the city he knew so well. He turned out of Piazza dei Martiri into a gateway in the wall of a nineteenth-century palazzo. Inside a concrete ramp led steeply down into a cavern, its dimensions too huge and complex to be grasped at once. The vaulted ceiling, barely visible in the gloom, must have been over fifty feet high. The space below extended back at least twice that distance, irregular in shape and divided by walls of bare stone left to support the streets and houses on the hill above.
Gesualdo angled his car into a vacant slot in the middle of one of the rows of vehicles parked there, for a fee, by office workers and other commuters. Unlike them, however, he did not walk back the way he had driven in, towards the steps leading up to street level, but the other way, into the deepest recesses of the subterranean car park. The ground underfoot was dusty with particles of stone scuffed up from the soft volcanic tufa forming the walls, floor and ceiling of this gigantic excavation, one of a series of such cavities underlying the entire city.
It was the Greeks who first realized that the stratum of solidified lava beneath their new city, Neapolis, was at once easy to extract and work, and strong enough to resist collapse. Both they and the Romans exploited this fact to install a complex system of subterranean aqueducts, reservoirs, road tunnels and storage spaces for grain, oil and other goods. The temperature at these depths was consistently cool, the humidity constant.
But the boom period for the underground city dated from the Spanish conquest. In one of the earliest attempts to enforce zoning regulations within the city walls, the invaders prohibitively taxed the importation of building materials. The response of the inhabitants was to reopen the ancient tunnels and caverns, this time as secret quarries, and to use the tufa to extend or amplify their homes.
The fact that they were thus undermining the very houses they were constructing apparently struck no one as ironical.
The branch of the cavern which Gesualdo was following narrowed progressively to form a giant ravine no more than ten feet across, but even higher than the main body of the cave. The lower walls had been widened, presumably to accommodate the vehicles whose tire tracks were imprinted in the fine dust covering the ground. The passage ended at a pair of rusty iron doors, from behind which a variety of industrial noises were audible: drilling, sanding, hammering. Occasional brief flashes of incredible brilliance enlivened the prevailing darkness.
Gesualdo pressed a button mounted beside the doors.
After a long pause, a muffled voice inside said something incomprehensible. Gesualdo leant forward, pressing his face to the metal.
‘Roberto sent me/ he shouted.
Another long pause ensued. Then there was the sound of a bolt being drawn back, and a man’s face appeared between the two doors. He was wearing welding goggles, through which he inspected the intruder cautiously.
‘It’s about a car/ said Gesualdo.
Troppo vero
When the phone rang the first time, Zen assumed it must be work. On his return from the trip to consult Gilberto Nieddu in Rome, he had called by the port and dropped
off the grey cassette with the duty officer, a young man named Pastorelli who had merely saluted Zen and returned to a volume of Mickey Mouse comics printed on what looked like crudely recycled toilet paper. After returning the video game to the plastic bag containing the suspect’s other belongings, Zen had departed as inconspicuously as he arrived.
By dint of staying out of the house most of the next day, he had managed to avoid hearing anything further about the progress - or, more likely, the lack of it - of the case to which he was supposedly devoting his every waking hour. He realized that this ostrich approach to problem solving was widely regarded as immature and escapist,
but where, he demanded of the hypothetical sneerers, had all his clear
Gesualdo angled his car into a vacant slot in the middle of one of the rows of vehicles parked there, for a fee, by office workers and other commuters. Unlike them, however, he did not walk back the way he had driven in, towards the steps leading up to street level, but the other way, into the deepest recesses of the subterranean car park. The ground underfoot was dusty with particles of stone scuffed up from the soft volcanic tufa forming the walls, floor and ceiling of this gigantic excavation, one of a series of such cavities underlying the entire city.
It was the Greeks who first realized that the stratum of solidified lava beneath their new city, Neapolis, was at once easy to extract and work, and strong enough to resist collapse. Both they and the Romans exploited this fact to install a complex system of subterranean aqueducts, reservoirs, road tunnels and storage spaces for grain, oil and other goods. The temperature at these depths was consistently cool, the humidity constant.
But the boom period for the underground city dated from the Spanish conquest. In one of the earliest attempts to enforce zoning regulations within the city walls, the invaders prohibitively taxed the importation of building materials. The response of the inhabitants was to reopen the ancient tunnels and caverns, this time as secret quarries, and to use the tufa to extend or amplify their homes.
The fact that they were thus undermining the very houses they were constructing apparently struck no one as ironical.
The branch of the cavern which Gesualdo was following narrowed progressively to form a giant ravine no more than ten feet across, but even higher than the main body of the cave. The lower walls had been widened, presumably to accommodate the vehicles whose tire tracks were imprinted in the fine dust covering the ground. The passage ended at a pair of rusty iron doors, from behind which a variety of industrial noises were audible: drilling, sanding, hammering. Occasional brief flashes of incredible brilliance enlivened the prevailing darkness.
Gesualdo pressed a button mounted beside the doors.
After a long pause, a muffled voice inside said something incomprehensible. Gesualdo leant forward, pressing his face to the metal.
‘Roberto sent me/ he shouted.
Another long pause ensued. Then there was the sound of a bolt being drawn back, and a man’s face appeared between the two doors. He was wearing welding goggles, through which he inspected the intruder cautiously.
‘It’s about a car/ said Gesualdo.
Troppo vero
When the phone rang the first time, Zen assumed it must be work. On his return from the trip to consult Gilberto Nieddu in Rome, he had called by the port and dropped
off the grey cassette with the duty officer, a young man named Pastorelli who had merely saluted Zen and returned to a volume of Mickey Mouse comics printed on what looked like crudely recycled toilet paper. After returning the video game to the plastic bag containing the suspect’s other belongings, Zen had departed as inconspicuously as he arrived.
By dint of staying out of the house most of the next day, he had managed to avoid hearing anything further about the progress - or, more likely, the lack of it - of the case to which he was supposedly devoting his every waking hour. He realized that this ostrich approach to problem solving was widely regarded as immature and escapist,
but where, he demanded of the hypothetical sneerers, had all his clear
Similar Books
