“Are you sure? They won’t care?” Servi asked Paulo again, holding his hand and moving quickly away from the day school.
“Yes,” Paulo answered, looking straight ahead. “They won’t care at all. They don’t know who is there and who isn’t.” Then the boy was quiet, and Servi imagined he was thinking long and hard about his predicament.
“Just get me to Father Roberto when Mama is supposed to come,” he said nearly inaudibly. “She’ll expect to find me there.”
Servi took the boy to a playground. He pushed him on a swing until the boy said he wanted to stop, and then Servi sat on a bench while he nimbly climbed the monkey bars. Paulo was scrawny, yet he clambered with considerable dexterity. But the day was scorching, and after sweating a while on the asphalt playground, Servi suggested they get a drink. The boy nodded, neither relieved nor appreciative as Servi ordered him a cherry flavored soda from a push cart.
They sat on a bench under a linden tree surrounded by retired pensioners playing chess. Servi watched as the boy slurped his soda and the warm breeze, the first stirrings of the sirocco, tossed about his wispy black hair. Servi examined him for strain, but the boy bore his suffering with stoicism. He seemed neither happy nor sad that Servi had taken him out of his dreaded daily routine, and as the boy was not inclined to loquaciousness, Servi allowed him to sit in dignified silence.
When the boy was finished with the soda Servi asked if he wanted a gelato. The boy nodded and Servi walked to a vendor and as the boy did not specify a flavor, chose lemon. He handed Paulo the little paper cup. When the boy was half way through, he finally looked up at Servi; his brown eyes bore a hint of expectancy in their glint, as if Servi, and not he, was about to reveal a satisfying secret.
“Did you leave that note in my pant’s pocket, Paulo?” Servi asked, producing the letter. The lad looked at it for a moment, not so much because he did not recognize it, but rather to give himself time to get the facts straight without initial missteps.
“Yes,” the boy finally answered between casual slurps of his gelato. A flock of pigeons landed near their feet. An old man had opened a bag of stale bread and was casting it among the dappled blanket of birds. A scooter squealed by, it exhaust hung in the air. “I’m not really Paulo Sacerdotti and that woman is not my real mother.”
“But how do you know this for sure,” Servi asked. “That boy, Cosmo Ricchetti, was only two when he disappeared. How old are you, seven? You can remember your other family?”
“Of course,” the boy said evenly. “I had a Papa who went to work in the morning, but always came home at night. He wore dark suits and was handsome. And Mama stayed home with me all day, and cooked anything I wanted.”
“Does anyone else know who you really are?”
“Yes,” the boy answered. “Father Roberto. But he can’t tell a living soul. I told him in confession.”
“If you are really Cosmo Ricchetti,” Servi explained patiently, trying to build up his case gradually, sentence by sentence, word by word. “Why don’t you go to the police?”
“I can’t,” the boy explained, getting near the end of his gelato. “Claudia would find out.”
“Claudia?” Servi asked. “Your mother?”
“She’s not my mother,” the boy answered resolutely. “She is the woman who took me from my real mother.”
“What does Father Roberto tell you, when you tell him you aren’t Paulo Sarcedotti?”
“He doesn’t say a thing,” the boy answered. “It isn’t a sin not to be the person people say you are, so what can he do? But he has to keep the secret, because I told him in confession.”
“Why did you give me the note?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said, looking off into the distance. “I guess so you can bring me back to my real Mama and Papa.”
Sometime in the night Servi awoke to crying. Claudia was next to him snoring lightly. So Servi rose from the couch and entered Paulo’s room. The boy was in a little bed tangled in sheets and blankets. Servi extracted the boy and sat on a chair, cradling him close to his neck. In the dim light cast from the street lamp, Servi could see his tight, closed face, and an expression of wan anticipation evident even in fitful sleep.
When the boy quieted down Servi placed him gently on the bed, straightened the cover and the sheet and seeing that he was quiet, walked gently away.
“Shit, I’m so late,” Claudia hissed, hurriedly dressing. “ Servi watched her from the couch. She kept giving Paulo instructions and the boy grunted in the next room. Servi could hear him rustling about, grunting, stamping his foot, whimpering.
“Can you take him to the day school Servi?” Claudia finally asked. “I’m at my wits end. I can’t get him there and get to work on time.”
“Claudia, Paulo is your son alright?”
“Of course he is,” she snapped in rapid English, so the boy wouldn’t understand. “He wants another mother. Who the fuck doesn’t? He wants another mother who doesn’t have to harass him to get him out the door and go to work. Well too damn bad! We all get the mother we get… the mother we deserve... case closed…” she was so angry, that halfway through she switched from English to rapid Italian.
“Servi,” she continued on a more subdued note. “Can you please take Paulo to school?” Servi nodded and she was gone.
“We have to hurry,” Claudia explained, quickly sliding off her dress. “I have to pick up Paulo in a half hour.”
But Servi would not rush. He charily kissed Claudia’s body from her neck to her belly, all the while examining her for stretch marks, or any sign that she had given birth to a child. Claudia stroked his head appreciatively, but then quickly pulled him up.
