GUNSLINGER GIRL

"See Naples and Die"

By

Robert Frazer

Qui Rido Io – Here I Laugh

Inscription on the Palazzo Di Scarpetta, Naples.

Naples spreads out underneath Mount Vesuvius, and sitting in the shadow of a volcano is as apt an image of the city as any. It is a dense, congested hive of humanity, where narrow streets are clamped shut by towering buildings, lives are forever encumbered by having to forge up or tumble down the steep hills, and the only way to make space to even breathe is to push against someone else. If you want something, you have to take it – and take it quickly, before the relentless surge of the packed human mass sweeps you away, pulps you underfoot or crushes you into a corner (the people of Naples are artistically-minded and can muster plenty of variety). It is a hot, close, stifled, foetid environment and the steadily advancing Mediterranean heat only aggravates the stink.

Some speak of Neapolitans as having a vibrant, forthright and fast-paced Devil-may-care attitude. Others understand that the city is a boiling cauldron where people either get out - or burn.

It was magnificent.

As Mario passed by the toy shop each morning on the way to school, the rising sun – he could never remember a day when it had rained – would beam through its window and make it radiant. Bears and dolls, horses and soldiers, kites and streamers; a dazzling welter of colour, iridescent through the glass – but none equalling the splendour of that robot. It may have been an ungainly thing, unsophisticated even back then, and its coat may have been a dull, scuffed brass – but for those few precious moments, measured like pearl drops, before his testy and demanding brother yanked and dragged him back along the path, both he and the sun looked the same way. The robot glowed like gold.

Mario would come back on weekends, spending hours pining for it. Occasionally, the shopkeeper would shuffle to the window, and with an indulgent smile crank up the robot's mechanism for a walk around the display. It would creak a stuttering march, lurching and tottering past all of the leaping and dancing devices that the shop was resplendent in, but he loved and longed for every judder and jerk, each one a spurt and burst of happiness.

That was what made it so painful.

The shopkeeper thought, in his own contented - conceited - charity, that he was helping to give one of the poorer boys of the town a little taste of pleasure… but, the boy howled, why only a taste? He wanted, yearned, lusted for it. It was a simple toy, but the fact that something so small – maybe old and not valuable to everyone, but precious to him- remained in sight and yet beyond reach maddened. Why did it have to be so hard? Mario was poor, but he wanted a robot, not to be royalty. He wouldn't ask for the world – but the one thing that he did ask for was not spurred on by wistful hope, but discharged from the grotesque, mutated envy of what you want, but cannot have.

"Ask, and ye shall receive", the priest had said at Mass, and thus he did. He became a paragon of virtue – as much as lively boys are at that age, anyway, but surely He would not hold it against him – and every night, prayed earnestly, ardently, clenching his hands together until the knuckles were white in crushing entreaty, for the one small thing, a minute speck in all Creation, that would still glow in his estimation as brightly as the star over Bethlehem.

Christmas. Easter. Birthday. Good school reports. Random treats.

It never came.

Once, tearful with frustration, Mario had yanked and dragged at his mother's skirt, wanting to know what it was that he was doing wrong, why his prayers weren't being answered. It wasn't even the most expensive toy in the store! God didn't want for money, surely?

His mother was tired, wearied from another long late shift, but her son was never a burden. She clucked and cooed sympathetically, sat the unhappy boy on her knee, dabbed his eyes and explained. She couldn't give her boys the latest SSC Napoli soccer shirt in the new season, but she could still give them hugs and a decent dinner, keep a roof over their heads and not abandon them as destitute scugnizzi, and they didn't resent her for that, did they? The Holy Father was the same - He gives you what everyone looks for, even if they forget it sometimes - love, kindness, contentment, happiness, peace and serenity. They were more valuable things, things that lasted a lot longer than a little bit of metal which could break or be forgotten.

Mario thought for a while, and understood.

So he took a brick, smashed the window, stole the robot, and prayed for forgiveness.

