A Dead Man in Naples

by Michael Pearce

  It was usually given the name of the saint of the day and for surname the name of the Governor of the Hospital for the current year. The last practice had been discarded, however, owing to unfortunate interpretations, and a new practice introduced, that of calling any child admitted ‘Esposito’, abandoned. That, too, had now been discarded, because it was felt to point a shameful finger at a person’s origins.

  Not too shameful a finger, thought Seymour, since so many people in Naples appeared to have Esposito as a surname and seemed prepared to use it happily. About every other shop bore the name proudly on its front. A more practical reason probably was the difficulty of distinguishing between so many. With so many Espositos, which was the one you wanted? This was particularly important to the army, most of whose recruits were named Esposito.

  The number on Scampion’s lottery ticket referred to a girl foundling who had been admitted to the Hospital on 27th March 1880. She had been given the name Margareta, after the saint of the day, together with the universal Esposito. Margareta Esposito was, then, the person whose identity mattered so much to the purchaser of the ticket that he or she had used it as their special number for betting.

  And what had happened to her? asked Seymour. Was she still at the Hospital?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the nun, consulting her records: she had left when she was thirteen.

  What to do? asked Seymour.

  ‘Probably marry,’ thought the nun. Their girls were much sought after as wives. They were educated, well trained, and disciplined. And religious, of course. All qualities thought desirable in a wife.

  Some, however, would go on to a trade, for which, again, they were much sought after, on the grounds that they had been brought up to work hard and not answer back.

  And this one, this Margareta Esposito, had she left to marry or to take up a trade?

  The nun consulted her records, and then frowned. On this one, she said, she would have to consult Sister Geneviève. Who would at the moment, she guessed, be in the chapel.

  A choir was practising in the chapel when they went in. They were singing rather beautifully.

  Three nuns were conducting the practice. One was actually a member of the choir and was leading it. Another was conducting. A third, much older than the other two, so old that she was bent down double, and had to sit down to one side, was offering a kind of general supervision. This was Sister Geneviève. She had, said the nun who had brought them in, herself conducted the choir for many years, but recently, as infirmity grew, she had taken to playing a more minor part. It was Sister Geneviève, said the nun, who had been in charge of the choir at the time Margareta Esposito had been one of its leading members.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said brightly, ‘I remember Margareta. What a beautiful voice she had! So beautiful that the Pietà came after her. You know about the Pietà, of course? No? Well, it is Vivaldi’s church. At Venice. An institution, like ours, for foundlings, and he was Director of Music there. Goodness, how I would have liked to have been there when he was! He wrote music especially for them. They were all girls, of course, and so good!

  ‘Even after he died, the musical tradition continued. But in late years they were not always altogether scrupulous. When they heard of an outstanding singer in a place like ours they would tempt her away. And they tempted Margareta. We resisted, of course, but they had friends in high places and we were not able to prevail against them. So Margareta left us before we had really had the benefit of her remarkable voice. It was a remarkable voice. I can still hear it . . .’

  She closed her eyes.

  ‘I can still hear it in my head. Such a pity that she left! From all points of view, hers as much as our own. For while she benefited from the Pietà, of course – who could not benefit? – she became more worldly. She lost the simple faith that we had given her, lost, perhaps, the love and respect with which we surrounded her. She became, so I have heard, wilder, less reconciled. It is a difficult time for girls, those years between fifteen and eighteen, and if there are not good people at hand, they can go astray.’

  ‘And Margareta Esposito went astray?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘Very much so.’ Sister Geneviève sighed. ‘She became an opera singer.’

  ‘An opera singer? Well, that’s rather good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Some would think so, but . . . Many, perhaps, would think so,’ conceded Sister Geneviève despite herself. ‘And certainly she had the voice for it. When she was with us her voice was still young and I thought we could develop it in terms of church music. And there was always that timbre there, and I suppose that as she grew older, her voice changed and she lost some of the early purity and gained in the capacity to produce deeper, richer notes. Colour – she always had plenty of colour. Too much, perhaps. I tried to discipline it out of her, but I don’t think the Pietà were as successful. But who am I to say? Her voice changed, that was all. And perhaps she changed with it.

  ‘Anyway, she left the Pietà. They lost her voice but gained in reputation, and Margareta went on to do very well.’

  ‘She still sings?’

  ‘Not now. She married, I think. Well, that is good, is God’s will for some of us. But I think it was a loss. A loss to God. Such a talent should have been used for God’s purposes. But who am I to say that it was not? I do not like opera myself, but it gives pleasure to so many that it cannot be altogether evil. Maybe God thought she could serve Him best in that way. Who knows?’

  ‘And you have lost track of her now?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘I do not follow the opera,’ said Sister Geneviève, ‘and, in any case, she no longer sings. But I can tell you one thing. She has not altogether forgotten us. Sometimes our daughters come back. Years later, sometimes. And when they do, they sometimes take away their things. Those little things they brought with them when they were admitted as a baby, things that speak to them, perhaps, of the mother they never knew. An amulet say, or a charm. Sometimes, too, they take away the label that they were given when they entered and which they kept through all the time they were here – something to remind them, perhaps, of us, or, more probably, of the child they were once and which they are no longer. I looked once to see if Margareta had come back. She had. And she had taken away her things. And her label.’

