Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

They were sitting down. The garden stretched away, neat and small, and a policeman stood at the far end with a machine pistol slung on his neck from a webbing strap. She saw the hands that had snatched at her clothing, the feet that had kicked her and the mouths that had torn away her dignity. Neither stood and neither waved her to a chair. Nothing, Immacolata thought, is forgiven.

Marianna’s father, Luigi, said, ‘We didn’t want you to come, but they insisted. There is no welcome.’

Marianna’s mother, Maria, said, ‘There is a boy, nineteen, admitted this week to the ospedale. He has followed Marianna to the Santa Maria della Pieta. He may now be in the same bed, but certainly in the same ward, and he has the same symptoms. I don’t know the family but Luigi taught him for a year. It’s said he’ll die the day after tomorrow.’

Luigi said, ‘We haven’t visited the family – we didn’t want to intrude on the crisis afflicting them.’

Maria said, ‘There were others before Marianna. There will be others after the boy.’

‘Will you go?’ she blurted.

‘Go where?’ A frown knitted the father’s forehead.

‘Will you leave?’

‘And take Marianna with us, break her peace? Or leave her behind? Can you imagine us doing either?’ The mother’s shaking head expressed her incredulity.

‘I wondered if-’

‘We shall stay. If they kill us we’ll join her. We’re not frightened of them. There’s nothing else they can take from us,’ they said in chorus.

‘You know what I’m doing?’

‘We were told,’ the father said.

‘We respect it… but we do not forgive and we do not forget,’ the mother said. ‘Also, we were told of a boy who loves you, and that they’ll kill him. But you won’t weaken – it is what we were told.’

‘I’ll testify against my family.’

She had said it, ‘I’ll testify against my family,’ and at that moment the scales tipped and she had made her commitment. They turned away from her. It was as if she was of no further use to them. She was ignored, vulnerable. Did Castrolami rescue her? He did not. She fidgeted and shuffled her feet. She wondered if, one day, she would be somewhere in England, in the countryside, green, near cows, and she would be with the father and the mother of Eddie Deacon, explaining to them what choices had been made and the consequences.

She spun on her heel.

She faced Castrolami who lounged at the door. Immacolata said, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

A smile widened at his mouth, his arms unfolded and he took her elbow. At that moment, she believed, she had his respect.

She walked past the box of books, the files, and past the bags that would go to a tip, and past the two heaps of Marianna’s clothing. Orecchia came out of the kitchen, Rossi following him, and they readied their weapons.

They went out into the sunlight and the brightness dazzled her.

They headed back towards the dual-carriageway and Naples, driving past fields that had been harvested and groves of apple trees, and crossed a stream that was almost dry. She didn’t know where the poisons had been dumped or where Marianna Rossetti had played, or whether that was the stream she had paddled or swum in. The car was silent.

Nothing more to be said. She had made her pledge and could not turn back if she wanted ever again to walk with a pinch of pride. She had killed the boy – might, herself, have held a knife or a pistol.

She broke the quiet: ‘Am I a circus freak?’

She wasn’t answered.

‘Do I have the right to know where I am to be exhibited next?’

No reply.

It couldn’t be challenged. A lawyer’s clerk had the right to escort the mother-in-law of an accused woman, not yet convicted and entitled to legal presumption of innocence, to see the daughter-in-law, and take her toiletries, clothing and fruit.

Massimo escorted Anna Borelli, drove his car and listened.

‘Too much time is lost, and no message is sent.’

He wished he hadn’t heard.

‘It should be done in the morning.’

His own grandmother had a baggy stomach, wide hips, an excessive bosom, a twinkling eye and a smiling mouth. She teased him about the marriage invitation that hadn’t been sent to her, the lack of babies to drool over. This woman, the hag, was sheer contrast: not a gram of spare flesh, no fullness in her chest, a dulled deathlight in her eyes and thin lips. She seemed to find no pleasure in her world. His own grandmother, on his mother’s side, living in comfort in Merghellina, north along the coast and only a few kilometres from the city’s centre, couldn’t have spoken those whipped words.

‘Or done in the night, then dumped in the morning.’

He crossed the piazza Sannazzaro, then cut down to the via Francesco Caracciolo. Soon they would be close to his grandmother’s apartment. At this time of the day, she would be watering the plants on her balcony, or maybe she would have started to mix a pesto for Massimo’s uncle, a bachelor of fifty-three who hadn’t yet left home. His grandmother’s life was ordered and regulated. His other uncle, Umberto, the lawyer, was on his father’s side and his character was harsher and colder. Umberto would have been at ease with this woman – a strega – in his car and would have listened unfazed as she discussed, without passion, the killing of a young man.

‘I have thought of where the cadaver should be left.’

His own grandmother was nervous of small spiders and wouldn’t even swat a fly on a window-pane. Massimo wondered as he drove – near to his grandmother’s now – how many men and women had lost their lives on the witch’s say-so. He could imagine those fingers, with the wrinkled skin and the pared nails, wrapped tight round a man’s throat – he swerved and nearly hit a taxi.

‘The cadaver should be where the impact is greatest.’

They were past Merghellina and the marina where the launches rolled on the gentle waves in the shelter of the breakwater. At one more set of traffic-lights they were beyond the franchise area of the Piccirillo clan, and were entering the territory of the Troncone and Grasso families. That information might have been given on an advertising hoarding or a frontier control point. A man who answered to the Piccirillo would not cross that street beyond the traffic-lights and go north to trade narcotics or to extract protection dues; neither would a man employed by the Troncone or the Grasso come south. Very ordered. He would be at the gaol in ten minutes.

She said, ‘The cadaver should be left at the main door to the Palace of Justice, but not before nine in the morning.’

He didn’t ask how a vehicle would bring a dead body across a wide piazza that was a pedestrian-only zone. How could it be tipped on to the patterned paving, under the sign that read, ‘Palazzo di Giustizia’ and the flag, when there was always a carabinieri vehicle parked there, with two armed men inside it from the protection unit? How? He did not ask.

‘I have spoken to Carmine. I told him what I thought and then I told him what he thought. It was the same.’ He thought, incredibly, that a suspicion of a smile hovered briefly at her lips. ‘You, Massimo, will take my instructions to Salvo. There is no time for a rendezvous. You take them to him. Kill him early in the morning and leave his body for when they arrive at work.’

His hand shook. The direction of his car wobbled. He would not have dared to contradict Anna Borelli. They drove in silence the last kilometres to the parking area outside the walls, fences and watchtowers of the women’s gaol where the daughter-in-law was held.

What did guys do? They had last visits, sent messages and wrote final letters. Eddie would have no visit, did not expect an opportunity to send a message, and could hardly write a last bloody letter with his hands trussed behind his back.