‘Mine already are,’ he says.
The gun is in my hand. I pull the weeping boy over to the side of the boat. His head lolls off the side. His crying is strangled in his throat. I shoot him behind the ear. I hand R. the gun thinking, This is what I am capable of.
The same hand that pulled the trigger is now guiding the words out of the pen and I am no closer to understanding how this hand can be the instrument of creation and destruction.
We take the boats up to Corsica and drop the bodies overboard on the way. I am in the Italian boat and pull alongside. It’s going to take two men to shift each body. We come to A. and I say that we should honour him with a prayer. R. shrugs. I say what we used to say over a fallen comrade in the Legion. I call out his name and make my own response, which is: ‘Present!’ As we ease him over the side, I see that he’s been hit twice, in the shoulder and the back of the head.
We offload the cigarettes and drydock both boats in Ajaccio. We remodel and repaint both boats using the money from the cigarettes. R. disappears for a day and comes back with papers for both boats in each of our names. We sail to Cartagena and register the boats under the Spanish Flag and change the boat names. We have had no time to talk about what has happened and as the time lengthens away from the incident, and all memory of A. disappears, I see that one of R.’s talents is for shutting the door. His link to me is that he has entrusted me with the only memory of importance to him, which is the death of his parents. I think it was then that he decided memory was something that interfered, rather than clarified and, in offering only nostalgia as recompense for a lack of belonging, had no value.
14th March 1944
A conversation with R. goes like this:
Me: What happened with the Italians?
R.: You saw, you were there.
Me: I didn’t see what started it.
R.: Then why did you open fire?
Me: The two guys who came aboard our boat should not have been there. I opened fire at the first hint of trouble … as ordered.
R.: Was that all?
Me: I heard a shout … like a signal.
R.: The Italian had a gun. I shouted. He shot A. I jumped in the water. I heard that burst from your sub-machine-gun and the Italians did, too. They made a run for it.
Me: A. was shot twice.
R.: What do you mean?
Me: He was hit in the shoulder and the back of the head.
R.: I was in the water. Maybe the Italian fired twice.
Me: Where did you get that handgun?
R.: Why are you interrogating me?
Me: I want to know what happened. You said you got your hands dirty. You said sometimes you have to prove yourself first before you get permission.
Long pause in which I decide I will never know what goes on inside R.’s head.
R.: The handgun belonged to one of the Italians you shot.
At least he replied, even if it was a lie.
23rd March 1944
Some more information about what I now call Opera Night. I go to the American in Tangier to get another magazine for the sub-machine-gun and ask for some more bullets for the handgun he sold to R. He gives me a box of .45 calibre shells without question. He also tells me in passing that the best thing the Allies did for business was to hand over the running of Naples to Vito Genovese. I don’t know this name. The American tells me he’s a gangster with the Camorra, which I find out later is the Naples version of the Sicilian Mafia.
There has been a change in R. since we embarked on this business. He is not as likable as before. His charm is now turned on and off as required. It occurs to me that R. has been let loose in the world with the single, burning memory of the shooting of his parents. My unthinking remark that they had been killed precisely because of his acumen must have run through him like a white-hot bayonet. The guilt I have induced has made him ruthless and savage. He has made me his partner. I don’t know why, because now he doesn’t seem to need one.
30th March 1944, Tangier
R. has given me my pay of $100. He tells me to keep the money in dollars and only change what I need into pesetas. I tell him I’m going back to being an artist and he says that I have learnt nothing.
Me: It’s what I have to do.
R.: I respect that. (He doesn’t at all)
Me: As you said, we have to think for ourselves.
R.: Forgive me, but what you are doing is not thinking.
Me: I want to see how far I can take it.
R.: Do you think that talent has anything to do with success in the world of art?
Me: It helps.
