No charges had yet been brought against Zeno D’Agostino and likely never would be. It wasn’t a crime, after all, to rant drunkenly to your cousin about the man screwing your wife, and it would be hard for prosecutors to prove anything worse. Sure, he’d provided a false alibi; but even that was too contestable for an easy conviction.
Yet everybody knew.
His students, colleagues and neighbours now all looked at him with fear, disdain or disgust. Resignation from the university and associated posts had been inevitable, and anyway had felt fitting. He needed a fresh start, somewhere smaller and less prestigious, where his disgrace would haunt him less. But he was still too toxic for the moment. And with no income to speak of, and with Emanuela having moved in with her mother, it made sense to sell the apartment.
Apart from anything else, it held too many memories.
He’d promised Emanuela to be out by five, for her to take her turn. But packing took longer than he’d expected. He’d forgotten how many books she’d bought him over the years, for his birthday, for Christmas and just because. She’d written a message in every one of them too, offering encouragement and love. He couldn’t help but pause to read them all and remember how good it had once been. He was still at it when he heard a key in the lock. He turned towards the door. All their recent contact had been by email or phone, so that this was the first time he’d seen her in weeks. It dismayed him how radiant she looked. Or rather, her radiance didn’t dismay him. What dismayed him was that it had taken their parting to achieve it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he told her, gesturing at the shelves. ‘Too many books.’
‘You always said there was no such thing.’
‘For a home, yes. For a Mercedes, on the other hand…’
‘Have you decided where you’re going yet?’
‘Pescara. Sandro’s letting me use his place there while I sort myself out.’
‘That’s kind of him. What will you do?’
He gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘No one will hire me for a while. Or publish any of my textbooks or histories. So I thought maybe that potboiler of mine.’
‘Cassius and Miriam.’
‘That’s the one.’ For years, he’d toyed with the idea of a series of bawdy mysteries set in first-century Naples, about a maverick one-legged senator called Cassius who threw wild orgies and kept exotic animals, while investigating a series of grotesque murders with his sidekick, an outspoken Judean slave girl called Miriam. But he’d never had the time. ‘And you?’
‘I took that copywriting job I mentioned.’
‘I’m glad. You’ll be great at it.’ He meant it too. Oddly, it hadn’t been her looks that had first made him take notice of her, but rather an assigned essay on Tiberius. Its content had been unremarkable, but the sweetness of her language compared to all the others had been like Mozart after a bin collection. ‘It suits you. You look stunning.’
‘I haven’t even started yet. Not until Monday.’
‘Oh. Well, you look stunning anyway. Radiant. As though…’ He tailed off uncertainly. His eyes flickered to her stomach.
She couldn’t restrain her smile; her glow grew beatific. ‘Yes,’ she said.
He stood there dumbly. He didn’t know what to say. ‘How long?’
‘Three months or so.’
‘And…? Is it…?’
‘I don’t know. Not for sure.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Except that with him, we always used protection.’
He nodded. His eyes dropped again. There was nothing yet to see, but he felt the strangest tingling anyway. Parenthood had always been Emanuela’s dream rather than his, yet he now entered an almost dreamlike state, as though the world were cotton wool. ‘May I?’ he asked.
‘If you’d like.’
He approached her slowly, placed his palm upon her belly. All he could feel was her warmth, yet he couldn’t take his hand away. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he blurted out suddenly. ‘I fucked everything up.’
‘We both did.’
‘No. I mean from before it all went crazy. I wasn’t the husband I thought I’d be. It made me resentful.’
‘I know. That’s what I meant too.’
‘I’d do anything…’
‘Anything?’ she asked. ‘Do you truly mean that?’