“You are a sweet boy Aaron,” she said, grasping him and pulling him into her. “But we have to get this show on the road.” She tried to work him in, but Servi did not rise to the task.
“Here,” she said gently, “I am rushing you too much. Poor boy. Lie down,” and she took Servi in her mouth, and after a minute, she stopped and looked at him.
“What the hell is wrong?” she spat.
“I can’t stop thinking about your husband…”
“Jesus Servi,” she spat and pulled her dress over her head. “That was meant to turn you on, not off…”
“I felt as if I walked in on my mother and father…”
“Good Christ,” Claudia turned away. “I have to go get Paulo.”
“I’ll come,” Servi said, rising from the bed.
“Suit yourself, Servi,” Claudia snapped, and then laughed. “Father and Mother did not turn you on… maybe it is Mother and Son.”
Servi watched Paulo the entire evening, but the boy made no reference to his note, or gave any indication to Servi that anything was amiss. Servi even crouched down on the floor to play with him while Claudia cleaned the dishes. They were alone for sometime, but the lad said nothing. He had a tight, fixed expression, and the rigid rules by which he played his games allowed little room for idle talk. All this was inscrutable to Servi, who sat with a train in his hand, looking at this boy and trying to plumb the depths of his secret. Claudia approved of their play.
“What good boys,” she laughed, clapping her hands. “Playing nice while Mama cleans up the kitchen, and Paulo can have a gelato before bed, and Aarone something special from me once Paulo is in dreamland.”
When Claudia put Paulo to bed, she sauntered to Servi on the couch, pleased with her performance, beaming from her satisfied expectations. She placed a hand of Servi’s crotch and whistled appreciatively.
“You are a good boy,” she whispered, and they fell back toward the couch.
When Servi arrived at Claudia Sacerdotti’s apartment he was nearly a half hour early. He was surprised that her door was unlocked and ajar. Quietly, he peered in to see if he could find Paulo and speak to him before he saw Claudia. But the little apartment was empty and quiet. Then Servi took a step into the vestibule. What he heard sounded like a groaning of rusty springs. In between, in the space between its rhythms, was a hissing sound like the workings of a faulty piston. Then a rapid exhalation, deep and guttural, like the call of some tribal serenade.
Servi walked to the bedroom door and saw a naked man moving on top of Claudia. The man was fast and efficient. Claudia dug the balls of her feet into his sagging flanks. “Tell me…” the man said between clenched teeth. “Tell me…” and Claudia lifted her head and whispered something in his ear. This made the man’s movements wild, and just before Servi turned around to leave, he caught Claudia’s eye.
Servi returned two hours later. The door was now closed, so Servi knocked. Claudia opened the door immediately. She was wearing a light cotton dress with a plunging neckline and a gold cross dangled between her breasts.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” she said to Servi, annoyed, but with a light of mischief in her eyes.
“I was by early, but it looks like you had your hands, or something, full,” Servi walked by her while Claudia laughed. Servi frowned.
“Don’t be such a prude,” she answered, patting Servi on the cheek as if he was a boy. “That was a little gift for Rosario, my ex-husband. You should have stayed to the end of the show. Rosario is a maestro.”
“And where was Paulo during this piece of theater?”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Servi?” Claudia moved past him and into the kitchen. “You have no moral high ground here. As far as I can tell you wander around Rome and stalk women. You got lucky with me – I didn’t call the police but brought you to bed. So don’t get uppity about the terms.” They stood and faced each other in silence. Then Claudia’s face softened.
“To answer your question,” she said quietly. “Paulo is at a friend’s house until 10PM. I thought it would give us a nice romantic night alone,” and she moved toward Servi and kissed him.
The librarian led Servi to the stacks of Rome’s most illustrious daily newspaper.Left to himself, he rifled through the loose chronology of papers, until he found the date when the boy disappeared.
Servi read in the dim light that Cosmo Ricchetti had disappeared from his flat on August 3rd, 1987, sometime between .He was napping in his room, and when his mother came to retrieve him, the boy was simply gone. A rear door to the flat was open, but there was no sign of a forced entry.Then the search began.Servi followed the stories in the papers through the days and weeks which followed.Suspects in little Cosmo’s disappearance were rounded up and then released.There were sightings of him all over Rome, Florence, Milan, Palermo, London and Paris.
There were rumors he had been sold as a sex slave in Tunisia by a cartel of pedophiles.But nothing came of all this speculation and rumor.After two months, there were few stories.After six, Servi could not find a single mention of the little boy.Then he found in the Sunday magazine section of the paper a story, five years following Cosmo Ricchetti’s vanishing act, entitled What Happened to Cosmo Ricchetti?It was a summing up of the case.There were full color pictures of the Richetti’s plush apartment.Sylvia Richetti explained that she continued to keep Cosmo’s room as it was the day he disappeared, in the hope that one day he would return. The mother and father remained in their old apartment, despite the pain of remembrances, because little Cosmo knew his address and phone number.
