the news of his departure for Europe led to his father voluntarily ending their cold war. Rather than questioning the wisdom of relying on a single agent’s word, he congratulated Ransome with a formal handshake that seemed to finally acknowledge his eldest son as a man. ‘I was wrong. You are better off leaving this country, before it’s at war again over oil.’ He had even offered financial help, which Ransome, out of pride, had accepted only a small part of. Awkwardly his father had turned it into a joke. ‘You’ll soon be earning more in one week than I do in a year anyway.’
He had refused the offer of a lift to the airport too. He could see this was partly to the relief of Mr Ochikwe, a man loath to take time off work, fearing that the bar he ran would collapse if he turned his back for a second. Suffering a killer hangover from the send-off party his friends had thrown, Ransome had taken a bus out there alone in the grey first light of the morning. The last image he held of his homeland was from the plane window as it banked round to follow the Atlantic coast round to the west and then the north. The chaos of Port Harcourt took on an order the higher the plane rose, and as they flew over the mangrove creeks of the Niger Delta, the blue-flare spouts of gas burn-off from the pipelines seemed like illuminations heralding his transfer to a glorious future in Europe.
Driver of the Audi says nothing to Ransome, just concentrates on negotiating de twists and turns of narrow streets. No CD collection to distract, so I get to observing him, and what I see is the habit of making decisions and being obeyed. Something else too, difficult to identify, until just as we pull to a halt, I pin it down as the aura of a man who has embraced death and is no longer afraid.
From the postcard view of diamond bay sparkling I know we have climbed up the hillside from Mina’s flat which now is one of many rooftops cluttering the below. We are pulled in on open patch of ground, only thing spoiling the beautiness being de reek escaping piled bags of rubbish long since overflowed their confines. I follow Big Brutha, (must be at least one metre eighty five and built), to the far side of the bins, where - unexpected like a cool breeze in Port Harcourt summer - sits a picnic bench complete with water fountain beside. Long drink first and then sit down. Bruth is wearing a bridal clean white tee, levis and sandals like an Englishman. Sudden he pulls the bottom of his t-shirt up over barrel chest and sixpack, pointing to three circles of skin stood off white and shrivelled against the smooth black.
‘Do you know what these are, my friend?’
I nod, thinking about Mina and wondering how to get to the entrance of the park at nine o’clock. Big Bruth is a distraction in a chain of events already mysteriouser than a ride with Charlie's Angels. Course Africans in Europe tend to look out for one another, and I guess a spot of narco-gang recruiting might be about to happen. Same thing happened more than once previous at gaffs in the ol' Brixton. Those times I refused because I wanted to stay on the right tracks o' The Law, and course I had the sandwich trade to fall back on. Now what do I have? A possible rendezvous with some Cat Queen of Scots (where've I heard that) seems about all... I decide to play it cool.
‘I guess you got shot. But if you want me to name the bullets I ain’t no expert.’
‘They’re British.’
Voice is deeper than a Wilson Pickett bass line. Makes me sound like a choirboy after.
‘You been to Britain?’
‘Studied at Oxford University. But like yourself I am cursed with being a national of a country dreamed up by Victorian Englishmen with blank maps in their hands. What tribe do you belong to, my friend?’
Now my father was Ogoni and Ma was Yoruba, and I frankly feel a little tiring them who beat the tribal drum for a living. But I know better than to say so here.
‘I knew there was Yoruba in you.’ I love that bass sound!
‘How’s that, man?’
‘Because you look out for yourself. The tribes of Eastern Nigeria have always been prepared to struggle for each other: Ijaw, Ogoni, Igbo…'
I listen, saintly quiet while he reels off the names, wondering what this is leading up to. Gang bosses Brixtonway never stopped flauntin' their knowledge of de African R’n’B scene long enough to go commenting on social history such BBC2 style.
‘So many Africans in Europe forget their roots, think only about the future, how they are going to save themselves. But when they do this they are giving up on the one struggle they can honour their lives fighting for.’
'You fighting for Ijaw nation then?'
'I am fighting for the Niger Delta's people of all tribes, against the multinationals and government leeches who suck oil dollars out and put nothing back, while the British supply them with weapons, just as they did to crush Biafra. And you my friend, what are you fighting for?'
Ransome is mighty impressed by the speech, but that question makes him laugh.
'What am I not fighting, brutha. This whole darn shithole got my number pinned to the wall!'
'I know. I know exactly who they are, the people who have been chasing you. Let me tell you, you're very lucky you can swim.'
His eye twinkles and I recognise the deep intelligence that must always leap free of regulated learning. I have it myself.
'How do you know?'
'Let me introduce myself. Charles Amankwah.'
'Pleasure to meet you, Charles. So you control this here city or what?'
Big Chief Ijaw points diagonally across me, to where the bay curves round past Vesuvius.
'My business is two thousand miles that way. Naples is a useful place to get... certain things, that's all.'
I nod. I heard plenty about the militants, as Abuja government names 'em: gangs o' hard men guerrilla warrin' 'gainst the authorities and Shell, Exxon and the rest. Past five years it's got bigger and bigger, specially the kidnappings. Even before our fallout my old man said USA was gonna just airstrike the whole o' Port Harcourt if we let more oil workers be taken to the jungle. That's when I learnt meaning o' my own name, reading news reports o' those activities. Ransome: the money paid to a kidnapper in exchange for the release of the prisoner. Why d'you go' an think that was a suitable name for me, I asked Ma, and she told me if I wasn't happy I was welcome to change, but I didn't because I knew it was pretty cool.
'So the boys you're dealing with, they put you on to me, right?'
'Indeed they did. They told me you'd managed to get your hands on something you shouldn't have. A DVD to be exact. I was impressed enough to come out and track you down myself before they got you.'
'They don't know we're here?'
Big Chief shakes his head, winks.
'So you wanna work together on this one?'
I sizes up my options quick. Funny thing is, every word Chief says makes Mina seem less real and more like something dreamed of. Delta oil guerrilla leader in Napoli buying up AKs, asking Ransome on board - that makes sense alright. Happening outside that park last night - was it last night? - don't fit in - don't seem to offer any kind of future prospects. To survive, you've gotta get with somebody strong, who was it told me that?
'Yeah, sounds good.'
Then we're treading in the open back across the dust to the Audi. I feel a lot safer once behind the tinted glass, the smell of new car filling my nostrils, thinking it's a whole different chauffeur ride to the one I had this morning.
Monday, 4 May 2009
Chapter 9
Chapter 9 - Shapes below the Surface
Passing the site where they were building the new car park, Salvatore had been tempted by the shouts of voices he recognised. Sure enough, through the gap where one of the metal sheets had been pulled aside, he saw Scheletro and Vittorino kicking a ball about. They were trying to hit it off the digger that sat idle in the middle of the flattened area.
'Guaglioni', he called, cocking his chin up as he had seen the men do. They shook hands in the gangster style.
'Can't play. I'm on a job.'
'Oh yeah?'
'We're looking for this guy.' He unfurled the printout. 'You seen him?'
'It's a black.'
'You're a genius Rino.'
Scheletro, who was a little older and nicknamed for his deceptively spindly frame, took the sheet from Salvatore's hand.
'Hey!'
'Do you want me to look or not?'
'You don't have to take it.'
'We saw him ten minutes ago.'
'Where?'
'Up there.' Salvatore followed the direction of Scheletro's finger, to one of the balconies on the palazzo overlooking the building site.
'What was he doing?'
'Nothing. He came out then went back in.'
'Which one?'
'Fourth floor, centre.'
'Well done Scheletro.'
'What do you mean well done. I was just here, that's all.'
'Mimmo'll be pleased.'
'You're working for Mimmo.'
'Yes.'
'There! there!'
Suddenly Rino was jumping up and down, jabbing with his finger at the street lined with pine trees that passed above the other end of the car park. A dark figure was walking down it, in the shadow of the trees.
'That's him. The black.'
Salvatore turned and sprinted across the bare earth. The machines had made a four metre high cliff where they'd gouged out the soil to make the car park. He had to get up there, to follow the African, but there was nothing to hold onto, no tree roots, no ivy, just sand that crumbled in his fingers. He made futile grabs trying to gain a purchase, and ended up almost weeping with frustration. After a minute he thought to use his mobile to call Mimmo, who answered after only two rings.
'What is it?'
'I just saw him. Via dei Pini, he's alone.'
'Right. Stay close, we're coming.'
'But -' it was too late. Mimmo had ended the call.
What we gonna do then Ransome ol' boy, got six hours to kill so how 'bout a little sightseeing, shopping, or perhaps a visit to an internet cafe - see if Mamma's e-mailed again, check the football scores, do a little social networking. Pick up a cappucino or two, smoke a cigar called hamlet and enjoy sitting on the dock at the bay, try to catch some lady's attention. Sweet mother you near clean forgot - none o' that is yours. You have what Bible boys call the mark o' Cain: you're condemned to wander like a hunted man with malodorous clothes. Fact: what you need most of is a shower, good strong hot one like at le club sportif, all of the boys standing there naked as babies scrubbin' with soap.
The Audi had been tailing him for a full minute before it gave up on his powers of observation and pulled alongside. He began to run, until he heard the command to stop in the native language he hadn't heard since he'd left London.
*
For the past ten years, Alberto Scalina had been steadily advancing through the ranks of Servizi per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare, known to all as SISMI, until he was in a position of being more or less able to decide his own daily agenda. This meant, as he enjoyed telling his friends, that he had achieved his main ambition in life. Today he walked from his base near the port, through Piazza del Popolo, towards Via Toledo. The new Pope was due in the city the next day and small groups of pilgrims were already clogging the streets. Scalina felt a surge of irritation at a pale, grossly overweight woman in tight shorts wheeling a boy in a chair who was squealing and jabbing in the air. This was no place for foreigners, least of all such flawed specimens of humanity. Watching her struggle with the chair up a foot high kerb, he was taken aback when she began addressing him, a complete stranger, in English, speaking as though the situation was his fault personally, as if any rule except survival of the fittest could apply in Napoli. Shaking his head, he laughed as he walked on by.
The Englishman, Commons, had seemed okay, at least at the one conference in London where they had previously seen each other. Well-presented, and efficient, not like the fool Sozbury who was always trying to disguise the fact that he knew nothing. Commons was already there when he walked into the cafe, and Scalina noted with approval that he had chosen a table in a discreet corner at the back. They shook hands and without being asked, Commons offered him a light for the cigarette he was already withdrawing from his suit jacket pocket. Commons himself did not smoke, and Scalina imagined correctly that this was because he treated his body like a Formula One car on the inside as well as out. Scalina was well-muscled enough, but developing a slight paunch, and his engine was suspect at best.
'Allora Nick, how are you this afternoon?'
'Pretty good, Alberto. Thank you for getting in touch so quickly. It's as if you know our Embassy always fucks up.'
'Yes. I prefer to communicate with you personally.'
They had fallen easily into the habit of using first names, something which had never happened with the pompous Sozbury.
'So, would you like to tell me why your Majesty finally sent you here in person? Is it the reason I think?'
'And what would that be Alberto?'
Neither of them knew it, but they were both enjoying exactly the same pleasure in these exchanges: the pleasure of actors sure that the words they chose to deploy were merely tips for vast bodies of meaning they hid beneath the surface. The skill lay in discerning the larger shape concealed beneath the words of the other, without revealing too much of one's own. And yet, Nick realised, with a shock of guilty thrill, their secret services were supposed to have the same interests. Instead of playing games over espresso, shouldn't they be leaning over a table with all their cards lain down, working out the best way to accomplish the mission? But London had told him not to expect that for a second, and, in any case, now it was the Italian who was making the first move. He picked up the card that Alberto had scrawled on and pushed across the tabletop towards him. On it was written the confirmation that they both held the same intelligence.
MA Blue Ocean
He took out his Parker and wrote a time underneath the name, before pushing the card back across, catching the waiter looking at them as he did so. Commons thought he looked too old for a waiter, though he understood that Italians took the job more seriously than people back home, where it was only ever temporary unless you were an immigrant. Alberto winked and nodded.
'How many men?' he asked.
Never mind nosy waiters, this was going to be a lot easier than Nick had thought.
Passing the site where they were building the new car park, Salvatore had been tempted by the shouts of voices he recognised. Sure enough, through the gap where one of the metal sheets had been pulled aside, he saw Scheletro and Vittorino kicking a ball about. They were trying to hit it off the digger that sat idle in the middle of the flattened area.
'Guaglioni', he called, cocking his chin up as he had seen the men do. They shook hands in the gangster style.
'Can't play. I'm on a job.'
'Oh yeah?'
'We're looking for this guy.' He unfurled the printout. 'You seen him?'
'It's a black.'
'You're a genius Rino.'
Scheletro, who was a little older and nicknamed for his deceptively spindly frame, took the sheet from Salvatore's hand.
'Hey!'
'Do you want me to look or not?'
'You don't have to take it.'
'We saw him ten minutes ago.'
'Where?'
'Up there.' Salvatore followed the direction of Scheletro's finger, to one of the balconies on the palazzo overlooking the building site.
'What was he doing?'
'Nothing. He came out then went back in.'
'Which one?'
'Fourth floor, centre.'
'Well done Scheletro.'
'What do you mean well done. I was just here, that's all.'
'Mimmo'll be pleased.'
'You're working for Mimmo.'
'Yes.'
'There! there!'
Suddenly Rino was jumping up and down, jabbing with his finger at the street lined with pine trees that passed above the other end of the car park. A dark figure was walking down it, in the shadow of the trees.
'That's him. The black.'
Salvatore turned and sprinted across the bare earth. The machines had made a four metre high cliff where they'd gouged out the soil to make the car park. He had to get up there, to follow the African, but there was nothing to hold onto, no tree roots, no ivy, just sand that crumbled in his fingers. He made futile grabs trying to gain a purchase, and ended up almost weeping with frustration. After a minute he thought to use his mobile to call Mimmo, who answered after only two rings.
'What is it?'
'I just saw him. Via dei Pini, he's alone.'
'Right. Stay close, we're coming.'
'But -' it was too late. Mimmo had ended the call.
What we gonna do then Ransome ol' boy, got six hours to kill so how 'bout a little sightseeing, shopping, or perhaps a visit to an internet cafe - see if Mamma's e-mailed again, check the football scores, do a little social networking. Pick up a cappucino or two, smoke a cigar called hamlet and enjoy sitting on the dock at the bay, try to catch some lady's attention. Sweet mother you near clean forgot - none o' that is yours. You have what Bible boys call the mark o' Cain: you're condemned to wander like a hunted man with malodorous clothes. Fact: what you need most of is a shower, good strong hot one like at le club sportif, all of the boys standing there naked as babies scrubbin' with soap.
The Audi had been tailing him for a full minute before it gave up on his powers of observation and pulled alongside. He began to run, until he heard the command to stop in the native language he hadn't heard since he'd left London.
*
For the past ten years, Alberto Scalina had been steadily advancing through the ranks of Servizi per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare, known to all as SISMI, until he was in a position of being more or less able to decide his own daily agenda. This meant, as he enjoyed telling his friends, that he had achieved his main ambition in life. Today he walked from his base near the port, through Piazza del Popolo, towards Via Toledo. The new Pope was due in the city the next day and small groups of pilgrims were already clogging the streets. Scalina felt a surge of irritation at a pale, grossly overweight woman in tight shorts wheeling a boy in a chair who was squealing and jabbing in the air. This was no place for foreigners, least of all such flawed specimens of humanity. Watching her struggle with the chair up a foot high kerb, he was taken aback when she began addressing him, a complete stranger, in English, speaking as though the situation was his fault personally, as if any rule except survival of the fittest could apply in Napoli. Shaking his head, he laughed as he walked on by.
The Englishman, Commons, had seemed okay, at least at the one conference in London where they had previously seen each other. Well-presented, and efficient, not like the fool Sozbury who was always trying to disguise the fact that he knew nothing. Commons was already there when he walked into the cafe, and Scalina noted with approval that he had chosen a table in a discreet corner at the back. They shook hands and without being asked, Commons offered him a light for the cigarette he was already withdrawing from his suit jacket pocket. Commons himself did not smoke, and Scalina imagined correctly that this was because he treated his body like a Formula One car on the inside as well as out. Scalina was well-muscled enough, but developing a slight paunch, and his engine was suspect at best.
'Allora Nick, how are you this afternoon?'
'Pretty good, Alberto. Thank you for getting in touch so quickly. It's as if you know our Embassy always fucks up.'
'Yes. I prefer to communicate with you personally.'
They had fallen easily into the habit of using first names, something which had never happened with the pompous Sozbury.
'So, would you like to tell me why your Majesty finally sent you here in person? Is it the reason I think?'
'And what would that be Alberto?'
