The Wedding Officer

34

WHEN THE tin was full he took the money to Angelo. They had hit upon a simple way of transferring cash without arousing suspicion: James would eat a small meal, and Angelo would bring him an astronomical bill. James would then place a large pile of notes on the plate, thus reinforcing his own reputation as a fool who unnecessarily insisted on paying his own way.

Zi’Teresa’s was fuller than ever these days. It might no longer be a place to secure a girl for your bed, but that was more than compensated for by the sheer beauty of the staff. From the sommelier to the cigarette seller, all were female and all were nice to look at, and if they also seemed to leave quite soon after they arrived, no one minded very much, since they were quickly replaced by others who were just as lovely.

One night, as James was leaving, Angelo murmured that he would like a quiet word around the back. James went to the kitchen door, where Angelo drew him to one side. “A man will come and see you tomorrow,” he whispered. “He has the information you require.”

The man who came the next day was huge, a fat mountain of flesh who could barely fold himself into one of James’s chairs. He did not introduce himself and he wasted no time on pleasantries.

“Zagarella has a mistress,” he said. “She lives out at Supino, and that’s where he keeps his stocks of penicillin. She has agreed to make sure he stays all night tonight, so you’ll be able to arrest him in the morning.”

“Why is she doing this?”

The huge man shrugged. “She has been shown a photograph of him with another woman. She is by nature very jealous.” He removed a piece of paper from his pocket and held it out to James. “The house is isolated. I have drawn you a map.”

Something about the man made James’s skin crawl. The old adage about devils and long spoons came to mind. But it was too late for that now. He took the map and glanced at it. It seemed clear enough. “Thank you.”

The man levered himself to his feet. “Be very careful,” he said. “Zagarella will certainly be armed.”

At that moment the door opened and Livia walked in. For a split second she and the fat man stared at each other. Then the fat man smiled.

“So this is where you have been hiding yourself, Livia,” he said.

“His name is Alberto,” she explained. “He’s been causing me trouble for years.”

“Well, he can’t get at you here,” James said. “You’re under my protection now.”

“You don’t understand,” Livia said flatly. “To a man like that, information is power. And you’ve entrusted him with the most dangerous information of all—the information that you are breaking the law.”

“He’s in this just as much as I am.”

“But you have more to lose.” She shook her head. “Alberto’s a pig, but he’s a clever pig. You’ll see, he’ll find some way of twisting this to his own advantage.”

Seeing her looking so vulnerable stirred something deep in his heart. He took her in his arms. “I swear you’ll be safe,” he promised.

“Idiot!” she said, hitting him with her fist. “It isn’t me I’m worried about. It’s you.”

He smiled at her. “Then you really care about me?”

“Cazzarola!” she fumed. “Of course I do.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“Do you ever ask?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Well, now you know. So now you can promise me that you won’t try to arrest this man Zagarella tomorrow.”

“Livia,” he said, “I have to.”

“Rubbish.”

“It’s my duty.”

“How can it be your duty?” she shouted. “Your superiors would absolutely forbid it if they knew.”

“Don’t you see—unless I do this, I’m just another corrupt intelligence officer.”

“So?”

“It’s the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.”

“Oh?” she said. “I thought I was the opportunity you were waiting for.”

“Of course you are. But I still have to do this.”

She threw up her hands. “Tiene ’a capa sulo per spartere ’e rrecchie!^*3 And I was stupid enough to think an Englishman might be different. Men are all the same, wherever they come from.”

“Livia—”

“Get out,” she cried. “Go and get yourself killed. See what I care.”

They set off before dawn. The Italians had, as usual, dressed up for the raid in suits, spats and boaters, but something of James’s mood must have communicated itself to them, and they were in less exuberant form than usual as the borrowed jeep rolled through the dark streets and onto the coast road heading north. The sun was rising by the time they found the place, a farmhouse just as remote as Alberto had promised. It was very still.

Too still, James thought. He didn’t have much experience of farms, but surely they were never this quiet. Why were there no dogs barking? He motioned for Carlo and Enrico to draw their weapons.