He frowned. It had been an expression of regret rather than a pledge. Yet her words suggested that that was how she’d taken it. Or, at least, that she was prepared to pretend. He took a few moments to think it through. Marriages took work; he’d learned that much the hard way. Vows were serious business and needed proper consideration. So, then. If Emanuela wanted to stay in Naples, would he brave the jeers, dirty looks and cold shoulders of neighbours and old friends? Would he give up drinking and take more exercise? Do his fair share of housework for once? Could he swallow his pride to become a stay-at-home dad? Could he truly forgive her infidelity? Most of all, if it turned out that way, would he love Conte’s child as his own? He mulled each of these questions both separately and together. Then he weighed them against the wretchedness of his life since she’d walked out. ‘Yes,’ he said soberly. ‘I mean it. I’ll do anything.’
His hand was still on her belly. She covered it with her own. ‘Good,’ she said.
They spent the afternoon painting the kitchen and the dining room. Both had been in dire need of a fresh coat, as indeed was this whole house, but it left them too pungent to eat in. They wrapped up warm, therefore, and carried the gas heaters out onto the porch to dine at the long wooden table. Izzo rustled up a salad and vinaigrette while Valentina cut bread and grated Parmesan to go with the huge bowl of gnocchi alla sorrentina his sister Teresa and her daughter Emilia had brought over, finished off by delizie al limone from his favourite Eboli pastry shop.
Their new landlord had left them six bottles of red from his own vineyard, part moving-in gift, part apology for how shabby the house was, but mostly in exchange for Izzo’s promise to tart it up. It was a little raw in the throat, sure, but it undeniably warmed the heart. And the heart was going to need plenty of warming these coming months, for the house was essentially a summer refuge, with thin walls and spacious tall rooms that would become iceboxes over a hard winter. But the eruption had left Izzo so straitened that it was all he could afford.
Not everything was bad, however. Mario had settled with unexpected ease into his new school, thanks largely to his blossoming friendship with his young cousin Emilia. His own transfer had been approved, making him Eboli’s new Head of Serious Crime. Not that there was much of it compared to Herculaneum. He spent most of his days tossing paper balls back and forth with his new colleagues. Better yet, he’d driven the few kilometres down the road to Battipaglia to introduce himself to his counterpart there, a formidable woman who’d put off retirement until she could find a replacement she was prepared to trust her town to. On the strength of Izzo’s recommendation, she’d given Valentina a month to prove herself. And – seeing that Valentina’s finances were as screwed as his own – he’d offered her his couch to crash on too.
Late last night she’d slipped into his room. ‘For warmth,’ she’d mumbled, as she’d climbed beneath his duvet. He still didn’t quite know what to make of that. She’d never shown much sign of fancying him and it had undeniably been chilly. Yet Valentina was tough as they came, scornful of sympathy and famously impervious to cold. But sometimes even the toughest need a friend.
Dinner finished and cleared away, he passed out shot glasses and then took around the bottles. Amaro for the adults. Apple juice for the kids. He put a fond hand on Isabella’s shoulder as he reached over her to pour. She was one of them, now, thanks to her having saved Mario. When he’d told her it was his dear wish that she’d stay with them for ever, it had been as though a hard glass phial had shattered inside her chest, allowing out all the happiness, vulnerability and kindness that she’d bottled up in it. Remarkably, she even burst out laughing sometimes. And she’d started taking real trouble in the kitchen too.
He returned to the head of the table. ‘Alla nostra,’ he said, raising his glass. To us. Our family. He looked around at them, raising their own glasses in return, huddled in their winter clothes, faces shining from the cold. And he felt a sudden hot love for them all in his chest, even before he drank; a glad certainty that life was going to get better now, that it even might get good again. He drained his Amaro in one draught, then sought out Valentina with his eyes, to tip his glass to her.
‘For warmth,’ he said.
The roads had all been closed off by police barriers, from the top of Herculaneum down to the sea. Lighting had been set up too, as if for a parade. Which it was, in its own way, if an unusually macabre one. Tourists and locals alike spent hours there, transfixed by the hot grey sludge still spewing from Vesuvius’s broken peak and creeping slowly down towards the sea, its thin crust constantly ripping open to reveal the molten orange lava beneath before scabbing over again. A whole town swallowed, with only the tops of a few sturdy buildings still protruding, like the last traces of a sunken fleet. And hot too. So hot that, even at this distance, Carmen could feel it on her face.
