Ultraviolence: A Beautiful Ruin

I will never be able to scrub the memory of that August heat from my skin.

One of the core memories of that day is the smell. Mildewy laundry hanging from lines that crisscross the alleyways like spiderwebs and exhaust fumes. But mostly, the scent of rotting lemons baking in the gutter.

I was thirteen years old. Back then, my world was minute. I thought I understood the worst of life's hardships; a torn school skirt, my mother coming home too tired to cook pasta. I thought monsters were things that lived under the bed. I didn't know that monsters wore tailored suits and walked among us in the daylight.

I was stupid then. I was soft. I was a child living in a city that eats children for breakfast.

It was a Tuesday. Market days in Quartieri Spagnoli were nothing short of deafening. You had to shout at the top of your lungs just to be heard over the hagglers. Scooters buzzed through the crowds like angry swarms of bees. Old women squeezed tomatoes and argued with the grocers about prices that had not changed in twenty years.

My father held my hand.

That was the first wrong thing.

Antonio Ceretti didn't hold hands in public. He was a man who believed in dignity, in walking with your chin up even when you had holes in your shoes. But that day, his grip was wet and tight. His palm was sweating against mine and his fingers were trembling.

He walked so fast that I had to skip to keep up. I remember looking up at his face. He was a small, humble man who worked as an accountant for a logistics firm down by the port. It always felt a little weird seeing him hunched over spreadsheets because he had actually spent his college years studying to be a doctor. Somewhere along the line, life happened and he traded his stethoscope for a calculator.

Papa usually walked with a bounce in his step. He liked to hum opera - badly and off key. But that day he was as silent as a mouse. He wasn't a man of bravery or confrontation. I knew that even then. He was the gentlest soul I ever knew but then, seeing the fear in his eyes, I realized he had secrets, dark ones that put us in peril.

"Papa, you're hurting my fingers," I whimpered, trying to pull away from his grasp.

But he didn't let go, didn't even ease his hold. He kept glancing over his shoulder, a look of panic he tried to mask with a twitching smile. He was looking for a face in a sea of people and he did so in a manner he thought was subtle, but to me was far from it. I didn't know it then, but he was running from something, someone. I didn't know about the ledgers he found, the numbers that didn't add up, the blood money that flowed through the city like poison in its veins.

Luciano Corvo was a name I would come to know all too well in the years to come, a name that struck fear into the hearts of all who heard it whispered. But on that day, I was blissfully ignorant, annoyed that I had to skip to keep up with my father's frantic pace.

We stopped under the striped awning of the bakery near the piazza, the shade offering temporary relief from the scorching heat. He knelt down in the dirt, oblivious to the stains on his white trousers, and cupped my face in his hands. With his thumb, he wiped a smudge of dirt from my cheek, the same way he used to wipe the ink off my nose when I was a toddler playing with his fountain pens.

“Macchietta, guarda che pasticcio," he murmured as a sad smile appeared on his lips. (Translation: little smudge, look what a mess.)

He called me Macchietta - Little Smudge because I was never clean. I always had tomato sauce on my chin or paint stains on my fingers. He was a man of cleanliness and pristine white shirts, and I was the human imprint that marred his otherwise spotless life. But he never minded, never seemed to notice the way the grime of the city clung to my skin.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring he always wore. It was a cheap thing, gold-plated brass that was already losing its luster, exposing the grey metal at the bottom

We never had money for such things, not with mamma working herself to the bone at the laundry and the diner. The ring was the only valuable thing he owned, and he was giving it to me.

"Papa, Non posso," I protested, feeling guilty at the thought of taking something so precious from him. (Translation: I can't.)

"Ssshh," he hissed. "Take it, Bella. Please. Tienilo al sicuro per me," he whispered desperately. (Keep it safe for me.)

He took my hand and he pressed the ring into my palm. Then he closed my fingers over it one by one until I was making a fist. His hands were shaking so much I could feel the tremors vibrating up my own arm.

"I need you to listen to me," he said.

"Papa..." I whispered. I could sense something was wrong. I didn't want the ring. I wanted him to stand up. I wanted him to start humming that terrible opera again.

"Papa, please. Let's just go to Mamma. Let's just go home."

A single tear streamed through his cheek. He didn't wipe it away. He just looked at me.

"Papa," I whispered. "What's wrong? What's happening?"

I stared at him, confusion. I didn't understand, couldn't comprehend the danger that lurked just out of sight. All I knew was that my papa, my gentle, bookish father, was acting off.

"Non preoccuparti, piccola," he said. "It will be alright. You must trust me, yes?" (Don't worry, baby.)

I was scared now. The noise of the market seemed to dissipate until it was just the sound of his breathing.

"You are good," he whispered. "You are smart. Don't let them make you stupid. Non permettere che ti rendano crudele." (Don't let them make you cruel.)

I didn't know who them was. I just nodded, not trust myself to speak.

"You stay here," he said. "You buy the bread. You sit on the crate and you eat a sfogliatella and you wait for me. Do not move. Do not go with anyone. You wait for me."

"I don't understand. Where are you going?" I asked, reaching for his sleeve. My vision blurred as my own tears finally spilled over. "Papa, don't go. Please. I'm scared."

"Solo a prendere le sigarette. Conta i limoni su quel carretto." His voice trembled as he forced a smile that didn't reach his eyes. (Just to get cigarettes. Count the lemons on that cart.)