He crept toward the front door. It was open. Stepping inside, he heard a sound—a baby, the muted half cry of an infant that can’t decide if it wants to sleep or to eat. He relaxed a little. At least there were people here, and alive. For a moment he had thought—but now he had to focus on the fact that a crying baby meant a waking mother. The element of surprise was vital. Pushing open the door where the noise had come from, he hurried through into a bedroom.

The man slumped against the wall was Zagarella, James was sure of that. He had been rising from the bed when someone had cut this red slice out of his windpipe, like a piece of watermelon. The woman in the bed had been stabbed as she slept: There was blood all over the mattress, a dark pool surrounding the body. And—horror of horrors—there was the baby, still attempting to suckle her lifeless breast. It lifted its head blindly as they entered, as if searching around for any mother who was not as cold as his was.

There was a movement beside him as Enrico crossed himself. James heard the rumble of an approaching truck. Carlo went to the window.

“Men,” he said economically. “Men with guns.”

“Soldiers?”

Carlo peered out. “I can’t be sure.”

“Come out with your hands up,” an American voice shouted.

“Sì, soldiers,” Carlo said resignedly.

It was a disaster in every possible way. For a while he had wondered if Livia had sent the Americans after him, worried for his safety. But she swore she had not, and the Americans themselves said that they had simply received an anonymous tip-off. Even so, it required some fancy footwork to explain his own presence at the farmhouse in a way that satisfied his superiors’ curiosity. A search of the farmhouse had not produced any clues. Nor had it turned up any penicillin, although there were signs that some crates had been hastily removed.

Jumbo’s view was that James shouldn’t worry. “He’s dead. You won.”

“But who killed him? And how did they know we were coming?”

“Probably a falling-out between thieves. And as for the timing, that must be a coincidence. It couldn’t have been the Americans, if you didn’t tell them about the op in the first place.”

James knew he ought to feel triumphant. It was certainly a satisfaction to know that the pharmacist’s boasts about the high-level protection he enjoyed had turned out to be hot air. But he could not help feeling uneasy. It was all too neat.

In an effort to find out more he took Dr. Scottera for a drink at Zi’Teresa’s. But the former fascist was not as hungry now as he had once been, and even the promise of egg-and-marsala failed to loosen his tongue.

“It’s a mystery, Angelo,” James said gloomily when Dr. Scottera had gone. “Nobody knows anything.”

“You should ask yourself,” Angelo said thoughtfully, “not ‘Who would want to kill him?’ but ‘Who is better off because he is dead?’”

“Who?”

Angelo shrugged. “Perhaps those who betrayed him were playing a double game. This way, they get rid of Zagarella, but they also get to keep his penicillin themselves.”

As the heat became fiercer, the atmosphere in Naples changed yet again. Arguments that in cooler weather would have led to florid exchanges of insults now ended quickly in stabbings. It was as if the citizens’ passions were rising with the mercury, and it was all James could do to keep a lid on the waves of mass hysteria that quite suddenly gripped the city, like a panic, and then were gone again.

Rumors seemed to propagate like flies. A statue of Christ had climbed down from a crucifix in Pozzuoli and had led the congregation to the safety of the hills. The fascists were going to murder anyone who did not wear black shoes as a sign of their support. The king had demanded that all his loyal subjects wear their belts inside out. It was all nonsense, but even nonsense could be dangerous if it was allowed to get out of hand, and each wild allegation had to be investigated before it could be dismissed.

And yet James had to admit that it sometimes did feel as if something odd was happening. Take the case of the well at Cercola. He had a report from the British officer there that the water supply had been poisoned, and that the woman believed to be responsible had been arrested.

He drove out to investigate on the Matchless, grateful to exchange the stifling heat of the office for air moving on his face. It was certainly true that the water supply in Cercola had a fetid odor, like bad eggs. He tried a small mouthful, and immediately spat it out: It tasted vile.

“We thought at first someone had chucked a dead goat down the cistern,” the officer told him. “But when we dragged it, there was nothing there. That’s when we started to think it must be poisoned.”

