When Matteo and Don Mazerotti disappeared into the depths of the tower, they had left Grace, Garibaldo and the professor behind on the dirty central reservation that separated the two fast-flowing lanes of traffic. Silence settled over them. How much time went by? They could not have said. Time slowed down. Everything seemed to float in the calm of darkness. At first they waited as if they were at a station or in front of an apartment building. The professor sat down at the foot of the tower, his old satchel between his legs. Garibaldo smoked a cigarette, then another one, then a third. Grace, meanwhile, paced about, trying to imagine what Matteo and Mazerotti were going through. ‘Why did I not go down with them?’ she thought. ‘Am I not also dead inside?’ She thought of her precarious life, a life of loneliness and dissatisfaction. ‘We only have one life and I am a mess. A ridiculous failed monster.’ She thought of how she had been mocked for years in the street, and of the names she had been called with disgust and cruelty. Only one life. And hers had been one long succession of scorn and bullying. Yet, she had not gone down with them. Something in her had made her feel that the dead were not her business. ‘I like my life,’ she thought, smiling sadly. ‘It’s ugly and smells of sweat, but I like it.’ And she liked the city as well, with its long dark avenues and shadowy populace scavenging in bins. ‘I belong here,’ she thought and was surprised to realise that there was more life in her than she had thought. She had not gone down because, in spite of the muck which stuck to her cheeks on her nights of sin, she liked being here, a bit sad and fragile like a child made dirty by the ugliness of the world.
Minutes or hours passed and gradually they were overcome with fatigue. Garibaldo sat down, his back against the stone wall, beside the professor, and Grace lay down in the grass. The passing cars no longer made them jump. They didn’t even hear them any more. A haggard man with trembling lips came up to them at one point and seemed to be about to ask them for something: money, a light, or maybe something else. But when he saw the three of them he sensed he would not get any joy, and he disappeared. Later – but when exactly? – an ambulance passed, wailing in the night, but even that did not rouse them from their torpor. They must have been asleep, although it felt more like an absence than slumber, and soon it was the middle of the night. There was silence and no cars passed any more. The city made no sound.
Suddenly they were awoken by a thud. They sat up instantly and hurried over to the door of the tower and leant over, peering into the dark staircase down which the two men had disappeared. There was a figure, seemingly encumbered, coming up. His laborious breathing could clearly be heard.
‘Don Mazerotti?’ murmured Grace. And her voice betrayed fear as much as joy. In reality, deep down they had all thought they would never see their friends again. They thought that Matteo and Mazerotti had disappeared for ever. This sudden apparition was rather terrifying, like the return of a ghost.
‘Don Mazerotti,’ repeated Garibaldo, ‘is it you?’
Soon they could make out the features of the man who was struggling to ascend. It was indeed the old priest. He was panting and his face had an unnatural pallor. When she saw him, Grace thought he must be dead, but, by some kind of trick, still walking. He had the waxy hue of a corpse, with white lips and eyes sunk into their sockets. He did not manage to walk up the last few steps and Grace didn’t understand what was hampering him. Don Mazerotti opened his mouth to ask something but no sound came out. He was too weak.
‘He won’t make it on his own,’ murmured Grace.
Garibaldo leant forward, gripped the old man’s arm and pulled as hard as he could. The priest was strangely heavy. That was when the professor realised that he was carrying someone and that the weight prevented him from walking.
‘Take him,’ gasped the priest with his remaining strength. ‘Take him for the love of God!’
Garibaldo took hold of the inert body Mazerotti held out, and went back up the stairs, making sure that Mazerotti was following him. When they were finally in the open air, he sank to the ground, exhausted. It was only then that he looked at the face of the person he was carrying. He was holding a child of about six, a little boy who seemed to be deeply asleep, but who, now that he was in the fresh air, opened his eyes – large frightened eyes. And as Garibaldo was looking at him, he let out a cry that rooted them to the spot. It was the cry of a newborn, as if air was making its way through the child’s throat and lungs for the first time.
‘You did it?’ asked the professor, stupefied. ‘I was right … A gate … it really was a gate!’ he repeated like an excited child.
‘Where’s Matteo?’ asked Grace anxiously.
The old priest did not respond to any of their questions. He struggled to get up, and still with that corpse’s pallor, his hand over his heart because he had difficulty breathing and his ribcage was hurting, he said, ‘Take him. To the church. Quickly. I’ll tell you everything there. But, please, hurry!’ And as the little group didn’t move, trying to understand what was going on, who the child was and where Matteo had gone, he added threateningly, ‘It’s after us, and God knows what it’s going to do to catch us!’
Then, without further questions, the professor led the way. Grace helped the old man to walk and Garibaldo took the child in his arms again. He had stopped shrieking and was looking about him like a frightened animal.
They ran as fast as they could, like thieves after a heist or slaves making a bid for freedom, terrified at the thought of what was pursuing them, but giddy with their sudden freedom.