  As they were coming back from the Hospital they went past the Porta Capuana, which was as usual bustling with people, animals, carts, and trade of all kinds. You could hear it as you approached: the bleating, whinnying and people talking at top volume, gesticulating as they did so. In several places tables had come together to form a kind of impromptu café, and in one of these they saw Giuseppi, contributing his quota to the noise.

  And right beside him, arms akimbo, in exactly the pose of her grandmother and, no doubt, the other long-suffering women of Naples, was Francesca.

  ‘Grandmother says: what about the office?’

  Giuseppi waved a dismissive hand.

  ‘And Jalila,’ persisted Francesca.

  ‘Later, later,’ said Giuseppi, continuing with his conversation.

  ‘You promised,’ said Francesca. ‘You said you would go to the office with Jalila.’

  ‘Well, I will. In a bit.’

  ‘Grandmother says you won’t have time to do it before lunch.’

  Giuseppi waved an airy hand.

  Giuseppi waved an airy ‘Yes, I will,’ he said.

  ‘And that you won’t get lunch unless you’ve done it.’

  This stopped Giuseppi in mid-flow.

  ‘There’s plenty of time,’ he protested.

  ‘And she meant it,’ said Francesca implacably.

  ‘Look, I’ve said I will –’

  ‘It will be too late. You know what they’re like. They’ll be closing early for lunch. And then Jalila will be going without money for another day. And It Will Be Your Fault.’

  Giuseppi began to get up, still talking.

  ‘And Rinaldo and Pietro,’ said Francesca.

  ‘What?’ said the other
two men at the table.

  ‘That’s the point of it,’ said Francesca. ‘The point of him talking to you. To get you to go with him.’

  ‘Go where?’ said one of the men, astonished.

  ‘To the office. To get them to pay Jalila her pension.’

  ‘I was coming to that!’ protested Giuseppi.

  ‘Jalila?’

  ‘Yes. Tonio’s widow. She’s had nothing so far.’

  ‘That’s not right!’

  ‘It’s an injustice.’

  ‘And Grandmother said you were just the men to put it right. You were to go with Grandfather. Otherwise he would wander off the point.’

  The men laughed.

  ‘It’s true, Giuseppi!’

  ‘And so he was to ask you to come with him.’

  ‘Well, I don’t mind that. This is the widow of an Italian soldier, and she’s got her rights. Not only that, she’s one of ours. In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Even if she’s an Arab,’ said the other man.

  Seymour and Chantale were still having lunch when Giuseppi returned.

  ‘Well,’ said Maria, ‘did you get it?’

  ‘Yes. It will start next week.’

  ‘That’s no good. They’ll have found a reason why it shouldn’t by then.’

  ‘And meanwhile,’ said Giuseppi, ‘they’re paying her some money in advance.’

  ‘Next week too?’

  Giuseppi put his hand in his pocket and produced some notes.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘That was Pietro’s idea. He and Rinaldo insisted on it.’

  ‘I suppose it’s something,’ said Maria grudgingly. ‘But I’ll believe that about the pension starting when I see it.’

  ‘Oh, it will start,’ said Giuseppi confidently. ‘You see, Rinaldo told them that Our Friends held an interest.’

  ‘You told them that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what happens when they find out?’

  ‘Rinaldo’s going to have a word with them tonight.’

  ‘With Our Friends?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I don’t like that,’ said Maria.

  ‘Well, I don’t like it, either. But it was the best we could do in the circumstances. Look, you’ve no idea what it takes to shift these bureaucrats. Unless you put the fear of God into them, they won’t do anything.’

  ‘All the same –’

  ‘It will be all right. Rinaldo is going to speak to them. Tonight. They’ll do it as a favour.’

  ‘And what favour will they ask for in return?’

  ‘Look, it will be as a general favour. They won’t be asking for anything particular in return.’

  ‘Well, if they do – when they do – just tell me about it, will you? I don’t want you getting mixed up in anything like that.’

  ‘Look, I’ve always stood out against that sort of thing, haven’t I? Refused to pay protection? Turned them away when they came round asking for something?’

  ‘Yes, but now you haven’t. You’ve asked them for something.’

  ‘You wanted me to get the money for Jalila, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not like this. Not in this way.’

  ‘You want me to go back and tell Rinaldo that it’s all off?’

  ‘I just don’t want us to have too much to do with the Camorra, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that,’ Giuseppi complained, after Maria had gone back into the kitchen. ‘You can’t get anything done in Naples unless you go through the Camorra. Well, you don’t even need to go through them. You just need to know that you have their support. Or, at least, that they’re not against it. And they’re not usually against seeing that people get their dues. Ordinary people, that is. I mean, it would be stupid of them, wouldn’t it? It could put people’s backs up. And they’re usually on the side of the poor. But you’ve got to go about it in the right way. Make sure that what you want doesn’t clash with something that they’ve got in mind. Often you’ve just got to let them know. Just mention it. That’s what Rinaldo’s doing tonight. Not asking for anything, just mentioning it. What’s wrong with that? And, anyway, she herself told me to bring him in on it, didn’t she?’

