‘Oh Vidali, Vidali. ’ Just for a change, Stefanelli, who’s playing with The Baron against Melega and Bortolotti, shakes his head, which always seems to mean something like ‘Oh, if you only knew,’ or ‘poor innocent creatures’, but no one really knows what it means.
Melega walks around the table, takes aim and throws the bowl. He obviously wants to talk, but he doesn’t dare to while Benfenati’s around. And in fact, the moment Benfenati says goodbye to everyone and heads for home, Melega comes into the main bar with his finger pointing and his cowboy look. ‘All I want to say is that as far as I’m concerned Togliatti just has to say, “Come on, then!” And I’ll be off. I’ll get out my Sten gun and pick them off one by one. Round them all up: Christian Democrats, Americans, Yugoslavs, bang! Only language they understand.’
Garibaldi’s booming voice thunders from the card table. ‘Wasn’t the last war enough for you? Do you want to have another one?’
Melega turns towards him and waves his index finger in the air like a sabre. ‘Don’t you come the pacifist with me, Garibaldi, I know how many fascists you killed in Spain. And it was the same thing here: if we communists hadn’t taken up arms in ’43 and hadn’t killed loads of fascists and Germans we’d all be talking English right now! They didn’t give us free rein because the time wasn’t right. Do you know what I mean? They’re bloody lucky the time wasn’t right!’
‘Listen,’ says Bortolotti with an irritable nudge of his elbow, ‘could you throw that bowl before I die of boredom?’
‘I’m coming, I’m coming.’
Melega turns around to study the billiards, and Walterún immediately stretches his neck towards Garibaldi and speaks quietly so as not to be heard in the other room. ‘Oh, Garibaldi, perhaps I shouldn’t say this, perhaps I’m getting old, but is Tito really a fascist communist? It’s just that I’ve always thought you were either a fascist or a communist. So what’s going on exactly?’
‘Shut up and play, all this talk’s really getting on my tits.’
Chapter 8
Naples, 21 January
You couldn’t trust anyone, that was all there was to it.
Getting the trucks out of that inferno of carts and humanity, a pack of ravenous stray dogs, incomprehensible cries flying from one side to the other and the stench of fat mixed with the sweetish smell of rotten fruit. Get the load on and off we go, no dawdling, no stops, him in front and Palmo following along behind, twelve hours without interruption. A place like that had nothing whasoever to do with stories of the war, his war. Or rather they did, indeed they did, you just had to look around, all the navy insignia, all those soldiers, but in a different way that he still had to understand. They had told him it was like Calcutta, and he had nodded. But who’d ever seen Calcutta? Certainly not Ettore, who was sure to have seen plenty of chaos, shit and gunfire, but that Mediterranean Calcutta, Naples, affected him, and Palmo made him anxious. What the hell sort of people were wandering around in there? Time to get away quickly, smiling and friendly, but quickly. He didn’t even have any sweets or chocolate that he knew of. All those children jumping and shouting and charging madly about on those wooden carts cobbled together with iron wheels, it all worried him, something insidious like that illness that had carried off part of his family and lots of his mates, that not even the Thompson gun stowed safely away under the driver’s seat could pacify.
American cigarettes, refillable Ronson liquid gas lighters, various brands of whisky, and junk watches that the shysters on the Via Emilia could sell to some poor suckers. That was the cargo that Ettore took on in Naples, covered with bales of hay and quantities of sackcloth. It was the first time they had taken two vehicles, tarpaulined great things, of wartime vintage, that gave off more smoke than the
volcano up there ahead of them.
Mustn’t be distracted.
The man that everyone, deferentially and submissively, called Vic, orchestrated that chaos almost without moving, in a dark-blue double-breasted suit that made him look even squatter than he was, a basalt block with his hair slicked back with brilliantine and a bouffant pompadour. Soon, Vic would give him a nod of the head and they would be moving, with him in front and Palmo behind, towards the port exit.
He gave a honk of his claxon in the middle of the hubbub, and for a moment he saw Palmo’s unintelligent expression falter, just for a moment, before he poked his big moon face out of the window.
‘When they let us out, stay right up my arse and don’t stop, ever!’ Ettore boomed, while Palmo nodded without a great deal of conviction.
After several long minutes and two more cigarettes, the man everyone called Vic finally raised his right arm, and with three crisp movements of the hand he indicated that the cargo was on, telling them to turn around and head off along the internal road running along the shore towards the exit. A few hundred metres in a column, at walking pace, behind other lorries, carts pulled by emaciated horses, women offering fresh water, fruit and all kinds of fried food. Then the little monkeys, dirty and pestiferous, who went on jumping and cavorting all over the place.
At the start of the Via Marina, the long road running along the docks that was to take them out of the city, the chaos was at its most intense, with passing trams and a mad scramble of carts and horses, and when a gap opened up, Ettore resolutely drove into it, setting off towards the clear road.
Behind him the screeching brakes of Palmo’s lorry and a series of excited cries announced the shit he had been most afraid of.
The little boy lay contorted under his back wheels, or rather between the wheels and the cart on to which he had been dragged by his mates, screaming like a lunatic, while another boy clung to the windscreen, shouting, ‘You’ve killed him! You’ve killed him!’ and all of a sudden people were crowding around them.
When he saw Palmo, purple in the face, getting out of the vehicle clutching his rifle, he knew they were done for.
‘Christ alive, Palmo! Stay here, don’t get out, Palmo! For God’s sake!’
But Palmo was out already, and from that moment it took only a few seconds: the little boys to send Palmo flying, the one who can’t have been more than twelve has leapt for the steering wheel, another three or four have gone for the cargo, and all of a sudden there’s this gap behind the truck, which means they can reverse quickly and flee, despite the shots fired into the air by a furious Ettore.
One of the monkeys in the gang hadn’t managed to get away. He wriggled about as Palmo came back, cursing, towards the lorry, rifle in hand and the little pest held firmly by the arm.
Ettore could only watch, from less than fifteen metres away. If he’d got out, they’d have had his lorry as well.
‘You are a moron, Palmo,’ he said the moment he had got on board with his writhing snake, who was yelling, ‘Lemme go! Lemme go!’
Ettore struck him with the back of his hand. He shut up.
‘Now what are we going to do?’ asked Palmo, panting agitatedly.
‘We’ll head back to the docks, kill someone and get ourselves killed.’