by Nadia Marks
Rosaria was not yet eight years old when her father died from tuberculosis. The illness, which indiscriminately claimed the lives of so many people, was considered by the locals as something of a curse on their village and in their ignorance they believed any house inflicted by the disease was unclean and blighted. Rosaria’s father was not the only one to be struck down; her little brother and two uncles were also taken, leaving the family fatherless and destitute, and the household tainted by the deadly malady. At twenty-five, Rosaria’s mother Luisa was left a widow with two young daughters. Her elder sister Philomena was the only person willing or able to lend a hand.
‘I remember those first years,’ Rosaria told Alexis. ‘No one would come near us, apart from my auntie and she had her own troubles. We had nothing. We had to make do with scraps for food, clothes from rags. I had to grow up in a big hurry, Alexis, my mama couldn’t cope. I had to help her with everything, including looking after Sofia, my little sister. I missed my father and brother. We were desperate for someone to take care of us, to protect us. What we needed was a guardian angel but instead the devil himself walked into our lives.’
With two small children and herself to look after, Luisa had no option but to find a job, and the only possibility for any kind of work was in Naples. The prospect of the big city should have terrified Luisa but it thrilled her instead, so she packed a bag, handed the girls to her sister, and set off. Her good looks soon landed her a job as a waitress in a bar that meant she had to stay most nights away from home in a pitiful damp room above the bar. Being young, pretty and naive she soon started to attract the wrong sort of interest from the wrong sort of men, and one in particular. Salvatore De Sio was handsome and a charmer, sported a pencil moustache, wore a smart suit and smelled of expensive cologne.
Luisa had never been outside her village before, let alone worked in a bar or mixed with the likes of Salvatore De Sio. He bought her gifts, lavished attention on her, and turned her head. Soon she was crazy about him. All Salvatore had to do was to whisper sweet nothings in her ear, pin a red carnation in her hair, kiss her sweetly on the lips and she willingly agreed to go and live with him. Her squalid room smelling of fried fish and sewage was no competition to the apartment that was now on offer. No sooner had she moved in with him than Salvatore insisted she gave up her job in the bar, promising that he would take care of her.
‘I’m a rich man,’ he boasted as they lay in bed. ‘No woman of mine needs to work in a bar,’ he murmured in her ear as he thrust himself inside her. ‘You give me what I want and you can have anything your heart desires.’
This was a new kind of love and a new kind of sex for Luisa, whose husband had been a mild, gentle man who had never stirred such overwhelming physical sensations in her. To top it all she was being promised a life she’d only ever dreamt of. For that, she was willing to do anything.
True enough, Salvatore always had plenty of money and was happy to spend some of it on Luisa. Her village seemed to be a lifetime away. Once in a while she remembered to visit, and each time she arrived with food and clothes and stories about her new life, much to Philomena’s disapproval.
‘Who is this man, Luisa?’ she asked her younger sister the first time she came home laden with gifts. ‘What about your girls? Don’t you want to be with them? They need you, I’m not their mother!’
‘They love you, Philomena, you are a better mother to them than I have ever been. Please look after them for a bit longer. I’ll send for them as soon as I’m settled. I’ll talk to Salvatore.’
‘Wake up, Luisa, stop dreaming! Why would he want your children? What makes you think a man like him, who takes in a pretty girl for fun, would want to take in her brats as well?’
‘You don’t understand, Philomena, he loves me, he wants me to be happy, he told me!’
‘You don’t know anything about life, Luisa. Don’t believe everything people tell you, especially men like Salvatore De Sio.’
‘I’m sure about him, Philomena, I love him and he loves me back and he’s rich, and if you look after my girls I will look after you and all the family. I will bring you everything you never had before and we will all live well at last!’
‘I don’t know, Luisa, I have a bad feeling about this. You be careful, my girl.’ But Luisa was deaf to her sister’s worries and relished her new status as the mistress of a well-to-do man who apparently seemed to be as taken with her as she was with him. It took just three months before Salvatore De Sio’s true character surfaced, and when it did, for Luisa there was no turning back.