Neither of them knew it, but they were both enjoying exactly the same pleasure in these exchanges: the pleasure of actors sure that the words they chose to deploy were merely tips for vast bodies of meaning they hid beneath the surface. The skill lay in discerning the larger shape concealed beneath the words of the other, without revealing too much of one's own. And yet, Nick realised, with a shock of guilty thrill, their secret services were supposed to have the same interests. Instead of playing games over espresso, shouldn't they be leaning over a table with all their cards lain down, working out the best way to accomplish the mission? But London had told him not to expect that for a second, and, in any case, now it was the Italian who was making the first move. He picked up the card that Alberto had scrawled on and pushed across the tabletop towards him. On it was written the confirmation that they both held the same intelligence.
MA Blue Ocean
He took out his Parker and wrote a time underneath the name, before pushing the card back across, catching the waiter looking at them as he did so. Commons thought he looked too old for a waiter, though he understood that Italians took the job more seriously than people back home, where it was only ever temporary unless you were an immigrant. Alberto winked and nodded.
'How many men?' he asked.
Never mind nosy waiters, this was going to be a lot easier than Nick had thought.
Chapter 8
Chapter 8 - Last Testament
The lesson seemed to drag on interminably, and when she came out her tired senses barely registered the gleaming, polished jag parked at the top of the street. As she moved out to pass on her moped, a hand emerged from the driver side window and flagged her down. Her heart was beating faster than it should have until she saw who the hand belonged to.
'Johhny Salisbury.'
'Mina .'
Even this brief exchange had an Ealing Studios feel to it, as everything involving Johnny did. She had only met him a few times, first at a British Council function she'd gone to in the search for contacts, then privately, over coffee, when he'd told her about his novel.
'You got a book deal yet, Johnny?'
'They're queuing up. Just working out the best option'
She took it for granted that this was fatuous bluster - the idea of Johnny ever applying himself hard enough to finish a book was as outlandish as they came. What he did possess was the art of describing a theory: in the form of a whole plot mapped out for one of those historical thrillers with a code hidden in a renaissance painting. She wouldn't put it past him to have pocketed a publisher's advance without having written a single paragraph.
'What's going on Johnny? How did you find me here?' She hoped her nervousness came across as surprise.
'Well you didn't answer your mobile so I phoned your house number. They said you'd be here, not that I could bloody understand at first.'
'Who answered?’
'It was a creature that produced what I call a low guttural soundscape.'
'That'll be Luca, his dialect's quite thick.'
She was thinking fast. This must be about Ransome. Johnny Salisbury was MI6's man in Naples, a fact which caused much hilarity among the ex-pat community. 'Double gin seven', they called him.
‘Why do you want-’
'Don't ask me,' he shrugged, an exaggerated gesture he'd unconsciously copied from the locals. 'Our London chappy wants to speak to you. I'm just the messenger. I'll bring you in in style if you want,' he indicated the tan leather passenger seat, currently covered by an opened copy of The Times.
She gave a short laugh, feigning nonchalance. Maybe they'd already got Ransome. Now she'd have to explain her way out of something she didn't even understand. What had she been thinking, leaving him in her room?
'I need to go back home first and drop this off. Will you drive behind and wait for me outside the flat?'
'Yes, Ma'am.'
He mock-saluted as she revved the engine up the steep cobbles. It was a left down Via Universita then a right a hundred metres later. Even if her motor had packed more than a hundred and fifty cc's she couldn't have lost him in that time.
'Alright, what have you done?'
Jeepazcreepaz the lady she don't look happy an' all I done is take a few gentle tokes from a pouch which was, afta all, open on the table. I'm sorry but -
'Listen, there's a British agent outside who wants to bring me in. It's got to be about you.'
Shit I don' know! Is she making all this up? Is she playing games with Ransome? But then what about the disk?
'Tone down the sirens jus' a second Mina, and listen. I found something. You see first off I was being a plain fool, fast fo'wardin' my way an inch at-a-time thru one crappy romcom afta anotha. Did three o' em that way then I realised, if they's something's on one of the disks, chances is it ain't feature length. They've all got 'Hollywood covers but are all the disks doin' what they say on the cover, maybe not? So - an 'here be the genius part - I put 'em in jus' to check the runnin' time what comes up in pretty green digits here. One hour an' a half is about the average, so when I got once that said four minutes I knew -.'
'Quick, show me now. We don't have much time.'
Mina sat beside him on her bed to watch the screen: A man on the other side of a desk, looking straight into the camera, his hands steepled under his chin. The face looked vaguely familiar, yellowed and set with such deep wrinkles they might have been ironed in.
'Welcome to my last message.' He spoke in heavily accented English, a wolf-smile showing crooked teeth. He lit a cigarette and started talking about the ethics of revolution and guerrilla war, and she remembered who he was and where she’d seen him before: an article in last month's Repubblica. Carlo Soro, former eminent sociology professor, in prison for twenty years for taking part in Brigate Rosse bombings in the seventies, released only a few years ago, controversially now lecturing at the Federico II University in Napoli. His voice held the didactic rhythm of a lifelong ideologue.
'... state violence is always legitimate. Resistance is terrorism. These are the lessons of our age.'
Soro sighed and sucked his pen. Mina decided he bore a strong resemblance to the late chanteur Serge Gainsbourg, and probably seduced his students too. He lifted a sheet of paper from the desk.
'Finally I'd like to read a little poem.' He cleared his throat.
'In War's refuge
Under the nose of the Tarzan
Where a tyrant sang
As the houses burned
You'll find me there...
'What's he on about?'
'Wait.'
Soro was reaching into a drawer now, and before his hand emerged Mina guessed what was going to happen.
'No!'
Ransome nodded. 'Looks like it'. Soro, with the barrel pressed to his forehead, leant forward and stopped the camera. The screen went black.
'What the -'
The mobile started juddering like an insect trying to right itself on the desk. Salisbury.
'Give me one more minute, Johnny.'
'Our man from London just on again, dear. Apparently I'm not to let you out of my sight.'
'Woman's trouble. Down in a sec.'
'You can't stay here.'
'Don worry I ain't planning on. You got the MI6 boys on me now, they'll use a cat like Ransome for target practice.'
'This is all because of you.'
'Maybe so. But I'd say we got ourselves a mystery. You recognised that geezer didn't you? What was he talkin' about?'
'Search me. He was a university professor, ex-terrorist.'
'Not a poet?'
'Good point. Play that again, the bit about Tarzan.'
This time she writes down while I manipulate de controls. Outside a horn is sounding. Guess that'll be James Bond. She instructs me follow her down and wait at the bottom 'til the car drives away, saying we'll meet again later, entrance to the park, nine o clock. The park where I tried to... place of bad memories. She tells me keep the disk safe. As we descend the stairs I ask her how she's going to get away from MI6 clutches, and she says she can talk her way out of it, she trusts me more than them. Okay I say, nine o' clock it is, I'll be careful, you gotta do the same. Nice jag she drives away in, man at the wheel has a face like steamed vegetable puddin'. Wonder if she'd choose me over him? Not if I don't get a change of clothes.
The lesson seemed to drag on interminably, and when she came out her tired senses barely registered the gleaming, polished jag parked at the top of the street. As she moved out to pass on her moped, a hand emerged from the driver side window and flagged her down. Her heart was beating faster than it should have until she saw who the hand belonged to.
'Johhny Salisbury.'
'Mina .'
Even this brief exchange had an Ealing Studios feel to it, as everything involving Johnny did. She had only met him a few times, first at a British Council function she'd gone to in the search for contacts, then privately, over coffee, when he'd told her about his novel.
'You got a book deal yet, Johnny?'
'They're queuing up. Just working out the best option'
She took it for granted that this was fatuous bluster - the idea of Johnny ever applying himself hard enough to finish a book was as outlandish as they came. What he did possess was the art of describing a theory: in the form of a whole plot mapped out for one of those historical thrillers with a code hidden in a renaissance painting. She wouldn't put it past him to have pocketed a publisher's advance without having written a single paragraph.
'What's going on Johnny? How did you find me here?' She hoped her nervousness came across as surprise.
'Well you didn't answer your mobile so I phoned your house number. They said you'd be here, not that I could bloody understand at first.'
'Who answered?’
'It was a creature that produced what I call a low guttural soundscape.'
'That'll be Luca, his dialect's quite thick.'
She was thinking fast. This must be about Ransome. Johnny Salisbury was MI6's man in Naples, a fact which caused much hilarity among the ex-pat community. 'Double gin seven', they called him.
‘Why do you want-’
'Don't ask me,' he shrugged, an exaggerated gesture he'd unconsciously copied from the locals. 'Our London chappy wants to speak to you. I'm just the messenger. I'll bring you in in style if you want,' he indicated the tan leather passenger seat, currently covered by an opened copy of The Times.
She gave a short laugh, feigning nonchalance. Maybe they'd already got Ransome. Now she'd have to explain her way out of something she didn't even understand. What had she been thinking, leaving him in her room?
'I need to go back home first and drop this off. Will you drive behind and wait for me outside the flat?'
'Yes, Ma'am.'
He mock-saluted as she revved the engine up the steep cobbles. It was a left down Via Universita then a right a hundred metres later. Even if her motor had packed more than a hundred and fifty cc's she couldn't have lost him in that time.
'Alright, what have you done?'
Jeepazcreepaz the lady she don't look happy an' all I done is take a few gentle tokes from a pouch which was, afta all, open on the table. I'm sorry but -
'Listen, there's a British agent outside who wants to bring me in. It's got to be about you.'
Shit I don' know! Is she making all this up? Is she playing games with Ransome? But then what about the disk?
'Tone down the sirens jus' a second Mina, and listen. I found something. You see first off I was being a plain fool, fast fo'wardin' my way an inch at-a-time thru one crappy romcom afta anotha. Did three o' em that way then I realised, if they's something's on one of the disks, chances is it ain't feature length. They've all got 'Hollywood covers but are all the disks doin' what they say on the cover, maybe not? So - an 'here be the genius part - I put 'em in jus' to check the runnin' time what comes up in pretty green digits here. One hour an' a half is about the average, so when I got once that said four minutes I knew -.'
'Quick, show me now. We don't have much time.'
Mina sat beside him on her bed to watch the screen: A man on the other side of a desk, looking straight into the camera, his hands steepled under his chin. The face looked vaguely familiar, yellowed and set with such deep wrinkles they might have been ironed in.
'Welcome to my last message.' He spoke in heavily accented English, a wolf-smile showing crooked teeth. He lit a cigarette and started talking about the ethics of revolution and guerrilla war, and she remembered who he was and where she’d seen him before: an article in last month's Repubblica. Carlo Soro, former eminent sociology professor, in prison for twenty years for taking part in Brigate Rosse bombings in the seventies, released only a few years ago, controversially now lecturing at the Federico II University in Napoli. His voice held the didactic rhythm of a lifelong ideologue.
'... state violence is always legitimate. Resistance is terrorism. These are the lessons of our age.'
Soro sighed and sucked his pen. Mina decided he bore a strong resemblance to the late chanteur Serge Gainsbourg, and probably seduced his students too. He lifted a sheet of paper from the desk.
'Finally I'd like to read a little poem.' He cleared his throat.
'In War's refuge
Under the nose of the Tarzan
Where a tyrant sang
As the houses burned
You'll find me there...
'What's he on about?'
'Wait.'
Soro was reaching into a drawer now, and before his hand emerged Mina guessed what was going to happen.
'No!'
Ransome nodded. 'Looks like it'. Soro, with the barrel pressed to his forehead, leant forward and stopped the camera. The screen went black.
'What the -'
The mobile started juddering like an insect trying to right itself on the desk. Salisbury.
'Give me one more minute, Johnny.'
'Our man from London just on again, dear. Apparently I'm not to let you out of my sight.'
'Woman's trouble. Down in a sec.'
'You can't stay here.'
'Don worry I ain't planning on. You got the MI6 boys on me now, they'll use a cat like Ransome for target practice.'
'This is all because of you.'
'Maybe so. But I'd say we got ourselves a mystery. You recognised that geezer didn't you? What was he talkin' about?'
'Search me. He was a university professor, ex-terrorist.'
'Not a poet?'
'Good point. Play that again, the bit about Tarzan.'
This time she writes down while I manipulate de controls. Outside a horn is sounding. Guess that'll be James Bond. She instructs me follow her down and wait at the bottom 'til the car drives away, saying we'll meet again later, entrance to the park, nine o clock. The park where I tried to... place of bad memories. She tells me keep the disk safe. As we descend the stairs I ask her how she's going to get away from MI6 clutches, and she says she can talk her way out of it, she trusts me more than them. Okay I say, nine o' clock it is, I'll be careful, you gotta do the same. Nice jag she drives away in, man at the wheel has a face like steamed vegetable puddin'. Wonder if she'd choose me over him? Not if I don't get a change of clothes.
Chapter 7
Chapter 7 - Performance
Nick Commons spent the duration of the flight on his blackberry, adjusting his facebook page. Working for the MoD did not automatically mean he couldn’t maintain one, quite the opposite. Agents in the field were encouraged to seem as normal as possible. Commons knew he looked the part: his suit he’d ordered from a website recommended in GQ; he’d known instinctively that the cufflinks were a vulgar addition. Get your style kit out Nick, his boss had said- you’re going to Italy. Style, Nick felt, was something you carried in your head. The boss himself hadn’t a clue.
Nick had completed a degree in Politics and Italian at Cambridge. First class honours. His parents had both worked for the British Council and Nick himself had spent his childhood in first St Petersburg and then Rome before going to St Paul’s to finish his education in London. He had always excelled at passing exams, was well muscled and an accomplished rugby player. After University it was the natural thing for him to apply to the MoD. He lived in his parents flat in London until he could afford his own place. He had a girlfriend, Lucia, who was half Italian and worked for a PR firm. On a typical evening out they ate at a restaurant recommended in one of the Sunday supplements, then went to the cinema on Regents Road. Not that either of them had much leisure time. For their ample salaries, both had to put in long hours, and of course there was travel involved. Sometimes they didn’t see each other for a week or even ten days. But they both reflected that this was probably a good thing. For one thing the sex was still electric. They were magnetized by the force of each other’s bodies, carried by the undercurrents of the great city on whose waves they soared.
At the airport at Capodichino Nick was picked up by the Embassy merc. As they drove in to the centre of Napoli he chatted to the driver, Johnny Salisbury. Salisbury, he’d been informed, was an old hand in Italy and ‘knew everything about the country’, as he was proving by telling Nick ‘they’d fucked up again’.
'They always do don’t they.'
'Oh yes. You can’t beat Italy for laughs.'
'So do you miss the Cavalier?'
'Don’t worry old son, he’ll be back. Merry go round isn’t it, Italian politics. Just like children. Stop the ride, change direction, climb on again. Back home you expect them at least to be pushing more or less the same levers. Here they all fight their own daft little corners, and whoah, what a surprise, absolutely nothing gets done.'
'Not since Mussolini.'
'Ha, ha, don’t let anyone hear you saying that. We’ll be accused of plotting a fascist coup.'
'You’re not being tapped are you?'
'Oh God the Yanks can probably hear every word we’re saying. You want to see the satellite gubbins they’ve got out at their base. Jesus- I bet they could take this merc out with one flick of a switch if they fancied.'
Nick smiled to himself and pretended to look out the passenger seat window. Salisbury was a typical old stager. Full of bluster – way out of the loop – left with his assumptions. He probably read Graham Greene novels and listened to World Service.
'Where am I meeting them?'
'Sorry?' Salisbury was busy chuckling to himself at the driving standards.
'I’m supposed to be meeting my Italian counterpart tonight.'
'Oh. Really? First I heard. And what is your job exactly? Just kidding. Yes, yes…' He tailed off vaguely as a pair of motorbikes whizzed by in the poorly lit street. 'Security of course, is not an area the Italians like to discuss with us.'
'Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve had a fairly frank exchange of e-mails with their top man-'
'Frank?' Salisbury sucked in his breath. 'In that case he must be a fascist.'
Commons could feel himself losing patience.
'I’ll page him myself.' He took out his blackberry and scrolled through the contact list.
'Please yourself. But you’d be better waiting til we get to the Embassy. Someone there’ll know the guy you’re looking for.'
'Unfortunately Security service business isn’t a matter for public consumption. As far as I’m aware, you were designated to set up a meeting for me.'
'Do you think it’s my fault if they’re not willing to go through me?'
'As I said, I’ll do it myself.'
They drove the rest of the way in silence, until the merc rolled to a halt outside the Embassy building in one of the city’s most exclusive shopping streets. Salisbury and Commons both slammed their doors as they got out.
'Stop.'
Mina braked so sharply that the cds on her dashboard jumped forward and then bounced back on to the floor.
