Pedro understood. It was the last thing he wanted to hear. But once again he had to put his entire trust in this stranger. He took a great gulp of air. Then he dived down.
The filth rose over his face, over his head. He could feel it pressing against his eyes. It was utterly and completely revolting. It was worse than death. He used his hands against the wire mesh to guide himself downwards. It seemed to be a long way and he wondered for how much longer he would be able to hold his breath. He had lost the torch. That didn’t matter. He wouldn’t need it any more. The knife too. Oh God – this was horrible. But then his fingers found the bottom of the metal barrier and he realized there was a little space underneath. An adult would never have been able to pass through. It would have been too narrow for most children. But he was half-starved. He could do it.
He went feet first. He felt the metal rim rubbing against his thighs as he pulled himself under the grille. Now he was terrified of getting stuck. To be so close and yet to be pinned down here, to be forced to open his mouth and let the sewage flow into him. He couldn’t bear it. In his haste, he tried to rise up too soon and the metal struck his throat, almost making him cry out. It hit him a second time, just above his nose – but then he was free, on the other side. There was almost nothing left in his lungs. He had to breathe. He pushed himself up, not exactly swimming … more like burrowing with all his strength. His hands came free. The cool evening air hit him. He had reached the surface! For a moment he splashed around helplessly, then somehow he made it to the side and pulled himself onto the sand, sewage still streaming out of his hair, down his face, over his eyes and lips. He hardly dared breathe, afraid that he would swallow some of it. He was covered in filth and it could still kill him.
“Ti aiuterò!”
Giovanni had grabbed hold of him, smearing himself too, and the two of them staggered down the beach, arm in arm, as if they were drunk or had been fighting together for the past couple of hours. They were making for the sea but heading away from the outlet. The further they went, the cleaner the water would be. Pedro felt it lapping at his ankles and gratefully threw himself forward, allowing it to wash over him. Giovanni did the same. The water was black and polluted but after what Pedro had been through it felt and tasted delicious. He washed himself all over, particularly his hair and his face. For a long time he didn’t move.
When he finally sat up, the sun had almost set. He could just make out the sprawl of a city, a port, a tangle of ships. In the middle of it there was a castle, a huge block with four massive towers and a scattering of tiny windows. This must have been where he had been held. It was from here that he had just escaped.
But there was something else that drew his attention. It was far behind the city and over to one side and yet still it dominated the landscape, soaring into the sky. At first Pedro thought it was a mountain, but then he saw the smoke pouring out of the top and realized that this was why the sky was always black and everything smelled as if it had burned.
Giovanni had followed his eyes. “Vesuvius,” he said simply. “Il volcano.”
The smoke wouldn’t stop coming.
It was forming itself into the shape of a tree.
TWENTY
Dripping wet and shivering, but no longer smelling quite as bad as he had a few minutes before, Pedro followed Giovanni through the darkening passages of the city, which he now knew to be Naples, Italy. It reminded him of Lima in some ways – particularly the cobbled streets and the palm trees, which somehow didn’t seem to belong together. A lot of the buildings were old and very grand but they stood just around the corner from modern flats and offices that were uglier and more run-down. From the harbour where they had begun, they followed a complicated network of interlocking roads and alleys, which led them ever deeper into the metropolis. And all the time Pedro felt the bulk of the castle where he had been kept prisoner looming over him, and wondered if they were still looking for him inside or if the search had been widened into the city itself. Either way, he was glad to put as much space between himself and it as he could.
Naples was crowded. In fact, that wasn’t the word for it. Pedro soon saw that there was an impossible number of people out in the open – thousands and thousands of them filling the pavements, crouching in the doorways, queuing for food, for shelter, for work, for a bed for the night or simply because they had nothing else to do. There were whole families clustered together: wizened grandmothers in black, children in rags, blank-faced mothers carrying babies. Many of the people were carrying huge bundles which surely contained everything they owned. Others had their possessions piled up on carts or wheelbarrows. And they were wearing so many clothes that they didn’t even look human; they were just round masses of cloth – old jackets and shabby coats – shuffling forward, barely able to move.
And everywhere there were policemen. They wore the same black uniforms as the guards in the castle and patrolled together in pairs, with pistols and batons hanging from their belts. At first, Pedro thought they were looking for him and crouched down, afraid to go on. But Giovanni urged him forward. The policemen were here to control the crowds, stopping people at random to question them and examine their identity papers. Even so, the two boys kept their heads down, moving as quickly as they could without drawing attention to themselves. They were friends on their way home. What did it matter that they were soaked through and filthy? Maybe they had been fighting together by the sea. What could be more innocent than that?
There were no cars at all. That puzzled Pedro. How could you have a modern city without cars, buses or taxis? And, for that matter, there were tramlines but where were the trams? A few people overtook them on bicycles, weaving their way through the crowds, but otherwise everyone was on foot. And although there was electricity – he could see the wires criss-crossing above his head and white light shining out of some of the windows higher up – the streets and most of the buildings were dark. Nobody seemed to be enjoying themselves. Most of the shops were closed. There were no restaurants or cafés. No music – live or recorded – played anywhere. It was as if all the most miserable people had come to live in one place and had become even more miserable once they’d arrived.