Cesco tapped his wrist to indicate the time. Their time in Naples was almost over. Her research was complete, Raff’s photographic studio successfully closed, their apartment handed back. Tonight they’d be taking the train back up to Rome for one last weekend together there before Carmen flew back to the States for another stint with her mother and a chance to catch up with her professors. And, with her mother’s condition so precarious, who could say for sure when she’d next be back?
‘So, then,’ murmured Cesco, standing beside her at the barrier. ‘The thing that lady said. Any thoughts?’
Remarkably, despite the violence of the eruption and the pyroclastic avalanche, only a few dozen people were known to have died or were still missing. Everyone else had got out in time. If the evacuation hadn’t been called when it had… It was unthinkable. But it had been called, thanks to Fatima Zirpoli, transformed overnight from tiresome scold into national celebrity.
‘I mean she is a lawyer,’ persisted Cesco. ‘A US immigration lawyer. A high-priced US immigration lawyer.’
‘I know who she is,’ said Carmen. ‘I was on the call too, remember?’
‘I’m just saying, I think we she should accept that she knows what she’s talking about. What’s the point of paying her otherwise?’
Carmen crouched to lay her white chrysanthemums against the barrier. They felt all wrong to her, for she connected them with celebration. Yet here in Naples they were the flower of mourning. But perhaps both meanings were equally fitting, for it wasn’t just Fatima Zirpoli whose reputation had been transformed by the eruption. The revelation of Taddeo Santoro as murderer, thief and rapist had justified to most Lucia’s killing of him. And the way she’d given up her life to protect the scrolls had turned her into a posthumous heroine too, though the success or failure of her sacrifice wouldn’t be known for years or even decades yet, what with the Villa buried once more beneath a good thirty metres of volcanic material.
‘So how about it?’ continued Cesco. ‘Considered purely as a legal strategy, I mean?’
That made her laugh. ‘Is this really your way of asking?’
‘I tried the other way,’ he pointed out. ‘It did not go well.’
Their lawyer had been blunt. Under ordinary circumstances, and considering the current climate, Cesco’s criminal history and his failure to declare it on his original application would have meant curtains for a visa. But circumstances were not ordinary. He still had three plausible paths available to him, each of which might help the other. The first was their recent adventure. News of the St Paul scroll had electrified the Christian world. As did the Villa’s vast library, of which Carmen had exclusive footage, while the scrolls they’d brought out had earned them a lot of goodwill with Victor, who was entrusted with them since being appointed the new head of the library’s special collections. Universities, churches and other institutions around the world had inundated them with invitations to talk. They’d made it clear to the American ones that they’d only give such talks together, thus hoping to recruit powerful allies to their cause. Then there was Cesco’s colourful and sympathetic life story. Despite his general wariness of the media, he’d given interviews to everyone who’d asked, retelling the painful story of how his family had been massacred by ’Ndrangheta gunmen, forcing him into hiding; and how he’d survived hand to mouth in part by committing crimes for which he was truly sorry and had already been making reparations. But there was a third possible path too. One to a different kind of visa.
‘Well?’ said Cesco. ‘How about it?’
But Carmen only shook her head, if a little sadly. ‘Your lawyer also made it clear that the INS don’t much like it when people marry just to get around them.’
‘But we wouldn’t be.’
‘I know. But that’s how it would look. Anyway, she said it could still take years.’
‘Then what do you suggest?’
She slipped her hand into his. ‘We’re in this together. That much is settled now. So how about we let your lawyer deal with the INS, and we get on with our lives as best we can?’ Then she added with the slightest of smiles: ‘Besides, first Alaric and now this. Who the hell has any idea what’s going to happen next?’