View attachment 308662Thursday, 22 January 2015
Gwen and I took the earliest train we could to Roma, transferred and made it to Napoli in plenty of time to get to the church in time for the funeral. We took a cab from the train station, drove past the small, neighborhood church to a nearby cafe that the cabbie recommended. We were too early.
"I must say that you are a bundle of nerves right now," Gwen observed.
I shrugged. I had a lot on my mind. Isabella and I had been divorced since June of 2009. When she left, Isabella had promised to gouge me for every euro she could. I guess I owed her father a lot as he'd intervened. Our divorce was quiet, quick and civil. The same man who was a major player in one of the most notoriously vicious criminal syndicates was also a decent man who treated me rather well in this aspect.
From his perspective, Gianluca approaching me with the offer to get rid of some of the debt I owed him was probably his way of trying to help. My debt was just business and since his business was crime, match-fixing was just a business deal that benefited everyone.
On another level, I'm sure he realized that I wouldn't be able to refuse any of his offers. He had power over me. First, because I couldn't have refused his offer of help to keep my restaurant open. Secondly, because if I had been disruptive, dangerous (in terms of law enforcement), disloyal or in any way belligerent, I (as a problem) would have been solved. In the Camorra, as in all large criminal syndicates, they only use a limited number of problem solving tools, i.e., knives, guns or bombs, when threats (implicit or otherwise) don't work.
View attachment 308663"I'm sorry," I said after I realized she'd just spoken to me. "I'm lost in my thoughts. Yes, I am a bundle. I don't know how much of this is nerves and reminiscing and ... I don't know ..."
"You know what baffles me now?" I said after a moment's pause. "That I married into this family despite kind of sort of knowing what I was getting into. I was just young and blindly, madly in love. What the **** was I thinking."
"Or not thinking with the brain in your head," she added glancing downward.
"Hah."
"Do you have any ties left to them?" she asked. "Didn't he say, implicitly or maybe more clearly, that you're free?"
"I think so," I said. "But you never know. There's only one way to find out."
"And that is?"
"Time will tell," I said as I shrugged.
It may have been drizzling, but at least it was warm. Warmer than Bologna by ten degrees. If the sun would have been out, it would have been pleasant. After a while of aimless chit-chat interrupted by my brooding, we walked under my umbrella to the church.
The ceremonial parts of the service were in Latin and the rest was in Neapolitan dialect which I pretty much don't understand. That's good, I guess. I'm not sure I wanted to hear how she was such a wonderful person. I don't mean to say that she wasn't or anything, just that it was more complex than that. She had been a charming, manipulative, warm, abusive, spontaneous and deceitful ... sometimes all inside an hour. Our marriage was a rollercoaster ride that didn't end well.
View attachment 308664I invented my own homily as the priest lisped away in his incomprehensible dialect. Then I was walking out into momentary sunshine with the most gorgeous, honest and straightforward woman I had ever met. Despite it being a funeral, nearly every man there snuck glances and some were more brazen about it. Those few blasts of sunlight awakened me from the past into the present. This might just work out pretty well for me in the end.
Everyone gathered outside and we all eventually walked four blocks to the family plot in a nearby graveyard. If anything reminded me of the Godfather movies, this part did. A massive line formed to wish the family well. As ex-husband, I was thankfully near the front.
And finally, we were in the taxi then on the train back towards Bologna.