James spoke to the woman who had been arrested, but it was clear that she had been fingered by the officer’s informants only because they thought she was a strega, a witch, and any misfortune not explicable by other means should therefore be laid at her door. He had the woman released, and told the officer to ship in fresh water from the next village.

In the fields around Fico an entire flock of sheep was slaughtered, presumably by bandits. There was nothing very unusual about that, but according to the report of the local chief of police, the dead animals did not have so much as a scratch on them, nor had their killers taken any of the carcasses away. It was as if they had been killed by a fog.

In the Santa Lucia district of Naples the inhabitants were convinced that the Germans were setting off explosions in the catacombs. James had a priest admit him to the ancient tombs which stretched for miles under the city, and quickly came to the conclusion that there were no Germans down there—there was no light, no air, and anyone trying to hide in the pitch-black passages would quickly become lost. But he himself heard a distant booming sound under the ground, as if a cannon were being fired many miles away.

It seemed to him that these occurrences must be somehow linked to the earth tremors that now passed through Naples almost every day—more frequently, the older Neapolitans said, than at any time in living memory, a sure sign that the saints were displeased. He had long ago realized that the Neapolitans were essentially pagan in their religious observances, with saints fulfilling the roles of the lesser deities, but the fact that the Allies might be losing the support of the local population was a worry.

Yet he had Livia, and that was all that really mattered. After the lightest of lunches—spiedini perhaps, sticks of rosemary sharpened into skewers and passed through a few pieces of grilled octopus or fish; or a soup of fresh fava beans—they would retire to his room, where the feast that was on offer was infinitely more sumptuous. He came to know the different tastes of her body—the salty, delicate skin of her neck; the tips of her fingers, still bearing the flavors of her cooking; the sweet nectar of her mouth; the gentle perfume of her arms and things; her breasts, soft as fresh mozzarella. Even the taste of her sex was intoxicating, like the interior of some exotic fruit, bursting with sweet ripe juices.

He was sorry now he had fought with Eric. The truth was, they had simply had a hot-tempered falling-out over a woman. Slowly, they started to become friends again, although there remained a slight awkwardness whenever the subject of Livia came up.

The first batch of fiancées was now all married, but a sizeable backlog had built up, and the bell-ringers of Naples were being kept busy. With the bars and restaurants open again, and few real restrictions on servicemen and Italians socializing together, there was also a steady trickle of new applicants wanting to see the wedding officer. James tried not to be a pushover, and if a girl was clearly unprepared for the life she would be leading after the war he would gently suggest that she come back to see him in a month or two, but in general he allowed love to take its natural course. How could he not, when he himself was so happy?

“James?”

“Mmm?”

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to mention,” Livia said.

“Rightio.”

They were skinning tomatoes, and she paused to rinse some of the sticky skins off her fingers before she continued. “Sometimes you’re too polite.”

“Oh.” He thought about this. “You see, one was rather brought up to be polite. Especially to the opposite sex and so on.”

“For example, while it’s very nice,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “that you always hold doors open for me…”

“Exactly. A case in point. A gentleman should always allow a lady to go first.”

“…there are certain other times,” she said significantly, “when that doesn’t apply.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No.” She carried the pile of skinned tomatoes over to the sink. “Well,” she admitted, “sometimes it’s nice that you make sure I…go first. But sometimes you shouldn’t worry about it.”

“Ah.” He went and rinsed his own hands.

“When I cook a meal, I don’t want everyone to sit there eating it with their elbows off the table, making polite small talk,” she explained. “I want them to be greedy, and to stuff their faces, and to talk with their mouths full, and to reach across each other to try to steal the best bits off the plate, and maybe even make pigs of themselves a little bit. Because, you see, I have spent a long time preparing this meal, and half the pleasure of that is thinking about the pleasure other people will have when they eat it.”

“So you want me,” he said slowly, “to make a pig of myself in bed?”

“Occasionally, yes.”

“No small talk?”

“No polite small talk. A compliment to the chef is always welcome.”