Mario groaned awake, shifting about in bed. He swept the brochures that he'd been reading before nodding off the night before off of his sheets and onto the carpet as he slowly mustered the energy to get up. His mother had always fretted that Mario was making nothing good of his life, flinging it all into the gutter for the sake of all-too-brief friends, like all of the other feral street-packs; but his extensive travels about the continent heading up his former clan's European ventures put him in extremely good stead for his new, honest work as a travel agent, of all things. Strange how things worked out – he supposed that you could call that the guiding hand of Providence.

Even though he was in no hurry and there was nothing there, he dressed quickly, and felt under the bed to check his Mossberg 590. It was a Saturday and he had the afternoon shift at the agency (but not The Agency, he thought with a chortle), and the shotgun had long since been disposed of, but eh – some things just never left you.

One other thing that had never left him in all his years as a Camorra dogsbody was the appreciation of a good Campanian insalata caprese, which you could never find abroad (or much in Naples anymore, it had to be said). As he strode out to prepare his brunch, Mario gave a sharp rap on his daughter's bedroom door. "Maria! Don't you have a match on today? It's getting on a bit!"

Abruptly the door banged open and a blur jetted out towards the front door – you could well imagine her sucking the air along with her in sonic boom. "YeahIknowgottafly!"

Mario shook his head with an indulgent smile. "Boots!"

There was a jangling clang as Maria threatened to upset the shoe-tidy in the hallway in her rush.

"Water bottle!"

Maria almost made a sliding tackle across the entire sideboard while making a grab for it.

"Kiss!"

Maria suddenly appeared before him – dark hair in an unkempt tomboyish frazzle, but her eyes shining in a rich amber and a smile that could soothe any ailing heart.

"Have a good day, Dad." She leant up to give her father a peck on the cheek, before with a too-loud bang of the door, she was gone.

Cream rises to the top – so does scum.

The Villa Floridiana's open parkland provided rare respite from the relentless rounds in the city proper. The green arbours dampened down the touchpaper atmosphere, and softened the pounding sun; it provided a rare opportunity to spread out, to exhale.

Neri was not particularly surprised to find out that it was only ever foreigners and tourists who came here. In Naples, the ocean didn't end at the coast, but swept up, seethed and spumed over the hills, only as people, not as water – and just as surely as you were borne by wind and tide on the sea, so too could you not help but keep moving in the city. Real Neapolitans always had business to do.

Walking briskly down the pathways of the villa grounds, Neri found the boss standing under the stone temple pavilion, looking out over the cliff at the edge of the park and down – far down – to the rest of the city.

"Don Ambrogio, sir?" Neri ventured. It hadn't been so long since Ambrogio had succeeded to leadership of the clan, and while he was still naturally accorded all due respect due to him as the leader, it still seemed something of an odd fit – and coupled with Ambrogio's heavy physique (one that was thick-set, not fat, and undoubtedly strong), the resultant sense of uncertainty warranted an approach with some trepidation.

Ambrogio responded by motioning a hand towards the vista. "Take a look."

A little perplexed but nonetheless obedient, Neri did so. At first, the grand sweeping sight of the city extending beneath them was spectacular, even inducing a giddy thrill of vertigo – but what followed, the clanking, grinding and whirring din of a city at work and the wave of fumes lifting up from the buildings to slap against the cliff was enough to nearly floor him in a different way entirely.

"Hmm. You notice. Filthy, isn't it?" Ambrogio grunted. "I've just heard from Stefano, our Padania contact. He wants to traffic Libyan rifles to their Ligurian faction through our Capri branch."

Neri was silent, trusting that when the boss wanted advice or comment he'd ask for it.

"I came up here to consider it." Ambrogio continued. "I like business with a long tail - reliable partners, repeat custom. The Five Republics of Padania have caused an almighty ruckus recently in their attempts to break off north from south, but can they sustain it? If they win, I'd be feted as a hero of the valiant struggle for independence. If they lose, an Agency cyborg will be murdering me in my bed. Hell, they'd probably do it anyway, just for shits and giggles.

"Tiny little waifs. Bare slips of girls, probably not even old enough to have had their confirmations – leaping walls. Catching bullets. Smashing down doors. Crushing our throats. Can you imagine that, Neri?"

