Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

The spit was on Immacolata’s cheek and her chin and she did not wipe it.

There was a table between them. Two women guards were behind her mother, but Immacolata sensed they would intervene only if there was a physical attack. She thought them in awe of her mother. Rossi and Orecchia were behind her. Her mother, before spitting, had used different avenues to demonstrate her disgust, contempt for and loathing of her daughter: the shame to the family of a collaborator, the betrayal of her relatives, the treachery of siding with the prosecutor against her own.

She had not flinched. She had stared back at her mother, had ridden the punches as a boxer did. She had been taunted: where would she live, who would befriend her, could she live a lie for the rest of her life? Did she understand what it would be to cringe each time on a darkened street if she heard a footstep behind her? Did she know how much bounty money her mother and father in joint enterprise had placed on her life? Did she understand that she would never be forgiven?

There was the spit, then her mother’s final throw: ‘You sleep with a boy, you curl your legs round him, you take him into you, you fuck him, and you kill him… I never betrayed your father. You took the boy into your bed, and he means nothing to you. You kill him. It is not Salvatore who kills him, it’s you. I love your father and I love Vincenzo, Giovanni and Silvio, and they love me… You cannot love. The boy comes, searches for you, will give his life for you. You cannot love because you’re cold. You’re not a daughter. You have the cold of a whore. You don’t know what love is, what loyalty is. The boy did. You’re cold, not of Naples. You kill the boy. It’s as if you fire the shot or hold the knife. Do you imagine that one of our family, if there was love, would turn away and condemn to death? Perhaps you fucked him like a whore does, were cold… You will never love. You’re not capable. You’re not your father’s daughter, not my daughter. You’re not your brothers’ sister. All of our family have warmth, can love, not you. The proof of it? You killed the boy.’

Her mother swung round, did not spit again, and strode to the door. As if she was a monarch, the two women officers scurried to get to it first and to open it for her. They stood aside so that she could pass through. Immacolata heard more keys jangle in harmony, more doors opened and closed in slammed timpani, the distant trill of her mother’s laughter, as if she deigned to share a joke with her escort. Then the voices, the footsteps, the music of keys and the percussion of doors faded, were gone.

Her chin trembled.

They had set Immacolata hurdles to leap, she understood that. She had cleared them all, except this one. Here, she had stumbled.

She looked at her watch – had no reason to but did – and saw that the minute hand showed five to the hour. The watch was in a gold setting but discreet. It had been her father’s present to her on her twenty-first birthday, one of many presents, and had become part of her. She had worn that watch in the telephone kiosk on an east London street when she had made the international call, and in an east London park when she had met the enemy of her family, and on a flight to Rome and in a car that had carried her south and home. It was five minutes to an hour, and the time had no significance to her. The watch was part of an old life. She took it off, opened her fingers, let it fall to the concrete floor of the room that had been made available to them in the late hours while a prison slept. She had been wounded, and knew it. Deliberately, Immacolata put her heel on the watch face, and killed it at five minutes to an hour.

Rossi pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, unfolded it and – without fanfare – wiped the spittle off her face. Orecchia took her arm.

She left the watch behind her, for a cleaner to find or a trustee prisoner, as she had left behind a padlock on a bridge.

‘Do we have long?’ she asked.

‘Not long,’ Orecchia answered.

She said where, now, she wanted to be taken. Rossi shrugged. Orecchia said it would be done. She thought they humoured her because of what her mother had said. She didn’t know the importance of a watch stopped at five minutes to an hour.

He did not want food. He did not want water. He did not want cigarettes. It was five times now that he had been asked if he wanted to eat, drink, smoke. He yelled it back at the small man who sat cross-legged on the walkway. Nobody listened to him. Why did nobody listen? In Forcella, in Sanita, men listened when he spoke. He didn’t have to raise his voice. He could whisper and men would crane forward to hear what he said, and others would hush those at the back. If he was angry, men were fearful. If he made a joke, men laughed.

‘I don’t want anything.’

‘It’s just that it’s a long time since you ate or drank, Salvatore. Myself, I could do with a cigarette and-’

‘Anything except that you look at the time. Look.’

The man had a gentle voice. ‘Use my name,’ he said. ‘It’s Lukas. What I always say is that a guy’s name is the most important thing he owns. I’m Lukas, you’re Salvatore, he’s Eddie. I don’t want to be hustled by time.’

‘Look at your watch.’

‘All right, easy, all right. Can I say something, Salvatore? The gun. Can the gun be moved from where it is? Eddie’s head? You’re tired, course you are. Can you just shift the gun a little? They frighten me, guns do.’

‘Look at your watch – see the time.’

‘How about you move the gun and I look at my watch? Is that reasonable? You’re tired, that situation, your hand might slip. Maybe you have a hair trigger. We don’t want an accident.’

‘Look at the time.’ He couldn’t now see his own watch. Hadn’t seen it since the man had come forward and offered food, then sat, and Salvatore hadn’t dared to move, not a centimetre, and the guns’ aim was on him. The way his arm was across the boy’s chest, and his own head was half buried in the hair at the back of the boy’s skull, didn’t allow him to see the face of his watch… but now he heard the chime, distant. A church’s clock, a church’s bell. Could have been the Church of the Resurrection he had passed on Fangio’s pillion. Midnight’s strike… If a player of importance, a figure who was respected, let a given deadline drift, allowed an ultimatum to slip, then face – authority – was lost, could never be regained.

‘That is fair exchange, Salvatore. You move your pistol, shift it a little, and I’ll check my watch. Listen, friend, all I’m here to do is to help.’

He screamed. He heard his own voice, detached from it, as if it was another who howled in the night, a cat’s cry. ‘Where is she? Where is her statement? Where is the retraction? Answer me.’

The gentle voice was so reasonable, and there was a shrug, helpless, from the small shoulders and the hands gestured it. ‘Way above my level, that sort of decision, Salvatore. Nobody tells me anything. The jerks who make that sort of decision, they’d have gone home long ago. People like us are left out of bed, no food and no water and no goddam cigarettes, and there’ll be no decision from them till the morning comes. Better, Salvatore, for you, for me and for Eddie, that we sort this out ourselves, and I can go home, and Eddie can, and you can go get some sleep.’

It was like honey, the voice, sweet and cloying and satisfying, and he knew the deadline of an ultimatum had gone and could not be clawed back… If he killed the boy then he, himself, was dead, and he could see the light reflected from the scope’s lens. He couldn’t clear it from his mind: did he want to die?

He cocked the pistol, scraped metal on metal, and the sound echoed along the concrete of the walkway and filtered through the washing lines, and the hammer was back. He had no hatred of the boy. He had no love for Gabriella Borelli, or loyalty to Pasquale Borelli who had created him. He loved the respect that was shown him. A slow gathering smile came to his face but his stomach growled and his throat was dry, and he craved to smoke, and his finger tightened on the trigger stick, squeezed on it.