'Thanks for the warning.'
'Pavarotti's not bad, but you wanna get some Fela Kuti on you stereo.'
Ignoring him Mina pulled the Fiat in next to the wall – there was no pavement, just dusty ground scattered with the odd piece of rubbish.
'Where is it?
'You go down there a little'. He pointed to an opening in the wall where a disused looking road led to some warehouses. On one side of the lane were more market gardens. On the other, an area of wasteground where construction machinery lay idle, a sight so emblematic of Southern Italy the tourist boards should put it on postcards. 'Behind that is Ercolano.' Ransom indicated the other side of the wasteground where a mini cliff rose up with houses on top - 'that’s where I ran when they came lookin’ for me. Across there – with it all open and bare and I was sure they were gonna shoot me but they must have thought they could catch me cos they were on bikes. But I reached the other side and scrambled up – don’t look like you can from here but actual fact there are plenty tree roots for hold onto. An’ then I got lucky, there’s a hole in the fence – and suddenly chickens are going mad all around me clucking and squawking – sure left a trail alright – other side the houses look right down onto the ruins, it's not difficult to jump fence and get in. I thought I could lose them ok once I got in amongst the tunnels but those boys were like dogs with bones and Ransome had to dive not knowing if that would be the end of him. Lucky thing I come up not too far from yours truly.'
'And the rest is history.'
'You sure you wanna do this?'
'That’s the tree isn’t it?' In the corner of the scrub patch nearest the warehouse, a solitary Mediterranean pine stood. From where they were, looking through the car’s dirt spattered windscreen, the sun was hanging just behind the tree’s outline.
'Exactly.'
'Ok, you wait here.'
'Be careful.'
'Don’t go for a joyride.'
Mina walked down the road deliberately slowly, stopping every so often to survey the view. She had the natural cover of tourism if anyone asked what she was doing: looking for the scavi, taken a wrong turning- that couldn’t fail. Ahead of her she could see a van pulled up in front of the warehouse. Ransome had told her she might see one or two of the other Africans sitting out in the yard, though almost certainly at this time they would be out on the street trying to sell. The presence of the van was unexpected. It was facing towards her and as she drew closer she saw there was a man in the front seat. He must have spotted her, and now it was too late to turn back without looking unnatural. She steeled herself and walked brazenly up to the window, smiling at the man who glowered down at her.
'Scusi, si puo andare.' She let her English accent show.
He continued to stare at her, then launched into an anti-tourist diatribe in thick dialect, of which she understood about half. She went through the options in her head. If she retraced her steps, she was still no nearer getting to the tree. Unless… she dug her wallet out and, yes, there it was, her old student card still intact. She showed him it, and started spinning the story, rediscovering the gift she had possessed since she was a child. She wished she had worn more revealing clothing – as it was she only had her eyelashes to assist – but even so she could tell he was listening. It was just unlikely enough to be plausible, an inter-university research project to survey ecological damage in the bay of Naples... they needed to sample different natural environments at various distances from the shore. She felt herself believing her own story, the sign of the best lies. When she asked him exactly how far they were from the shore and his brow started furrowing in calculation she knew she was on the way to convincing him. A slow smile was spreading across his unshaven jowls.
'Femmene, ciucce e crape teneno 'e stessi ccape!'. The fact that she’d stimulated him to one of the proverbs of his city – put her in his favour. What harm was she doing, measuring trees? All you seemed to hear about these days were deaths. Just that Sunday, Ciccio Pannone had been shot outside the church after his daughter’s wedding. Ercolano was getting more dangerous each day as the clan wars spread. Even this job he was doing, whatever it was about, Genco Della Sabbia would have to line himself up with one side or another. There was no stability any more – if only he could be paid for measuring trees…
He escorted the woman down to the corner of the yard and watched her as she advanced towards the pine – a fine old plant it was too – funny that it hadn’t been chopped down. She was lucky to get in now, with her measuring tools, except she didn’t seem to have any…
Oh crap, how could she make him stop watching her? What a ludicrous idea anyway, ecological research, here… Nico would have laughed. She put her hand out and touched the bark, making a show of examining it close up. Then she crouched down and, feeling absurd, tried to embrace the trunk. She could feel his eyes boring down on her
'Too wide'. She turned and smiled. He narrowed his eyes. She stood again and walked round to the other side, in the shadow of the wall. Immediately she saw the hollow, and, in the near darkness, something white. She reached in and grabbed it, making sure nothing fell out. The bag was quite light – she risked a glance inside and saw the pouches tied together with elastic bands. Too big to go in her pockets – how could she get them away? If only she’d thought to wear her jacket then she could have stuffed it inside. But she only had her shirt and jeans on. He was coming closer, footsteps on the gravel. She stuffed the bag back in and came out in front of the tree again, gazing up into the branches.
'Do you see those markings?'
She was desperate to stop him going round the back.
'Where?'
'Look, up on the trunk above the first branches.'
'Oh yes, I see them.'
God, just her luck. A gang member who was interested in botany. She racked her brain for an idea.
'They are, er, evidence of owls.'
'My son likes owls.'
'Really.'
The conversation was becoming strained. She had a brainwave.
'Could I borrow a light?'
'Do you smoke?'
'It’s for a test.' Her heart was beating fast now.
'Wait.' He tramped back up the slope towards the yard where the van was parked. Bingo. Mina had a chance. She tore the bag out again and tipped the disc pouches onto the ground. There were two stacks of about fifteen bound lengthways. She took the band off one of the stacks and started stuffing the pouches down her left trouserleg until they were all inside. Then she did the same with the other. She heard a door slam. He was coming back. She rose to her feet and three pouches promptly slipped out onto the ground. She pulled her socks up over the bottoms of her jeans and rammed the last ones back inside just as he came round the gate post. The carrier bag floated towards him and he kicked it out the way as he covered the last steps and offered her the lighter.
'For your experiment.'
'Grazie.'
What to do now? She looked up again into the branches.
'Can you break me off a branch please. I want to see how well it burns.'
He looked at her and she could feel his suspicion.
'It’s the quickest way to test how dry the wood is.'
'It's dry.' He said simply. And clearly it was. There had been no rain all through September. She played her last card.
'Polluted wood won’t burn. If it burns well, the wood is healthy.'
He shook his head, as though to dismiss her as mentally retarded.
'Please.'
He shrugged, stepped forward and reaching up, snapped off one of the thinnest pine branches and placed it down in front of her. She picked up the old newspaper that she’d spotted on the ground, and ripped out some pages. She made a little pile underneath and around the branch, conscious of him watching her all the time. Finally she lit the papers. They burst into flame. She stepped back, aware there was no way the fire would last long enough to allow the branch to catch. Sure enough, soon the pages wrinkled in on themselves and the flame died, with the wood barely blackened.
'That’s not how you make a fire.'
She nodded, trying to look as naive as she could.
'You need some petrol.'
She froze. Not three feet away from them on the dusty ground lay one of the DVDs, the recent Hollywood version of Spiderman. He followed the direction of her eyes.
'What’s this?' He bent down and picked up the disc, examined it, and stared at her again. 'Is this yours?'
'No.' She feigned unconcern. 'Look, don’t worry about the petrol. I need to come back with more research equipment.'
'Which University did you say you’re from?'
'Glasgow. But this project is an international collaboration.'
He had extracted the disc from its pouch and was spinning it round his sausage-like finger.
'Why did you come here?'
'Napoli is…an area of ecological concern.'
'I don’t mean to Napoli. I mean right here.'
'I saw that tree and -'
'Do you know him? He pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. She could tell from the shirt that the photo was of Ransome.
'No. Should I?'
He looked her body up and down. The jeans tucked into her socks must look ridiculous, she realised. Even the most style-bereft tourists, the socks and sandals brigade, didn’t adopt that particular fashion.
'Have you finished your research,' he asked finally.
'Yes. I don’t think this tree is polluted in fact.'
'Everything is polluted here.'
She chose to ignore his comment.
'Thank you for your help.'
He did not reply, but she could feel him watching her as she moved up the slope into the yard and back along the track towards the main road. She prayed that the presence of the plastic pouches wouldn’t show in her walk. When she was halfway back to the car he shouted something in dialect which she could only just make out.
‘chi pazzea cu’ ‘o mulo nun le manca ‘nu caucio ‘nculo.
It was only after, in the car, when she’d got over the fact that Ransome was driving and settled into silence, that she realised what it meant. He who plays with the donkey doesn’t fail to get a kick in the arse. A donkey kicks you. A fire burns you… she thought of the glint of metal she'd seen poking out of the pocket of the man’s red trousers – completing the chain was all too easy…
When she unlocked the door of her flat she motioned for Ransome to wait in silence on the landing. Outbreaks of giggling from the bedroom of Luca and Allesandra- the coast was clear. She beckoned Ransome into her bedroom, where clothes were strewn about the floor because she’d never got round to acquiring a washing basket. Then there was all the stuff she’d amassed from the treasure trove of the centro storico: an old sewing machine, art prints that lay scattered about waiting to be hung when suitable frames could be found, books and papers, a Japanese vase with a single withering rose presented to her by a street seller; various packets of seeds and plant pots for the basket she was going to hang out the window; a one-eyed bear she’d had since she was a child... The shutters were down so she switched the light on. The whole scene was illuminated by a seedy red glow – she noticed a pair of Nico’s cartoon boxer shorts poking out from under the rug. Ransome’s attention had focused on a half finished joint laid across the top of a mug:
'You smoke?'
'Hardly at all. Last night I was feeling like shit'
'You ain’t no angel are you.'
She ignored him so he sat down on the bed while she set up the DVD player. All the discs looked ordinary enough – a mixture of Italian and the latest Hollywood cinema releases. It was beginning to look like a false trail. But they would have to watch and see. No way she was wasting the risk she’d taken. Suddenly she remembered-
'Shit.'
'What’s up?'
'I’ve got to teach.' Her private lesson with the kids on Via Roma. Three hours, two of English and one of French, which brought in a handy sixty euros, a sum that could go a long way in Napoli.
'Look, here’s the remote, you know how to work it don’t you.'
'Sure.'
She went through to the kitchen – scene of last night’s horrors - and reheated some coffee for a quick shot. There was no time to eat so she grabbed the car keys from the table top – glancing at the rota on the fridge which told her she should have cleaned the bathroom that morning – and went back into the room. Ransome had taken his sandals off and was sitting cross-legged on her bed in front of the TV.
'I’m going to lock the door. Here, put these in' – she yanked the headphones out of her cd player and tossed them over to him. 'Nobody can know you’re in here.'
He nodded. 'When you coming back?'
'By five. Which’ll give you plenty of time to find whatever’s on those films.'
'I can stay here?'
'Just this afternoon.'
'Thanks.'
'Ciao.' She turned the key to lock him in. So this was how a prison guard felt. Not that a guard would lock the prisoner in their own bedroom.
Nick Commons spent the duration of the flight on his blackberry, adjusting his facebook page. Working for the MoD did not automatically mean he couldn’t maintain one, quite the opposite. Agents in the field were encouraged to seem as normal as possible. Commons knew he looked the part: his suit he’d ordered from a website recommended in GQ; he’d known instinctively that the cufflinks were a vulgar addition. Get your style kit out Nick, his boss had said- you’re going to Italy. Style, Nick felt, was something you carried in your head. The boss himself hadn’t a clue.
Nick had completed a degree in Politics and Italian at Cambridge. First class honours. His parents had both worked for the British Council and Nick himself had spent his childhood in first St Petersburg and then Rome before going to St Paul’s to finish his education in London. He had always excelled at passing exams, was well muscled and an accomplished rugby player. After University it was the natural thing for him to apply to the MoD. He lived in his parents flat in London until he could afford his own place. He had a girlfriend, Lucia, who was half Italian and worked for a PR firm. On a typical evening out they ate at a restaurant recommended in one of the Sunday supplements, then went to the cinema on Regents Road. Not that either of them had much leisure time. For their ample salaries, both had to put in long hours, and of course there was travel involved. Sometimes they didn’t see each other for a week or even ten days. But they both reflected that this was probably a good thing. For one thing the sex was still electric. They were magnetized by the force of each other’s bodies, carried by the undercurrents of the great city on whose waves they soared.
At the airport at Capodichino Nick was picked up by the Embassy merc. As they drove in to the centre of Napoli he chatted to the driver, Johnny Salisbury. Salisbury, he’d been informed, was an old hand in Italy and ‘knew everything about the country’, as he was proving by telling Nick ‘they’d fucked up again’.
'They always do don’t they.'
'Oh yes. You can’t beat Italy for laughs.'
'So do you miss the Cavalier?'
'Don’t worry old son, he’ll be back. Merry go round isn’t it, Italian politics. Just like children. Stop the ride, change direction, climb on again. Back home you expect them at least to be pushing more or less the same levers. Here they all fight their own daft little corners, and whoah, what a surprise, absolutely nothing gets done.'
'Not since Mussolini.'
'Ha, ha, don’t let anyone hear you saying that. We’ll be accused of plotting a fascist coup.'
'You’re not being tapped are you?'
'Oh God the Yanks can probably hear every word we’re saying. You want to see the satellite gubbins they’ve got out at their base. Jesus- I bet they could take this merc out with one flick of a switch if they fancied.'
Nick smiled to himself and pretended to look out the passenger seat window. Salisbury was a typical old stager. Full of bluster – way out of the loop – left with his assumptions. He probably read Graham Greene novels and listened to World Service.
'Where am I meeting them?'
'Sorry?' Salisbury was busy chuckling to himself at the driving standards.
'I’m supposed to be meeting my Italian counterpart tonight.'
'Oh. Really? First I heard. And what is your job exactly? Just kidding. Yes, yes…' He tailed off vaguely as a pair of motorbikes whizzed by in the poorly lit street. 'Security of course, is not an area the Italians like to discuss with us.'
'Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve had a fairly frank exchange of e-mails with their top man-'
'Frank?' Salisbury sucked in his breath. 'In that case he must be a fascist.'
Commons could feel himself losing patience.
'I’ll page him myself.' He took out his blackberry and scrolled through the contact list.
'Please yourself. But you’d be better waiting til we get to the Embassy. Someone there’ll know the guy you’re looking for.'
'Unfortunately Security service business isn’t a matter for public consumption. As far as I’m aware, you were designated to set up a meeting for me.'
'Do you think it’s my fault if they’re not willing to go through me?'
'As I said, I’ll do it myself.'
They drove the rest of the way in silence, until the merc rolled to a halt outside the Embassy building in one of the city’s most exclusive shopping streets. Salisbury and Commons both slammed their doors as they got out.
'Stop.'
Mina braked so sharply that the cds on her dashboard jumped forward and then bounced back on to the floor.
'Thanks for the warning.'
'Pavarotti's not bad, but you wanna get some Fela Kuti on you stereo.'
Ignoring him Mina pulled the Fiat in next to the wall – there was no pavement, just dusty ground scattered with the odd piece of rubbish.
'Where is it?
'You go down there a little'. He pointed to an opening in the wall where a disused looking road led to some warehouses. On one side of the lane were more market gardens. On the other, an area of wasteground where construction machinery lay idle, a sight so emblematic of Southern Italy the tourist boards should put it on postcards. 'Behind that is Ercolano.' Ransom indicated the other side of the wasteground where a mini cliff rose up with houses on top - 'that’s where I ran when they came lookin’ for me. Across there – with it all open and bare and I was sure they were gonna shoot me but they must have thought they could catch me cos they were on bikes. But I reached the other side and scrambled up – don’t look like you can from here but actual fact there are plenty tree roots for hold onto. An’ then I got lucky, there’s a hole in the fence – and suddenly chickens are going mad all around me clucking and squawking – sure left a trail alright – other side the houses look right down onto the ruins, it's not difficult to jump fence and get in. I thought I could lose them ok once I got in amongst the tunnels but those boys were like dogs with bones and Ransome had to dive not knowing if that would be the end of him. Lucky thing I come up not too far from yours truly.'
'And the rest is history.'
'You sure you wanna do this?'
'That’s the tree isn’t it?' In the corner of the scrub patch nearest the warehouse, a solitary Mediterranean pine stood. From where they were, looking through the car’s dirt spattered windscreen, the sun was hanging just behind the tree’s outline.
'Exactly.'
'Ok, you wait here.'
'Be careful.'
'Don’t go for a joyride.'
Mina walked down the road deliberately slowly, stopping every so often to survey the view. She had the natural cover of tourism if anyone asked what she was doing: looking for the scavi, taken a wrong turning- that couldn’t fail. Ahead of her she could see a van pulled up in front of the warehouse. Ransome had told her she might see one or two of the other Africans sitting out in the yard, though almost certainly at this time they would be out on the street trying to sell. The presence of the van was unexpected. It was facing towards her and as she drew closer she saw there was a man in the front seat. He must have spotted her, and now it was too late to turn back without looking unnatural. She steeled herself and walked brazenly up to the window, smiling at the man who glowered down at her.