James and Livia are in bed, not lying down but sitting with their legs entwined, playing the game which, when James was a child, he always knew as “slapsies,” while Livia, it turns out, had known an identical game as “schiaffini,” or “little smacks.” The rules are simple. Each of them places their hands, palms together, in front of them, so that the ring fingers are just touching. Then they take it in turns to slap the back of the other person’s hands. If the other person manages to avoid the blow, they get a turn instead. If they move before the slap has been initiated, or if the hitter lands a slap, the hitter gets another go.

And Livia, James is discovering, is quite extraordinarily good at slapsies. In fact, he only gets one to every dozen of hers, and even when he does manage to get a slap in, it’s a light tap, sacrificing power for speed. Livia somehow manages to both land a blow before he can so much as twitch, and to make it such a resounding smack that the back of his hand now throbs as if it has been attacked by a dozen bees.

“Ow,” he says, as she slaps him again, and then a moment later, “Ow—ow—ow,” as she lands three more in quick succession. This time, he thinks, he will be quicker to pull away.

“You moved,” Livia says, concentrating intently.

“No, I—ow.” While he was talking, she has taken the opportunity to deliver a stinging crack with her left hand. “Why are you so good at this?” He sighs.

She slaps him again, with her right. “Italian girls get a lot of practice at slapping men. And I have very quick reactions.”

“Hah! My turn.” He hits her a hefty blow.

She protests, “That’s too hard.”

“But you hit me that hard.” This time he is a little gentler, and she easily evades him, then slaps him back before he has even put his hands together.

“Cheat—I wasn’t ready.”

“So? I’m allowed to hit when I like.”

“Not in England, you wouldn’t be.”

“Well, we’re in Italy, so we’re obviously playing Italian rules.” She slaps him again, and he falls over backward, pulling her with him. “Uh-uh,” she protests. “It’s still my turn.”

“But I’ve stopped playing that game,” he explains, twisting her so that she falls across his lap. “And now I’m playing this one.” She arches her back, and he smacks her experimentally across the buttocks, noting how her eyes half close with pleasure. So much of sex, he thinks, is actually child’s play. He remembers, though, not to be too polite, and this time he ignores her yelps and protests until they turn into murmurs of satisfaction.

Afterward he pulls on his shirt, and as he buttons it up she notices a piece of paper in the breast pocket. “What’s this?” she asks, pulling it out.

“Oh.” He’s embarrassed. “It’s a letter.”

“An important letter?” she asks, then answers her own question. “Well, of course it must be, if you keep it next to your heart.” She starts to unfold it, then glances at him, suddenly serious. “Is it from Jane?”

“Yes. She wrote that when she ditched me.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A long time. It was when I was in Africa.”

“But you pretended you had a girlfriend when you met me,” she reminds him.

“Yes. That was stupid of me, wasn’t it?”

“Very, because I knew you were lying, and that was what made me think there must be another explanation. What was she like, anyway?”

He shrugs.

“Come on,” she protests. “What was she like?”

“I don’t really know,” he says slowly. And it’s true: Everything about Jane has vanished, like an English mist exposed to the fierce Italian sun of Livia’s vitality. “I think she was quite brave, though. Because it probably took quite a lot of guts to write that letter, and to decide that what we had wasn’t good enough after all.”

“She was in love.”

“That always makes it easier,” he agrees. “Anyway, tear it up.”

“I can’t do that,” she protests.

“Then I will.” He takes the letter and rips it into a dozen pieces, tossing them into the air like confetti. It feels good. He is lying in bed with Livia, and nothing that happened in the past will ever matter again.

“One day you’ll tear up my letters like that,” she says, suddenly sad.

“Never. Besides, we’re never going to be apart, so you’ll never need to write to me.”

One of his new wedding interviews was rather different from the rest. About a fortnight after the weddings started up again, Jumbo Jeffries stuck his head in the door. He was not looking quite so tired of late, something which he confided was partly due to a better diet, and partly because now that the war had moved on to a more aggressive phase he was obliged to spend more time away from Naples, blowing up bridges and slitting German throats. “It’s amazing what a few days’ rest does for the constitution,” he explained. “When I come back, it’s as though I’m a new man.”

