The Italian Affair (17 page)

“Izzy. It eez non easy to live in Napoli, it eez not easy” he repeated in English.

Trying to understand what he was trying to say Issy sought clarification.

“So long as you don’t mix with the Camorra presumably it is easy. So if you are saying it’s not easy….do you have something to do with the Camorra?”

Her strident Yorkshire way of dealing with a problem had rather overtaken her mouth by this point of the conversation. Once she’d started she found it impossible to hold back. She was basically accusing the man she thought she might love or fancy the pants off – of possible Camorra connections and linked to the murder.

She’d said too much too soon. Keep on walking Issy, she told herself as she caught sight of Bruno touching the pistol shaped bulge in his trousers.

But the silence that followed frightened her more than the gun because in the silence surely there was some guilt?

When she’d asked Bruno the question, she’d wanted the answer to be a massive NO. But the longer Bruno didn’t speak, the less hope she had of it being the answer she was looking for. “Dan must be right after all,” Issy thought as she prayed he would say something. “Perhaps he had been involved after all?”

After a period of only a few minutes, that had seemed like a lifetime to Issy, he looked into her eyes and spoke not the full truth but a truth.

“Non,” and then he stressed the next bit “I AM not the Camorra”.

“Good” said Issy not able to contain her relief. “I’m so glad to hear that. I wouldn’t have continued to talk to you if you were. I just needed to be sure. So answer me one question as I haven’t been able to work it out. Why you were in Via Maria Magdala on the morning of the murder?”

“Easy,” Bruno smiled. “I see you at Giovanni’s bar. I hear the gun and follow you to Via Maria Magdala. I have fear for the beautiful English girl. I want to help you. Is that such a big problem for you that I care?”

“No,” Issy replied. “It’s not a problem for me it’s nice that you cared enough to run after me. I didn’t see you in Giovanni’s bar and so I had no idea where you’d suddenly appeared from. It was just me you and the man who’d been shot. Sorry, I guess I was being unnecessarily suspicious.”

“It is ok,” Bruno said. “I understand everything.”

Issy smiled and asked “What exactly do you understand Bruno. Surely you don’t mean you understand me? I’m very complicated – in fact I am way too complicated.”

By now they were at the school, and Issy had her usual weekly lesson with Giuseppe. As she went to say goodbye Bruno caught hold of her arm and looked deeply into her eyes.

“This evening you have a pizza with me?” he asked.

Issy hesitated as she remembered Dan’s fear that Bruno had been involved in the murder but she desperately wanted to see him again. She wanted to start living, and despite everything she could not deny the butterflies that crowded her stomach as he continued to search her face for an answer.

She didn’t at this stage really know what she wanted from Bruno, but the fact that there was a huge attraction was undeniable and so she said the fatal words “Yes, I’d love to.”

“Good” said Bruno smiling broadly. “I come ere again for you at 8 o’clock this evening.”

“Ok” said Issy as feelings she had not felt since the first time she’d been with Jeremy caroused through her veins. “Until this evening, then” she continued. “See you at eight o’clock at the school.”

As she turned to go up the stone steps to the school she sensed Bruno watching her until she disappeared. Maybe the next slice of the story would never have happened, if Issy had been told the things that Bruno would have liked to have told her but didn‘t. Partly because of the language, but mainly because of the cultural divide between them which Issy had not even guessed at.

So Issy accepted dinner without knowing that whilst Bruno had not been involved with the murder, he had known intuitively what had happened.

He’d been standing in Giovanni’s bar minding his own business enjoying a cappuccino and watching Issy’s long blond curly hair from behind, imagining what she would look like when she finally turned around to face him.

On hearing the sound of a gun, Issy had turned much more quickly than he expected her to. As soon as he’d seen her face he thought it was the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Her cornflower blue eyes had momentarily caught his own. While she could not remember seeing him in the bar that first look would always stay with Bruno and haunt him in the intervening years.

He’d watched in the bar that day as Issy’s face had contorted in fear in the immediate aftermath of the shot, and had noticed as she’d run past him that her deep red lips were still lined with chocolate powder from her cappuccino.

Bruno had been unable to stop himself racing out of the bar after the blond haired vision following her as she ran at break neck speed in the direction of Via Maria Magdala.

“Good God”. He’d realised as he’d looked at his watch. She would get there too soon. He needed to stop her otherwise this girl – whoever she was – would end up being implicated and could even die – and a force greater than himself that morning seemed to be driving him on. He had to stop her from being involved.

Issy had got there a couple of minutes before him and as she had stooped down to help the dying man on the ground Bruno had caught hold of her hands and even at that first touch could feel at once her strength and a deep loneliness that sat within her soul – one which mirrored his own.

He looked down at the dying man, a face he’d grown up with and wept silently. “An eye for an eye,” the family feud continued.

Despite his grief, he knew they only had moments left to leave. Bruno wanted Issy to be safe away from the tawdry scene of organised crime and remain untouched by something so brutal. To have been seen to help would have implicated her in the work of the journalist. Something touched him from the heavens that morning and made him understand what he had to do.

That is why he acted so quickly. Not out of guilt but because he intimately knew how the laws of the Camorra worked and he too was now at risk. They needed to get away until it was all over, otherwise this beautiful ethereal woman that had appeared unexpectedly before him in Giovanni’s bar would possibly die too and so would he.

He also knew, because he was related as far back as time could remember to the philosophers of love that he had felt both a sexual tension and a connection of the soul Agape when he had got up close to Issy and touched her hand. It was the most powerful combination of the lot.

Bruno’s tragedy was that he understood this. The wisdom of love handed down through his genealogy gave him knowledge but also gave him pain.