The Richettis held hope that one day the phone would ring and it would be Cosmo on the other end.Servi looked at a picture of the boy which the police had aged five years.There was a resemblance to Paulo Sacredotti, but in the dim light, Servi could not be sure.He was about to tear out the photo, when the librarian walked into the carrel and told him the library was closing for lunch
In the morning Servi was awoken by a dusty beam of sunlight tickling his face. There was a folded note placed firmly on his chest.
If you wish, the note said in Italian, come by for dinner at 8PM – Claudia.
Servi was alone in the apartment. As he put on his pants, he found a piece of thick, light blue construction paper in his pocket. There was writing on it in a child’s rough hand:
I am not Paulo Sarcedotti. I am Cosmo Ricchetti. Please help me.
“Yes, Senor Servi, something else?” the man asked, drooping forward with a napkin to snatch at some crumbs.
“Bobbo,” Servi asked, “who is Cosmo Ricchetti?” The waiter listened to the words and rolled on the balls of his feet, his head reclined backward, as if he was searching through a Rolodex in his mind. Then he smiled and snapped his fingers.
“Ah yes, that little boy,” he said, smiling broadly. “About five years ago, no, maybe more, this little boy, Cosmo Ricchetti, two years old vanished without a trace from his parent’s flat. It became a sensation. The police searched every apartment, rooftop, cellar and water conduit in Rome, and even opened the catacombs. His poster was on every wall and streetlamp. They searched and searched but never found him…”
“No clues?” Servi asked. “Just gone without a trace?”
“Yes,” the waiter answered sadly. “They never found a hair from his head.”
Servi woke up to crying. At first he thought it was Claudia, but looking about the dim living room, he was alone. The woman was in the kitchen holding Paulo in her arms. Even in the meager light of the oven lamp, Servi could see the boy’s face was red from the exertion of tears. His eyes were mere slits, as if he was not fully awake, but in some agonizing half-stage between sleeping and wakefulness.
Claudia was pouring water from the tap into a plastic tumbler and imploring the boy to drink. He tried, but spilled half the liquid on his pajama top. Then Claudia walked by Servi without even glancing at him, and carried the boy back to the bedroom. Servi was gathering up his clothes when Claudia entered the kitchen.
“Don’t leave,” she told Servi, placing a hand firmly on his shoulder. “In this neighborhood, it’s not altogether safe to walk around at night, especially if it looks like you don’t belong here. And you don’t look like you don’t belong anywhere.” In the dim light Servi could see Claudia’s tired face etched with sleep lost, never to be regained.
“Maybe I should leave for the boy,” Servi said, unsure of what else to say.
“The boy is used to men staying the night,” she said casually. “Paulo’s father stays here for the night and then leaves. He treats the place like a flop house.”
“Who is his father?”
“It’s not that important,” she answered, sitting in a kitchen chair across from Servi. The light in the kitchen, blue and unforgiving, had sped time unnaturally forward and rendered her older then her years.
“We’ve separated,” she told Servi, rubbing her temples with the tips of her index fingers.
“But you still sleep together?” Servi asked.
“Yes, does that bother you?” she glared at Servi and then quietly laughed. “You shouldn’t get upset. We’ve hardly signed a sexual contract. He fucked me yesterday and you today. Is that enough of a gap?” Then she looked at Servi through narrow eyes. “Why not snatch some pleasure when we can. My husband and I were always good in bed and nowhere else. So why not continue with what we were good at?
“It doesn’t bother me.”
“No?” Claudia asked with a twinkle in her tired eyes. “But does it turn you on? It does for some men, you know. My husband loves to hear about the men I take to bed, what I do to them, and what they do to me. It makes him roar like a lion.”
Servi ignored her words.
“What is wrong with your son?”
“He has had a hard life and it is wearing on him, just like it is wearing on me…” she said, her tone sad but her face set like stone. “But for screwing, his father is useless and doesn’t give us a lira. So I have to work like a dog for what little we have…”
“How do you know all those languages?”
“My father was an Italian Jew who married a gentile woman. He immigrated to Israel and we lived in Tel Aviv until my father got himself killed in the Yom Kippur War. Well, we spoke Italian at home and I spoke Hebrew at school. My mother is very good with languages, and after my father died she brought in money by giving lessons in Italian, German, French, English. I suspect she slept with a great many of her students. When I was fifteen one of those student lovers killed her in a fight. I had no relatives in Israel, so I moved to Rome to live with an aunt. So, here I am in Rome, and as I can speak five languages, I took a job with a tour company. But as I said, I work like a dog, and my son is in day school six days a week. Sometimes he is with neighbors on the weekend if I need to work. It has been hard on him.”
“And he escapes,” Servi asked, unsure how else to frame the event. “And the people at the day school don’t give a damn?”
“It’s not an escape,” Claudia answered, annoyed. “It is a ritual he has… a way of asserting his freedom from me and that school. He goes to Father Roberto and drinks milk and eats cookies. The old man waits for him everyday.” She stopped talking and looked at Servi coolly. He could see her mind was working at a feverish pitch, even as her face was slack with exhaustion.
“Do you mind if I sleep in the bedroom for the rest of the night while you stay on the couch? If he wakes up again, I want to be in the room.”
“Of course,” Servi answered, and the woman rose up, leaving Servi at her kitchen table.
