A Dead Man in Naples

by Michael Pearce

  ‘One of the officers, Vincente, is arranging for some water to be brought,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Oh, yes, but that’s for drinking.’

  ‘Couldn’t you use some of that?’

  ‘That will be being paid for and they might not be very keen to have it used on washing bicycles down.’

  Giorgio looked at Francesca.

  ‘I’ve been wondering about Jalila,’ he said.

  ‘Getting her to fetch the water?’

  ‘Yes. She’ll be glad of the work.’

  ‘It would have to be paid for,’ said Francesca doubtfully. ‘You couldn’t expect her to do it for nothing.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind paying Jalila. A bit. I mean, I wouldn’t have to pay her as much as I would a man.’

  ‘There’s not going to be much money in this for you, Giorgio, if you’re paying her something. However small,’ said Francesca. ‘And would she do it, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, I think she would,’ said Giorgio confidently. ‘She’s interested in bicycles.’

  ‘What!’ said Seymour.

  ‘Jalila?’ said Chantale.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Francesca doubtfully.

  ‘Yes!’ Giorgio insisted. ‘I’ve often seen her talking to the Signor.’

  ‘What Signor is this?’

  ‘The English Signor.’

  ‘Signor Scampion?’

  ‘Yes. I used to see him talking to her at the Porta del Carmine after he’d been out riding.’

  ‘You’re sure it was them?’ said Seymour.

  ‘Look,’ said Giorgio, ‘an Arab woman and an Englishman! You don’t make mistakes over that.’

  ‘I’m sure you saw them, Giorgio,’said Chantale, ‘but . . .’

  She hesitated. ‘Giorgio, are you sure they were talking about bicycles?’

  ‘Yes,’ snapped Francesca. ‘He’s quite sure!’

  ‘He always had his bicycle with him,’ said Giorgio, a little lost, ‘and I think he was showing it to her. What else would they be talking about?’

  ‘Giorgio, we have to go now,’ said Francesca, hustling him away.

  ‘In my family’s house,’ said Jalila, ‘there was always water.’

  She and Chantale were sitting on the patio at the back of the pensione. The smaller child was asleep on Jalila’s lap. The little girl had just been sitting on Chantale’s lap being read to but they had come to the end of the story and she had slipped off Chantale’s knee and taken the book to the other side of the patio, where she was now sitting turning the pages and looking at the pictures by herself.

  The book was a children’s book, which was why Chantale had noticed it. There weren’t many books for children in Arabic. She didn’t think she had ever seen one. There were religious prohibitions against the representation of human forms and although in some parts of the Muslim world it was quite common to represent animals and flowers and trees, among the stricter Muslims even that was frowned on. So she had been intrigued when she had picked this book up.

  ‘Where did you get it from?’ she had asked.

  ‘It is a special book,’ said Jalila. ‘Tonio and Marcello found it when they were out together one day in Benghazi. Marcello was always interested in books – Tonio less so – and they went in. The owner was a Jew and he had lots of interesting books, some of them in Italian. There was only one, though, that was for children, and Marcello picked it out. It was the pictures, I think, which struck him. They were, he said, as a child would draw. Well, now, most of our children do not draw, so I wouldn’t know.

  ‘But Marcello said: “Your children would like this, Tonio.” And so he bought it for him as a present. Tonio was not sure about this because in his own house in Naples there were no books, and he himself didn’t read much. But in Marcello’s house there were books and both Giuseppi and Maria made much of them.

  ‘“If your children are going to grow up as Italians,” Marcello said, “they must grow up as real Italians. And not just real Italians, but rich Italians. It will not do, Tonio, for either your children or my children to grow up as we have done. For them it must be better. And so I will buy this book for you.”

  ‘Which he did. So this book, Signora, is special. It speaks to me of my husband and his friend. And it speaks also of all our hopes. Some of those hopes, Signora,’ said Jalila, ‘can now never be fulfilled. My husband is dead. But others of them, his, and mine, and, yes, Marcello’s, too, will be fulfilled. This I have sworn, Signora, and I will keep my oath.’