Neri hissed involuntarily. He didn't want to. Camorra, Mafia, Cosa Nostra – Italy's various criminal fraternities all operated under their own corrupt honour codes, but however twisted they may be the one constant amongst them was that you just didn't fucking talk about the Social fucking Welfare Agency! A charity which rescued crippled, abused and tormented adolescent girls from the streets… and rebuilt them into superhuman government assassins. It was scarcely creditable, and most of the underworld denied that such a fantastic thing existed… or rather, they wished that it didn't exist.

Ambrogio grunted out a semblance of a humourless laugh. "Grow a pair, Neri, they're only a bunch of bloody precocious tots, for all their fancy hardware. Anyway," he mercifully changed onto a new tack. "Name me an important figure of Italian culture."

Neri was caught flat-footed by the strange and unexpected question, and flailed blindly. "Um, uh, Leonardo da Vinci." he offered, lamely.

"Another."

"…Michaelangelo?" Neri floundered.

"Once more for good luck."

"Dante." Neri remembered reading Inferno in school, just about. He did know that thieves and fraudsters were condemned to the Eighth Circle, and shivered uncomfortably despite the heat. Just a silly story.

"What's the one common thing linking those three, then?"

Neri was silent, sure that Teacher Ambrogio was about to tell him. True enough, the lesson continued.

"They're dead." Ambrogio waved a hand out across the city. "Naples is a prime centre of European culture, apparently. Music, cuisine, art, and architecture in particular. They're splendid constructions, no doubt, but they're all ducal mansions and royal palaces. Of course, we got rid of kings back in the Forties, and half of them have since been hacked up into offices. So what then?"

"Well, at least there's always pizza." Neri tried to laugh.

"Great, so the sole legacy of a city with two and half millenia of history is a splat of dough and ketchup a lathering of fat, and even that is something that half of people think that the fucking Americans came up with. Spare me." Ambrogio's jaw tightened – he was genuinely angry about this. "I look out over the city here, and I see then throwing up tower blocks at every point of the compass – concrete walls and iron girders that will crumble and rust within a generation, the rubble burying beautiful frescoes and age-enduring stone.

"Modern 'Italy' has no genius, nothing to truly call her own – just desolate, drained fields and degenerate dregs scrabbling around amongst the tumbledown ruins of their grandfathers' labours, trying to arrogate them for their own. It's fraud. It's contemptible. That's why I'm going to bet on Padania, and why they will win their war of independence in the end. Italy is dead, she has been for decades. This is just her body decomposing."

Neri squirmed, feeling distinctly uncomfortable at having been exposed to the pumping and grimy innards of his boss's thoughts, but his reflection was interrupted when Ambrogio addressed a direct question. "Anyway, the details of the deal can be thrashed out in the clan's next meeting. What are you here for now?"

Neri bowed his head grateful for the opportunity to deliver his message and get out. "I've just had a call from Adriano. Everything is prepared at his end."

Ambrogio didn't turn his head back from looking out. "Well, what else is there to say, then? He's to move at the first opportunity. Everything that I want happens afterwards." After tapping his fingers on the cliff-edge railings for a few moments, he suddenly looked up to study the friezes on the underside of the pavilion's cupola. "They call this thing a temple in the brochure. Who to, I wonder?" He mused.

"Maybe it's a timeshare." Neri shrugged.

Adriano Lippi was a clever man. Not so much in the vein of having a library of witty repartees to be the delight of stimulating conversation – he was always a fairly prosaic character – but he was genuinely smart. He did well in school, and had a host of certifications to demonstrate that that knowledge could be applied, not just regurgitated by rote. He never went to university, but that wasn't through any inadequacy on his own part – he preferred to work with his hands, as it felt so much more meaningful and substantial than drowning himself in ink and suffocating himself with paper. In his adult life, he'd worked variously as a craftsman, a carpenter, a machinist, a gardener and now a groundskeeper – moving from job to job not because of dissatisfaction, but simply a desire to run his hands over everything, and enjoy all that had to be offered.