He felt Giovanni take hold of his arm and the two of them left the avenue they had been following and continued down a series of narrower streets between buildings that were so close together that they almost seemed to touch. They passed a food shop with an open door and a long line of people stretching down the pavement. Next to it was a pawnbroker with an old bearded man sitting behind a desk, examining a gold ring with an eyeglass. They turned a corner, continued under an archway and finally followed a flight of steps into a private square formed by four crumbling apartment blocks, eight storeys high, with identical windows, shutters and cast-iron balconies. Clothes hung everywhere, limp and stripped of their colour by the fading light. The same uncanny silence that had characterized the city seemed to have followed them here. Pedro would have expected to hear a television playing or at least a radio – but there was nothing. The two of them made for a doorway and entered a dank, old-fashioned hallway with a flight of concrete stairs leading upwards. There were yet more families huddled together here. As Pedro brushed past, he felt their heads turn towards them and saw the whites of their eyes peering at him out of the gloom.
There was a lift but it wasn’t working. They climbed six floors, passing twenty or thirty more people, stacked one above the other on different steps. They followed a corridor with light sockets dangling down on wires but no bulbs. Pedro could smell cooking … plain boiled rice or pasta. He heard a baby crying, a woman shouting at someone. In the distance, perhaps half a mile away, there was a single gunshot, then, a few seconds later, someone screaming. Giovanni stopped in front of a door and knocked – a special code, Pedro noticed – which he rapped out with his knuckles. There was a pause and then the door opened. The two of them went in.
They were in a flat that had just three interconnecting rooms, with high cei
lings, bare wooden floors and windows looking out over the courtyard. It might once have been grand. Pedro observed some of the details; the finely carved shutters, the marble fireplace. But there were empty squares where pictures had once hung. The curtains had gone. There was barely any furniture.
A whole family lived here, several generations all sitting round a table together, lit by the oil lamp that was the only source of light. Most of them were adults but there were also children … two girls aged about four and six. They had all looked round as Giovanni had come in. They were obviously surprised and disturbed to see Pedro.
The door had been opened by a thin, serious-looking man with long grey hair and a beard. He was wearing a thick cardigan, a scarf and a flat cap. He slammed the door quickly, then grabbed hold of Giovanni and began to speak to him in fast, barely audible Italian. Pedro stood waiting, dripping on the wooden floor, aware that the rest of the family was still watching him. The man was angry, frustrated, but Giovanni held his ground, explaining what he had done. Eventually the man turned to Pedro.
“You speak Spanish?” he asked. He was speaking fluent Spanish himself.
“Yes.” Pedro nodded.
“Are you from Spain?”
“No. Peru.”
The man was astonished by this. “I also speak your language,” he said. “A long time ago I used to be a professor of languages here at the university. That was before they closed it down. It is now used for housing. My name is Francesco Amati. You need to dry yourself.”
He snapped at one of the women, who hurried into the next room, returning with a blanket which she draped over Pedro’s shoulders. Pedro folded it around himself. Meanwhile, Giovanni had stripped off his own shirt and was drying himself energetically with a tea towel.
“I expect you are hungry,” Francesco said. “Giovanni tells me that you have been a prisoner for a long time. You can join us. Please, sit down.”
It seemed that Giovanni had won the argument and now that the man had acknowledged it, the whole family was prepared to accept him. They shuffled aside to make space for Pedro at the table and he found himself being served warm soup and bread, which he wolfed down immediately. The soup was thin and the bread hard but after a month of prison rations, they tasted delicious.
“We will tell you about ourselves,” Francesco said. “But first there are some things I must know about you. Your name is Pedro. Is that right? Why are you here in Naples?”
“I didn’t mean to come here,” Pedro said between mouthfuls. He wasn’t sure how much to tell these people. It wasn’t just a question of whether he could trust them or not. It was simply that he wasn’t sure how much of his story they would believe. “I was taken prisoner in a church, or maybe a monastery, about thirty minutes away. They brought me here in a helicopter.”
“Why?”
“Because they think I can hurt them.”
Giovanni said something in Italian and the older man muttered a few words in reply. “Can you hurt them?” he asked.
“If I can find my friends. There are five of us…”
A much older man on the other side of the table leant forward and spoke rapidly, in a low voice. Pedro heard the word “cinque” repeated several times. The Italian for five. He looked at the other people around the table: two women, two younger men, the children. They all looked similar and he guessed they were part of the same family but that wasn’t what united them. They were all survivors. There was nothing left for them in the outside world. Everything, for them, boiled down to these three rooms.
The old man finished talking. Francesco turned back to Pedro. “I am Giovanni’s uncle,” he said. “His father was my brother but he is dead. This man –” he glanced at the man he had just been speaking to –”is my father. That is my wife, her sister and the two girls are her children. We are lucky because we still have this place to live in. My older brother, Angelo, works in the harbour, where he has a boat. He used to be a fisherman, but of course there are no longer any fish. And Giovanni is a kitchen boy at the Castel Nuovo, which is where they were keeping you. They treat him badly but he is able to bring home food and they also pay him, and it is only thanks to him that we can live.