  ‘It is right that parents should wish the best for their children,’ said Chantale. ‘As I expect your parents did for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jalila, laughing, ‘and when I told them I wished to marry Tonio, they were not sure it had happened!’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Chantale. ‘In the end you may have great joy from your children.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jalila, laughing, ‘and no doubt great trouble also!’

  She gave them a fond look.

  ‘But, meanwhile,’ she said, ‘if they are to eat, I have to fetch water.’

  ‘Even with the pension?’

  ‘Even with the pension,’ said Jalila. ‘The water will perhaps buy them some treats which otherwise they would not have known. The difference between eating and eating well is as little as that.’

  She sighed. ‘And so, Signora, I have to think hard. If, as Marcello said, it is not enough for our children to grow up as we did, then I have to think very hard. Carrying water will not bring that about. And so, Signora, I come back again to Bruno, who was, too, a good friend of Tonio’s.’

  ‘But you hesitate,’ said Chantale.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jalila, ‘I hesitate. And it is not because I think like a maid, Signora. I am past that. It is . . .’

  She stopped, and rocked the child a little on her lap.

  ‘Bruno is a good man,’ she said. ‘He is good to his mother and he would be good to me and to them. But although he is a good man, Signora, and is earning good money, he does not earn his money in a good way.’

  ‘How does he earn it?’

  ‘He collects,’ said Jalila simply.

  ‘Collects?’

  But Jalila wouldn’t say more.

  The little boy on her lap stirred and Jalila bent over him and stroked his cheek. He half opened his eyes and she stroked them shut and began to croon a little baby song. He went back to sleep and she sat quietly rocking him.

  On the other side of the patio the little girl read on determinedly.

  ‘Jalila,’ said Chantale, ‘have others tried to help you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Jalila. ‘Tonio’s family, and Maria and Giuseppi –’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about them,’ said Chantale. ‘I was talking about people – people not from Naples.’

  ‘My patron, you mean? The man who paid for me to come back from Libya to Naples. Marcello and Bruno say that I must always be grateful to him, and I am.’

  ‘And has he helped you since?’

  Jalila hesitated.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘although he swore he would not. He sent me some money. It is all spent, though. I had to spend it when the pension did not come through. He sent it me by the Englishman.’

  ‘Signor Scampion?’

  ‘Yes. The nice Englishman.’

  ‘And was it just the once that he sent you money?’

  ‘Yes. But, as he said, he had already done much for me.’

  ‘It is said,’ Chantale chose her words carefully, ‘it is said, Jalila, that the Englishman saw you more than once. In fact, that he saw you several times.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but that was not to give me money.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. That was –’ She stopped, then continued. ‘That was because my patron had asked him to keep on eye on me and see that all was well. He used to give me words of comfort, for which I was very grateful.’

  ‘And this was all?’

  ‘All? Well, as I have said, my patron had said there cou
ld be no question of money –’

  ‘Was there more to it than that, Jalila?’

  ‘Was there more ‘More to it?’

  ‘Because people say there was.’

  Jalila flushed angrily.

  ‘People will say these things,’ she snapped, ‘whether there be truth in them or no.’

  ‘And there was no truth in them?’

  Jalila did not reply for a moment.

  ‘Perhaps there was,’ she said then. ‘A little. But only a little. We met, perhaps, more often that we should have done. But it was, I think, a comfort to us both. For me, because even with all the good people around me, I still, at times, felt very alone. And I think he felt alone, too. At times. He was, like me, a stranger in a strange land. And he needed to talk to someone, he said, who was also a stranger. Or, at least, someone who was not Italian, for the Italians were blinded, as he had been.

  ‘Besides, he said, he wanted to talk to someone who knew what war meant. Not what war was – a soldier, any soldier, could tell him that, provided he had served. He said that the young men at the base had not previously served yet, they had not yet been on the battlefield, and so they did not really know.