It turned out that Jeffries had come to see him about Elena. “What with all these other girls getting married,” he said, stroking his mustache, “it seems like a nice idea for us to tie the knot too. Actually, I was wondering if you’d like to be the best man.”

James assured him that he would be delighted, and said he would arrange for Elena to be vetted and receive the necessary papers forth-with—a mere formality, he promised his friend.

When the time for the interview came, however, Elena seemed a little preoccupied. Although her glass eye stared at James as unblinkingly as ever, her other gaze seemed to be fastened on the table.

“Is something wrong?” James asked gently.

Elena shrugged. Then after a moment she burst out, “I don’t want to marry him.”

“Ah.”

“I love Jumbo,” she said. “I love him more than I’ve loved anyone. But I’m a whore, not a housewife. What will happen to me after the war is over? He’ll want me to go back to England with him. It will be cold, and I’ve heard the food is disgusting. And we’ll be poor as well. Jumbo’s not clever like you; he’s made for wars, not peace, and I don’t think he’ll ever be rich. I like my work here, and I like the freedom it gives me. Why should I have to give it up?”

It was a tricky problem. James asked her what she would do if a way could be found to avoid a marriage.

“I’d like to stay with Jumbo until the end of the war,” she said. “After that, I should have another four or five years at the top, and with the money I save I’ll open a whorehouse, the best whorehouse in Naples. Then”—she shrugged—“my looks will be going, so perhaps I’ll have to find someone to marry after all.”

“You could always tell Jumbo you don’t accept his proposal.”

“But that will hurt his pride. He won’t want to go on seeing me if I do that, and it seems a shame to end it sooner than we need to. Can’t you help me somehow?”

It was hard to see how, but James promised to try to think of a solution.

After a few days he went back to see her. “I’ve got it,” he said. “We’ll just have to pretend that you were married before, a long time ago, and you don’t know what became of your original husband. Perhaps he ran away and abandoned you on your wedding night or something. Anyway, this being a Catholic country, getting a divorce will be tricky—perhaps you’ll need a dispensation from the Vatican, and of course you can’t get that while Rome’s in German hands.”

“You’re a genius,” she said delightedly. “I’ll tell Jumbo this evening. Now, how can I repay you?”

James assured her that he wanted no payment for making his friends happy.

“I know,” she said. “But I want to do something for you. I suppose you don’t want to sleep with me?”

James explained that, quite apart from any awkwardness it might cause with Jumbo, Livia would probably not be too keen on this idea.

“Then I shall repay you by talking to Livia,” she said mysteriously. He tried to find out what she meant, but she refused to be drawn any further.

The next day she and Livia closeted themselves in the kitchen, and cooked a slow ragù with the door firmly closed. From the shrieks of laughter coming from behind it, James gathered the conversation was going well, but when he asked Livia about it later she, too, became rather mysterious.

“We were just gossiping,” she said airily. “Women’s talk. You wouldn’t be interested.”

The next time she came to his room, however, it turned out that she had acquired some rather intriguing new skills.

“I think I can guess who taught you that,” he said, after one particularly virtuoso episode. “Though I can’t quite imagine how.”

“She demonstrated on the zucchini,” she said. “But it wasn’t all one-way. I showed her how to make my special sugo.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that I still have any secrets left? Or does the whole of Naples know what we’re up to?”

“Oh, Elena is very discreet, for a Neapolitan. She has to be, given her profession. Although I did find out why he’s called Jumbo.”

“Ah.”

“Let’s just say she picked a bigger zucchini than I would have,” she teased. But he couldn’t be offended, because it was soon time to start the virtuoso activities all over again.

He knew better now than to try to categorize what it was they did together, to file each afternoon’s activities under one of Burton’s myriad positions. When she climbed on top of him, gripping his hips with her fingers, and rubbed herself with a rocking motion back and forth along the length of his penis, or rolled him between her hands like dough, or knelt over him, as she did now, slipping him into her mouth, it was not as yet another item in a list, to be ticked off like a sightseer’s experiences, or even a recipe that could be duplicated the next time it was made; it was simply sfiziosa, the whim of the moment; and like the moment, it was no sooner felt than it was gone again, never to be recaptured.