“At first I was angry that he brought you here. The police will be looking for you now. If they find you here, it will be the end of us all. But Giovanni tells me that he heard them talking about you. He said that they were afraid of you, that you were their enemy – and that is why he brought you to this place.”
“Why are there so many people in this city?” Pedro asked. “What are they all doing in the streets…?”
“They are refugees.” Francesco muttered to his wife and she rose from the table, returning with the pot that held the soup. She ladled out another bowl for Pedro. The children looked at the food longingly and Pedro felt a twang of guilt, knowing that they were being refused. “Naples is overrun by refugees,” Francesco went on. “They have come from the south of Italy, to avoid the floods, and from the far north because of the food shortages. There is fighting all over Eastern Europe and so they have escaped from Romania, Slovenia, Croatia – bringing everything they have with them in the hope of starting a new life. Some of them have come from as far away as Africa and India. Every night, hundreds of them die on the streets of this city and when the winter comes it will be even worse. There are huge camps out in Aversa and Arienzo – tens of thousands of people – but the authorities do not really want to help them. They would prefer them to die. Some say the camps are there to help them on their way.” He paused. “You don’t know any of this?”
Pedro shook his head. “No. I don’t understand. What you’re saying … the world isn’t like that!”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about the world that I knew. I saw the newspapers. I saw television. There was nothing about any fighting…”
“There are no newspapers and how can there be TV when we have no electricity?” Francesco examined Pedro carefully. “What you are saying is mad and I do not know if we should trust you. But Giovanni says that they are afraid of you and that is enough. We must help you. And my father, who once studied theology in the University of Rome, becomes interested when you talk about the five of you.”
“Cinque!” The old man repeated the word again, vigorously nodding his head.
“But whoever you are and whatever reason you are here, you cannot stay in Naples. That is the first consideration before all else. I have to think about the safety of my family. You may believe it would be impossible to find you in a city with so many poor people who have no addresses and no identities. You even look Italian. But you have no idea what you are about to unleash. If you are who my father thinks you are, the police will tear down whole buildings and drag away everyone inside them to find you. And any one of the people who saw you tonight will be glad to sell you for the price of a meal. So far they have been slow because they did not expect you to find a way out of the Castel Nuovo. Unlike Giovanni, they did not know about the old sewer system. But soon it will begin and by then you must be gone.”
The old man spoke again and Francesco raised a hand, silencing him.
“It is too dangerous for you to travel by land. There are checkpoints everywhere. But we can talk to Angelo. He has the boat. He can take you up the coast to Rome and there are friends there who will shelter you. All that matters is that you leave here as soon as you can.”
Pedro tried to take all this in. The trouble was that it was all happening too quickly; first the prison, then the escape, Giovanni, the nightmare of the sewer, the city and now this family, sitting in the half-light of an empty flat, telling him what he had to do. Nothing added up. Naples was a big European city, a place where people went to art galleries and smart restaurants. He had seen pictures of it in magazines. But this Naples seemed to be nothing more than a giant camp for refugees – and all these things that the man was talking about … flooding and wars. Whatever Francesco was telling
him, Pedro had watched television when he was in Nazca with Matt and Richard. They had read the news and surfed the Internet. There had never been anything about any of this. Why were the schools closed? And how could a boy as young as Giovanni end up working in a kitchen? In Lima that might be possible, but not here. Was this man lying to him? He surely didn’t have any reason to and he genuinely seemed to want to help. But nothing he had said had any connection with the world that Pedro knew.
Only one thing was certain. He couldn’t leave. Not on his own.
“I have to see Scott,” he said.
Giovanni had understood nothing of the conversation but the mention of the name caused him to look round sharply. “Scott?” Francesco asked.
“He was a prisoner with me. He’s my friend. I can’t go anywhere without him. I certainly can’t leave him with them.”
“Is he in the castle?”
“Yes. He was in my cell but then they took him away. I have to go back for him…”
Pedro hadn’t touched his second bowl of soup, which had gone cold in front of him. He was still hungry but he slid it towards the two girls, who glanced briefly at Francesco for permission. He nodded and they began to eat greedily, attacking the bowl with their spoons.
“You broke out of the Castel Nuovo by a miracle and only because you happened to meet my nephew. He brought you across the city to one of the few places where you would be safe. And you want to go back?” Francesco laughed briefly. “You’re out of your mind.”
Giovanni leant forward and began to ask his uncle questions. Francesco answered him briefly. Pedro heard the name Scott mentioned and Giovanni scowled. They talked for what seemed like a long time until finally the older man turned back to him. “This friend of yours is the same age as you? A dark-haired boy? An American?”
“Yes.”
Giovanni began again but Francesco held up a hand, warning him to be silent. “You cannot see him,” he said. “You are mistaken about him. He is not a prisoner in the castle. He is a guest. He sleeps in a fine room with sheets and everything he could want. In the day he walks out in the streets of Naples and although he is accompanied by guards, they are there only to protect him. He can go where he likes.”
Raven's Gate Page 20
