From the autopsy room in the hospital, Dr. Modo could hear the rain beating down on the roof and the windows. The overhead lamps illuminated the marble tables; it was finally evening after a long, difficult day. The wards were filled with every disease imaginable; he asked himself how people survived in the hygienic conditions that prevailed in most of the city.
The rain made matters worse: lungs, throats, and bones all absorbed the dampness like sponges and suffered serious damage. The common folk, accustomed to scraping by and concealing their misery with dignity, only showed up at the hospital when the situation had advanced beyond any remedy and there was nothing left for the physicians to do but try to alleviate their pain.
Modo thought about the torrents of filthy water gushing out of the backed-up city sewers and pouring into the ground-floor bassi, carrying waste and dead animals onto the floors where children played. He shook his head and shuddered; it was a miracle that so many people were still alive, to be sure. Often, after his regular shift was over, when he was so exhausted that his eyes refused to close, he’d wander the city’s alleyways and vicoli, administering medical care to those in need of it. Old women tried to kiss his hands, but he recoiled: he wished there were more he could do. He wished he could give them medicine, but he only managed to pilfer a few doses here and there, when those people needed cartloads of it.
Tonight, for instance, I’d be much more useful out there than in here autopsying a corpse, he thought as he looked down at the little boy spread out naked on the table, bruise-blue in the spectral light, his head resting on a wooden block. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell Ricciardi no, and so instead of comforting the living, he found himself digging around inside a dead body.
He mused about the strange nature of his friendship with the commissario. They certainly weren’t kindred spirits: Modo was outgoing and overly emphatic, while Ricciardi was reserved and rarely laughed; but in some strange way he felt closer to him than anyone else he knew. Perhaps it was because they were both loners: perhaps it was because they both observed the times they lived in with the same disenchantment and melancholy. Or perhaps it was because they felt the same pity for that teeming city and its desperate populace. Each of them chose different battles, though: the doctor opted for the path of explicit dissidence, the commissario for silent action.
He pulled the pocket watch out of his vest fob: ten o’clock. It had probably been about twenty-four hours since the little boy’s death. He checked his surgical tools, clean and arrayed neatly in a metal tray next to the autopsy table. As always they looked ordinary and inoffensive: needle and thread, scissors, knives of various gauges and lengths, a handsaw and a pair of hacksaws, a bone chisel and a hammer. He thought of his father, a skilled carpenter who had worked until he was seventy so that Modo could attend medical school. You see, Papà, we’re not all that different in the end. In the end, I saw, hammer, and chisel, too.
Ricciardi, Ricciardi: damn you, and damn your stubbornness. He remembered something from the Great War, on the Carso front, where he’d been the battalion medical officer. He’d met a lieutenant, a Calabrian named Caruso. He was a slight man of few words, swarthy and dark haired, constantly on the move. The two men had hit it off and they spent long evenings together in the trenches, listening to the distant rumble of artillery, swapping stories about women and the faraway cities they called home.
Caruso had a gift: he knew before anyone else what would happen in battle. He’d say: now watch, they’re going to move over here, they’re going to maneuver in thus-and-such a direction, they’re going to try to outflank our machine gun emplacements. And right on schedule, as if Caruso himself were directing the whole operation, the chiefs of staff and the Krauts would do exactly what he’d predicted. But it didn’t stop him from taking a bullet right between the eyes, one September night: that was one thing he hadn’t seen coming.
Ricciardi reminded him of Caruso: the same sad half-smile, the same tense, active hands, the same gaze lost in contemplation of who knows what distant grief. The same strange ability to interpret reality according to his own subterranean streams, currents invisible to everyone else. There are people who go through life taking the burden of everything onto their own shoulders, even though they lack the necessary strength.
He focused on the little boy. He’d completed the external examination. He’d gone over the clothing: a shirt made of coarse linen, several sizes too big, threadbare and filthy, and a pair of oversized short britches, fastened at the waist with a length of twine on the verge of breaking. No underwear, no cuts, no recent rips or tears. No violence, at least not enacted on the clothing.