  ‘But, in any case, he said, that was not what he wanted. What he wanted to know was what war meant. And for that, he said, he had to go to someone else, someone who had been touched by war and yet not been part of it. And for that, he said, he needed someone like me.

  ‘I did not really understand him but I knew he meant well and that this was important to him. So we met and talked. And perhaps something grew out of that, or was beginning to grow out of that. But it never came to anything, we just talked. But the talking was important, and so we talked on.

  ‘I think now that perhaps this was important to me, too, for I, too, did not understand what war meant. I did not understand what war had done to me – no, I knew that all right. But I did not know why it had done it to me, why it should have singled me out, as it seemed to have done.

  ‘And he seemed to understand that, in a way that others didn’t.’

  She shrugged. ‘So, well, we talked, and then he died. He was killed, like my husband. And I could not understand that, either. Why did this sort of thing happen to me? Was there something special about me, that I drew such things? Why should God have designed it thus? Or perhaps God had not designed it thus? Perhaps it had just happened. But if that was so, did that not mean that God did not design everything in the world, and how could that be? I felt I needed to talk to some learned man, but there was no learned man like that around here.

  ‘I had said that to Signor Scampion and he said that no man was learned enough to be able to answer such questions. But that it was man’s fate, and perhaps woman’s fate especially, to ask such questions. And I could understand that, and especially about it being woman’s fate, to ask them.’

  Chapter Ten

  When Chantale walked down the street there were always cries of ‘Bellissima!’ from the young men lounging at every corner. At first she was taken aback and shrank into herself. But then she grew rather to like it. They were cries of appreciation not of incipient aggression; and she soon realized that she was not alone in receiving them. Any pretty girl in Neapolitan streets received the same treatment. It was not so much, as she had initially supposed, sexual ravenousness as a genuine admiration for beauty. Almost aesthetic, she thought. Almost.

  Anyway, it was not like this in London; and it certainly was not like it in Tangier. In Tangier it would at once have produced a riot. The knives would have been out in a flash. Any male relative would have looked upon it as an insult which he was bound, for the sake of family honour, and for the sake of his own, to avenge.

  Even in the East End of London, where she and Seymour lived, it was a bit like that. Very many of the people there were immigrants – Seymour himself came from an immigrant family (the ‘Seymour’ came from Shakespeare, chosen by a literature-loving Polish grandfather). They brought with them to London attitudes to family honour, and often to the females in their family, that were sometimes not so very different from those in Arab Morocco. Recourse was had less often to knives but if the girl of the family stepped out of line she would pretty swiftly be pulled back behind it. Or so Seymour’s sister had informed Chantale. She herself, she said, had stepped out once or twice, and whenever she did, she said bitterly, there had been a hell of a to-do.

  Seymour’s own attitude was relaxed as it was on most things, but Chantale had noticed that he frequently bridled at the shouts of ‘Bellissima’, as if the sense of primitive male honour and possessiveness was not entirely absent; and she was rather pleased.

  So when at the snail restaurant discussion began on the physical merits of a lady with whom they were obviously all familiar, she knew what to expect. Seymour was now, of course, a habitué of the restaurant, and Chantale had taken to dropping in with him. She was the only woman ever present and they treated her with an elaborate, old-fashioned courtesy which she rather enjoyed. Their own wives, of course, were never there.

  The acquaiolo had seen the lady in question the previous day.

  ‘And she is still as beautiful,’ he said admiringly, ‘as she ever was.’

  ‘That sort of beauty never fades,’ said the snail-restaurant owner sentimentally.

  ‘It sort of deepens,’ said the carpenter, which rather surprised Seymour, as he had never thought that the carpenter had a poetic side.

  ‘Of course, when she was here, she was very young,’ said the acquaiolo. ‘Barely more than sixteen when I first heard her.’

  ‘Heard her?’ said Seymour.

  ‘A wonderful voice!’ said the snail-shop man sighing.