  He poured himself a glass of wine.

  ‘The thing is, you see, it’s not entirely straightforward. Jalila’s being an Arab, you see. I mean, in the ordinary way, if it was just the widow of a soldier, and he was one of ours, there’d be no problem. But her being an Arab. Look, it doesn’t matter to me, her being an Arab. She’s just Tonio’s widow, as far as I’m concerned.

  ‘Tonio’s my brother’s son. Born the same year as our Marcello. The two of them were always close, always did things together. Enlisted together. The fools! Well, there wasn’t much else for them to do round here. Anyway, they went into the army together and were sent out to Libya together.

  ‘Only Tonio got himself killed. But not before he had had time to marry and have children. So when he died there was a question of what to do with the wife and kids. Well, you would have thought that the best thing would be for her family to look after them. But there were problems about that, apparently, and Marcello said that Tonio had laid it upon him as a sacred trust to see that they were provided for.

  ‘Well, I don’t know how he thought he was going to do that on a private’s pay but what he did was to send her home to my brother’s family. Well, of course, they agreed to take her. It was only right, her being their son’s wife. But my brother is older than I am, and so is my sister-in-law, and her health is none too good. It’s a lot to take on. Of course, we do what we can to help, but it’s not easy. People look at Jalila all the time, you know, and they wonder. What is she doing here?

  ‘But that’s war for you. You go off with your flags flying and everyone cheering and all the girls around your neck. But then the casualties begin to come home. And, of course, some, like Tonio, don’t come home at all. And then you know what war is. And you begin to wonder, if you’ve not wondered before, what the hell Italy is doing out there.

  ‘Liberating people and opening up trade, they say. But it’s not our people who are liberated, and it’s not the ordinary men who benefit from the trade. It’s the banks and the big people. And the small ones, like Tonio, are the ones who get hit by the bullets.’

  Chapter Four

  Down the street came the cyclists, pedalling furiously: three out in front, then several in a bunch, and, finally, some solitary ones straggling behind them. The scattered crowd raised a cheer. And there ahead of them was Porta Capuana with the crowded thoroughfares on either side and a great crush of people coming and going.

  The Porta was the announced finishing point, but the racers, mercifully, stopped some hundred yards short, where two officials in the colours of the Racing Club of Naples, surrounded by a herd of urchins, were furiously waving flags. Two or three other men in the Club’s colours were intercepting the riders as they came in and noting down their times and numbers on clipboards.

  ‘Are you the last, Umberto?’

  ‘Me?’ affecting affront. ‘No, there are others behind me.’

  And, indeed, one or two fresh riders, or, possibly, not quite so fresh, were just coming into view.

  ‘That last hill was a killer!’ said one, panting.

  ‘You’ve got to take it fast,’ someone advised him.

  ‘What do you think I was doing?’

  ‘Maybe we ought to make the last bit downhill next time.’

  ‘What, and have a big pile-up at the end?’

  ‘It would add something.’

  ‘A dozen people with their necks broken?’

  ‘You know what I mean. A bit of extra excitement.’

  ‘There’s enough excitement as there is. And suppose some daft bugger runs in front?’

  ‘He could run out now.’

  ‘Yes, but if we are all going that much faster, and we were all in a bunch at the end, it could cause mayhem!’

  At the moment the racers had a hundred yards o
r so to slow to a stop before they ran into the great stone wall of the Porta. Even so, there was much skidding of bicycles at the last moment.

  ‘Darling, you were tremendous!’ said a woman’s voice among the skids.

  ‘I was, wasn’t I?’

  ‘And your shorts, dear, are even more tremendous.’

  ‘I did what you said. Sat down in the water with them on to shrink them.’

  ‘It worked perfectly. Skintight, and shows everything off to advantage.’

  ‘Not too tight? I thought I heard a split at one point.’

  ‘Let me look. Oh, good heavens! There’s a great tear and everything’s dangling out!’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘What was that you were saying about adding to the excitement?’

  ‘Christ, let me have a towel, somebody!’

  ‘She’s having you on, Vincente,’ someone advised.

  ‘Is she? Luisa, you bitch!’

  ‘Luisa,’ said Richards, ‘can I introduce you to a colleague of mine? This is Seymour. Seymour, this is the Marchesa.’

  ‘So I guessed. Delighted to meet you, Marchesa.’

  ‘And you speak Italian? Why, this is a strange thing! The Foreign Office don’t usually send people here who can speak Italian.’

  ‘He is not Foreign Office. He’s here on holiday. With his fiancée.’

  ‘Ah? And what have you done with your fiancée, Mr Seymour? Where is she?’

  ‘Over here,’ said Chantale. ‘Keeping out of the way.’

  ‘Advisedly. I have noticed that when they cross the finishing line, the first thing they do is throw their arms round the nearest woman. I have never been able to make out whether it is the release of heaving passion temporarily bridled for the length of the race or because otherwise they would fall off. The latter, I suspect. Of course all these under-age girls love it. But you and I, Signorina, being more chaste, or, at any rate, more mature, can do without it.’