Eco squatted over the bloodstain, took out his knife and raised it high over his head, then brought it down within a finger's breadth of the street, over and over. He began to shake. He dropped forwards on his knees. He made a sound like a donkey quietly braying. He was weeping.
I knelt beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. 'It's all right,' I said. 'It's all right. I only want you to remember a little more.' He drew away from me and wiped his face, angry at himself for crying. 'Only a little more. Was there anyone else who-saw? Someone else in the tenement, or across the street?'
He glared at the shopkeeper's wife, who stood staring at us from the entrance to her store. He raised his hand and pointed.
'Ha!' The woman crossed her arms and lowered her head, bull-like. "The boy's a liar. Either that, or he's blind as well as dumb.'
The boy pointed again, as if by hurling his finger at her he could make her confess. Then he pointed at a little window above the shop, where the old man's face peered out at us for an instant before abruptly disappearing behind a pair of shutters closed from within.
'A liar,' the woman growled. 'He should be beaten.'
'You told me you lived at the back of the building, with no windows overlooking the street,' I said.
'Did I? Then it's only the truth.' She had no way of knowing I had seen her husband only an instant before, looming directly above her like the disembodied face of a deus ex machina in a play.
I turned back to Eco. 'Three of them, you said. Was there anything to distinguish them besides their cloaks? Tall, short, anything unusual? One of them limped, you say, the leader. Which was his crippled leg, the left or the right?'
The boy thought for a moment, then poked at his left leg. He scrambled up and limped about me in a circle.
'The left. You're certain?'
'Ridiculous!' the old woman screamed. 'The stupid boy knows nothing! It was his right leg that was bad, his right!' The words were out before she could stop them. She slapped a hand over her mouth. A smile of triumph crept over my face, then withered as she gave me a look such as Medusa might have given Perseus. For a moment she stood confused, then she took decisive action. She stormed into the street and seized the handle of the wide door, then stamped back into the shop, pulling it closed behind her in a great arc while Tiro scurried out of her way. 'We will reopen,' she shouted to no one in particular, 'when this rabble has cleared the streets!' The door closed behind her not with a great boom, but with an equivocal rattle and a thud.
'His left,' I said, turning back to the boy. He nodded. A tear ran down his cheek; he dabbed at it angrily with his sleeve. 'And his hand — which did he use for stabbing? Think!'
Eco seemed to stare into some great depth that loomed beneath the bloodstain at our feet. Slowly, trancelike, he transferred the blade from his right hand to his left. He narrowed his eyes. His left hand gave a jerk, making miniature stabbing motions in the air. He blinked and looked up at me, nodding.
‘Left-handed! Good, left-handed with a game left leg — that should make him easy enough to spot. And his face — did you have a look at his face?'
He shuddered and seemed to be holding back tears. He nodded slowly, gravely, not quite looking me in the eye.
'A good look? Good enough so that you would recognize him ‘ if you were to see him again?'
He gave me a look of pure panic and began scrambling to his feet. I grabbed his arm and pulled him back, close to the bloodstain. 'But how could you have seen him so closely? Where were you, in the window of your room?'
He nodded. I glanced up.
'Too far to get a really good look at a man's face in the street even in broad daylight. And yet it was dark that night, even if there was a full moon.'
'Fool! Don't you understand?' The voice came from above me, from the window over the shop. The old man had pulled back the shutters and was peering down at us again, talking in a hoarse whisper. 'It wasn't that night that he got a good look at the man's face. They came back again, only a few days later.'
'And how do you know that?' I asked, craning my neck.
'They… they came into my shop.'
'And how did you recognize them? Did you see the crime?'
'Not me. Oh, no, not me.' The old man looked warily over his shoulder. ‘But there's nothing that happens in this street day or night that my wife doesn't see. She saw them that night, standing where I am at this very window. And she knew them when they came back a few days later in broad daylight, the same three — she knew their leader by his limp, and one of the others by the size of him — a big blond giant with a red face. The third had a beard, I think, but I can't say more than that. The leader was asking questions around the neighbourhood, same as you. Only we didn't tell them a thing, not a thing, not one word about Polia claiming to have seen the stabbing herself from start to finish, I swear it. Didn't like the look of them. At least I didn't tell them anything; only it seems, now that I recall, I had to leave the shop, just for a moment, while the old woman got rid of them — you don't suppose she went off with her big mouth…'
Behind me I heard a strange animal cry. I turned, then ducked as Eco's knife went flying over my head. The old man's reflexes were amazingly quick. The knife went whistling towards the open window and struck against slammed shutters instead. The blade landed squarely in the wood, stuck for a long moment, then slipped free and fell to the street with a clatter. I turned and stared at Eco, amazed that a mere boy could have thrown the knife with such strength. He stood hiding his face in his hands, weeping.
'These people are mad,' whispered Tiro.
I grabbed Eco's wrists and pulled his hands from his face. He wrenched his head from side to side, trying to hide his tears. He pulled against my grip. I held him fast.
'The men came back,' I said. 'They came for you. Could they have seen you watching, the night of the murder?'
He wildly shook his head.
'No. Then they found out from the old woman in the shop. She led them to you. But according to the gossip it was your mother who saw the crime. Did she? Was she with you in the window?'
Again he shook his head. He wept.
'You were the only one who saw it, then. You and the old woman across the street. But the old woman had the sense to keep herself out of it — and to lead them elsewhere. You told your mother all the details, didn't you? Just as you've told us? And she started putting it out as if she'd seen the crime herself. Am I right?'
He shuddered and sobbed.
'Wretched,' I whispered. 'Wretched. So they came that day looking for her, not you. And they found her in your apartment. You were there?'
He managed to nod.
'And then what? Threats, bribes?' I asked, knowing it was something much worse.
The boy wrenched himself from my grip. Sobbing, whining, he began slapping his own face back and forth. Tiro huddled next to me, watching horrified. The boy finally stopped. He stamped his foot and looked me straight in the eye. Gritting his teeth, contorting his face into a mask of hate, he raised both arms. His hands moved slowly, stiffly, as if against his will. He made an obscene gesture, then crumpled his hands into fists as if they had been withered by fire.
They had raped his mother, Polia who had seen nothing, who would have known nothing of the crime if he had not told her, whose only crime was spreading second-hand gossip to an old lady across the street. They had raped her, and Eco had seen it happen.
I looked at Tiro to see if he understood. He covered his mouth and averted his eyes.
The boy suddenly pushed me aside and ran to the knife in the street. He snatched it up and ran back to me, taking my hand in his and pressing my fingers around the hilt. Before I could pay him, before I could make any gesture of comfort or understanding, he ran back into the tenement, pushing aside the gaunt watchman who was stepping out of the doorway for a breath of air.