He was still, he supposed, technically a virgin, although the distinction had become so very technical that determining his exact status would have required a debate of almost theological complexity. There seemed to be an infinite number of gradations of sexual experience still left to work through, as many as there might be angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Sometimes, when their bodies were sated with lovemaking, they worked at Livia’s English.

“I wud lick uh pant beater pliss.”

“A—pint—of—bitter.”

“Uh—pant—urve—beater. Pliss.”

“Certainly, madam. I will pour your pint of bitter straightaway.”

“Gems,” she said thoughtfully in Italian, “will I like beer?”

He scratched his chin. “Some girls do.”

“But why do they call it ‘bitter’? Bitter means sour, doesn’t it?”

“Sort of.” He switched back to English. “That will be sixpence, please.”

She sighed. “Du u hev sharnge for m’ tin-burb knot?”

“I have plenty of change for your ten-bob note.”

“This money is pazzo,” she complained. “‘Bobs’ and ‘tanners’ and ‘haypenny bits.’And what on earth is ‘half a crown’?”

“Two shillings and sixpence.”

“So a crown is—”

“Ah. There’s no such thing,” he explained helpfully. “Well, there is, but it sits on the King’s head and is worth a fortune. Don’t worry, you’ll soon get the hang of it. You just need to remember to count in twelves, not tens.”

“Huh,” she said. She put her hand on his upper thigh. “Enough English, for now.”

He ignored her. “Tell me how you’d ask for a ration of margarine.”

“What’s ‘margarine’?”

“It’s—um—a little bit like lard. Or goose fat. You know, for cooking.”

“Goose fat is rationed? Why don’t you just cook a goose and keep the fat?”

Perhaps English food was not the right subject to dwell on. He tried to think of something more appealing about his homeland. “Shall I introduce you to the king?”

“If you like,” she said, stroking the sensitive dish of skin between his hip and his groin experimentally with her thumb.

“Good evening, Your Majesty.”

“Gud ayvening, you matchstick.”

“May I have the honor of presenting my wife?”

“Ver’ gled to meter you, your matchstick. And now I kiss you cock.” Livia giggled, and slid down the bed the better to fit her actions to her words.

James did not reply, partly because what Livia was doing was extremely pleasant, and partly because he had just called her his wife.

Of course, they both knew that there was only one reason why she was learning his language: because of the unspoken possibility that she would one day go to live in England with him, and order pints of beer in pubs. Yet it was still just that: an assumption, not yet discussed directly, and certainly not formally proposed.

Livia gave a little “hah!” of satisfaction at what her kisses had achieved. She ran her tongue all the way from the base to the very tip. Her eyes, mischievous and solemn at the same time, fixed on his as she kissed and nibbled and flicked and finally, with a sigh of contentment, took him all the way into her mouth.

At that moment he knew without a doubt that he wanted this to be his whole life. Her generosity, her passion, her sensuality—he loved her.

“Livia,” he began.

“Mmm?”

He hesitated. Perhaps this was not, after all, the moment. A proposal made when your girl was giving you a perfect, languid blow job might be considered a slightly frivolous way of launching the serious undertaking of matrimony. There should be flowers, moonlight, candles—there should be a ring, for God’s sake, and the suitor should have gone down on one knee, his boots and belt smartly polished, not be lying sprawled half naked across a dilapidated four-poster, squirming with ecstasy as his lover went down on him.

He closed his eyes, his hips twitching involuntarily as she teased him with her teeth.

A proposal required planning and forethought. That was what he was good at, after all: He might as well get it absolutely right.

As he pulled her up and kissed her, unable to wait any longer, another thought slid unbidden into his mind. It would have to be a secret engagement. If the army forbade the wedding officer from marrying, they would hardly be happy if he got himself a fiancée.