Then he’d examined the epidermis, every square inch of skin. As he’d announced after his initial survey, there were no signs of recent wounds. Marks aplenty, no doubt about that: on the neck, belly, and legs. Contusions, bruises, hematomas. Life wasn’t easy for scugnizzi like this one. But there was nothing that could have caused his death, nothing very recent.
War, thought Modo. War and death. There was something absurdly exciting about war, he had to admit: the uniforms, the rifles, the bullets, and the bombs. Sure, there were hunger, filth, and infections: but there was also the knowledge that you were fighting for your country, for your homeland. Ridiculous concepts, he saw that now: a distant border, people who had never stopped speaking other languages no matter what flag was flying over city hall; but when you fight, you think of your own home far away, your traditions, the things that belong to you.
But the war that you fought, he mused, looking down at the body on the table, was one of neither glory nor grandeur. It was a war for survival, a war to live long enough to see the sun come up the next day, or to wake up to the feeling of rain on your skin. A war for bread, a war against the cold, a war for a dry place to sleep. A war that has no borders to defend, no bridges to destroy: the war of life.
He took his scalpel and made a Y-shaped incision, starting from the collarbone and running down to below the sternum, and continuing to the pubic bone with a detour around the navel. Beneath the skin, the layer of fatty tissue was virtually nonexistent, and Modo was not a bit surprised.
He decided first of all to perform a thorough examination of the abdomen, convinced as he was that the child’s death had been caused by a straightforward cardiac arrest, possibly triggered by a congenital malformation combined with the generally poor state of health: the little boy was light as a baby bird. If he discovered the cause of death, he hoped to spare the victim the next step: the opening of the cranium for an examination of the encephalon.
Now, once again, the talk was of war: in the speeches of the head of state, in the newspapers, in idle conversations in the bars and cafés. Nothing explicit, of course; no one ever spoke about war openly. But if you observe carefully, thought the doctor as he applied the retractor, you realize that war is in the air, and how. All this talk about greatness, empire, history, ineluctable destiny. About mastery, dominion, and colonies. If that’s not war, then I’ve never seen one before.
But I have seen war, you know that, child? I’ve seen war. And trust me, that’s not easy either.
Now the Man of Destiny himself is actually coming here, to Naples. He’s coming, and all the people like you will crowd the piazzas and clap and cheer on command. They might even put on their best clothes, as if it were a holiday, as if it were a special occasion. There might be a few petty thieves who’ll take advantage of the excitement to slip their hands into a few pockets, I don’t deny it, but there won’t be many. For the most part, everyone will feel better for it, stronger, less hungry. The destiny of greatness. The empire: sky, sea, and land. And this time, just like before, no one will have the courage to say that the fault lies with this man and the others like him, arms akimbo, hands on hips, eyes flashing and jaws jutting, that it is they who spread hunger and death in the name of nonexistent ideals.
I’ve seen plenty of dead people, child. And I still see them, every day. Today it’s you on this table, with the skin of your chest held up over your face by a couple of forceps, and these few little white bones splayed out. Tomorrow it could be anyone else. It could be your mother, who doesn’t even know you’re dead, or one of the brothers or sisters you’ve never even met.
Tell me, child: are you happy about Mussolini’s visit? Are you as eager as everyone else to kiss his shiny boots, to get a nod of approval from that massive bovine head? Do you think too that we’ll conquer the world together, and that Mussolini will restore the legacy of power and wealth that others took from you?
He picked up a large pair of surgical shears and started cutting through the ribs, on either side of the sternum. The ribs were soft and yielding, like those of a lamb. It broke his heart.
No, he murmured. You don’t care about the Duce’s visit anymore. Nothing matters to you; not now, my little one.
And he went on cutting, not realizing that his eyes were red with tears.