The first tremor took them by surprise as they reached Piazza Gesù Nuovo. Suddenly, the earth began to growl. The tarmac cracked. The houses shook. Things flew pell-mell off balconies – laundry, flowerpots, neon signs. It was as if a beast of monstrous proportions – a blind whale or a giant worm – were sliding under the earth and making the ground undulate. Soon the streets of Naples were filled with shouting. People woken in the middle of the night were wondering what was happening and why the walls of their bedroom were shaking. The whole city was in a panic and desperately calling out. Houses collapsed, with those inside them engulfed in falling concrete.
The little group was thrown to the ground. A few feet away, a lamp post came down on two cars, causing their windscreens to shatter. In spite of his age, it was Mazerotti who was first back up on his feet. He was fired up by the urge to fight. Nothing seemed to frighten him. He shouted at his companions still on the ground, with the calm of a captain in a storm, ‘Hurry up! We have to get back to the church.’
The three friends picked themselves up and followed the old man, who was marching along at a furious pace. Their progress was difficult. Only a few streets remained for them to walk through, and, all the way, there were crowds of women yelling like Vestal Virgins after the ravages of the barbarians, and mounds of rubble blocking the way. They had to give up on Via Sebastiano, which was entirely blocked by a collapsed palazzo, and make a large detour. All the way, they were amazed by Mazerotti’s energy and determination.
When they arrived, the priest made them go straight down into the crypt, just as there was another tremor. It was like being in the hold of a ship in a storm. They couldn’t see anything, and all they could hear was the muffled noise of falling masonry, shouts and cracking. Outside chaos reigned, and they did not know if they would ever be able to venture from their refuge. The house opposite had collapsed, blocking the entrance to the church. They hoped the church itself would hold up so that they would not be buried under several feet of rubble.
‘Whatever will be will be,’ said Don Mazerotti with astonishing calm. ‘But if we are to die tonight, I hope at least I will have been able to tell you what I saw.’
He fetched several candles, which he lit and placed around them. First he waited for the child, who was as tired as a newborn baby after his first feed, to be properly asleep, and then, by the light of the candles, he began his tale. He told them everything. Naples continued to be shaken by spasms and he talked for hours. When the walls of the crypt shook with another aftershock, he did not stop speaking, but instead speeded up his account to ensure they would know everything before they were buried.
They felt more than thirty aftershocks that night, short, sharp and muffled like the far-off anger of the gods. Each time, the ground shook, the walls trembled and a little plaster or marble dust fell down. Fissures zigzagged across the ceiling. Each time, they wondered if they were going to be able to hear the priest’s story right to the end or whether they would be snatched away, having first been crushed by falling masonry.
Eventually Don Mazerotti fell silent. He had finished. The earth around them seemed to have found its equilibrium. Grace and Garibaldo looked grave. They thought of Matteo and the child. The professor was entranced. He looked as if he were having hallucinations. He was overjoyed at the thought that he had been right all these years. The priest’s account had just washed away twenty years of mockery and insults.
Slowly they stood up, left the crypt and pushed open the heavy church door to see what remained of Naples.
They went down the steps to the square like sleepwalkers, staring wide-eyed at the world. The spectacle that greeted them was unimaginable. In a few hours, Naples had been plunged into total chaos. People had taken everything they wanted to keep out of their apartments. Fearing their houses would collapse and bury their most precious possessions, they had installed themselves on the pavements, huddled together around an old family chest, some suitcases, their pots and pans or an old armchair.
In front of the church, a young woman was holding a crystal candelabra in her arms, as you would hold a baby. The entire city was outdoors in the dark, in the middle of the rubble and broken flowerpots. Here and there some groups had a candle. To entertain the children, old people played the accordion. Some were laughing as though it might be the last night of the world.
The four men and the child walked a little way through this topsy-turvy landscape. They instinctively knew, without having to be told, that the door to the tower, down there by the port, had been buried, that no one would ever be able to descend again and maybe it was to make sure of this that death had shaken the earth with such rage. They knew they would never tell anyone about that night. They knew that in the days to come Garibaldo would report the disappearance of Matteo, who would be for ever counted among the people killed in the earthquake. They also knew they would never say anything to the child. What child of six could hear such a story and make sense of it? They were certain that the child’s memories of the Underworld would fade, and they would invent some story to explain the disappearance of his parents. They would raise him between the four of them. Garibaldo would give the boy a home with him at the café because he had the space. Grace would watch over him with the fondness of a shy aunt, but one who was ready to make great sacrifices for her nephew. As for the professor and the priest, they would be in charge of his education until he reached adulthood so that Matteo’s sacrifice would not have been in vain.
They were now walking the streets of Spaccanapoli and looking at the destruction the earthquake had wrought. Although they felt that they had caused the disaster, they kept silent. They thought that the old world was dead and that they would have to accept their new lives. They would raise the child, all four, in friendship, in spite of their age and the demons they all struggled with.
Finally they joined a group in Piazza San Paolo Maggiore. They brought two benches from the church to feed the fire that was threatening to go out and settled down there, protecting the child, who had not said a word and who looked around, goggling at the world he was rediscovering, this strange world where everything was shattered and fallen down. They warmed themselves at the flames of the pyre and began to sing old Neapolitan songs with the musicians. They sang so that the music would drown out the noise of the earth and Matteo, wherever he was, would hear their distant melodies. So that he would know that all was well, that they were with the child and that for Pippo life was about to begin.