One other thing that he liked doing with his hands was hurting people.

Adriano had realised this when he'd found out that his wife had made him a cuckold. Adriano had always been an honest man, so faithlessness cut him to the quick and through his normally taciturn demeanour. He'd ranted, he'd raved, he'd roared, and he'd raged. His wife had wept and moaned, pleading weakness, bleating contrition, gabbling abject apologies – which only confirmed her treason. So he'd hit her.

He'd remembered the first time he'd kissed his wife, years ago. That had been wonderful, warm lips crackling like electricity – and now, the hard slap of flesh, the sickly-sweet crack of her cheekbone disintegrating under his knuckles, the extravagant, elaborate arc her head rolled in as she toppled backwards, the solid, sound thump of crafted quality as she struck her head against the table edge, the shrieks and screams of pain and sorrow resonating in his ears. It was overwhelming. It was even better.

So, he hit her again. And again. And again. And he kept on doing it, until the police had smashed down the door and dragged him off the smear of mulch and gristle that had been his wife.

Adriano was a clever man – even though he didn't have that much money, he was still able to secure a good attorney. His defence argued persuasively for diminished responsibility, and after six years of quiet contentment with prison routine Adriano had won his parole. He'd made good use of his time inside, too – making connections, gaining introductions, acquiring contacts, such that once he was released, he had little trouble finding work.

Untaxed work, as well, which was always handy.

Adriano liked working with his hands, so for a while he'd been a redecorator – tenants were usually so much more attuned with the rhythms of their feng shui when half of their furniture had been smashed to matchwood, and as he'd discovered when painting someone's wall with their teeth and nose cartilage, red goes with everything. Better temperaments also meant that tenants had more respect for Don Ambrogio – Adriano appreciated that. Proper respect where it was due was very important to him – it's something that his late (but unlamented) wife had precious little of.

Let's not forget, though, that Adriano was a clever man, and not one to let his skills wither on the vine. He always maintained broad interests. When Padania mustered their cohorts for the struggle for northern independence, Adriano would often be contracted to craft devices for them to use. He was respected for their quality – so much so, in fact, that the family was happy to bring his work in-house as well.

Shouts and laughter drifted across the playing fields to Adriano as he reclined on a deckchair in a shade of the storage shed. Fresh, crisp grass crinkled underfoot – unlike the indolent staff at other schools, Adriano took pride in his work. All the pounding and tramping of boot-studs and double-footed tackles all through the preceding winter hadn't stripped his pitches barren, and now the turf was as fresh and springy in the spring as it had been at the start of the soccer season. Better surfaces to train on would doubtless stand the First XI in good stead for the rest of the season. Yes, Adriano was justifiably proud in the quality of his work – so much so, in fact, that he added a little extra to the soil, just out of professional courtesy.

The loud chirrup of a whistle sounded out across the fields, followed by a chorus of groans and shouts. Adriano tipped back the brim of his hat in a carefully idle gesture, and smiled approvingly as he saw a girl with short black hair picking herself up off the ground, and a brunette being surrounded by wagging fingers and hectoring voices. He'd bribed the other girl fifty euros to trip her opponent in the penalty box, making up some guff about the staff having a surreptitious flutter on the school's soccer games. Delightful greed had made the brunette's fat face so puffy and swollen that she hadn't even been able to ask a question about the odd arrangement – and afterwards, fear of being exposed as an accomplice, however unwitting, would make sure that her gob would remain firmly shut. If not… well, Adriano was nothing if not thorough.

The black-haired girl was a good kicker – weeks of observation had confirmed that - so there wasn't much chance of someone else being selected to take the penalty. True enough, she could be seen stretching out her legs, positively chomping at the bit at the opportunity to really give the ball some welly. She paced back, nodded to shouted encouragement from her team-mates, bounced on her toes, charged up to the spot, wound her leg back for the shot—

Adriano twisted a dial on what looked for all the world like a personal stereo. There was a dull, bass thud. A patter of scraps of turf. A moment's stupefied, uncomprehending silence.

Then the screaming started.

(Continued)