Conor Fitzgerald - The Namesake

Locri

His headache was no longer confined to his head nor was it a mere ache. At some point in the past hour the pain had burrowed its way into the centre of his body, and was operating from there. Each heartbeat seemed to squirt a jet of poison up his spine and into the back of his brain, from where it spread slowly, gripping his entire skull before pulsing in his temples as if trying to burst out. Just as the pulsation ended and the pain began to ebb, another heartbeat injected a renewed dose. He imagined the relief of his heart stopping.

The orange shine of the sun flared off the windows of the house behind the red gate and off the metal of a parked car. When the door opened to his knock, he almost stepped straight in, so inviting was the dark dry air from the house. But there was a woman in front of him, younger-looking and smaller than he had been expecting. He thought he could smell lavender and mint, either from her or from deeper inside. He screwed up his eyes against the brightness and tried to penetrate the dark entrance with his gaze. He could make out her shining hair, and when she smiled her teeth glistened.

‘Are you all right?’

Blume swayed on the threshold, confused. That was surely the question he was supposed to have asked her. And the voice was wrong, too. She sounded like a girl. He could not fit the voice to the wheedling Mafia-accented matriarch he had created in his mind.

‘Do you need to sit down?’

‘I have a terrible headache,’ said Blume. ‘And I think I’m pretty dirty.’

‘Have you been standing in the sun?’

‘It’s not the sun. I often get them.’

Maria Itria stood aside and he walked in. The drop in temperature was immediate and exhilarating, but it made him sneeze and break out in a sweat. He kept his eyes closed, trying to adjust to the shaded hallway.

‘Come through to the kitchen,’ she said.

He followed obediently.

‘Sit.’

He sat at the broad table. Its top was a board of dark oak that was cool against the palm of his hands. He had to resist the temptation to lay his cheek against it.

‘My name is Commissioner Alec Blume. Police.’

‘Eat this, Alessio.’ She handed him a rock-hard piece of bread.

‘Alec, not Alessio. I’m not hungry.’

‘If you want your headache to go, eat it. Just a bite or two. You need something in your stomach if you have a headache.’

Something wet and alive leaped at his face, and he realized she had thrown him a cloth dipped in water. He wiped his face, turning the cloth dark. Then he stood up and went over to the kitchen sink, which is what he should have done to begin with, and washed his hands and arms and drank glass after glass of water. The woman shied away from him as he did this, but when he sat down again, she resumed her position at the sink.

Back at the table, Blume tried to bite off a small piece of the bread she had given him, but found he had to gnaw his way into it. As he began chewing, it released a fragrance of orange and olive. His teeth cracked a seed, and his mouth filled with the taste of fennel. He realized his lips had numbed slightly and his tongue was tingling.

‘There are a few flakes of peperoncino mixed in with the grains. It can help a headache sometimes, but I’ve got something better.’

She walked across to the cupboard. Blume looked at her properly for the first time. She was barefoot, youthful, dressed simply in faded blue jeans and a beige cotton and linen blouse. It looked comfortable, floppy and elegant all at the same time, and he suddenly felt self-conscious about his abject appearance. Nothing about her fitted his image, and nothing in her actions matched his expectations.

She placed a full glass of jet-black liquid on the table before him. He looked down at the glass, then up at her, examining her face. Why had he not pulled up a file on her, prepared himself better for this encounter? This was the woman whose life he had decided to put in danger. The woman he said he had no sympathy for. Her eyes were dark and sloped in a way that would have given her an Asian look had they not been so large. She had a small white scar on her left cheek, a mark from childhood chicken pox or measles. Her childhood, Blume realized, could not have been all that long ago.

‘What’s in this glass?’

‘Your nose must be blocked if you can’t smell it.’ She stood up again, went over to the drawer, pulled out a large knife, and Blume felt his hand reach automatically inwards towards his sweaty waist and the butt of his gun. The knife flashed as she sliced through two thick-skinned lemons. Cautiously, he brought the glass up to his nose.

‘It’s a suspension of pure liquorice,’ she said, coming over with the lemons, one of which she had halved, the other quartered.

‘Liquorice liquor. Then it’s alcoholic,’ he said. ‘I don’t drink alcohol.’

She rolled up the dangling sleeve of her shirt, and pushed the lemons towards him. ‘If you want to get rid of your headache, drink that cordial.’

Blume drank. It was powerful. He could feel it painting his tongue and the roof of his mouth black, and it burned the back of his throat even though it was extremely sweet. The glass contained at least three measures. He put it down half empty. Already he could feel the fumes going to his head.

‘All of it, come on. You’re a big man.’

Blume took a second long draught and snapped the empty glass back on the wooden top. It was like drinking a cough medicine.

‘Those lemons are sweet enough to peel and eat like oranges, but they will taste sour after the licorice. Nothing is sweeter than licorice. Bite into the quartered lemons,’ she instructed.

‘I don’t think I will. We need to talk.’

‘Do it. You can talk at the same time.’

Blume did as she said. She was right about the lemon being sour, but the effect was invigorating and the taste delicious. He finished two quarters with two quick bites, attacked the third, and said, ‘You know who I am?’

‘For now, you are just an unhappy man with a headache.’

‘Commissioner Blume. I am a policeman.’

‘You just said that a minute ago.’

‘So I did. I apologize. The reason I am here, Mrs Curmaci, is.. ’ He stopped. He did not sound credible to himself. He finished the last quarter lemon as he thought of something to say.

‘Now take the two half lemons, and press them against your temples.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No. But if you think you’ll look stupid,’ and here she smiled sweetly at him, ‘and you will, just hold half a lemon in your hand and keep smelling it. Your headache will be gone in ten minutes. In fact, it’s already fading.’

She was right. As soon as he thought about it, he felt another pulse, but at least thirty seconds had passed since the last one. And the sensation of the pain trying to break out was diminishing fast.

‘You can use lavender, too. Shall I get you some?’

‘No. I’m fine. This,’ he brought the lemon to his nose and inhaled deeply, ‘is working.’

The nausea was fading fast too, and he had finally stopped sweating. He looked gratefully into the face of the young woman across the table and saw her eyes shift sideways and her face become anxious. He followed her gaze to the kitchen door, where staring at them was a youth on the verge of manhood.

Blume raised his hand in greeting, but the teenager continued to regard him in grave silence. Blume looked at the mother for guidance. He had never mastered the etiquette of speaking to children. All he knew was that after they reached a certain age, asking them their names and age sounded as strange to them as it would to an ordinary adult. And yet he could not for the life of him imagine what else to say.