Suffer the Little Children

out’

Thank you. Er ... ?'

'Yes, Signora?'

'My husband won't have to find out that I've been here, will he?'

'Certainly not from us, Signora’

'Thank you. I don't want you to think anything bad of him, but he just doesn't like us to.get mixed up in things.'

'I understand completely, Signora. You can be perfectly sure that he won't find out.'

'Thank you. And good morning.'

'Good morning, Signora. Inspector Vianello, will you take the Signora to the front door?'

2

Gustavo Pedrolli lay on the edge of the sleep of the just, curled round the back of his wife. He was in that cloudy space between waking and sleeping, reluctant to trade his happiness for there sleep. The day had brought him an emotion different from any he had ever known, and he refused to let himself drift away from the radiance of memory. He tried to remember when he had ever been this happy. Perhaps when Bianca had said she would marry him, or on the actual day of their wedding, the Miracoli filled with white flowers and Bianca stepping up to the landing from the gondola, as he hurried down the steps to take her hand and her into his care for ever.

He had known happiness, certainly – on completing his medical studies and finally becoming un dottore, on being appointed assistant chief of paediatrics - but those happinesses were far removed from the flooding joy he had felt just before dinner, when he finished giving Alfredo his bath. He had fastened both sides of the diaper with practised hands and pulled on the flannel bottoms of his son's pyjamas. Then he slipped the duck-covered pyjama top over his head, and when it emerged, had played their usual game of hunting for the child's hands before pulling them one at a time through the sleeves. Alfredo squealed with delight, as surprised as his father at the sight of his tiny fingers as they peeped through the open ends of the sleeves.

Gustavo picked him up by the waist, hefting him up and down as Alfredo waved his arms in the same rhythm. 'And who's a beautiful boy? And who's his father's darling?' Gustavo asked. As always, Alfredo raised one of those clenched marvels, unfurled a finger, and placed it on his own nose. Dark eyes intent on his father's, he pressed his broad nose flat to his face, then lifted his finger away, only to point to himself repeatedly, throwing his arms around and squealing all the while with delight.

'That's right, Alfredo is his papa's darling, papa's darling, papa's darling.' There followed more dangling, more lifting up, more waving. He did not toss the boy into the air: Bianca said the baby became too excited if they played like that before bedtime, so Gustavo merely raised him up and down repeatedly, occasionally drawing him close to kiss the end of his nose.

He took the boy into his bedroom and carried him over to the cot. Above it hung a galaxy of floating, turning shapes and animals; the top of the dresser was a zoo. He hugged the boy to his chest, careful to exert only the gentlest of pressure, well aware of the fragility of those ribs. Alfredo squirmed, and Gustavo buried his face in the soft folds of his son's neck.

He moved his hands down and held the boy at arm's length. 'And who is Papa's darling?' he asked again in a singsong voice; he could not stop himself. Again Alfredo touched his own nose, and Gustavo felt his heart turn. The tiny fingers moved through the air until one of them rested on the tip of Gustavo's nose, and the boy said something that sounded like 'Papa', waved his arms and gave a goofy, toothless smile.

It was the first time Gustavo had heard the boy say the word, and he was so moved that one of his hands flew to his own heart. Alfredo fell against his shoulder; luckily, Gustavo had the presence of mind, and enough experience with frightened children, to make a joke of it and ask, 'And who is trying to climb into his papa's sweater?' Holding Alfredo against his chest, he pulled at one side of his cardigan and wrapped it around the boy's back, laughing out loud to show what a wonderful new game this was.

'Oh, no, you can't try to hide in there. Not at all. It's time to go to sleep.' He lifted the boy and placed him on his back in the cot. He pulled up the woollen blanket, making sure his son's chest was covered.

'Sweet dreams, my little prince,' he said, as he had said every night since Alfredo had begun to sleep in the cot. At the door he lingered, but only for a moment, so that the boy would not develop the habit of trying to delay his father's exit from the room. He looked back at the tiny lump and found tears in his eyes. Embarrassed at the thought that Bianca would see them, he wiped them away as he turned from the open door.

When he reached the kitchen, Bianca had her back to him, just pouring the penne through the strainer. He opened the refrigerator and took a bottle of Moet from the bottom shelf. He put it on the counter, then took a pair of crystal flutes, from a set of twelve that Bianca's sister had given them as a wedding present.

'Champagne?' she asked, as curious as she was pleased.

'My son called me Papa’ he said and peeled the golden foil from the cork. Avoiding her sceptical glance, he said, 'Our son. But just this once, because he called me Papa, I want to call him my son for an hour, all right?'

Seeing his expression, she abandoned the steaming pasta and moved to his side. She picked up the glasses and tilted them towards him. 'Fill both of these, please, so we can toast your son’ Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

As in the first days of their marriage, the pasta grew cold in the sink, and they drank the champagne in bed. Long after it was gone, they went into the kitchen, naked and famished. Ignoring the dry pasta, they ate the tomato sauce on thick slices of bread, standing at the sink and feeding chunks to one another, then washed it down with half a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Then they went back to the bedroom.

He lay suspended in the afterglow of the evening and marvelled that, for some months now, he had feared that Bianca had somehow changed in her ... in her what? It was natural - he knew this from his practice - for a mother to be distracted by the arrival of a new child and thus to seem less interested in or responsive to the father. But that night, with the two of them behaving like teenagers gone wild at the discovery of sex, had eliminated any uncertainties.

And he had heard that word: his son had called him Papa. His heart filled again and he slid himself closer to Bianca, half hoping she would wake and turn to him. But she slept on, and he thought of the morning, and the early train to Padova he had to catch, so he began to will himself towards sleep, ready now to drift off to that gentle land, perhaps to dream of another son, or a daughter, or both.

He became vaguely conscious of a noise beyond the door to the bedroom, and he forced himself to listen, to hear if it was Alfredo calling or crying. But the ringing noise was gone, and so he followed it, his lips curved in memory of that word.

As Doctor Gustavo Pedrolli sank into the first and most profound sleep of the night, the sound came again, but he no longer heard it, nor did his wife, sleeping beside him, naked and exhausted and satisfied. Nor did the child in the other room, sunk in happiness and dreaming, perhaps, of the wonderful new game he had learned that night, hidden and safe under the protection of the man he now knew was Papa.

Time passed, and dreams played in the minds of the sleepers. They saw motion and colour; one of them saw something that resembled a tiger; and all of them slept on.

The night exploded. The front door of the apartment burst inward and slammed against the wall: the handle gouged a hole in the plaster. A man leaped into the apartment: he wore a ski mask, something that resembled a camouflage uniform, and heavy boots; and he carried a machine-gun. Another masked man, similarly uniformed, followed him. Behind them came another man in a dark uniform but without a mask. Two more men in the same dark uniform remained outside the house.

The two masked men ran through the living room and down the hall towards the bedrooms. The man without a mask followed more cautiously. One of the masked men opened the first door, and seeing it was a bathroom, left it open and moved down the hallway towards an open door. He saw the cot, the mobiles moving slowly in the draught created by the open door.

'He's here,' the man called out, making no attempt to keep his voice down.

The second masked man went to the door of the bedroom opposite. Still holding his machine-gun, he ran in, the other man close behind him. The two people in the bed sat up, startled by the light from the hallway: the third