lolanda's eye and jerked her head sharply towards the door. With a grimace, Iolanda went after Gesualdo.
Dario De Spino coughed tactfully.
'If you'll just excuse me for a moment, I must make an urgent phone call. Remember Don Giova? One of his conquests wants me to fix up her son with a job on the cigarette-smuggling boats/ Catching Sabatino's eye, he tapped the side of his nose and added in dialect, 'Have fun!'
'What was that he said?' asked Libera as De Spino closed the door, leaving them alone.
'He told me to look after you/ said Sabatino.
'And will you?'
Sabatino gestured awkwardly.
'There's not much I can do, but…'
'Dario mentioned someone called Don Giovanni,' Libera rattled on. 'Maybe he could help.'
'No, no, he's finished.'
'Finished?'
'He used to be a player around town, but he was a big womanizer. That was his downfall.'
Libera sighed loudly.
'Ah, it's useless! Here are my sister and I, stranded in a foreign land with no one to help us. We have no work, no money, no hope. Our last chance was that you and your friend might take pity on us.'
Sabatino shrugged.
'Eh, eh! Life is tough everywhere these days.'
Libera turned away, biting her lip.
'You're so cold! I'm desperate, and all you do is laugh at me/ Sabatino reached out and grasped her hand.
'I'm not laughing.'
They exchanged a long look. Libera gently disengaged her hand.
'Words are cheap.' 'I mean it!' Sabatino insisted. 'Why do you think I went to all that trouble to get rid of Gesualdo? He's cold, all right. But not all of us are, and certainly not me. I want to help you. I want you to be happy!'
He rubbed the fingers which had been gripping her hand. They seemed to be smeared with some sort of greasy black substance which smelt vaguely familiar, paint or polish…
'Prove it/ said Libera, staring at him defiantly.
Sabatino took a bunch of keys from his pocket, removed one from the cluster and handed it to Libera.
She stared at it as though she had never seen such a thing before.
'What is it?' she asked.
'Akey, of course.'
Libera looked him in the eyes.
'Yes, but what does it open?'
Sabatino reached inside his jacket and produced a pen.
Taking Libera's hand in his, he wrote something on the velvety skin of her inner wrist.
'Come to this address at eight this evening/ he said, 'and you'll find out.
XXII
Professor Esposito's tall, angular figure was familiar enough in the back streets north of Via Sapienza, where he was regarded with a mixture of awe and mockery.
Everyone had some tale to tell about the legendary powers, both worldly and supernatural, of 'o prufessd, which ranged from predicting the winning number in the lottery to locating a lost will by direct communication with the dear departed, from fixing up someone's worthless nephew (who was nevertheless pate 'efiglie, with a family — God help them — to support) with a safe municipal job, to obtaining tickets for Napoli's big game against Juventus which had been sold out for months. One story even claimed that the professor had brought back to life a child who had swallowed rat poison, simply by passing a magnet over its inert body!
The professor's physical appearance, on the other hand, was a subject of general derision, mingled perhaps with a tinge of fear. His height would not have been considered exceptional farther north, but here, especially accentuated by his extraordinary skinniness, it created a freakish effect reflected in the nicknames which seemed to stick to him like dough thrown at a wall: Piece of Spaghetti, Stilt-Walker, the Lighthouse, Number Twenty- Nine. This last referred to the number popularly known in the local bingo game of tumbulella as 'the source of all trouble', an allusion to the male sexual organ.
On this occasion, though, Professor Esposito's progress through the narrow, crowded alleys of this part of Spaccanapoli caused even more consternation than usual.
'Mamma bella d' o Carmine!' exclaimed an old woman selling contraband cigarettes from a tray on her ample lap. 'The professor has duplicated himself!'
To a casual glance this might indeed appear to have been the case, for at his side was another man of equal height and scarcely greater bulk. They were similarly dressed, too, in long overcoats and grey felt hats, and their stride — long and hurried by local standards — was evenly matched.
'Some long-lost brother?' mused the cobbler, looking up from his work outside the one-room home where five children were playing a noisy game of tag.
'Why not? There's no shortage of foundlings in Naples!' commented his customer, playing on the original meaning of the name Esposito.
But when the professor finally reached his own home, on the third floor of a tenement above a second-hand book shop, he introduced his companion to the woman there — who might with equal likelihood have been his sister, his wife or his mother — as Don Alfonso Zembla. He then dismissed her curtly, with instructions that he was not at home to anyone.
'Not even Riccardo?' the woman queried.
'Least of all Riccardo!' retorted the professor, making the two-fingered gesture against the evil eye.
Once the woman had gone, he set about closing the shutters and the windows, leaving the room in semi- darkness.
'I needn't bother with the costume,' he remarked as though to himself.
His visitor looked puzzled.
'Costume?'
The professor opened a large trunk in the corner and lifted out a long robe in a satiny crimson material.
'There's a hat and boots to go with it,' he said. 'It's useful when you're dealing with the popolino, common folk who are ignorant and credulous. With a man like you there's no need for cheap tricks.' 'I don't see why that makes any difference/ his visitor objected. If you get results, your clients will believe in your powers, costume or no costume. And if you don't, fancy dress isn't going to help.'
The professor closed the trunk with a curt shake of the head.
'With all due respect, dottore, there you betray a complete misunderstanding of this science, which is not Newtonian but, if I may use the expression, post-Einsteinian!
What is true for a given person in a given situation is not necessarily true for that person in a different situation, or for another person in the same situation, and still less if both are different.'
He lit an oil lamp and placed it on the table, beckoning his visitor to be seated at one end.
If some illiterate market trader comes to consult me and sees me looking like this, he'll think, 'This is no magician, no seer, this is an accountant or a teacher.' He won't believe what I tell him, so it's a waste of time for me to tell him anything at all. The relationship is doomed from the start. With you, on the other hand, it's exactly the opposite.
There's no point in me dressing up and going through a lot of mumbo-jumbo, because you would just think, 'This man is obviously a fake or he wouldn't need to bother with all this nonsense.' Am I right?'
