Behind the door was a narrow passage lined with coats and books and umbrellas. The policeman looked inside one of the rooms to the left and gestured sharply to Tom that he should enter it. It was almost a replica of the one he had just left at the hospital, only with more dust and lots of cardboard boxes filled with files and papers scattered all over the floor. The only decoration was a large rectangular photograph of uniformed men and women standing in three neatly aligned ranks in ascending levels. Some graduation ceremony, it looked like. He had to move some of the boxes aside to get to the bed, and on top of the pile of documents in one of them he noticed a certificate from a police academy stating that Mirella Kodra had excelled in the firearms training course she had taken two years previously.
So this must be the spare bedroom in her apartment. No unmarried Calabrian woman would dream of letting it be known that she had allowed a man to spend the night in her home. Therefore Tom was not categorised as a man by Mirella. He was a problem, a job, a parcel that had to be passed around like in that kid’s game. He was not a guest, still less a potential lover, just a displaced person who must grudgingly be housed and fed until he got well enough to do everyone a favour by pissing off back to where he came from. He slumped down on the bed, feeling utterly lonely and exhausted and bereft. What a fool he’d been, with his big ideas of rediscovering his Calabrian roots and opening una vera trattoria americana autentica! It wasn’t so much what he didn’t know. Given time, he could learn that. It was about what he did know and would never be able to forget, stuff that was inappropriate here, behaviour and habits and ideas that were alien, maybe even offensive. But how could he pretend to be ignorant of those things? How could a person ever unknow anything? He swallowed two of the capsules he’d been given — without water, to avoid appealing to his swinish guard — then lay down again, gasping at the pain, drew his knees up into a foetal crouch and went to sleep.
He was awoken by voices he couldn’t recognise or understand, a man and a woman, perhaps arguing. The room was in complete darkness. At length the voices fell silent and a door slammed somewhere. Footsteps came and went gently for some time, and then the door to his room opened and a figure in silhouette broke the rectangular panel of light. Mirella.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m feeling fine. You know why? Because I’m homeward bound, homeward bound. Do you know that song?’
‘You told me the other evening that this was your home.’
‘I was misinformed.’
‘Not by me.’
Tom shifted position on the bed. Those painkillers really mellowed you out. Once his eyes had adjusted, he could just about make out Mirella’s face.
‘And how are you, signorina?’ he asked with some asperity and using the third person mode of address.
‘Tired. There’s a big operation in progress. They’re hoping to arrest the man who killed your father. They needed help with setting it up but don’t want me there when it happens. That’s why I’m late, and tired. When it comes to the crunch, it’s pretty much boys only. That tires you, after a while.’
Silence fell.
‘Why are you addressing me formally?’ she said.
‘Just trying to be polite. I know almost nothing about you, and most of what I thought I knew turns out to be false. You told me you were a pen-pusher and call-catcher for the local government, but apparently you work for the police.’
Mirella sighed.
‘I’m sorry, Tommaso.’
He didn’t reply.
‘I’ll make us something to eat,’ she said.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You must eat.’
‘Forget it! I’m not accepting charity from some soup kitchen set up to save immigrants like me from starving to death and making you guys look bad.’
In the doorway, strongly shadowed, Mirella turned.
‘I am also an immigrant.’
‘Oh sure.’
‘It’s true. I’m arbereshe. Five hundred years ago, when the Turks conquered our country and burned our cities, my ancestors emigrated from Albania to a town just north of here, San Demetrio Corone. In our language, Shen Miter.’
‘Whatever you say, signorina,’ Tom replied coldly.
The next thing he knew, she was leaning over him and shouting angrily.
‘I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, you know! You could be shut up at the men’s barracks with a truckle bed and food fetched in from the canteen. I invited you here out of the kindness of my heart and you treat me as disdainfully as you would a whore!’
Her fury astonished him.
‘I’ve never been with a whore,’ was all he could find to say.
‘You’re impossible!’ she cried and stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
Pots clanked and thudded, water ran, there was the crinkle of a plastic bag. Tom got painfully to his feet. Stay mobile, the doctor had told him. Don’t bend or stretch or lift anything, but keep moving as much as you can. Just normal movements. He walked through to the kitchen. Mirella wasn’t there. He leant back against the doorpost exploring the messages that his body was sending him. The first twenty-four hours will be the worst, the doctor had said. Pleasure is a fleeting illusion but pain never lets you down. It’s the real deal. On pain, you can always count.
‘Excuse me, please.’
Mirella brushed past him. She had showered and changed into a crisp white blouse and black pants.
‘What are you making?’
‘A pasta sauce. I also bought a roast chicken and some salad.’
‘Sounds great.’
‘No, only adequate. My mother is a wonderful cook. I take after my father.’
He watched her fingers working on the wooden chopping board, the spreading stain of the onion’s white blood.
‘Italian-Americans are always bragging about how great their mother’s pasta sauce is.’
‘Then it’s good that you’re homeward bound. Over there you can live your dream of Italy. Here we have to live with the reality. My father would kill me if he knew that you were spending the night here. But you can forget the idea of talking your way on to that business jet with your employers. One is dead, the other has fled the country.’
‘What? How?’
She streamed pasta into the boiling water.
‘They were dumping a crate at sea from a helicopter and something went wrong. Never mind, there are plenty of commercial flights from Rome. Go! Leave! The people who return don’t fit in. They’re an embarrassment, like house guests who’ve outstayed their welcome. They think they’re family here, but they’re just another kind of tourist. Chine cangia a via vecchia ppe’la nova, trivuli lassa e malanova trova.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You see? You don’t even speak the language! It means that changing your old way of life for a new one removes minor problems only to create newer and bigger ones. You have to have been born and raised here to be Calabrian, but these people think they’ve inherited the title like some baron in the old days. A friend of my father who lived abroad for many years said that America nourishes your body but eats your soul. Maybe it eats your brain as well.’
She added chunks of raw, lumpy, hunchbacked tomato to the simmering onions.
‘And you accused me of being cold,’ Tom said.
‘I’m simply a realist. You Americans are idealists, and when reality doesn’t measure up to your expectations you turn brutal. You invented your own country and think that gives you the right to invent everyone else’s, even though you know nothing about their history or traditions. Why should you bother? History and traditions are the consolations of the poor. Rich people like you don’t need them.’