'Scusi, si puo andare.' She let her English accent show.
He continued to stare at her, then launched into an anti-tourist diatribe in thick dialect, of which she understood about half. She went through the options in her head. If she retraced her steps, she was still no nearer getting to the tree. Unless… she dug her wallet out and, yes, there it was, her old student card still intact. She showed him it, and started spinning the story, rediscovering the gift she had possessed since she was a child. She wished she had worn more revealing clothing – as it was she only had her eyelashes to assist – but even so she could tell he was listening. It was just unlikely enough to be plausible, an inter-university research project to survey ecological damage in the bay of Naples... they needed to sample different natural environments at various distances from the shore. She felt herself believing her own story, the sign of the best lies. When she asked him exactly how far they were from the shore and his brow started furrowing in calculation she knew she was on the way to convincing him. A slow smile was spreading across his unshaven jowls.
'Femmene, ciucce e crape teneno 'e stessi ccape!'. The fact that she’d stimulated him to one of the proverbs of his city – put her in his favour. What harm was she doing, measuring trees? All you seemed to hear about these days were deaths. Just that Sunday, Ciccio Pannone had been shot outside the church after his daughter’s wedding. Ercolano was getting more dangerous each day as the clan wars spread. Even this job he was doing, whatever it was about, Genco Della Sabbia would have to line himself up with one side or another. There was no stability any more – if only he could be paid for measuring trees…
He escorted the woman down to the corner of the yard and watched her as she advanced towards the pine – a fine old plant it was too – funny that it hadn’t been chopped down. She was lucky to get in now, with her measuring tools, except she didn’t seem to have any…
Oh crap, how could she make him stop watching her? What a ludicrous idea anyway, ecological research, here… Nico would have laughed. She put her hand out and touched the bark, making a show of examining it close up. Then she crouched down and, feeling absurd, tried to embrace the trunk. She could feel his eyes boring down on her
'Too wide'. She turned and smiled. He narrowed his eyes. She stood again and walked round to the other side, in the shadow of the wall. Immediately she saw the hollow, and, in the near darkness, something white. She reached in and grabbed it, making sure nothing fell out. The bag was quite light – she risked a glance inside and saw the pouches tied together with elastic bands. Too big to go in her pockets – how could she get them away? If only she’d thought to wear her jacket then she could have stuffed it inside. But she only had her shirt and jeans on. He was coming closer, footsteps on the gravel. She stuffed the bag back in and came out in front of the tree again, gazing up into the branches.
'Do you see those markings?'
She was desperate to stop him going round the back.
'Where?'
'Look, up on the trunk above the first branches.'
'Oh yes, I see them.'
God, just her luck. A gang member who was interested in botany. She racked her brain for an idea.
'They are, er, evidence of owls.'
'My son likes owls.'
'Really.'
The conversation was becoming strained. She had a brainwave.
'Could I borrow a light?'
'Do you smoke?'
'It’s for a test.' Her heart was beating fast now.
'Wait.' He tramped back up the slope towards the yard where the van was parked. Bingo. Mina had a chance. She tore the bag out again and tipped the disc pouches onto the ground. There were two stacks of about fifteen bound lengthways. She took the band off one of the stacks and started stuffing the pouches down her left trouserleg until they were all inside. Then she did the same with the other. She heard a door slam. He was coming back. She rose to her feet and three pouches promptly slipped out onto the ground. She pulled her socks up over the bottoms of her jeans and rammed the last ones back inside just as he came round the gate post. The carrier bag floated towards him and he kicked it out the way as he covered the last steps and offered her the lighter.
'For your experiment.'
'Grazie.'
What to do now? She looked up again into the branches.
'Can you break me off a branch please. I want to see how well it burns.'
He looked at her and she could feel his suspicion.
'It’s the quickest way to test how dry the wood is.'
'It's dry.' He said simply. And clearly it was. There had been no rain all through September. She played her last card.
'Polluted wood won’t burn. If it burns well, the wood is healthy.'
He shook his head, as though to dismiss her as mentally retarded.
'Please.'
He shrugged, stepped forward and reaching up, snapped off one of the thinnest pine branches and placed it down in front of her. She picked up the old newspaper that she’d spotted on the ground, and ripped out some pages. She made a little pile underneath and around the branch, conscious of him watching her all the time. Finally she lit the papers. They burst into flame. She stepped back, aware there was no way the fire would last long enough to allow the branch to catch. Sure enough, soon the pages wrinkled in on themselves and the flame died, with the wood barely blackened.
'That’s not how you make a fire.'
She nodded, trying to look as naive as she could.
'You need some petrol.'
She froze. Not three feet away from them on the dusty ground lay one of the DVDs, the recent Hollywood version of Spiderman. He followed the direction of her eyes.
'What’s this?' He bent down and picked up the disc, examined it, and stared at her again. 'Is this yours?'
'No.' She feigned unconcern. 'Look, don’t worry about the petrol. I need to come back with more research equipment.'
'Which University did you say you’re from?'
'Glasgow. But this project is an international collaboration.'
He had extracted the disc from its pouch and was spinning it round his sausage-like finger.
'Why did you come here?'
'Napoli is…an area of ecological concern.'
'I don’t mean to Napoli. I mean right here.'
'I saw that tree and -'
'Do you know him? He pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. She could tell from the shirt that the photo was of Ransome.
'No. Should I?'
He looked her body up and down. The jeans tucked into her socks must look ridiculous, she realised. Even the most style-bereft tourists, the socks and sandals brigade, didn’t adopt that particular fashion.
'Have you finished your research,' he asked finally.
'Yes. I don’t think this tree is polluted in fact.'
'Everything is polluted here.'
She chose to ignore his comment.
'Thank you for your help.'
He did not reply, but she could feel him watching her as she moved up the slope into the yard and back along the track towards the main road. She prayed that the presence of the plastic pouches wouldn’t show in her walk. When she was halfway back to the car he shouted something in dialect which she could only just make out.
‘chi pazzea cu’ ‘o mulo nun le manca ‘nu caucio ‘nculo.
It was only after, in the car, when she’d got over the fact that Ransome was driving and settled into silence, that she realised what it meant. He who plays with the donkey doesn’t fail to get a kick in the arse. A donkey kicks you. A fire burns you… she thought of the glint of metal she'd seen poking out of the pocket of the man’s red trousers – completing the chain was all too easy…
When she unlocked the door of her flat she motioned for Ransome to wait in silence on the landing. Outbreaks of giggling from the bedroom of Luca and Allesandra- the coast was clear. She beckoned Ransome into her bedroom, where clothes were strewn about the floor because she’d never got round to acquiring a washing basket. Then there was all the stuff she’d amassed from the treasure trove of the centro storico: an old sewing machine, art prints that lay scattered about waiting to be hung when suitable frames could be found, books and papers, a Japanese vase with a single withering rose presented to her by a street seller; various packets of seeds and plant pots for the basket she was going to hang out the window; a one-eyed bear she’d had since she was a child... The shutters were down so she switched the light on. The whole scene was illuminated by a seedy red glow – she noticed a pair of Nico’s cartoon boxer shorts poking out from under the rug. Ransome’s attention had focused on a half finished joint laid across the top of a mug:
'You smoke?'
'Hardly at all. Last night I was feeling like shit'
'You ain’t no angel are you.'
She ignored him so he sat down on the bed while she set up the DVD player. All the discs looked ordinary enough – a mixture of Italian and the latest Hollywood cinema releases. It was beginning to look like a false trail. But they would have to watch and see. No way she was wasting the risk she’d taken. Suddenly she remembered-
'Shit.'
'What’s up?'
'I’ve got to teach.' Her private lesson with the kids on Via Roma. Three hours, two of English and one of French, which brought in a handy sixty euros, a sum that could go a long way in Napoli.
'Look, here’s the remote, you know how to work it don’t you.'
'Sure.'
She went through to the kitchen – scene of last night’s horrors - and reheated some coffee for a quick shot. There was no time to eat so she grabbed the car keys from the table top – glancing at the rota on the fridge which told her she should have cleaned the bathroom that morning – and went back into the room. Ransome had taken his sandals off and was sitting cross-legged on her bed in front of the TV.
'I’m going to lock the door. Here, put these in' – she yanked the headphones out of her cd player and tossed them over to him. 'Nobody can know you’re in here.'
He nodded. 'When you coming back?'
'By five. Which’ll give you plenty of time to find whatever’s on those films.'
'I can stay here?'
'Just this afternoon.'
'Thanks.'
'Ciao.' She turned the key to lock him in. So this was how a prison guard felt. Not that a guard would lock the prisoner in their own bedroom.
Chapter 6 - La Strada
‘You’d like to have a mission wouldn’t you?’ Salvatore’s brother Mimmo let the cigarette smoke billow out of his mouth. They were both on the balcony, lounging on chairs. Salvatore had been showing Mimmo the comic book he’d been reading, but after a few seconds Mimmo had leaned over and closed the book.
‘You don’t want to read comic books all your life.’
‘What mission, Mimmo?’
‘How old are you?’
‘You know I’m ten’
‘But it’s not your age that matters. What matters is, are you a man?’
‘I’m a man.’
‘Are you strong?’
‘Yes.’ Salvator flexed his muscles and did his impression of a boxing commentator – ‘in the red corner, the undefeated heavyweight champion, fifty one fights, fifty one victories, forty nine of them by knockout…’ The old woman hanging out washing on the balcony opposite screeched at him that her mother was trying to sleep.
‘You’d better go and check the old bat’s still alive’, Mimmo shouted back.
She muttered something.
‘What was that?’
She didn’t answer. Instead she took a yellow bedsheet and billowed it out into space, alarming a black and white cat passing below.
‘Why is she scared of you Mimmo?’
‘Because she respects me. One day you’ll have that respect too.’
Salvatore wasn’t sure he wanted respect. He didn’t like the men that came to the doorway on the vicolo sometimes and asked for Mimmo. The older ones growled like bears and had cold eyes. The younger ones always wore sunglasses that reflected the light and looked through him as though he wasn’t there.
‘Come on, we’re going on Killer,’ Mimmo interrupted his thoughts.
‘Great. Va va Voom! Can I drive?’
‘Did I say I wanted to die?’
‘Should I wear the helmet?’
‘I thought you said you were a man.’
‘Ok, no helmet.’
Salvatore followed Mimmo inside. He could hardly see a thing, it was so dark after the bright sun on the balcony. He grabbed his denim jacket that was flung across the back of a chair, opened the cupboard and took a spoonful of chocolate spread out the tub.
‘HURRY UP!’
‘Coming Mimmo.’
Salvatore’s Mum came into the kitchen with a basket of washing. She put it down and glared at Mimmo.
‘Where are you taking him?’
‘We’re just going out. I’m his brother. His father’s not here so it’s my job to show him things.’
Ignoring Mimmo his mum grabbed Salvatore’s arm and held it, forcing him to look into her eyes. Salvatore noticed they had dark rings round them like a panda, and she had a bruise turning purple on her cheekbone.
‘I don’t want you turning out like him,’ she whispered. ‘If you go out now you’re to go to school tomorrow, you hear.’
‘There’s no school tomorrow, the water’s bad.’
Salvatore was telling the truth. Someone at the water company had added ten times the right amount of a nitrate chemical into the supply.
‘Well when there is school you’re to go, and work.’
‘Yes Mum.’ Salvatore took advantage of a relaxation in her grip to wrench free. He ran down the stone steps after Mimmo. He wasn’t going to stay in all afternoon, helping his Mum hang out washing.
‘Killer, killer, killer’, he shouted. He liked the sound of the word. It was the only English he knew. Mimmo’s beloved motor scooter was waiting for him in the tiny courtyard, revving with anger and power. No sooner had he climbed on than they roared out through the arch into the street.
‘If you find him, you phone me ok.’
Salvatore looked at the photo. To him the black guy looked pretty much like any of the Africans who sold stuff on the streets all over Napoli, especially around the station.
‘How will I find him?’
‘He’s in Portici or Ercolano. You know where they sell pirate stuff round here. Ask around.'
'Why?'
‘Don’t ask why. That’s just your mission.'
'Do you know why?'
'Of course I do.'
Mimmo’s answer was sharp. On the bike they’d gone up to the Circumvesuviana station at Ercolano and waited until a man who Salvatore vaguely recognized had pulled up in a car. Mimmo had asked Salvatore to wait while he went over and spoke to the man through the window. Something had been handed over and then the car had driven off. Now he was holding a sheet of paper with a colour printout of a digital photo on it. The quality wasn’t great but the guy looked scared, as though he was cornered. The background was dark and it looked like a flash had been used. Mimmo had other copies of the same sheet and he gave Salvatore two more –
'Take these to Nello and Franco’s shops, then start looking yourself.'
He turned the keys and the bike’s engine started revving.
'Where are you going?'
'I’ve got other stuff to do.'
'What’s his name?'
But Mimmo was already speeding away across the asphalt. On the other side of a mesh fence the Vesuviana clattered out of a tunnel on its way round to Pompei. Salvatore had never visited the ruins but he knew when he saw a tourist that was probably where they were going.
'So where exactly did you hide them?'
They were driving along the cobbled road that followed the seafront a few hundred metres to the right. Passing some cultivated gardens Mina saw an old man carrying a rake disappear under a canvas awning. Here at least, life was carrying on as it had for centuries. That was the paradox of Napoli’s suburban sprawl: in amongst the madness of trade at its frenzied, unregulated height, you had people still growing oranges on patches of land their family had owned for generations. Just a pity their soil was blighted by pollution from the rubber factory next door. The gardens finished and were replaced by an immaculate modern hotel complex with rolling lawns tended by sprinklers. Needless to say the wall that had stood for generations wasn’t enough – a high fence laced with the wires of an alarm system kept unwelcome visitors out. Who would own a place like this? If she was with Nico he might have been able to tell her which local boss had his finger in the pie, but now, without him, she was none the wiser. This clan at war with that, alliances formed and broken – but what it came down to was one senseless death after another – and over it all hung the refrain you could always use to play the whole thing down: si ammazzano fra loro- they kill amongst themselves. It was true to an extent: innocents died – family members fair game for vendetta – but outsiders would have to do something special to get involved. The engine of violence was propelled too much by the logic of the past to admit strangers into its ritual sacrifice.
And that was the puzzle? Why would they chase an African? Had he raped one of their daughters?
He was looking out the window anxiously.
'They are gonna be looking for me.'
It made sense. If they thought he had something people would be watching the squat, even if they’d already searched there.
'But it’s not at the factory, right?'
'Yes and no. They looked in the building. But outside, there's a wall at the back and a big tree at the corner with rubbish all dumped round it. The DVD’s are inside the tree in a yellow bag.
'I’ll get them.'
'You?'
'They won’t recognize me.'
'It’s dangerous.'
'It was dangerous when you tried to mug me.'
'Not really, I was only gonna take your bag.'
'And how was I supposed to know that. Anyway that’s what I’ll be doing. Just picking up a bag, right?'
'I should go.'
Who wins that argument? The muscled athlete who was gonna be a football star, or the skinny English Scottish woman who just left the car with keys in the ignition and Ransome in the passenger seat. You guessed it, she is one crazy chick. Even now Ransome contemplates driving off. Sometimes you just gotta let your brain play with possibilities nevermind you know they are wrong. Remember now what my father said one period when he was clean: Ransome boy, you don’t know nothing about evil, then you don’t know nothing about good either. But this lady she just seem one hundred percent angel. Least Ransome can do when she come back is a bit of getaway driving.
‘You’d like to have a mission wouldn’t you?’ Salvatore’s brother Mimmo let the cigarette smoke billow out of his mouth. They were both on the balcony, lounging on chairs. Salvatore had been showing Mimmo the comic book he’d been reading, but after a few seconds Mimmo had leaned over and closed the book.
‘You don’t want to read comic books all your life.’
‘What mission, Mimmo?’
‘How old are you?’
‘You know I’m ten’
‘But it’s not your age that matters. What matters is, are you a man?’
‘I’m a man.’
‘Are you strong?’
‘Yes.’ Salvator flexed his muscles and did his impression of a boxing commentator – ‘in the red corner, the undefeated heavyweight champion, fifty one fights, fifty one victories, forty nine of them by knockout…’ The old woman hanging out washing on the balcony opposite screeched at him that her mother was trying to sleep.
‘You’d better go and check the old bat’s still alive’, Mimmo shouted back.
She muttered something.
‘What was that?’
She didn’t answer. Instead she took a yellow bedsheet and billowed it out into space, alarming a black and white cat passing below.
‘Why is she scared of you Mimmo?’