  ‘Of course, it ripened with the years,’ said the acquaiolo. ‘But when I first heard her, it was as clear as a bell.’

  ‘What did you first hear her in?’ asked the carpenter.

  ‘Mozart. I don’t regard that as proper opera, but the freshness of the part suited her. Suited her as she was then, I should say. Of course, as she matured she went on to proper parts.’

  ‘And then the bastards took her away,’ said the snail man, sighing.

  ‘She came back sometimes,’ said the carpenter. ‘She always had a soft spot for Naples.’

  ‘Whenever she did, the crowds outside the house were immense. Never mind the crowd inside.’

  ‘She was our girl,’ said the snail man, sighing again.

  ‘Whenever she came, Naples was all a-buzz,’ said the carpenter.

  ‘You couldn’t get a ticket. They say not even Our Friends could get you one. At any price.’

  ‘Ah, those were the days,’ said the restaurant owner, concealing his emotion by dipping another portion into everybody’s bowl.

  ‘Do you still go to the opera?’ asked Seymour, surprised; surprised because in London when you went to the opera, you didn’t normally find yourself rubbing shoulders with carpenters and water-carriers or even restaurant owners.

  ‘I try to see everything they put on here,’ said the carpenter matter-of-factly.

  The others nodded.

  ‘Of course, it’s got more expensive,’ said the acquaiolo. ‘The prices now are ridiculous.’

  ‘That’s what she said!’

  They smiled in recollection.

  ‘She came down here once and looked at the prices, and then she demanded that for one night they all be lowered. “So that her friends could come.” And they did.’

  ‘And I went,’ said the carpenter. ‘And she sang encore after encore, and the crowd was ecstatic. It went on till two in the morning.’

  ‘That is the sort of woman she was,’ said the snail man. ‘We’ll never see her like again.’

  ‘We’ll never hear her like again. She was remarkable. No wonder they spirited her away to La Scala.’

  ‘But then she stopped. Quite suddenly.’

  ‘Her voice was beginning to go, I think,’ said the carpenter. ‘She couldn’t quite hit the top ones any more. �
��This is the time to go,” she said. “Before it gets any worse. And while I’m still there.”’

  ‘It helped having a rich husband. She didn’t need to work any more.’

  ‘They say that when she married, he told her that in future she was to sing for him alone.’

  ‘Those rich men are like that,’ said the carpenter.

  ‘Bastards!’ said the acquaiolo.

  ‘Shut her up like a bird in a cage. And hung the cage inside the house so no one else could hear her.’

  ‘You know,’ said the snail-shop owner, ‘I don’t think you could have seen her yesterday.’

  ‘I did,’ the acquaiolo insisted. ‘I looked up, and there she was! As near to me as you are. I nearly dropped my water bags. In fact, I must have said something, for she turned round to me and smiled. And I’ll tell you what: I may be old, and nine-tenths round the bend, but once you’ve seen it you never forget a smile like that. I used to hang around the stage door hoping to catch a sight of her. She used to come out and give everyone a smile – you know, a sort of we’re-all-in-this-together smile, as if you were sharing something with her. You never forget a smile like that, I can tell you.’

  ‘Ah, bellissima!’ they all sighed in unison.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’ demanded Chantale.

  ‘Tell you something? No. What makes you think that?’

  ‘This going to the Foundling Hospital: you’re not hinting at something, are you?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like perhaps we should be thinking of adopting a child from there.’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’

  ‘No, well, I didn’t really think you were. If we’re going to have a child, we’ll damned well have one of our own.’

  ‘Never for one moment did I think that!’

  ‘No, well, I didn’t really think you did. What I thought was that this was an untypically subtle way of bringing pressure on me.’

  ‘Pressure on you?’ said Seymour, astonished.

  ‘To marry. If it is, forget about it. I’m still making up my mind.’

  ‘Listen, I just wanted to go back to the Foundling Hospital so that I could make the obvious check.’