After that she didn’t have to work in a bar any more. He had other plans in mind and the kind of work he had lined up for her, and for many others like her, was the oldest profession of all. Prostitution, smuggling, kidnapping, blackmail and bribery were just some of the rackets Salvatore De Sio was involved in, along with the rest of his family, as one of the leading members of the Camorra.
One month of wooing and grooming was his usual style and the maximum length of time that Salvatore invested in his women, who were mostly provincial girls alone in the city. After he had broken them in they were moved out of his apartment and into one of his brothels, in the labyrinth of dark and putrid alleyways that made up the slums of Naples, and there they stayed. For Luisa, though, the story didn’t end there.
Apparently Salvatore had taken a fancy to her. Apart from being a rare beauty, Luisa’s blind willingness to please him and her readiness to become his sexual slave persuaded him to keep her with him three times longer than his other victims. She was pliable and easy to control and he was having fun with her.
Most of the other women would start to resist after a while, refuse his demands, scream and shout, but Luisa was ever ready and even seemed to enjoy it. A habitual drug user, Salvatore introduced her to hashish, his favourite recreational pastime after sex, thus increasing his hold on her and ensuring her submission to him. Even so, Salvatore had his limits. Three months was long enough with one girl before boredom set in and finally Luisa was sent on her way to join the rest of them. Besides, he needed her to start earning for him.
To Luisa’s delight, Salvatore appeared to be quite hooked on her even if he didn’t want to admit it. Once a week he would send for her to pleasure him. She discovered that this was a privilege no other girl had after leaving the apartment, and she was allowed to even spend the night with him. He apparently missed her imaginative sexual games. She was overjoyed. Every week the poor wretched thing was given new hope. Being singled out from the rest of the whores had given Luisa an elevated status which fed her deluded fantasy that one day Salvatore would take her back as his official mistress, or maybe even marry her.
The outbreak of war brought endless misery to the inhabitants of Naples, but to Salvatore De Sio it brought fortune. His business boomed and his brothels were thriving. The German occupiers were partial to local female company and they paid well. Salvatore knew how to cater for a variety of sexual tastes, and the new girl was popular amongst some of the high-ranking officers who needed special attention.
Luisa had been well and truly sucked into his dark and dangerous world and she had now taken to it like a sea urchin to salt water. She hardly visited the village any more, although she still sent money and once in a while she would turn up laden with gifts. On one of those visits, soon after war was declared, she arrived in her furs and finery with a basket full of food, accompanied by Salvatore in his black limousine, wearing a fancy suit and smoking a fat cigar.
In an unusual gesture of generosity, more out of curiosity and the narcissistic impulse to show off, Salvatore had offered to drive Luisa to the village; by now he knew about the girls and Philomena, and how she disapproved of her sister’s life.
‘Let her see how well I keep you,’ he told her. ‘Let them all see what money can do!’
‘And maybe finally my sister will stop preaching to me,’ Luisa replied, hitching up her silk stockings.
When Philomena opened the door to her
sister and her pimp, she had an overwhelming desire to spit on the ground and slam the door in their faces. She wanted nothing to do with either of them and if she had been alone she would have gladly refused their food parcel of sin. But food was running out in the village faster than water from a sieve and she wasn’t alone, she had other mouths to feed. None of them could remember when they last saw a loaf of bread, and a bag of rice or potatoes would feed them all for weeks. How could she now refuse a basket full of tinned meats and vegetables, cakes, sweets, and delicious white bread, which she knew would keep them going for months?
‘Where are the girls, Philomena?’ asked Luisa as she settled herself down on the sofa in the tiny room her sister had kept to receive visitors, and which now was apparently being used for the girls’ sleeping quarters. ‘Where are Rosaria and Sofia? I want them to meet Salvatore!’
These were words that Philomena had hoped she would never hear, praying they’d be spared knowledge of the man she considered had been the ruin of their lives. It was bad enough that the girls should see what their mother had actually become.