‘Because she respects me. One day you’ll have that respect too.’
Salvatore wasn’t sure he wanted respect. He didn’t like the men that came to the doorway on the vicolo sometimes and asked for Mimmo. The older ones growled like bears and had cold eyes. The younger ones always wore sunglasses that reflected the light and looked through him as though he wasn’t there.
‘Come on, we’re going on Killer,’ Mimmo interrupted his thoughts.
‘Great. Va va Voom! Can I drive?’
‘Did I say I wanted to die?’
‘Should I wear the helmet?’
‘I thought you said you were a man.’
‘Ok, no helmet.’
Salvatore followed Mimmo inside. He could hardly see a thing, it was so dark after the bright sun on the balcony. He grabbed his denim jacket that was flung across the back of a chair, opened the cupboard and took a spoonful of chocolate spread out the tub.
‘HURRY UP!’
‘Coming Mimmo.’
Salvatore’s Mum came into the kitchen with a basket of washing. She put it down and glared at Mimmo.
‘Where are you taking him?’
‘We’re just going out. I’m his brother. His father’s not here so it’s my job to show him things.’
Ignoring Mimmo his mum grabbed Salvatore’s arm and held it, forcing him to look into her eyes. Salvatore noticed they had dark rings round them like a panda, and she had a bruise turning purple on her cheekbone.
‘I don’t want you turning out like him,’ she whispered. ‘If you go out now you’re to go to school tomorrow, you hear.’
‘There’s no school tomorrow, the water’s bad.’
Salvatore was telling the truth. Someone at the water company had added ten times the right amount of a nitrate chemical into the supply.
‘Well when there is school you’re to go, and work.’
‘Yes Mum.’ Salvatore took advantage of a relaxation in her grip to wrench free. He ran down the stone steps after Mimmo. He wasn’t going to stay in all afternoon, helping his Mum hang out washing.
‘Killer, killer, killer’, he shouted. He liked the sound of the word. It was the only English he knew. Mimmo’s beloved motor scooter was waiting for him in the tiny courtyard, revving with anger and power. No sooner had he climbed on than they roared out through the arch into the street.
‘If you find him, you phone me ok.’
Salvatore looked at the photo. To him the black guy looked pretty much like any of the Africans who sold stuff on the streets all over Napoli, especially around the station.
‘How will I find him?’
‘He’s in Portici or Ercolano. You know where they sell pirate stuff round here. Ask around.'
'Why?'
‘Don’t ask why. That’s just your mission.'
'Do you know why?'
'Of course I do.'
Mimmo’s answer was sharp. On the bike they’d gone up to the Circumvesuviana station at Ercolano and waited until a man who Salvatore vaguely recognized had pulled up in a car. Mimmo had asked Salvatore to wait while he went over and spoke to the man through the window. Something had been handed over and then the car had driven off. Now he was holding a sheet of paper with a colour printout of a digital photo on it. The quality wasn’t great but the guy looked scared, as though he was cornered. The background was dark and it looked like a flash had been used. Mimmo had other copies of the same sheet and he gave Salvatore two more –
'Take these to Nello and Franco’s shops, then start looking yourself.'
He turned the keys and the bike’s engine started revving.
'Where are you going?'
'I’ve got other stuff to do.'
'What’s his name?'
But Mimmo was already speeding away across the asphalt. On the other side of a mesh fence the Vesuviana clattered out of a tunnel on its way round to Pompei. Salvatore had never visited the ruins but he knew when he saw a tourist that was probably where they were going.
'So where exactly did you hide them?'
They were driving along the cobbled road that followed the seafront a few hundred metres to the right. Passing some cultivated gardens Mina saw an old man carrying a rake disappear under a canvas awning. Here at least, life was carrying on as it had for centuries. That was the paradox of Napoli’s suburban sprawl: in amongst the madness of trade at its frenzied, unregulated height, you had people still growing oranges on patches of land their family had owned for generations. Just a pity their soil was blighted by pollution from the rubber factory next door. The gardens finished and were replaced by an immaculate modern hotel complex with rolling lawns tended by sprinklers. Needless to say the wall that had stood for generations wasn’t enough – a high fence laced with the wires of an alarm system kept unwelcome visitors out. Who would own a place like this? If she was with Nico he might have been able to tell her which local boss had his finger in the pie, but now, without him, she was none the wiser. This clan at war with that, alliances formed and broken – but what it came down to was one senseless death after another – and over it all hung the refrain you could always use to play the whole thing down: si ammazzano fra loro- they kill amongst themselves. It was true to an extent: innocents died – family members fair game for vendetta – but outsiders would have to do something special to get involved. The engine of violence was propelled too much by the logic of the past to admit strangers into its ritual sacrifice.
And that was the puzzle? Why would they chase an African? Had he raped one of their daughters?
He was looking out the window anxiously.
'They are gonna be looking for me.'
It made sense. If they thought he had something people would be watching the squat, even if they’d already searched there.
'But it’s not at the factory, right?'
'Yes and no. They looked in the building. But outside, there's a wall at the back and a big tree at the corner with rubbish all dumped round it. The DVD’s are inside the tree in a yellow bag.
'I’ll get them.'
'You?'
'They won’t recognize me.'
'It’s dangerous.'
'It was dangerous when you tried to mug me.'
'Not really, I was only gonna take your bag.'
'And how was I supposed to know that. Anyway that’s what I’ll be doing. Just picking up a bag, right?'
'I should go.'
Who wins that argument? The muscled athlete who was gonna be a football star, or the skinny English Scottish woman who just left the car with keys in the ignition and Ransome in the passenger seat. You guessed it, she is one crazy chick. Even now Ransome contemplates driving off. Sometimes you just gotta let your brain play with possibilities nevermind you know they are wrong. Remember now what my father said one period when he was clean: Ransome boy, you don’t know nothing about evil, then you don’t know nothing about good either. But this lady she just seem one hundred percent angel. Least Ransome can do when she come back is a bit of getaway driving.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 - Histories
'He said you’ve got something they want. What could it be?'
'I don’t know. I don’t have much things.'
'Tell me again why you - '
'I tell you - I was desperate and I did not think. I just come from crawling underground and … at that moment, I was only' – he bit his lips in the effort to explain – ' following an instinct for survival.'
'You needed money?'
'Sure. It’s money which make the world go round, innit. – Hey, why you laughing?'
'Innit.'
'Your accent is pretty funny too.'
'How did you learn English?'
'Everybody speaks English in Nigeria. But not like me. I pick up the language of music and film and literature, like what's it called, the bird that steals -'
'A magpie'.
'That's it: silver earring here, safety pin there. I gotta shine for shiny things, and some words got a kind of glitter, don’t you think?'
'So do you think they want you for your poetry?'
Ransome stirring another sugar into his cappuccino, thinking, is this real, him sitting at a table drinking from a neat little cup with Englishwoman? Barman’s eyes scoured them both, but not unfriendly, just curious. Now he must behave well as he can, not break the spell, and maybe she’ll offer him money.
'What do you have?'
He indicated his clothes.
'Do you have family here?'
'No. My family’s back in Nigeria. Just I came.'
'Why?'
Sucking in of breath. Long story and he doesn't like it, but Ransome tells her the whole tale: the English talentscout spotting him, talking up big the French team he work for and how he got a lot of potential – the English scout says puffing cigar on hotel veranda: ‘Ransome you are such a nippy bugger on the wing, I can see it now, your nickname’ll be the Gazelle. The fans’ll be chanting your name. Just sign here.’ So Ransome he sign and the family help him pay half of flight to London. He get there and like they say other scout waiting at Heathrow holding up a card. Next day they give him a suit of clothes and train ticket to South France on Eurostar no less. At station he phone number he got given and this guy turn up after long wait – they put his trunk in the back of a car and drive long time. Finally they come to a small town, he let off at big apartment block and told third floor room so and so. There he find four other Brothers sleeping on mattresses. Two from Congo, one Sierra Leone, one Gabon, they explain him how it works, you fight for place, if you good enough they pay you, otherwise forget it, if you’re lucky they’ll send you on another club to try again. Now Ransome he fine player in Rivers State league, but first training he see other brothas they nippy also and coach don’t pick him for top squad. Then reserve coach he real sonofabitch tell Ransome he not strong enough and send him to weights gym every day alone while others work with ball. This gym real old-fashioned place not hi-tech like you expect in Ee-You. Rusty ‘quipment, smelly sweat stains everywhere, the feel of loneliness with metal sound of de weights clangin’ hollowly. But Ransome he say, come on boy, you fight harder than you ever done before, you can do this – only second day, just him in there, he liftin’ bar multistacked up with kilograms- but his palms so slippery they can’t hold and it fall on his back. He trapped under it, callin’ out, but nobody hear him for a longtime. Club doctor when he see it says, this boy’ll not play again for…actual fact, he ain’t played since that day.
Via Roma: Two men get out of an alpha, both wearing expensive coats in sober shades. On the driver’s side, a smooth, tanned face, salt and pepper hair, opens the gate and shows the other man in –
In the garden the woman is sitting at a table alone. Her opaque wraparound sunglasses give her face an insectoid quality. She’s sipping coffee. A newspaper is open on the table before her.
They greet each other. Salt and pepper introduces the guest. They speak Italian, not dialect. The two men sit down at the table and the woman shouts in through the modern French windows for more coffee.
The guest speaks first, admiring the cornices above the windows of the villa.
‘This is one of the original Bourbon villas. It was built in the eighteenth century.’
‘It’s beautiful. Very beautiful.’ Limited expression range of the foreigner.
‘Thank you. I have had the pleasure of visiting your city. I stayed in…’ she listed a number of top hotels and the guest listened attentively, making comments every so often. The conversation had the feel of an interview granted - an audience with a reclusive poetess perhaps. A question on the importance of form over content wouldn’t have seemed out of place. But salt and pepper interrupted:
‘The negro got away.’
Silence. A sense of narrowing slits behind the shades.
‘You knew where he was squatting.’
‘He ran.’
‘Where?’
‘The scavi.’
‘And then?’
‘We don’t know. He dived.’
‘Dived?’
‘Into the waste channel. Don’t worry, we’ve got our own copy, remember. It is simply a case of finding out what he means.’
'It is the Lord’s will that we find out before anyone else.'
The guest, flashing a crocodile smile, interjected: 'It is a code. A fascinating puzzle to be honest.'
The woman glared at him.
'If it is so easy, why does no one have the answer?
'We have top scholars working on it, myself included.'
'Meanwhile another copy is loose on the streets.' It was salt and pepper's turn to feel the force of her disapproval.
'Come on! I hardly think an African is going to solve it first.'
Insect, and Salt and pepper looked at the guest, who was grinning broadly. He had been peering around the whole time they were talking, like someone on safari – over the woman’s shoulder into the shadowy rooms at the back of the house.
‘You must find it very interesting, living with all this history around you.’
'It’s fascinating', the woman replied. The only parts of her that moved were her thin, bloodless lips. The guest wondered what she enjoyed doing in her leisure time. No ideas immediately occurred to him. What a strange people they were. How serious, and how much they loved the misery of their way of life, so different from America’s clean opportunism. Something romantic about them. He guessed killing each other was what kept them going. It was as if they didn’t know life was there to be enjoyed. Enough money for a luxury yacht and they’d rather gild themselves in hideous mansions, in this hell of a place, not even travelling down the coast where at least you could get to the beaches. Crazy people – but he knew how to deal with them.
So how did you come to Napoli?
'T’aint much of a life wrapping sandwiches. You see them get sold four pounds a time for all hurrying people swinging laptop bags over there shoulders, take away to the office and eat at desks, pretty happy to be having healthy lunch. Maybe some folks they glean a satisfaction thinking me, I part of the drive for a healthy society, people eatin’ here what once would pack away bigmacs each day. Climb the old career ladder n’ that…but Ransome he got the formication thing…like ants in his pants- what he should think is- job London, shit pay but no matter, livin’ with a Brother who is assistant branch manager – his prospects could be lot lot worse after that weight crush his football dreams an’leave him with nothin’. Oh but no, he start goin’ to library man – is dangerous place that public library, an’ he starts readin’ books, gets out one book bout fall of the Roman Empire – ideas in there set to Ransome's head like a welding torch you see at roadworks, all hot and ready to melt the tar.'
'You mean Gibbon’s Decline and Fall -'
'That the one.'
'I had to read it for a course at University.'
'You gone to University?'
'Everyone with even half a brain does where I’m from. So you left the sandwich shop?'
'Half way through a chicken mayo wrap, some guy he asks me all sarky if I’m planning to finish it that week, so I tells him deadpan by end of that week I gonna put bomb on the tube which he take to work. That pretty much be the time when you gotta say a customer service job is not for you. Not to mention the boys in blue might pick me up and throw me in Guantanamo. So I walk out, pick up the money what I saved, and get buses all the way to Rome. Figures I, if all roads lead there bus is the way to go.'
'What did you think you’d do when you got there?'
'Little bit o’ sightseein’. Oh yeah, I did that. Even went in a few cafes like we are in now. Italians respect you no problem if you are well dressed an’ got money to pay yo’ bills. I hit a couple o’ clubs. Real dolchay veeta train I was riding for two days, but problems started when my suitcase got stolen from the hostel – suddenly you only got the clothes on your back and a wallet none too strong for thickness.'
He stopped. Telling his story was triggering such memories that he had to pause to let the images sift through his brain. She was impatient. There was still this mystery of something he had which she wanted to know about – .
'Maybe they just want to throw you out the country. Aren’t you -'
'Illegal' – he showed his white teeth in a short laugh – 'of course. Clandestino they call you here. Don’t know which I prefer.'
'Didn’t you get a Visa to come?'
'Fell for scouts trick, it was a tourist Visa, just one month. The French team if you do good they fix you up with necessary documents. One way I was lucky my injury come so quick. I got back to London with visa still ok – I just showed fake return to Lagos that the scout booked then cancelled.'
'But for Italy?'
'If I see any police I run.'
'Last night then. Wasn’t that why they were after you?'
'I don’t think so. Reason being, in my present abode I sure as certain ain’t the only one senza documenti. There is a six strong West Africa posse living in an old factory jus’ along by the sea there. Now, don’t you think it mighty curious they come only lookin’ for Ransome Ochikwe, askin’ the rest where Ransome is and not mindin’ that they are clutterin’ up Italy too and all hatchin’plans to bring their families over?'
'Could it be something to do with the terrorism threat? When you said you’d blow up the tube?'
'These were not English. English cops just shoot you, ask the questions after that. Oh he was the wrong man, oh well, never mind eh, we still basically gentlemen. No, these were real bad men, not Englishmen defending an empire in fine upstanding way.'
'Which takes us back to the question. What have you got that they would want?'
Ransome sighed, suddenly tired of all her questions.
'I told you, I don’t know.'
She had an idea.
'Let’s try something. Look, here’s some paper, and a pen' – she fished in her bag – 'now write down an inventory of all your possessions.'
He sucked the pen for a while and just gazed at the sheet. Had she assumed too much - that he could write just because he'd read Gibbon? Maybe he was embarrassed... but no, he was off - it didn't take long.
clothes
blanket
photo of my family
laptop computer
'You have a laptop?'
'Just kidding.' He put a lazy stroke though it.
'Blanket.'
'It's not even a flying one. I tried.'
'What about the photo?'
'You think the Italian mafia want a photo of Granma Ochikwe?'
'Well, are you sure that's all?'
'I have a phone card but no credit left. Can you believe they put a picture of bananas on jus' because it's for Africa?'
'One like this?' Mina pulled her wallet out and found the card she'd used before she bought an Italian mobile. 'It's not only Africa.'
'Well the guy in the shop didn't have to choose that one when I said Nigeria.'
'I think you're being paranoid.'
'Sorry, ok this is a very fair society.'
'How do you survive?'
He slapped his forehead. 'You're right, yeah. I still got plenty left in the bag.'
'Plenty what?'
'DVDs. I can sell 'em. Already shifted a few, enough for a decent feed two days straight.'
'Films?'
'Yeah, pirate copies. Some boy - what do you say - from the computer.'
'Burns them?'
'That's it. Then he sells us them - all African boys, Senegal most.... you get them in little plastic wallets with the cover printed from internet. You put your money in and you take a stack of fifty all held together with rubber band. fifty euro fifty cds. Sell them all for two each and you get fifty profit.'
'I paid three on Via Liberta for Blood Diamond.'
'Di Caprio, right. Then you got fleeced. But sometimes they slip in no-hope discs that you can't sell for shit. Like, I got an Easyjet flight attendant training dvd. Now who wants to buy that. You don't sell enough - you make a loss, not a profit.'
'How did you have enough money to buy them in the first place?'
'One of the brothers helped me out. I got to pay him back of course.'