Listen to any Neapolitan love song and the words and the music speak of the tragedy of love that is not possible because of circumstance and of love which ends because Eros and Agape do not co-exist. It is the intensity of broken love built on the wrong foundations that will hit you as you listen. There is no music in the world like a Neapolitan love song because they understand the beauty and the intensity and the tragedy of love.

Naples
– 8am local time 26 September 1986

“Good morning” radiated Issy as she entered the sunniest classroom in the school to find her most difficult student Giuseppe had actually beaten her to it AGAIN.

Issy glanced guiltily at her watch. “Damn,” she thought. “She was late and needed to get going.” As Issy pulled her teaching books and Giuseppe’s homework out of her brown leather bag she felt ridiculously happy and tingly. So un-feminist but she wasn’t actually able to stop herself.

“I hope you had a wonderful weekend Giuseppe?” Issy asked.

“Si,” Giuseppe said sleepily whilst playing the game of cat and mouse. “I go to Capri with my girl Francesa and my boat. And you Issy – what did you done this weekend?” asked Giuseppe in even worse English than he normally spoke.

“What did you do this weekend is the correct version of that question” countered Issy.

“I went,” Issy said using her hand with unusual enthusiasm and energy to indicate she was speaking in the past tense “to Ischia with Dan one of the teachers from the school.”

“Ischia eez beautiful non?” replied Guiseppe. “But for me Capri is more beautiful. I invite you and this man Dan to come to Capri on my boat the next weekend with my woman.”

“Wow” said Issy slightly shocked that Giuseppe actually wanted to spend a weekend with her. “That’s very kind but I couldn’t put you out like that.”

“What?” growled Giuseppe unable to understand her English excuses. “You must come” he continued banging his fist on the table and responding in the sort of offended way Pasquale did when she turned down one of his invitations down. “And afterwards we go to San Carlo and watch the Tosca opera.”

“Gosh. That sounds amazing” said Issy slightly taken back by the revised offer he was putting on the table. Not wanting to upset his Neapolitan generosity anymore than she already seemed to have done she agreed.

“Ok” replied Issy. “That is a very kind invitation and I will accept and ask Dan a bit later if he wants to come too”. Embarrassed that by acquiescing to his demands she had somehow crossed the lines of him being the student and her the teacher Issy cleared her throat and began the lesson seventeen minutes late.

After one hour of traversing most of the basic tenses, they left the room together agreeing where Giuseppe and Francesca would pick her up for their weekend away together.

In retrospect, Giuseppe’s behaviour felt very much out of character and Issy felt somehow that Giuseppe’s offer was not just based on kindness. But that morning, with the sun streaming through the open windows and thoughts of an evening with the Adonis to look forward to, Issy didn’t give Giuseppe’s motives much more thought.

And yet as he said his goodbye – it bothered her that he was being so kind.

Naples
– 7 pm local time 26 September 1986

“You did what?” cried Dan on hearing she was dining with the underpant salesman that very same evening.

“What’s the problem?” said Issy feigning indignation at his concern. “Do you think there is a big risk of me being in danger or something?”

“Well yes in a word I do. I know he told you he had nothing to do with the Camorra, but there’s something about him that bothers me” Dan said petulantly.

“What bothers you?” said Issy. “I can’t quell your fears if you don’t tell me what they are.”

“Ok then. You asked so I will tell you what my fears are. It’s going to sound very mean and snobbish. And I’M never snobbish” Dan said “I‘ve got nothing to be snobbish about.”

“Go on” Issy said. “I’d entrust you with my life and, therefore, I care about your views.”

“What really bothers me then Issy is why does the man sell underpants? I mean it seems such an odd choice of job for someone who looks like a Roman God and is not lacking in confidence or intelligence. I mean, seriously, what kind of career is it and that‘s my point. Who in their right mind would sell underwear from a dingy stall in Pompeii and more to the point why even sell them there? Most people I know go to Pompeii to wander round the remains of that fabulous ancient civilization which is still - pretty much - how it was before Vesuvius went and erupted all over it. It’s the last place on earth I would go to buy pants. I think it is his cover for something much more sinister if you’ll excuse the pun.”

They were having this conversation in the Garden of Eden in exactly the same place that Bruno had taken Issy to after the murder.

Issy had liked the privacy, and the view. But most of all she liked the stone bust of the Emperor Tiberius as it somehow made her feel close to Bruno. She’d taken Dan there after their lessons had finished to talk about the pizza proposal and Giuseppe’s surprise invitation to sail around Capri for the weekend with the opera thrown in as a grand finale.

They sat on a piece of real antiquity, a stone column next to the Roman Emperor Tiberius. That was one of the things that Issy liked most about Naples. The random scattering of pieces of history, that in normal circumstances should have been labeled and housed carefully in museums in cool temperatures, rather than being used by the locals as pieces of outdoor furniture.

Issy nodded. “That is actually very snobbish Dan. But I do kind of understand what you mean. If I told someone that I was going out for a pizza with an underpant salesman from Pompeii they would think I had lost the plot completely.”

“Look the reason I didn’t want to expand was two-fold” said Dan. “Firstly, I think you are too beautiful, bright and quirky to be wasted on someone who could be quite dubious…and secondly…”

“And secondly…what?” asked Issy.

“Well you’re a ban the nuke feminist from Oxford who did it her way against the odds. What is someone like you doing with someone like him? I mean you are genuine and he is well…..he is a fake Issy sorry to say but that’s what I think.”

Issy stood up and started to pace around the Emperor’s plinth. “NO you’re wrong Dan. He is NOT a fake. The reason I want to go out for a pizza with Bruno is because I believe he is innocent and a really nice guy. And ok yes I admit, I fancy the underpants off him and if you’d allow yourself to be honest I bet you do too.”