‘They are busy, Luisa, leave the girls alone,’ she hissed at her sister.
‘How can they be too busy to see their mama? Call them, Philomena, please, I want to see them.’
‘They are better off not seeing you,’ the older woman muttered under her breath.
‘They are my girls and I want to see them,’ the reply came back fast and sharp. Before either of them could say anything else, Rosaria walked into the room, followed by Sofia.
They hadn’t seen each other in months and the change in the girls, especially in Rosaria, was acute. At eight, Sofia was still very much the little girl: lovely, with big dark eyes, and a mass of black hair. But at thirteen, Rosaria was blossoming into a little beauty. Her budding body displayed all the potentials of a gorgeous female, with an uncanny resemblance to her mother. At the sight of her, Salvatore’s intake of breath was audible.
‘Ciao, Mama,’ Rosaria said quietly in a serious voice as she walked up to greet her mother.
‘Ciao, cara,’ Luisa replied, surprised at the sight of her changed girl. ‘Sei molto bella, Rosa! You’re so beautiful, how you’ve changed! Come and give your mama a kiss.’ Warily Rosaria approached her mother and reluctantly kissed her on both cheeks. From the corner of the room came a long, slow whistle of admiration from Salvatore.
‘Sì, sì, che bella ragazza!’ he exclaimed, with a glint in his eye as he shifted in his chair, puffing on his cigar and filling the room with smoke.
Philomena stood watching motionless by the door with fear in her heart.
5
The moment Salvatore De Sio laid eyes on Rosaria his evil little mind started to plan how best he could get his hands on her. As the war worsened, reports of air raids by the Allies on the village became more frequent. The invasion of Sicily by them in July 1943 followed soon after by Benito Mussolini’s fall from power had opened the way to the Allied forces to invade the rest of Italy. With the situation getting more serious by the minute Salvatore took the opportunity to suggest to Luisa that she send for her daughters. But Philomena wouldn’t hear of it. She was determined to keep the girls under her protection for as long as she could. She didn’t trust Luisa and she certainly didn’t trust that sperm of the devil, as she called Salvatore.
Night after night everybody in the village, including its entire population of cockroaches, vermin, lice and fleas, crammed into the dark and dingy railway tunnel that smelled of urine and unwashed bodies to take shelter. Eventually the raids became so unpredictable there was no time to even run to safety so immediate evacuation was ordered by the authorities. Mass hysteria broke out and people started to scurry like panicked ants, mainly to Naples where they imagined things were not as bad yet. Philomena was paralysed. Where should she go? She would rather have a finger chopped off than ask her sister for help, but she wasn’t alone; she had the girls to consider. Luisa was apparently their only hope.
‘We’ll take just the girls,’ Salvatore grunted when Luisa first told him about the evacuation. ‘Your sister can find somewhere else to go.’
But Luisa hadn’t entirely lost her bearings.
‘She’s my sister, I can’t let her sleep in the street while they are dropping bombs!’ she replied.
They were given a room in the basement of the brothel – if the hole that was made available to them could be called a room. But if nothing else, Philomena thought, for the moment at least, they were not in danger of being killed and they had enough food to eat. Nobody was starving there, crime paid well.
The first time Salvatore raped her, Rosaria was asleep. She had been suffering from a very high fever and she had been in and out of delirium for several days. It was Philomena who stayed by her side, taking care of her, washing her down, and keeping her cool. Luisa was too busy whoring to pay attention to her daughter.
That day was the first day Rosaria had been left alone. Her fever had started to subside, mainly due to the illegally obtained penicillin which Salvatore was now trading in the black market.
‘The least you can do is ask your pimp to get some medicine for your daughter,’ Philomena had screamed at her sister. ‘The girl is burning up, she could die, and he is sitting on the medicine that would save her.’
That morning Salvatore was standing by a window puffing on his cigar and looking down at the street when he saw Philomena and Sofia leave. Neither of them had been out for days and the little girl begged her auntie to take her out for a breath of air. No sooner had they turned the corner and out of sight than he made his way down the dingy stairs to the basement.