'So the discs are back at your -'
'They searched the factory. But I hid them pretty good. Hey, do you think?'
'That's what I'm wondering. Who knows you're selling pirate dvd's?'
'Anyone who saw me. But the other boys do it too, that's what I don't get, why only Ransome they want to catch?'
'We need to have a look at those discs. There could be something there.'
'We?'
'You'll have to give me directions.'
'Who are you, Cagney or Lacey? Don't look at me surprsied, Nigeria gets TV you know, we ain't in the stone age.'
'Just the seventies. Is that where you learnt to talk like Shaft?
'No, that's my old man. He went to America in the seventies a short time. Came back with a silver tongue, gold jewellry and a bit of a liking for Columbian talcum powder.'
'He said you’ve got something they want. What could it be?'
'I don’t know. I don’t have much things.'
'Tell me again why you - '
'I tell you - I was desperate and I did not think. I just come from crawling underground and … at that moment, I was only' – he bit his lips in the effort to explain – ' following an instinct for survival.'
'You needed money?'
'Sure. It’s money which make the world go round, innit. – Hey, why you laughing?'
'Innit.'
'Your accent is pretty funny too.'
'How did you learn English?'
'Everybody speaks English in Nigeria. But not like me. I pick up the language of music and film and literature, like what's it called, the bird that steals -'
'A magpie'.
'That's it: silver earring here, safety pin there. I gotta shine for shiny things, and some words got a kind of glitter, don’t you think?'
'So do you think they want you for your poetry?'
Ransome stirring another sugar into his cappuccino, thinking, is this real, him sitting at a table drinking from a neat little cup with Englishwoman? Barman’s eyes scoured them both, but not unfriendly, just curious. Now he must behave well as he can, not break the spell, and maybe she’ll offer him money.
'What do you have?'
He indicated his clothes.
'Do you have family here?'
'No. My family’s back in Nigeria. Just I came.'
'Why?'
Sucking in of breath. Long story and he doesn't like it, but Ransome tells her the whole tale: the English talentscout spotting him, talking up big the French team he work for and how he got a lot of potential – the English scout says puffing cigar on hotel veranda: ‘Ransome you are such a nippy bugger on the wing, I can see it now, your nickname’ll be the Gazelle. The fans’ll be chanting your name. Just sign here.’ So Ransome he sign and the family help him pay half of flight to London. He get there and like they say other scout waiting at Heathrow holding up a card. Next day they give him a suit of clothes and train ticket to South France on Eurostar no less. At station he phone number he got given and this guy turn up after long wait – they put his trunk in the back of a car and drive long time. Finally they come to a small town, he let off at big apartment block and told third floor room so and so. There he find four other Brothers sleeping on mattresses. Two from Congo, one Sierra Leone, one Gabon, they explain him how it works, you fight for place, if you good enough they pay you, otherwise forget it, if you’re lucky they’ll send you on another club to try again. Now Ransome he fine player in Rivers State league, but first training he see other brothas they nippy also and coach don’t pick him for top squad. Then reserve coach he real sonofabitch tell Ransome he not strong enough and send him to weights gym every day alone while others work with ball. This gym real old-fashioned place not hi-tech like you expect in Ee-You. Rusty ‘quipment, smelly sweat stains everywhere, the feel of loneliness with metal sound of de weights clangin’ hollowly. But Ransome he say, come on boy, you fight harder than you ever done before, you can do this – only second day, just him in there, he liftin’ bar multistacked up with kilograms- but his palms so slippery they can’t hold and it fall on his back. He trapped under it, callin’ out, but nobody hear him for a longtime. Club doctor when he see it says, this boy’ll not play again for…actual fact, he ain’t played since that day.
Via Roma: Two men get out of an alpha, both wearing expensive coats in sober shades. On the driver’s side, a smooth, tanned face, salt and pepper hair, opens the gate and shows the other man in –
In the garden the woman is sitting at a table alone. Her opaque wraparound sunglasses give her face an insectoid quality. She’s sipping coffee. A newspaper is open on the table before her.
They greet each other. Salt and pepper introduces the guest. They speak Italian, not dialect. The two men sit down at the table and the woman shouts in through the modern French windows for more coffee.
The guest speaks first, admiring the cornices above the windows of the villa.
‘This is one of the original Bourbon villas. It was built in the eighteenth century.’
‘It’s beautiful. Very beautiful.’ Limited expression range of the foreigner.
‘Thank you. I have had the pleasure of visiting your city. I stayed in…’ she listed a number of top hotels and the guest listened attentively, making comments every so often. The conversation had the feel of an interview granted - an audience with a reclusive poetess perhaps. A question on the importance of form over content wouldn’t have seemed out of place. But salt and pepper interrupted:
‘The negro got away.’
Silence. A sense of narrowing slits behind the shades.
‘You knew where he was squatting.’
‘He ran.’
‘Where?’
‘The scavi.’
‘And then?’
‘We don’t know. He dived.’
‘Dived?’
‘Into the waste channel. Don’t worry, we’ve got our own copy, remember. It is simply a case of finding out what he means.’
'It is the Lord’s will that we find out before anyone else.'
The guest, flashing a crocodile smile, interjected: 'It is a code. A fascinating puzzle to be honest.'
The woman glared at him.
'If it is so easy, why does no one have the answer?
'We have top scholars working on it, myself included.'
'Meanwhile another copy is loose on the streets.' It was salt and pepper's turn to feel the force of her disapproval.
'Come on! I hardly think an African is going to solve it first.'
Insect, and Salt and pepper looked at the guest, who was grinning broadly. He had been peering around the whole time they were talking, like someone on safari – over the woman’s shoulder into the shadowy rooms at the back of the house.
‘You must find it very interesting, living with all this history around you.’
'It’s fascinating', the woman replied. The only parts of her that moved were her thin, bloodless lips. The guest wondered what she enjoyed doing in her leisure time. No ideas immediately occurred to him. What a strange people they were. How serious, and how much they loved the misery of their way of life, so different from America’s clean opportunism. Something romantic about them. He guessed killing each other was what kept them going. It was as if they didn’t know life was there to be enjoyed. Enough money for a luxury yacht and they’d rather gild themselves in hideous mansions, in this hell of a place, not even travelling down the coast where at least you could get to the beaches. Crazy people – but he knew how to deal with them.
So how did you come to Napoli?
'T’aint much of a life wrapping sandwiches. You see them get sold four pounds a time for all hurrying people swinging laptop bags over there shoulders, take away to the office and eat at desks, pretty happy to be having healthy lunch. Maybe some folks they glean a satisfaction thinking me, I part of the drive for a healthy society, people eatin’ here what once would pack away bigmacs each day. Climb the old career ladder n’ that…but Ransome he got the formication thing…like ants in his pants- what he should think is- job London, shit pay but no matter, livin’ with a Brother who is assistant branch manager – his prospects could be lot lot worse after that weight crush his football dreams an’leave him with nothin’. Oh but no, he start goin’ to library man – is dangerous place that public library, an’ he starts readin’ books, gets out one book bout fall of the Roman Empire – ideas in there set to Ransome's head like a welding torch you see at roadworks, all hot and ready to melt the tar.'
'You mean Gibbon’s Decline and Fall -'
'That the one.'
'I had to read it for a course at University.'
'You gone to University?'
'Everyone with even half a brain does where I’m from. So you left the sandwich shop?'
'Half way through a chicken mayo wrap, some guy he asks me all sarky if I’m planning to finish it that week, so I tells him deadpan by end of that week I gonna put bomb on the tube which he take to work. That pretty much be the time when you gotta say a customer service job is not for you. Not to mention the boys in blue might pick me up and throw me in Guantanamo. So I walk out, pick up the money what I saved, and get buses all the way to Rome. Figures I, if all roads lead there bus is the way to go.'
'What did you think you’d do when you got there?'
'Little bit o’ sightseein’. Oh yeah, I did that. Even went in a few cafes like we are in now. Italians respect you no problem if you are well dressed an’ got money to pay yo’ bills. I hit a couple o’ clubs. Real dolchay veeta train I was riding for two days, but problems started when my suitcase got stolen from the hostel – suddenly you only got the clothes on your back and a wallet none too strong for thickness.'
He stopped. Telling his story was triggering such memories that he had to pause to let the images sift through his brain. She was impatient. There was still this mystery of something he had which she wanted to know about – .
'Maybe they just want to throw you out the country. Aren’t you -'
'Illegal' – he showed his white teeth in a short laugh – 'of course. Clandestino they call you here. Don’t know which I prefer.'
'Didn’t you get a Visa to come?'
'Fell for scouts trick, it was a tourist Visa, just one month. The French team if you do good they fix you up with necessary documents. One way I was lucky my injury come so quick. I got back to London with visa still ok – I just showed fake return to Lagos that the scout booked then cancelled.'
'But for Italy?'
'If I see any police I run.'
'Last night then. Wasn’t that why they were after you?'
'I don’t think so. Reason being, in my present abode I sure as certain ain’t the only one senza documenti. There is a six strong West Africa posse living in an old factory jus’ along by the sea there. Now, don’t you think it mighty curious they come only lookin’ for Ransome Ochikwe, askin’ the rest where Ransome is and not mindin’ that they are clutterin’ up Italy too and all hatchin’plans to bring their families over?'
'Could it be something to do with the terrorism threat? When you said you’d blow up the tube?'
'These were not English. English cops just shoot you, ask the questions after that. Oh he was the wrong man, oh well, never mind eh, we still basically gentlemen. No, these were real bad men, not Englishmen defending an empire in fine upstanding way.'
'Which takes us back to the question. What have you got that they would want?'
Ransome sighed, suddenly tired of all her questions.
'I told you, I don’t know.'
She had an idea.
'Let’s try something. Look, here’s some paper, and a pen' – she fished in her bag – 'now write down an inventory of all your possessions.'
He sucked the pen for a while and just gazed at the sheet. Had she assumed too much - that he could write just because he'd read Gibbon? Maybe he was embarrassed... but no, he was off - it didn't take long.
clothes
blanket
photo of my family
laptop computer
'You have a laptop?'
'Just kidding.' He put a lazy stroke though it.
'Blanket.'
'It's not even a flying one. I tried.'
'What about the photo?'
'You think the Italian mafia want a photo of Granma Ochikwe?'
'Well, are you sure that's all?'
'I have a phone card but no credit left. Can you believe they put a picture of bananas on jus' because it's for Africa?'
'One like this?' Mina pulled her wallet out and found the card she'd used before she bought an Italian mobile. 'It's not only Africa.'
'Well the guy in the shop didn't have to choose that one when I said Nigeria.'
'I think you're being paranoid.'
'Sorry, ok this is a very fair society.'
'How do you survive?'
He slapped his forehead. 'You're right, yeah. I still got plenty left in the bag.'
'Plenty what?'
'DVDs. I can sell 'em. Already shifted a few, enough for a decent feed two days straight.'
'Films?'
'Yeah, pirate copies. Some boy - what do you say - from the computer.'
'Burns them?'
'That's it. Then he sells us them - all African boys, Senegal most.... you get them in little plastic wallets with the cover printed from internet. You put your money in and you take a stack of fifty all held together with rubber band. fifty euro fifty cds. Sell them all for two each and you get fifty profit.'
'I paid three on Via Liberta for Blood Diamond.'
'Di Caprio, right. Then you got fleeced. But sometimes they slip in no-hope discs that you can't sell for shit. Like, I got an Easyjet flight attendant training dvd. Now who wants to buy that. You don't sell enough - you make a loss, not a profit.'
'How did you have enough money to buy them in the first place?'
'One of the brothers helped me out. I got to pay him back of course.'
'So the discs are back at your -'
'They searched the factory. But I hid them pretty good. Hey, do you think?'
'That's what I'm wondering. Who knows you're selling pirate dvd's?'
'Anyone who saw me. But the other boys do it too, that's what I don't get, why only Ransome they want to catch?'
'We need to have a look at those discs. There could be something there.'
'We?'
'You'll have to give me directions.'
'Who are you, Cagney or Lacey? Don't look at me surprsied, Nigeria gets TV you know, we ain't in the stone age.'
'Just the seventies. Is that where you learnt to talk like Shaft?
'No, that's my old man. He went to America in the seventies a short time. Came back with a silver tongue, gold jewellry and a bit of a liking for Columbian talcum powder.'
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.
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.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 - Crossroads
The hand was clamped down over her mouth so tightly and suddenly, not even the start of a cry got out. Her torso manacled in a vicegrip, she lashed backwards, bronco-like – hit shin bone- but not hard enough. Gasping she tried to bite the fingers, all the time twisting her neck side-to-side: a mongoose killing a cobra, except she was a toothless prey. This… couldn’t be – not – is – happening- to her! Travelbug Teacher Raped and Murdered. Her end – a quick fix of horror headline! She heard serpentine whisperings in her ear - the familiar cadence of African Italian.
‘Scusi scusi non sono cattivo. solo soldi per favore’
Only money! Never did those words bring such relief! She’d thought the best she could hope was to be brutally assaulted and left for dead on a building site. She went limp and felt a hand slip her bag strap off her shoulder. Instinctively, she jerked free and tore away the fingers clamped over her mouth. For some reason she felt sure this man would understand if she could just speak to him.
‘I’m a friend’ she hissed, jerking from his clutches and in one movement pivoting round to face him, knowing in some part of her it was the most naive thing she'd ever done.
This woman it like she know Ransome not bad man and he not want to do what he just come doing. First she go all tense and wriggling-like grumpy cat what don’t wanna be pick up. Then when he ask money she go all relax and he think okay I take what money is get me some train away from here make direkshun back Londonway. And he already thinking his apology, signorina, Ransum he wish he can get soldi some other way but he try selling pirate Deeveedee and some reason be they send da men wid guns make sure he don’t sell none – So Ransum start to think this city got itch to pick on him much worse than the otha brothas which just slouch round the streets nobody botherin’em. But before he get so far with apology she snickled out – Ransum muscles must be getting’ weak – and she saying to him she his friend whiles holdin’ her hand right out, not screamin’ and hollerin’ nor peggin’ off like you’d ‘spect. Oh now when he see this, Ransum, he really got big shame comin’ on. He thinking he don’t deserve to breath same air as this woman. She so brave and he a lanky coward…
He didn’t seem to quite believe she’d escaped. They stood a few yards apart, both with shoulders dropped, panting. They looked into the whites of each others’ eyes. After a few seconds the African lowered his gaze. He staggered backwards a few paces and sank down against the railing, his breath escaping in heavy gasps. She stood over him, took out her mobile and pressed a button to light up the screen. What was the number for Italian emergency services? She started to imagine the consequences if he was arrested. She would have to give evidence – but it wouldn’t be as simple as that – she would be swallowed up in the maze of Italian justice. What actual crime had been committed anyway? She was ok, she could just walk away, keep going down Corso Garibaldi, get the beers and meet Maggie – tell her the story and bathe in the glory of her fightback. The figure slumped against the railings wasn’t threatening anything any more. She could see now his clothes were filthy, horizontal streaks of mud across his light-coloured shirt.
‘What’s your name? The words were out, in English because it was hard for her to equate black skin with the Italian language, even though he’d spoken it to her.
Hey this go crazier an’ crazier she askin’ Ransome his name now, like he come for job interview at Hackney Sandwich place. Yeah, it even be English she saying, and he thinking only British here was tourist but she sure don’t seem like no tourist. All this thinkin’got Ransom shame chased li’l away and he look up again to find her face close by above, quite stern-lookin’ and bit distract. She’s holdin’ a phone… oh missy, please don’t call the police.
‘My name is Ransome,’ – first English lesson, ‘I’m from Nigeria.’ Because they always want to know that bit, where you from.
Then I think I’m hallucinatin’ sound, like dem prisoners what they torture with absolute silence, ‘come with me’, I’m hearing, n’ I say’ Excuse me but no she says it again, ‘if you come with me I’ll help you’. Well what can Ransome do when the whole resta de EeYou seems to have it in for him. He says ‘thank you’ and walks by the lady’s side, already wonderin’ what sort o’ do-goodin’ set-up she know ‘bout, reckn’ing he’ll be in with some nuns pretty soon.
She switched the light on in the tiny lock-up. There was barely room for them both to stand. She pointed.
'You can sleep in there tonight. In the morning I’ll come at eight, ok. You understand?'
'You English aren’t you?'
'No.'
'Where you from?'
'Scotland.'
'Ah ha – Scottish – William Wallace eh.'
'Listen, I’m going to close the outside door. But I won’t lock it, ok. And I promise I’ll see you in the morning.'
'Why you doing this?'
'I don’t know. Maybe I like men who try to assault me.'
'You a little bit crazy, I think.'
'Probably. What about you. Are you crazy?'
'No.'
'I thought you were going to kill me back there.'
