He had done enough of that already that evening. Trying to get into the house straight away wasn’t the best idea in the world. Too many eyes watching him from the windows. He thought he could feel them. He decided to make himself comfortable there and try to sleep. The last time he had slept had been thirty-six hours ago, and his exhaustion didn’t help. He sat down, stretched his legs out on the pavement, his case between his back and the wall. He tried to breathe more and more deeply.
‘What is it?’
Eyes suddenly wide open, mouth too, as he was woken by a hand tugging his jacket.
‘I am friend of Vittorio Capponi. Who are you?’ whispered the white-haired shadow.
Pierre ran his hands over his face a few times, as though washing it with imaginary water. ‘I’m his son,’ he said finally.
‘His son? Really? Are you Nicola?’
‘No, I’m Robespierre.
‘Ah, Robespierre, of course. Fine, Robespierre. It big pleasure to meet you. Come, come.’
Sheltering Pierre under his coat, he all but dragged him towards the shaft of light that crossed the cobblestones a few metres away.
‘Come in, quick. This my house. Come in.’ He pointed him to a chair and made him sit down. A faint light fell on the table. The room was small, in semi-darkness: a chest of drawers, a washbasin, a gas cylinder, a bed.
‘Here. Take it.’ The man put a glass on the table and slid it towards Pierre. ‘Drink, is good, against the cold.’
It was a strong and rather bitter grappa. Pierre downed it in one and the glass was refilled. The man was older than his father, he must have been over sixty. When he turned to pour himself some grappa, Pierre saw that half of his face was disfigured by a burn.
‘Souvenir of the war,’ he said, brushing his scars with his fingers. ‘Bad memory. I’m Darko, I know your father very well, we great friends, look.’
He opened a box behind him, and after rummaging about in it for a moment, he took out a photograph. The man without a scar, standing in front of the carcass of a deer with his arm around Darko, was his father.
‘Can you tell me where he is, why he left?’ asked Pierre, to choke down the lump in his throat.
‘He had to go away. Problems with political idea, you know?’
‘Yes, yes, I understand, but where is he now? How would I find him?’
‘Calm now, Robespierre, I’ll explain everything. He now in
Sipan, near Dubrovnik, 200 kilometres from here.’
‘And how do I get there? Is there a coach, a ferry?’
Darko poured the third glass, then he turned back and a piece of cheese, half a loaf of bread and some black olives appeared on the table.
‘Uzmi jedi, moj sine. Eat!’
Pierre didn’t need to be asked twice. He stretched his hands out to the bread and repeated the question. ‘How can I get to Sipan?’
‘Wait, Robespierre, let me think.’ He sipped his grappa calmly, as though hoping to draw inspiration from it. ‘Listen. Tonight you can sleep here, ok? Tomorrow morning, very early, I must go down to Split, with my cart. If we’re very careful, I can take you with me. At the market in Split we ask friend with lorry if he’s going to Dubrovnik, this much better than coach. Then from Dubrovnik you ask someone, some fisherman, to take you
Sipan, because no ferry, understand?’
‘I understand,’ said Pierre and his stomach rebelled at the mere thought of another crossing. ‘Thanks, Darko. I don’t know how to thank you. Everyone else here was afraid to speak. You weren’t. How come?’
‘If someone was looking for me, Vittorio he do the same. I saw you asking and I knew you were friend. Then when you said the son, then I had to help.’
Pierre ate some cheese and a few olives. He wondered if Sipan would be his destination, or just another stage on the journey. He devoured every last crumb on his plate and asked again, ‘What else can you tell me about my father? I’ve had no news of him for months now. He hasn’t written for a year, and my last letter was sent back to me.’
Darko got up again, disappeared out the back door and reappeared a moment later with a wooden box in his hands. He opened it on the table and pulled out some newspaper cuttings, which he gradually spread out in front of Pierre. He picked up the last one. It was written in Italian. Signed by Vittorio Capponi.
‘Article by your father for Italian newspaper in Zadar. These two also by your father, for other newspaper, in Slavonic language. And these others, they are by Milovan Djilas, for the Borba, the Party newspaper. You know Milovan Djilas?’
Pierre looked up from the article. ‘I know he’s a dissident, that he was expelled by Tito.’
‘That’s right,’ Darko replied. ‘At October last year he start writing these articles. At December elected as President of Skupstina. Two weeks later, trial begin against him. Not expelled, that is Stalin’s thing and Tito does not want, but forced into self-criticism.’
‘And what about my father?’
‘Your father write that Djilas says many true things. Others not, but many are right. Then towards the end of January they come and take him to Split. No trial, for him: they say he expelled, enough of his work, he must not express his ideas any more, better he go away, far away, where no one know him. They treat Djilas better than anyone less important. Djilas too famous, must be careful. Luckily he does self-criticism, otherwise much worse for his comrades.’
Pierre read a few more lines. An Italian translation of Djilas’s article ‘New Contents’, with the addition of a brief commentary. He reached the end, while Darko put another piece of cheese and some more bread on the table.
‘What happened then?’ Pierre asked when he had finished reading.
‘Afterwards? Your father stayed on his own, people stopped talking to him. No work, and in Split no one wanted him. He was afraid they take him to Goli Otok, the prison camp for friends of Stalin. One day he tell me he want to die. Then instead he leave. Fishes, looks after sheep, and can live on partisan pension. But I don’t know much, he phoned one time, then nothing.’
Darko bowed his head and ran the back of his hand over an eye. ‘He was my only friend,’ he said in a breath. He tried to go on, but all that came out was, ‘Sorry.’
Then he picked up the articles, quickly closed the box and disappeared once more through the back door.
Chapter 39
Naples, 17 April
It was a relief to walk along the road, in the sunlight, amidst the hubbub of the people, and the shoving and the shouts. After three months in jail, Salvatore Pagano, known as Kociss, only wanted to run. Three months they’d kept him in there! In that dirty, disgusting prison, full of stinking murderers, and Commissioner Cinquegrana firing questions at him, and the television, and the money, and Don Luciano, and this one and that one. Now, finally, he breathed, he looked at the sky, and the women. He thought about all the things he would do. Three months of recuperation. He had the money, they hadn’t been able to take it from him. Honest earnings. With that money he would get a present for Lisetta, a nice present, and at that point she would be sure to let him have what he was after, on a silver platter. Because he hadn’t given her name to the commissioner, no, he hadn’t done that. No names. The policeman had yet to be born who would make a fool of Kociss. But he had got scared in that nick. Pretty damned scared. It was as if they wanted him to tell them everything, as if he was a big player, as if he knew things. Absolute silence. He’d given them nothing. What would the commissioner think if he knew the truth? Neither nuns nor charity that night. Oh heavens, yes, he’d been giving presents to the little orphans, then he had taken his bike, the one with the platform on the front and gone to see Lisetta. What a woman she was!