The moment the congregation was dismissed, everyone got down to the real business. Many of them had already had a chance to take preliminary soundings in the course of their daily work, social calls and trips to the shops. Now the time had come to meet in committee, compare notes, sift the evidence and rough out the interim report which would later be delivered to their respective families. Lively discussion was going on both in the church itself and on the steps and street outside between small groups that constantly formed and reformed, relaying their findings to others for comparison and contrast. After about twenty minutes, a consensus gradually emerged.
Both the television news and the local paper had confirmed that the murdered man, despite having been reported following his earlier disappearance as being a visiting American, was in fact a member of the Calopezzati family which had ruled this part of Calabria like a feudal possession for almost two hundred years. The memory of their crimes and infamies was still fresh among the older generation, and there was general agreement that it was harsh but just for this Pietro Ottavio — evidently the illegitimate son of the baronessa Ottavia — to have been condemned to a symbolically ignominious death outside the family’s former stronghold as retribution for the misdeeds of his forebears.
Where dissension emerged was over the punishment of Francesco Nicastro. There were those who held that he deserved it for giving information to the police. Rules were rules and they had to be enforced, brutally if necessary, if the community was to survive in the face of the even more brutal repression that had governed the region since time immemorial. Others argued that boys like Francesco were too modern to understand the old ways, adding that in any case no real harm had been done by his mentioning the victim’s parked car, and above all that the penalty had been disproportionately severe. A few even dared to suggest that the incident was proof of the persistent rumours that ‘he’ had become addicted to the drugs in which he trafficked and had gone over the edge into madness, but the implications of this possibility were so disturbing that it was dismissed by the majority.
Both by nature and upbringing, Maria was a listener rather than a talker, particularly where the Calopezzati family was concerned. In fact, the name had not passed her lips for almost fifty years, and nothing in her speech or demeanour suggested that it meant anything more to her than to any of the other women present. She moved from group to group, nodding and shaking her head in turn, miming the appropriate righteous anger or resigned disapproval. Once she had gleaned all the facts, theories, rumours and opinions on offer, she slipped away home and shut herself up in her room. An hour later, when she emerged for dinner, she shocked the whole family by announcing that she was going into the city the next day. One of the women at church had told her about a new medication for arthritis that was now available, but you had to go to a certain doctor at the hospital to get it because the supply was strictly limited.
Maria’s son offered to drive her, but she declared that she would rather take the bus. It was more relaxing and you didn’t have to worry about parking. Her daughter-in-law, who wore the trousers in the marriage, then tried to butt in but as usual went completely over the top, making it sound as though her suocera was a senile old fool who shouldn’t be allowed out of the house, never mind turned loose in the dangerous streets of Cosenza. Maria waited until she had finished her tirade and then said, ‘I’m going to the city tomorrow, I’m going alone, and that’s all.’
Everyone knew that it was a waste of breath trying to argue with Maria when she used that tone of voice. Besides, the parents were more concerned about their son Sabatino, who had barely touched his food and sat staring blankly at the wall as if oblivious to everything about him. Francesco Nicastro was his best friend. They had played together in the stunted forest on the day when the dead man appeared. Maria rose and announced that she was going to bed early so as to get a good night’s sleep.
Once in her room, she did indeed undress, but then lay down on top of the covers, glancing alternately at the sacred image on the wall and the looming abyss of the shadowy ceiling high above. The Virgin had been unable to help her in this matter, so Maria would have to help herself, and all of them. For herself she had no fears, but she knew how the kind of men who had inflicted these injuries on the community operated, particularly if there was any truth to the rumours that their leader was possessed by demons. Whatever happened, her son and his wife and Sabatino must be protected. She would have to take stringent precautions before, during and after her trip, keep her wits about her at all times and not carry anything that might identify her if things went wrong.
Above all, she had to decide what to say and how to say it. After so many years of a silence which she had always assumed would last until her death, it was almost impossible to imagine selecting the words and framing the sentences that would bring the whole matter to light for the first time. In addition, she might very well not be believed. The story she had to tell was just that, a story. She couldn’t prove that it was true or produce any evidence or witnesses to support it. Maria had seen the new police chief on television and he looked like someone you could talk to, but that might just have been his public manner, assumed for the camera and the purposes of meeting the press. One to one, he could easily turn out to be the usual arrogant thug who would dismiss her statement as the ravings of a crazy old woman.
But none of this weakened her resolve, any more than the impenetrable silence of God, the futile gesture of his Son and the impotent anguish of the Madonna stopped her from praying or going to church. Both the gods and the police were as capricious and vindictive as any of the humans they lorded it over, but every once in a while you might be able to catch their attention and put in a good word for someone. But first you had to make that effort. It might not be sufficient, but if you had any sense of decency then it was necessary. You had to be prepared to ask, to beg, to plead, to grovel. That was all that could be done, and Maria was determined to do it.
When the papers landed on Zen’s desk early that evening, his first reaction had not been to do with the contents but with the form they took. Written under the letterhead of the US consulate in Naples, the first instalment opened with a boilerplate statement to the effect that ‘this communication contains potentially sensitive classified material’ and hence was being sent in randomly sequenced segments via fax, since no ‘mutually agreed encryption protocols’ were in place between the agencies concerned and the use of email might therefore have constituted a ‘bilateral security hazard’.
I remember when we first got fax machines at work, Zen thought. They were cutting edge then, a status marker. If you didn’t have one, you weren’t important. Now they were virtually obsolete and sat gathering dust in some unvisited corner of the building. I’ve witnessed the birth and decay of an entire technology, he thought, not just in my lifetime but within recent memory.
The communication in question was terse in the extreme. Sent in response to a phone call Zen had made the previous evening, it stated that Roberto Calopezzati had been resident in the United States from 1953 until 1965. The American consular official went on to express a disingenuously arch bewilderment at the fact that it had been necessary to contact him for this information. Surely it would have been more convenient for Zen to obtain it from his own internal sources, given that the said Calopezzati’s twelve-year stay in the US had been under the auspices of the Italian government as a legal adviser at their embassy in Washington, DC.
Zen headed down the corridor to Giovanni Sforza’s office. Livid clouds were hanging low above the city like clusters of poisonous fruit, but the storm wouldn’t break. Inside the Questura, the atmosphere was as taut as overstretched sailcloth.