'That back there was not real Ransome.'
'I believe you. So are you crazy? Is one of the Ransomes crazy?'
'You’re a smart woman. It's a crazy world innit? Not us which is crazy.'
'You’re no fool yourself. So will you be here in the morning?'
'Yeah, sure.'
'You’ll be safe I promise.'
'Thank you.'
'Goodnight.'
So civilized. He settles in the back seat of the little car, lays his head down and lets the exhaustion swallow him. He dreams of civilizations: Port Harcourt London Napoli all muddled together, shanties and palaces, airports and harbours, and amidst the confusion one clear sequence - walking out between some marble pillars to find himself alone on a beach with a sparkling sea before him. He turns round and sees the sand all clogged with sunbathers, and he is suddenly heavy with a load of shades and earrings pinned to a sandwich board hanging round his neck. Got to sell, but no one wants to buy. Then they come back to him, the strange words: You've got something we want…
The hand was clamped down over her mouth so tightly and suddenly, not even the start of a cry got out. Her torso manacled in a vicegrip, she lashed backwards, bronco-like – hit shin bone- but not hard enough. Gasping she tried to bite the fingers, all the time twisting her neck side-to-side: a mongoose killing a cobra, except she was a toothless prey. This… couldn’t be – not – is – happening- to her! Travelbug Teacher Raped and Murdered. Her end – a quick fix of horror headline! She heard serpentine whisperings in her ear - the familiar cadence of African Italian.
‘Scusi scusi non sono cattivo. solo soldi per favore’
Only money! Never did those words bring such relief! She’d thought the best she could hope was to be brutally assaulted and left for dead on a building site. She went limp and felt a hand slip her bag strap off her shoulder. Instinctively, she jerked free and tore away the fingers clamped over her mouth. For some reason she felt sure this man would understand if she could just speak to him.
‘I’m a friend’ she hissed, jerking from his clutches and in one movement pivoting round to face him, knowing in some part of her it was the most naive thing she'd ever done.
This woman it like she know Ransome not bad man and he not want to do what he just come doing. First she go all tense and wriggling-like grumpy cat what don’t wanna be pick up. Then when he ask money she go all relax and he think okay I take what money is get me some train away from here make direkshun back Londonway. And he already thinking his apology, signorina, Ransum he wish he can get soldi some other way but he try selling pirate Deeveedee and some reason be they send da men wid guns make sure he don’t sell none – So Ransum start to think this city got itch to pick on him much worse than the otha brothas which just slouch round the streets nobody botherin’em. But before he get so far with apology she snickled out – Ransum muscles must be getting’ weak – and she saying to him she his friend whiles holdin’ her hand right out, not screamin’ and hollerin’ nor peggin’ off like you’d ‘spect. Oh now when he see this, Ransum, he really got big shame comin’ on. He thinking he don’t deserve to breath same air as this woman. She so brave and he a lanky coward…
He didn’t seem to quite believe she’d escaped. They stood a few yards apart, both with shoulders dropped, panting. They looked into the whites of each others’ eyes. After a few seconds the African lowered his gaze. He staggered backwards a few paces and sank down against the railing, his breath escaping in heavy gasps. She stood over him, took out her mobile and pressed a button to light up the screen. What was the number for Italian emergency services? She started to imagine the consequences if he was arrested. She would have to give evidence – but it wouldn’t be as simple as that – she would be swallowed up in the maze of Italian justice. What actual crime had been committed anyway? She was ok, she could just walk away, keep going down Corso Garibaldi, get the beers and meet Maggie – tell her the story and bathe in the glory of her fightback. The figure slumped against the railings wasn’t threatening anything any more. She could see now his clothes were filthy, horizontal streaks of mud across his light-coloured shirt.
‘What’s your name? The words were out, in English because it was hard for her to equate black skin with the Italian language, even though he’d spoken it to her.
Hey this go crazier an’ crazier she askin’ Ransome his name now, like he come for job interview at Hackney Sandwich place. Yeah, it even be English she saying, and he thinking only British here was tourist but she sure don’t seem like no tourist. All this thinkin’got Ransom shame chased li’l away and he look up again to find her face close by above, quite stern-lookin’ and bit distract. She’s holdin’ a phone… oh missy, please don’t call the police.
‘My name is Ransome,’ – first English lesson, ‘I’m from Nigeria.’ Because they always want to know that bit, where you from.
Then I think I’m hallucinatin’ sound, like dem prisoners what they torture with absolute silence, ‘come with me’, I’m hearing, n’ I say’ Excuse me but no she says it again, ‘if you come with me I’ll help you’. Well what can Ransome do when the whole resta de EeYou seems to have it in for him. He says ‘thank you’ and walks by the lady’s side, already wonderin’ what sort o’ do-goodin’ set-up she know ‘bout, reckn’ing he’ll be in with some nuns pretty soon.
She switched the light on in the tiny lock-up. There was barely room for them both to stand. She pointed.
'You can sleep in there tonight. In the morning I’ll come at eight, ok. You understand?'
'You English aren’t you?'
'No.'
'Where you from?'
'Scotland.'
'Ah ha – Scottish – William Wallace eh.'
'Listen, I’m going to close the outside door. But I won’t lock it, ok. And I promise I’ll see you in the morning.'
'Why you doing this?'
'I don’t know. Maybe I like men who try to assault me.'
'You a little bit crazy, I think.'
'Probably. What about you. Are you crazy?'
'No.'
'I thought you were going to kill me back there.'
'That back there was not real Ransome.'
'I believe you. So are you crazy? Is one of the Ransomes crazy?'
'You’re a smart woman. It's a crazy world innit? Not us which is crazy.'
'You’re no fool yourself. So will you be here in the morning?'
'Yeah, sure.'
'You’ll be safe I promise.'
'Thank you.'
'Goodnight.'
So civilized. He settles in the back seat of the little car, lays his head down and lets the exhaustion swallow him. He dreams of civilizations: Port Harcourt London Napoli all muddled together, shanties and palaces, airports and harbours, and amidst the confusion one clear sequence - walking out between some marble pillars to find himself alone on a beach with a sparkling sea before him. He turns round and sees the sand all clogged with sunbathers, and he is suddenly heavy with a load of shades and earrings pinned to a sandwich board hanging round his neck. Got to sell, but no one wants to buy. Then they come back to him, the strange words: You've got something we want…
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 - Cervello
Pollution slicked over his skin, stinging as he stroked wildly, eyes tight shut. His stomach scraped something and he felt a sensation like a caress, though he knew it should be pain. He knew he had these things called lungs, and in them were millions of pips like tiny empty seed pods, and these pods needed oxygen. Everything was swelling – reddening to anger - the outrage of the body’s components that feel no relation to personality. Then you have to tell them: this is for your own good, this not breathing. Just keep calm, just enjoy the ride – like those pilots with the soothing voices – he remembered his one and only flight: Port Harcourt to London – the British Airways stewardesses with their shining lips – the pattern on the seat – blue, red and white – the man beside him explaining how design companies competed for multimillion pound contracts to make them – chuckling – crazy isn’t it, a crazy world – he’d smiled at the man and thought about where he’d come from – how he would never go back there, it was his now: the world of seat fabric design and would you like anything to drink, Sir.
He came up soundless as an otter. With the discipline of quarry he restrained the craved for gasps and tightened himself against the bank. He was at the edge of a tunnel and could hear voices above him; a torch beam was skipping across the surface of the channel. There being no real choice, he ducked into the tunnel and disappeared from view to anyone watching from the upper world.
What to do when you can’t sleep? Was it the surrealists who came up with the idea of counting sheep jumping over a fence? Certainly whoever first counselled this as an innately soporific image possessed either a sense of humour or a unique set of neural pathways.
Mina tried to read. First ‘Storia della Camorra’. She put it down after realizing that all the Salvatores had coalesced and she had no idea which was which. She checked her watch – Maggie not due back for another hour. She put down the tome and picked up a magazine from the supply under her bed - a supplement from la Reppublica, the Rome-based daily.
When the message tone sounded she flinched. She knocked the phone off the bedside table and had to scrabble to get it, knees on the bed, bum in the air, elbows supporting her on the cold tiled floor like someone engaged in a misguided form of yoga.
…
Nico’s message. Three dots. He’d only sent her that once before. It had been meant for someone else. Its meaning, as he had explained: ‘I don’t have anything more to say to you.’ That time the intended recipient had been a friend who owed him money and was avoiding him. This time, no doubt, it was for her, and she thought for a few seconds, relishing the pain in her arm muscles, before replying with an anagram of his name made into a term of abuse. Anagrams had been a hobby of hers since student days and of course he wouldn’t get it, but that was the point.
All possibility of sleep had vanished with the textual thrust and parry. She flopped down onto the floor like an inelegant seal sliding off a rock, already dressed. With a vague notion of going to meet Maggie, even though she didn’t know exactly where the pizzeria was, she slipped on shoes and jacket, gathered up her keys, and exited the flat.
Oh yes God, you ain’t always so clever but you hit jackpot with Ransome when you give him his slimslender body – he stretch, he squeeze, he fit - through the grille, all eel-like and boneless. To re-emerge, and now only the night sky above – feel good – stars winkin’ at the Ransomresurrection. In his subterranean odyssey wall of the tunnel guided him. Higher ceiling in the middle but who could trust no jackal not going to sneak up from other direction capture him? No need risk it so he paddled at a crouch, tight to black walls, shirt sodden and ripped - snagged on ancient branch stickin’ from dat wall, jeans clingfilmy like in London deli sandwiches he wrapped, and of course he’d lost both his sandals. But hey, dirty dog free better than clean one in a cage any day.
He look up. Oh, he do like those stars. An’ tree branches swaying lightly in the wind. Moonlight in the sky - farting of a motor in the distance. He is in a park, maybe Garden of Eden. Stream which bring him flow along bottom of little ravine. He scramble up side grabbing tree roots for hold onto. Now he on level ground. Carpet ferns and fallen leaves. Smells sap and growing things in earth. This still be the same city? Possible Ransome be gone a thousand miles in the tunnel and is now in some friendly country where nobody hunting him down? Europe 2.0 Microsoft goes natural? Or maybe he’s back in Africa. Oh, Ransome, there’s a thought – like when you’re checking that Italian Honey ice cream in-da-club and she turning to find – serial killa flick momento - you staring at her – you feelin’ delightful and shivery all at once. And only one thing to do – walk away before she put the bouncers on to you. Yeah, this thought’s the same. Africa! Oh don’t even go there!
She walked down the poorly lit Via Universita, past the little shops which at night, dark and with shutters down, lost all their cheerful personality. There were no bars on this street. And even Piazza San Ciro was quiet. The orchid-shaped fountain in the centre spilled its cascade out into the surrounding basin. Anita Ekberg wouldn’t be wading around here tonight with Marcello Mastroianni, not unless the pair of them had turned into a pug-faced old dwarf wearing jam-jar glasses and a mangy hound trotting along with its nose to the ground. In a different city you might assume the old woman was its owner. Here more likely she was trying to escape it to avoid feeding the thing. The dog had stopped now and was wagging its snout furiously in an attempt to widen a hole in a binbag that sagged against the wall.
Remembering that the pizzeria was somewhere near the station, she headed down Corso Garibaldi. She decided on the way she would set herself up with a beer from Tonino’s fridge – yes, if there was one thing she got a kick out of, it was drinking in the street. She’d get one for Maggie too, and meet her with it; they could walk back together. Tonino's was near the bottom on the left, just after the park.
In Ransome district, when he was small, he remember the one time people felt like they was where it’s at. Even Ransome Uncle Victor interviewed for an American channel- Victor always mention that fact of it being American. Yes according to him all U.S.A. know his face and he a big star over there. This we talking early nineties but sure, if you from Stateside you’ll still know him today, what with your youtube internetcetera. No one ever actually seen interview aired but Uncle Victor could act it out so well that don’t matter. Whoever his audience was had to play the part of Pamela the TV reporter. This usually necessitate creation of an artificial bust, using whatever materials be closest to hand. A couple of mangoes were best, but spare car parts would do – performances of the interview tend to take place on the forecourt of the garage he work, under the shade of corrugated overhang.
You (Pamela): You seen the victim, Mr Ochikwe? Can you describe her?
Uncle Victor: It’s terrible what happened to that girl. I knew her, man, I feel like she my own daughter, so pretty, she has this reddish hair like a sunset, and she smiling like a sunshine, all happy and not bitchy-bitching at all like oilman’s wives what pass through this garage – why, that’s my question, why, you Mr I-Want-To-Get-Myself-a-Woman-but-I-too-damn-crazy-to-do-things-nice-way-so-I-got-to-kill-one…If you must do something why you not kill some bitchy-bitch fe-male why this one what give light to us poor man…
Uncle Victor got telling this story so many places word came police way and next thing he’s a suspect himself. Bit of a hole he dug there but lucky for him they caught the guy who really did it – this kid from one of the villas everyone knew had his juices all confused – twenty five years old and never did anything ‘cep shoot hoop with juniors half his high – just walked into the station one day and so the story goes says ‘I only wanted to play with her’. Real Mice an’ men scenario there. Oh yeah, Ransome know his literature…
An’ now he’s thinkin’ ‘well, well, look at that passing lady all unprotected in the blacknes’ – maybe she’s got some the thing a Ransome needs if he ain’t gonna kiss his freedom sweet cherry pie’. Hell, that big stone piece of skirt Liberty might say, Sister, a man’s gotta sometimes do stuff you don’t like, but it don’t mean he real bad guy, things are tough and he not gonna hurt you, just the money…
Pollution slicked over his skin, stinging as he stroked wildly, eyes tight shut. His stomach scraped something and he felt a sensation like a caress, though he knew it should be pain. He knew he had these things called lungs, and in them were millions of pips like tiny empty seed pods, and these pods needed oxygen. Everything was swelling – reddening to anger - the outrage of the body’s components that feel no relation to personality. Then you have to tell them: this is for your own good, this not breathing. Just keep calm, just enjoy the ride – like those pilots with the soothing voices – he remembered his one and only flight: Port Harcourt to London – the British Airways stewardesses with their shining lips – the pattern on the seat – blue, red and white – the man beside him explaining how design companies competed for multimillion pound contracts to make them – chuckling – crazy isn’t it, a crazy world – he’d smiled at the man and thought about where he’d come from – how he would never go back there, it was his now: the world of seat fabric design and would you like anything to drink, Sir.
He came up soundless as an otter. With the discipline of quarry he restrained the craved for gasps and tightened himself against the bank. He was at the edge of a tunnel and could hear voices above him; a torch beam was skipping across the surface of the channel. There being no real choice, he ducked into the tunnel and disappeared from view to anyone watching from the upper world.
What to do when you can’t sleep? Was it the surrealists who came up with the idea of counting sheep jumping over a fence? Certainly whoever first counselled this as an innately soporific image possessed either a sense of humour or a unique set of neural pathways.
Mina tried to read. First ‘Storia della Camorra’. She put it down after realizing that all the Salvatores had coalesced and she had no idea which was which. She checked her watch – Maggie not due back for another hour. She put down the tome and picked up a magazine from the supply under her bed - a supplement from la Reppublica, the Rome-based daily.
When the message tone sounded she flinched. She knocked the phone off the bedside table and had to scrabble to get it, knees on the bed, bum in the air, elbows supporting her on the cold tiled floor like someone engaged in a misguided form of yoga.
…
Nico’s message. Three dots. He’d only sent her that once before. It had been meant for someone else. Its meaning, as he had explained: ‘I don’t have anything more to say to you.’ That time the intended recipient had been a friend who owed him money and was avoiding him. This time, no doubt, it was for her, and she thought for a few seconds, relishing the pain in her arm muscles, before replying with an anagram of his name made into a term of abuse. Anagrams had been a hobby of hers since student days and of course he wouldn’t get it, but that was the point.
All possibility of sleep had vanished with the textual thrust and parry. She flopped down onto the floor like an inelegant seal sliding off a rock, already dressed. With a vague notion of going to meet Maggie, even though she didn’t know exactly where the pizzeria was, she slipped on shoes and jacket, gathered up her keys, and exited the flat.
Oh yes God, you ain’t always so clever but you hit jackpot with Ransome when you give him his slimslender body – he stretch, he squeeze, he fit - through the grille, all eel-like and boneless. To re-emerge, and now only the night sky above – feel good – stars winkin’ at the Ransomresurrection. In his subterranean odyssey wall of the tunnel guided him. Higher ceiling in the middle but who could trust no jackal not going to sneak up from other direction capture him? No need risk it so he paddled at a crouch, tight to black walls, shirt sodden and ripped - snagged on ancient branch stickin’ from dat wall, jeans clingfilmy like in London deli sandwiches he wrapped, and of course he’d lost both his sandals. But hey, dirty dog free better than clean one in a cage any day.