He liked Luisa and her sexual games, and all the other females available to him, but he never said no to some young flesh when he could get it. He was not alone in his appreciation of the juvenile. He knew many, especially Germans, who were always willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of sampling unsoiled goods, and in these desperate times there seemed to be plenty of people willing to sell their children, girls or boys, for a price. But this one he decided he wanted for himself first. The other one, the little one, he’d be happy to pass on to whoever was willing to pay the most. But Rosaria was going to be his gift to himself for all the hard work he’d been putting in lately. He would sample her first before passing her on.
She was sound asleep, her forehead damp, her cheeks flushed from the high temperature. He didn’t even wake her. He silently unbuttoned his fly, took out his member, and within seconds he was on top of her, lifting her nightdress and groping her body, frail and thinner than before because of the illness. She woke up screaming as he forced himself inside her.
The more Rosaria told Alexis, the more he despaired. He thought that nothing had been worse than the things he’d witnessed and lived through when he first arrived in a war-torn Naples, but what he was now hearing from Rosaria made his skin crawl. At the beginning when the war first broke out, Alexis knew people were fighting to defend themselves, to avoid being killed. At least then, when the fight was for liberty in order to defeat an enemy, it was for the common good and there was a kind of dignity about it. But after years of war, when the fight to stay alive took over, some with no common goal any more other than their own self-preservation were capable of terrible, dreadful things. When he first arrived he saw desperate people willing to sell their souls, their children or their mothers, for a crust of stale bread; as much as Alexis deplored this depravity he knew it was part of the grim necessity for survival. But what Salvatore De Sio was involved in was beyond his comprehension.
After that first time Salvatore told Rosaria he would kill her if she told anyone. He would sell Sofia to the first man who wanted to have sex with her, he added, and throw the rest of them out into the streets so they’d all die because of her. He liked that, he enjoyed the young girl’s fear of him and he liked the power he had over her.
Rosaria prayed every night for the war to end, or for their village to become safe again so they could
return, but far from ending, the war continued with a vengeance, and with new developments all the time. For over a year Rosaria dared not say anything. Philomena suspected something was going on but Salvatore was devious; as much as she tried, she never managed to catch him in action. With dread in her heart she watched her niece change into a moody, nervous, withdrawn creature. She wanted nothing better than to find somewhere else to take the girls, she even begged Luisa to help them, but as far as Luisa was concerned she had done her bit to help her family. Salvatore was her king who meant more to her than her own daughters. She was quite willing to give them up to keep her lover happy. She even turned a blind eye when she found out that little Sofia was promised to a German officer with a taste for the prepubescent.
Then Alfonso arrived on the scene.
Alfonso De Sio was Salvatore’s younger brother, who had come home for a visit after travelling around the region taking care of family business. As soon as he saw Rosaria he was instantly in love, making him want for himself the young girl in the basement who his big brother had been bragging about. Her quiet fragile beauty, her tender years, and his brother’s apparent enthusiasm, ignited his lust for her. But it wasn’t just the sexual conquest that made Alfonso want to claim Rosaria as his. The obsessive competitiveness and sibling rivalry he always felt for his older brother was an even bigger motivator.
From an early age, whatever Salvatore had, Alfonso had to have too. If Salvatore thought Rosaria was so marvellous and declared ownership of her, then Alfonso had to take her away from him. She had to be his. His alone, and no one else’s, especially Salvatore’s. What Alfonso lacked in years as the youngest member of the De Sio clan he more than made up for in pathological temper. He was the only person who frightened Salvatore. Alfonso warned his brother to keep away from Rosaria and told him that if he ever laid as much as a finger on her again he would kill him. Of course Rosaria was never consulted; Alfonso wanted her and that was all that mattered, and what’s more, in order to ensure that his brother kept well away from her, he was going to marry her! And so it came about that Rosaria, fourteen and a half years old, became Alfonso De Sio’s wife, and a member of one of the most notorious families in the whole of Naples.
