No sentimentality? Didn’t know who he could be sentimental about – not his mum and dad… Good enough people, on railway lines of predictability, not particularly loving and not particularly disapproving, much like everyone else’s mum and dad. But worse things came into his mind and squeezed away the small matters, self-pity, control and sentimentality.
The man had spoken with a sing-song reciting voice, the sort of language he might have learned in a sixth- year classroom. He would have had a textbook open that showed a man’s body, with arrows pointing to an ear, a finger and a hand – not to a penis. She will leave the police… we send perhaps an ear… perhaps a finger… perhaps a hand… the pene… then all of you but not breathing… He saw a knife and his gut squirmed in fear as the shock waves surged and the pains came hard.
Not easy – fuck, no – to plead the need for control.
Hardest to understand: they wanted nothing of him. He had no secret to hide or squeal, no ideology to cling to or renounce. He was not an agent in occupied Europe or a heretic in Tudor England: he was just a piece of garbage.
Would Immacolata, his Mac, leave the police – she would be in protective custody – and walk away to save him, his ear, finger and…? Couldn’t say. He had slept with her, loved her, sucked her juices, whispered with her, laughed with her – he didn’t know.
Eddie thought he heard – indistinct – the moan of engine noise. Cars, lorries, vans? Couldn’t be sure. Might mean a new day had started. If he was right, noting that a new day was born was an act of control – pretty bloody small, pretty much all he was bloody capable of. He teetered then on the edge of self-pity – and righted himself. Another day.
Then teetered again, rocked, was near to capsizing. How big was Eddie Deacon in the emotions of Immacolata Borelli? Hard to say, admit, spit out that he didn’t know. He knew where the birthmark was, deep brown at the top of her right buttock, and where the minute polyp was in her left armpit, but he didn’t know her mind. Eddie had heard of prisoners in cells, or in interrogation rooms, who took a point on a wall or a ceiling and focused on it, or found a spider crawling and tracked it, but the hood didn’t allow that.
Perhaps it hurt most, and made the worst fear, that he didn’t know how Immacolata Borelli would react when she held his life in the palm of her hand and weighed its value.
‘You lied to me. I take much from the shit people I work with – but lying disgusts me.’
She hung her head.
Castrolami seemed to tower over her. It was a theatrical, contrived attack. A knock at her door, a request that she come now into the living room. She wasn’t dressed. Castrolami, Orecchia and Rossi were. No coffee had been made for her, no juice laid out, no rolls heated, but she had seen their plates on the draining-board in the kitchen. She thought they had ambushed her.
‘You lied. We took you on trust. We diverted resources. All the time you lied.’
She hung her head because she didn’t understand. She had talked of her father, her mother, her eldest brother. She had listed the names of men who laundered and bought for the clan, who handled transhipments. That day she had prepared herself to talk about Giovanni, the brother she loathed, and Silvio, who had depended and doted on her. She couldn’t think, then, of anything she had said that was untrue. There was, Immacolata believed, genuine anger in Castrolami’s accusation. His jaw wobbled and little froths of spittle were at the sides of his mouth.
‘We were about to offer you the contract. You would have read the document, seen what we offered and what we required in return, and it would have been signed by the palace and by you. Now we find you’ve lied to us. I don’t make deals with liars. I prosecute them, I send them to Poggioreale, but I don’t sweet-talk with liars.’
She saw that he was holding a roll of papers, maybe ten sheets, and she noted a photograph among them. For emphasis, Castrolami hit his palm with it. Rossi was at the kitchen door, sober-faced and impassive. Orecchia was sitting in the hall and neither made eye-contact with her. She was the daughter of her father. She wouldn’t bend the knee.
‘I don’t lie.’
Castrolami took a small tape-recorder from his pocket. He switched it on and held it out. There was the noise of the park – dogs barking, the kids screaming, the rain on the leaves, and his voice: Can they find, hold and hurt, maybe murder, a lover? She heard her own voice, dismissive: No. His voice again, seeking certainty: In Naples there is no lover, no boy? Her own voice again, giving the certainty: No. Castrolami pressed fast-forward briefly. She heard Castrolami first: So there is a boy here… I have to know. Her response: Yes, but not significant. Again, the fast-forward, Castrolami saying: You go to bed. But you say it’s not ‘significant’… yes? She said, crackling on the tape and distorted: He’s just a boy. We met in a park… It doesn’t mean anything. Querying her, testing her: You won’t pine for him? Heard herself snort, then, I’ll forget him – maybe I have already. ‘I believe you had a passionate affair in London, and that your protestation that the relationship was meaningless was a lie.’
‘I don’t lie.’
‘What was the boy’s name?’
She didn’t know where he was leading her. She saw the tape-recorder dropped into Castrolami’s pocket, as if its work was done. She said, ‘Eddie.’
Castrolami repeated the name, rolled it. ‘Eddie… Eddie… and he’s not significant and fucking him meant nothing?’
So, he was calling her a liar and a whore, implying she slept around. ‘I liked him.’
‘Only liked him?’
‘Yes, I liked him. There, I liked him. In London I liked him. Is that a sin? Do I go to confessional and blubber it to a priest who has his hand in his crotch? It was good in London. This isn’t London. People go on holiday, they fuck on holiday. People go to work conferences, meet others and fuck. People meet in cinemas in strange towns and fuck afterwards. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s what happens and-’
She was cut short. The papers were allowed to unroll, the photograph taken out and passed to her. She held it. Her Eddie was leaning on a gate, arms resting on the top bar. There were young cattle around him, nuzzling and nudging him. She could almost hear his laughter. She hadn’t seen the photograph before. She thought it would have come from an album at his parents’ home.
Castrolami curled his lip. ‘If I was the boy, and you were in my bed, and I said I loved you and asked, with a caress, how you felt about me, and you said I meant nothing to you, I’d be disappointed.’
She saw a trap, a cul-de-sac, and thought she was led into it. She handed back the photograph. ‘Why did you show it me?’
‘Because you lied to me. That boy is huge in your life, as you are in his.’
‘No.’
‘The best boy you ever knew.’
‘No.’
‘Free to sleep with him, fuck him, without your mother criticising who you chose.’
‘Not significant.’
‘We shall see…’ He dropped his voice, more theatre, and was casual, as in conversation. He smiled and held the photograph of Eddie in front of her face. ‘We shall see, Signorina Immacolata, whether you lie or not. He, your insignificant, meaningless bed partner, was taken off the street in Forcella yesterday. Why should the boy have come to Naples if he’s insignificant and meaningless? Why is he in Forcella? What is your response to him being taken?’
‘He’s not important. My evidence is.’
‘Another lie – or the truth?’
‘I’ll stay the course.’
‘A lie or the truth?’
‘I’ll go to court whatever-’ Castrolami’s big fingers made a small tear at the top of the photograph, above Eddie’s head, and then, with a sort of formality, he handed her the photograph. She knew what was expected of her. She did it sharply, but looked away, through the window. The sun clipped the roofs, the water tanks and the satellite dishes, and was above the mountain range. She knew, and had judged it, that the rip would go through the middle of his face – his forehead, between his eyes and down the length of his nose. It would split his lips, his chin and his throat. She did it. She let the two pieces fall to the floor. She said, ‘I’ll go to court, whatever is set against me. I’ll go in memory of Marianna Rossetti. Fuck you, Castrolami.’