He look up. Oh, he do like those stars. An’ tree branches swaying lightly in the wind. Moonlight in the sky - farting of a motor in the distance. He is in a park, maybe Garden of Eden. Stream which bring him flow along bottom of little ravine. He scramble up side grabbing tree roots for hold onto. Now he on level ground. Carpet ferns and fallen leaves. Smells sap and growing things in earth. This still be the same city? Possible Ransome be gone a thousand miles in the tunnel and is now in some friendly country where nobody hunting him down? Europe 2.0 Microsoft goes natural? Or maybe he’s back in Africa. Oh, Ransome, there’s a thought – like when you’re checking that Italian Honey ice cream in-da-club and she turning to find – serial killa flick momento - you staring at her – you feelin’ delightful and shivery all at once. And only one thing to do – walk away before she put the bouncers on to you. Yeah, this thought’s the same. Africa! Oh don’t even go there!
She walked down the poorly lit Via Universita, past the little shops which at night, dark and with shutters down, lost all their cheerful personality. There were no bars on this street. And even Piazza San Ciro was quiet. The orchid-shaped fountain in the centre spilled its cascade out into the surrounding basin. Anita Ekberg wouldn’t be wading around here tonight with Marcello Mastroianni, not unless the pair of them had turned into a pug-faced old dwarf wearing jam-jar glasses and a mangy hound trotting along with its nose to the ground. In a different city you might assume the old woman was its owner. Here more likely she was trying to escape it to avoid feeding the thing. The dog had stopped now and was wagging its snout furiously in an attempt to widen a hole in a binbag that sagged against the wall.
Remembering that the pizzeria was somewhere near the station, she headed down Corso Garibaldi. She decided on the way she would set herself up with a beer from Tonino’s fridge – yes, if there was one thing she got a kick out of, it was drinking in the street. She’d get one for Maggie too, and meet her with it; they could walk back together. Tonino's was near the bottom on the left, just after the park.
In Ransome district, when he was small, he remember the one time people felt like they was where it’s at. Even Ransome Uncle Victor interviewed for an American channel- Victor always mention that fact of it being American. Yes according to him all U.S.A. know his face and he a big star over there. This we talking early nineties but sure, if you from Stateside you’ll still know him today, what with your youtube internetcetera. No one ever actually seen interview aired but Uncle Victor could act it out so well that don’t matter. Whoever his audience was had to play the part of Pamela the TV reporter. This usually necessitate creation of an artificial bust, using whatever materials be closest to hand. A couple of mangoes were best, but spare car parts would do – performances of the interview tend to take place on the forecourt of the garage he work, under the shade of corrugated overhang.
You (Pamela): You seen the victim, Mr Ochikwe? Can you describe her?
Uncle Victor: It’s terrible what happened to that girl. I knew her, man, I feel like she my own daughter, so pretty, she has this reddish hair like a sunset, and she smiling like a sunshine, all happy and not bitchy-bitching at all like oilman’s wives what pass through this garage – why, that’s my question, why, you Mr I-Want-To-Get-Myself-a-Woman-but-I-too-damn-crazy-to-do-things-nice-way-so-I-got-to-kill-one…If you must do something why you not kill some bitchy-bitch fe-male why this one what give light to us poor man…
Uncle Victor got telling this story so many places word came police way and next thing he’s a suspect himself. Bit of a hole he dug there but lucky for him they caught the guy who really did it – this kid from one of the villas everyone knew had his juices all confused – twenty five years old and never did anything ‘cep shoot hoop with juniors half his high – just walked into the station one day and so the story goes says ‘I only wanted to play with her’. Real Mice an’ men scenario there. Oh yeah, Ransome know his literature…
An’ now he’s thinkin’ ‘well, well, look at that passing lady all unprotected in the blacknes’ – maybe she’s got some the thing a Ransome needs if he ain’t gonna kiss his freedom sweet cherry pie’. Hell, that big stone piece of skirt Liberty might say, Sister, a man’s gotta sometimes do stuff you don’t like, but it don’t mean he real bad guy, things are tough and he not gonna hurt you, just the money…
chapter one
Chapter 1 - Sottoterra
Ransome Ochikwe darted into the Neptune Room, vaulted a barrier and sprinted down a passage friezed with faded scenes two millennia old. The sound of his pursuers behind him, he turned a corner and skidded to a halt before a dead end. But there was a gap at the foot of the wooden beamed roof. If he could squeeze through…
The man was in the passageway.
‘Ehh che stai facendo? Mo vediamo’.
He leapt up and managed to grab a hold on the top of the wall with his fingers. Using all the strength of his wiry frame he hauled himself up and placed one foot over. He wiggled it forward and brought the other leg up so now he was horizontal in the gap. The man was charging towards him, reaching into his pocket. He wriggled and rolled his body until suddenly there was nothing underneath - and dropped three metres, cracking his shoulder on an earthenware pot. Pain shot along the joint as he staggered to his feet. He was on a patch of gravel at one end of a grassy courtyard. He ran across the grass and down another passage. More shouts behind - they must be back on his tail. He kept running in a straight line, ignoring the tempting dark entrances. Finally he came to the rope bridge across the ravine – the only place of entry or exit to the site. The wooden planks clattered together as he ran – but each stride was taking him nearer escape. The thought flashed through his mind that he should cut the ropes when he reached the other side – like Harrison Ford. Then an Italian voice –
'I think you've got something we want.'
He stopped dead. A dark figure was waiting on the far side.
The other closed in behind, cornering him like a rat in a trap. There was a long drop into the blackness of the ravine. He tried to remember what was at the bottom, until the glint of a weapon made up his mind regardless. He slipped under the rope and pushed himself out into space. It seemed he was hardly in the air at all before he was shooting under water, with pain searing into his eyes.
*
The face across the table seemed unreal all of a sudden. Gargoylelike. In her mouth the taste was acrid bile. How could he eat the dinner she’d prepared, wait for her to make the espresso, and then tell her this?
‘Fuck you Nico. Fuck you and your lousy family.’ The English swear words tasted good, but the Italian ‘cazzo’ was sweeter. What did ‘fuck’ really mean to an Italian? Just four letters plus an imaginary vowel at the end.
‘Cazzo, vaffanculo, stronzo di merda’: she threw everything she had at him.
Water off the proverbial.
‘Omosessuale!’
At last a reaction, a narrowing of the dark brown eyes.
‘Porca puttana.’ He rolled out the words slowly, like one of his endless cigarettes. Trust his primitive sense of manhood to be the sensitive spot. All Italian men were the same. Posturing and primitive. Beautiful and barbaric. She could feel clots of tears and phlegm mixing somewhere. He took the cigarette papers from his pocket.
‘Make me one,’ she ordered.
She saw a blurred images of him laying the paper on the tablecloth, portioning out some tobacco, and tapping it into shape with his thick fingertips. He licked the paper and rolled it, then offered it to her. She waited until he’d made his own, then took out the zippo and lit them both. The typical after-dinner routine. The kind of languid ritual that Italian males love. And what difference if they’ve just told their woman they’re leaving her for someone else, the pleasure is just the same, maybe better.
She walked round the table, knocking into one of the chairs on the way. Without looking she knew Nico would be tapping ash into one of her espresso cups.
‘Why do you do it?’ she would ask. And he: ‘Why not, they’re dirty anyway. Does it matter?’ How many times the sharp thrill of that little argument, knowing what was to follow. Until it became almost a game. Once she’d convinced him it reminded her of the eruption, bodies buried with full meals still in their stomachs. He’d accused her of having an overactive imagination. ‘At least I have an imagination’, she’d countered. A nice comeback in Italian.
She wandered onto the balcony and leaned out. Now, with the cigarette between her fingers, she could be calmer. So Nico said they couldn’t see each other again, ever. Well at least Vesuvius would remain. To the volcano even the locals were foreign. As proof it had once suffocated them under white hot ash.
Later, after he’d gone, she had a shower. Maggie always turned the heater on before she went out to work in the pizzeria, so there was hot water. Thank God the others had gone back to their families for the weekend. She couldn’t face happy Neapolitan couples now. Maggie, a Mongolian somewhere in her forties, would be back about one. She was thinking things couldn’t get any worse when she tried to move the shower head and it fell, cracking her on the shoulder and clattering into the bathtub where it sat spraying water up like an ailing sprinkler. She tried to use her foot to flick it up into her hand, but only succeeded in dashing it against the side of the bath. After that the water was only a pathetic trickle, Maggie would be desperate to get under when she got back, to wash away the oil and the sweat of the pizza place. Mina realised she was too miserable herself to care. If someone had offered a dark pit of penitence and shame she would have crawled into it. She thought of Savonarola, the mad Florentine Priest who said pestilence and syphilis were just punishments for man’s corruption. Even Michaelangelo was an admirer. All this knowledge of Italian high culture and where did she come to? The ass-end, il culo del paese. This idea had appealed to Nico’s sense of humour. But of course he’d corrected her, as he always did when she gave an opinion on anything Italian. The periferia of Napoli, he said, is not only the culo, but the intestines, the kidneys, the liver, and large parts of the brain of Italy – ‘in fact, all the bits you don’t want to contemplate!’ - as though it was his idea in the first place. Che palle!
In her room she put on a t-shirt, switched the light off, and pulled the single white sheet over her. It wasn’t that he’d betrayed her, that he’d given her horns. No, he’d done that before, and she had forgiven him, feeling a vague sense that it must be difficult for him, a pure Napoletano, to have a foreign girlfriend. But even that wasn’t right. The truth was, her upbringing taught her to forgive him. And that fact, she could see it now, was weakness, which in this barbaric land was to be abhorred. Nico always banged on about his admiration for the girls who tarted themselves up at fourteen because they had una strategia: fix on a certain male who they think can last the course, and use every means to get him. How admirable, she’d loaded on the sarcasm ‘Where I come from something called feminism happened, and women don’t think they need to hang on the coat-tails of a man all the time.’ Nico had chuckled at the literal translation of the phrase. ‘But where you come from is a petty bourgeois society. Not Secondigliano. Not Scampia. Not…’
‘You don’t think Edinburgh has its own shitholes. Pilton, Wester Hailes…’
‘Appunto. Everywhere you go, feminism is irrelevant to the poor.’
‘That doesn’t mean you have to admire ignorance.’
‘Tu non capisce stu posto’.
His trademark ring off to an argument. Okay so maybe she didn’t understand this place. But that was because it didn’t make any sense.
Ransome Ochikwe darted into the Neptune Room, vaulted a barrier and sprinted down a passage friezed with faded scenes two millennia old. The sound of his pursuers behind him, he turned a corner and skidded to a halt before a dead end. But there was a gap at the foot of the wooden beamed roof. If he could squeeze through…
The man was in the passageway.
‘Ehh che stai facendo? Mo vediamo’.
He leapt up and managed to grab a hold on the top of the wall with his fingers. Using all the strength of his wiry frame he hauled himself up and placed one foot over. He wiggled it forward and brought the other leg up so now he was horizontal in the gap. The man was charging towards him, reaching into his pocket. He wriggled and rolled his body until suddenly there was nothing underneath - and dropped three metres, cracking his shoulder on an earthenware pot. Pain shot along the joint as he staggered to his feet. He was on a patch of gravel at one end of a grassy courtyard. He ran across the grass and down another passage. More shouts behind - they must be back on his tail. He kept running in a straight line, ignoring the tempting dark entrances. Finally he came to the rope bridge across the ravine – the only place of entry or exit to the site. The wooden planks clattered together as he ran – but each stride was taking him nearer escape. The thought flashed through his mind that he should cut the ropes when he reached the other side – like Harrison Ford. Then an Italian voice –
'I think you've got something we want.'
He stopped dead. A dark figure was waiting on the far side.
The other closed in behind, cornering him like a rat in a trap. There was a long drop into the blackness of the ravine. He tried to remember what was at the bottom, until the glint of a weapon made up his mind regardless. He slipped under the rope and pushed himself out into space. It seemed he was hardly in the air at all before he was shooting under water, with pain searing into his eyes.
*
The face across the table seemed unreal all of a sudden. Gargoylelike. In her mouth the taste was acrid bile. How could he eat the dinner she’d prepared, wait for her to make the espresso, and then tell her this?
‘Fuck you Nico. Fuck you and your lousy family.’ The English swear words tasted good, but the Italian ‘cazzo’ was sweeter. What did ‘fuck’ really mean to an Italian? Just four letters plus an imaginary vowel at the end.
‘Cazzo, vaffanculo, stronzo di merda’: she threw everything she had at him.
Water off the proverbial.
‘Omosessuale!’
At last a reaction, a narrowing of the dark brown eyes.
‘Porca puttana.’ He rolled out the words slowly, like one of his endless cigarettes. Trust his primitive sense of manhood to be the sensitive spot. All Italian men were the same. Posturing and primitive. Beautiful and barbaric. She could feel clots of tears and phlegm mixing somewhere. He took the cigarette papers from his pocket.
‘Make me one,’ she ordered.
She saw a blurred images of him laying the paper on the tablecloth, portioning out some tobacco, and tapping it into shape with his thick fingertips. He licked the paper and rolled it, then offered it to her. She waited until he’d made his own, then took out the zippo and lit them both. The typical after-dinner routine. The kind of languid ritual that Italian males love. And what difference if they’ve just told their woman they’re leaving her for someone else, the pleasure is just the same, maybe better.
She walked round the table, knocking into one of the chairs on the way. Without looking she knew Nico would be tapping ash into one of her espresso cups.
‘Why do you do it?’ she would ask. And he: ‘Why not, they’re dirty anyway. Does it matter?’ How many times the sharp thrill of that little argument, knowing what was to follow. Until it became almost a game. Once she’d convinced him it reminded her of the eruption, bodies buried with full meals still in their stomachs. He’d accused her of having an overactive imagination. ‘At least I have an imagination’, she’d countered. A nice comeback in Italian.
She wandered onto the balcony and leaned out. Now, with the cigarette between her fingers, she could be calmer. So Nico said they couldn’t see each other again, ever. Well at least Vesuvius would remain. To the volcano even the locals were foreign. As proof it had once suffocated them under white hot ash.
Later, after he’d gone, she had a shower. Maggie always turned the heater on before she went out to work in the pizzeria, so there was hot water. Thank God the others had gone back to their families for the weekend. She couldn’t face happy Neapolitan couples now. Maggie, a Mongolian somewhere in her forties, would be back about one. She was thinking things couldn’t get any worse when she tried to move the shower head and it fell, cracking her on the shoulder and clattering into the bathtub where it sat spraying water up like an ailing sprinkler. She tried to use her foot to flick it up into her hand, but only succeeded in dashing it against the side of the bath. After that the water was only a pathetic trickle, Maggie would be desperate to get under when she got back, to wash away the oil and the sweat of the pizza place. Mina realised she was too miserable herself to care. If someone had offered a dark pit of penitence and shame she would have crawled into it. She thought of Savonarola, the mad Florentine Priest who said pestilence and syphilis were just punishments for man’s corruption. Even Michaelangelo was an admirer. All this knowledge of Italian high culture and where did she come to? The ass-end, il culo del paese. This idea had appealed to Nico’s sense of humour. But of course he’d corrected her, as he always did when she gave an opinion on anything Italian. The periferia of Napoli, he said, is not only the culo, but the intestines, the kidneys, the liver, and large parts of the brain of Italy – ‘in fact, all the bits you don’t want to contemplate!’ - as though it was his idea in the first place. Che palle!
In her room she put on a t-shirt, switched the light off, and pulled the single white sheet over her. It wasn’t that he’d betrayed her, that he’d given her horns. No, he’d done that before, and she had forgiven him, feeling a vague sense that it must be difficult for him, a pure Napoletano, to have a foreign girlfriend. But even that wasn’t right. The truth was, her upbringing taught her to forgive him. And that fact, she could see it now, was weakness, which in this barbaric land was to be abhorred. Nico always banged on about his admiration for the girls who tarted themselves up at fourteen because they had una strategia: fix on a certain male who they think can last the course, and use every means to get him. How admirable, she’d loaded on the sarcasm ‘Where I come from something called feminism happened, and women don’t think they need to hang on the coat-tails of a man all the time.’ Nico had chuckled at the literal translation of the phrase. ‘But where you come from is a petty bourgeois society. Not Secondigliano. Not Scampia. Not…’
‘You don’t think Edinburgh has its own shitholes. Pilton, Wester Hailes…’
‘Appunto. Everywhere you go, feminism is irrelevant to the poor.’
‘That doesn’t mean you have to admire ignorance.’
‘Tu non capisce stu posto’.
His trademark ring off to an argument. Okay so maybe she didn’t understand this place. But that was because it didn’t make any sense.
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