He pointed to a fruit cart across the piazza.

"I will be back before you get to the fiftieth."

He let go of my hand and the air felt suddenly cold where his skin had been.

I watched him walk away. I stood there with the coin for the bread in one hand and his warm ring in the other. I watched the back of his head, the small bald spot on the crown of his head that he tried to comb his hair over, and the way his shoulders were hunched as he retreated. He stepped into the darkness of an alleyway, turned a corner and he was gone.

I started counting. I did what I was told.

One. Two. Three.

I was a good girl. I bought the bread and the pastry. I sat on the milk crate outside the bakery and I ate the sfogliatella as the sugar stuck to my lips.

Twenty five. Twenty six. Twenty seven.

I waited.

I waited while the sun moved across the sky. While the shadows stretched out like long, dark fingers reaching for me. I waited while the market began to thin out. The fishmongers threw buckets of water over the blood on the street, the fruit sellers packed up their crates. The noise died down. The scooters stopped buzzing.

Forty eight. Forty nine. Fifty.

I recounted. I felt a sob building in my throat but I swallowed it down. He said fifty. He said he'd be back by fifty.

"Papa," I whispered to the air. My voice was so small it was lost in the wind. "Please come back."

I sat there until my legs were numb. Until the baker came out to sweep the sidewalk and told me to go home.

"He is coming back," I said. "He told me to wait."

The baker looked at me with pity and it made me angry. I didn't want his pity. I wanted my father.

I waited until the streetlights flickered on; they shone a sickly orange glow over the empty market. The trash blew across the stones. A stray dog sniffed at a pile of rotten melon rinds. I was alone. The ring was cutting into my palm because I was squeezing it with every ounce of strength I had.

"He is coming back," I said to the dog.

Then, I saw him. I stopped counting at four hundred and two and stood up.

Suddenly, a black car idled near the curb. It was out of place; too sleek expensive for a place like this. The windows were tinted dark.

Two men emerged from the shadows of the alley. They didn't look like the market vendors. They wore linen jackets and fancy shoes. They moved on both sides my father as he stepped out of the darkness.

My father didn't run or scream for help. He just... stopped.

He looked at the men and his shoulders slumped. It was the posture of a man who had been waiting for the bill to arrive.

One of the men touched his elbow. It looked gentle from afar, like a friend guiding a drunkard home, but I saw my father flinch. I saw his eyes go wide with a panic that will haunt me until the day I die.

He looked across the street and his eyes locked onto mine. He didn't call my name. He didn't tell me he loved me. His mouth formed a single, silent word.

Run.

The men pushed him in the backseat and slammed the door shut.

The car didn't not speed away. No, it merged into the evening traffic, moving at a casual taunting pace.

"Papa!" I screamed. I ran toward the street, the loaf of bread falling from my arms. "Papa! No! Stop!"

I chased the car for half a block, my lungs burning and my vision blocked by tears. I watched the red glow of the taillights fade, shrinking into two tiny pinpricks of light before they vanished entirely into the Neapolitan traffic.

I stopped in the middle of the street, gasping for air and unable to feel my legs.

I touched the ring on my thumb and waited for the punchline. I thought he would jump out at the next light. I thought it was a joke. That he'd come running back to me laughing about how he'd scared me and he would use his ink-stained thumb to wipe the tears from my face one last time.

But he never came back.

The first sob hit me like a punch to the stomach, doubling me over. I stood there in the center of the road and I wept until my whole body ached.

I stayed there for hours, a small, broken girl in a school skirt, begging the shadows to give him back. I whispered it over and over until the word lost its meaning and became just a hollow sound in the wind. Papa. Papa. Papa. Every time a car engine rumbled in the distance, my heart leaped into my throat, only to shatter again when the headlights revealed a stranger.

I walked home in the pitch black. I walked past the drug dealers in the shadows and the predators on the corners and I realized I wasn't afraid of them anymore. The monster had already visited me and it had taken the only thing that mattered.

When I arrived, the apartment was empty; mamma was at her shift. I sat at the kitchen table and I put the ring in the center of the plastic tablecloth. I stared at it until my eyes stung and the tears started to fall again, silent this time, dripping onto the ring.

The rumors started the next day. In Sera everyone knows everything and they love to share the gore. They said Antonio Ceretti had been taken. They said he had been a moron. That he had stolen or had seen something and had tried to be a hero.

They said Corvo's men had put him in a car and that he was gone.

Some people said he was dead. I wished he was dead. Dead would be honest. Dead would be a grave I could visit. It would be an ending.

But the other whispers were much worse. The old women in the stairwell whispered that he was not dead. They whispered that Luciano Corvo had uses for men who were excellent with numbers and precision. They said he had been taken to a place where people were recalibrated and filled up with new instructions. They said he was working off a debt that could never be paid.

I stopped being a child that night.

I took a thick piece of black cord from my mother's sewing kit and strung the ring onto it. I tied it around my neck and tucked it under my shirt where no one could see it. It didn't feel like a gift anymore.

I promised myself one thing: I would never wait again. I would never be the one left behind in the dust while the black cars drove away. From that night on, I would be the one hunted the shadows. I would be the one who walked into the dark and came back out.

I touched the ring through the fabric of my shirt. It wasn't a keepsake. It was the anchor that would hold me down until I was strong enough to tear the whole world apart to find my father.