"How did you get so lucky?"
Mimmo just chuckled. He didn't break rhythm with his shovel, just kept up his work.
"Dio mio! How they stink!" Gustavo tried shoveling left-handed rather than right. He tried swiping at his nose with his shoulder. He kept talking.
Mimmo didn't bother to correct his co-worker. He didn't bother giving encouragement. He had been at this job a long time, and he knew the type. Gustavo's type. Talkative. As if it helped. As he worked, he considered, though maybe it did help. The talkative types tended to keep on refusing things, like the ritual benediction on the way to work -- the one that Gustavo refused this morning. They also kept talking until they found the right person to commute their sentence. Gustavo would probably be gone quickly. Making his mischief (along with a lot of words) somewhere else.
"Seriously. How did you get a rich person to care for?" Gustavo switched again from left to right with his shovel, but at least this time he kept working. "If anything can be considered lucky in this job, it's that."
It was true. Mimmo considered as he kept going. Poor people, like the bones they were shoveling right now, died in multitudes. There were so many of them, and the stink was pestilential here. At least, he remembered it that way. Having his sense of smell leave was one of the private blessings God gave him. He knew he would always have as much work as the city could send him. He was simply grateful this year was not a plague year. Then, in a true plague, the shallow covering using up only a small plot of ground would have to expand. They should count themselves lucky.
If a rich person died, there was a lot of pageantry about it. Lot of fuss. Just the right outfit had to be chosen… even in death. The living people got almost as much prestige out of taking care of their bones as taking care of the person while they were sick. During a plague gear, it was natural too shuffle the dead bodies of even wealthy people away quickly. Those burials would also increase. The plague years were bad ones.
Gustavo hadn't spoken for a full minute. He broke the silence again. "Sto aspetto. I'm waiting. I really want to know how you got assigned with rich people."
Mimmo, of course, didn't answer. Gustavo would be finished with his sentence soon. Thievery was one thing. Murder was an entirely different thing. Mimmo would be here a long time. He just didn't talk about it much. Really, he just didn't talk. Much.
"Make sure every bit of dirt is off you before you leave."
"Wow." Gustavo rested against his shovel. "A full sentence? This must be a special occasion."
"The dirt can't always tell the difference between living and dead." It was true. Some parcels of ground ate the flesh more quickly than others. This was a parcel of ground that made poor people into bones quicker than any place he had heard of.
"You're off to change the buckets for the rich people, aren't you?" Gustavo said it as if he were off to a vacation.
Mimmo grunted.
There wasn't anything more Gustavo needed to know. Stirring the bones of poor people, like kneading bread or turning over a garden was simply a way to keep things moving. The bodies didn't rot as well unless they were shoveled around. Somebody had to do it, and it was always a convict; it was simple as turning off lights in any home in Naples so that nothing burnt down, or locking up … here, though those were laughable habits. What would anybody steal among the poor people? Somebody else got the few coins in the pockets, or the pitiful mementos in dank rooms. Gustavo would clank his way back into his prison cell, and think it was a break from the work. Like being let out of prison.
Come to think of it… both of them were going for release back into a prison. The way it was upside down sometimes made Mimmo chuckle. Not today. It was a beautiful day, and chuckling didn't add to anything. The wispy white clouds on an impossibly blue background that even a prison warden would never be able to block out entirely. The day was laughing. It was enough.
Mimmo finished putting away the shovels and carefully wiping off his own hands before dunking everything he could into the bucket of water. The soil he worked with still ate away at his fingers and hair, but it was less if he made sure to wash… even in fetid water… when leaving for a new job site.
There was a special box that held a different outfit when he had to go to this job. Am I supposed to be an executioner or a priest, he often wondered. Nonetheles, he put on the black robe and came out of the murky closet near the church. He closed the door with one side of his back. He was careful to avoid the scab in the middle of a healing bruise on his shoulder. From the feel of things, his face was almost a normal color again. From the eye all the way down to the jaw had been blue at its worst. That was nothing, though. Until things went black he wasn't really impressed with the abilities of the person doing the clouting. He ignored his own bruises. Today was a treat. He leaned a little, so that he could see a wedding. He wasn't supposed to look… and tried not to look, but couldn't help himself. The idea of a few more bruises was sometimes worth it to catch a glimpse of one of the fancy people as they came out of the church.
The women, nearly all of them, were dressed brightly enough to be brides themselves. Like a flock of birds in the plumage of yellows, blues, greens, and every other imaginable color, they waited for the happy couple to emerge. He listened closely to the talk over the years. He knew things. Simple things about weddings. Each of them probably had an intricate hairdo of braids beneath the tightly fitting covering and loosely worn gauzy veil. Each of the guests held a container for throwing something at the happy couple. He never stayed around long enough to find out what it was. Sometimes, though, the birds were pecking at the ground. So he thought it might be tiny bits of food. Rice, or bread, most likely.
Mimmo fumbled around with the door, and turned as slowly as he could. He would never do to be obvious that he was stalling. He went slowly… rewarded, just as he was about to turn the corner for the catacombs. A girl about half of the size of her groom, and Mimmo judged, also about half of the age of her partner descended the steps with equal parts, fear and excitement. Probably fear of her groom. Excitement from being a bride. She wore blue for purity, and her head coverings had strings of pearls. As he turned the corner, and couldn't see the bridal party, anymore, a large cheer erupted from the gathered crowd.
The church was close to the bones of San Genaro, in a crevice of the city down by the people, but a wedding made a person's thoughts soar like newly freed birds… even a prisoner.
For a single moment, the bright sun, the piercingly blue sky, the wedding party in front of the church made him forget himself. If he only climbed the hill, he would see the large volcano in the background and a huge bay with boats going to and fro as they had ever since Roman times. No, he corrected himself ... for millennia even before that. Fish and water were more eternal than even Roman boats. Surely, even before Rome, people need it to eat fish from the sea.
Mimmo hurried. He had only two hours of work her both catacombs San Genaro and of San Gaudioso. One church had already been rebuilt twice, and who knows what the future would bring? It might keep getting rebuilt forever.
The brilliant day was darkened by stepping into the church. And even beyond that, the crypt and the torchlight of the catacombs. Nonetheless, he looked forward to this part of the week. It was good to take care of fancy dead people.
One of the younger priests, who would put up with the smell because he didn't have the clout that came with age. He hoisted himself off of the steps to the altar where the young man had waited to unlock the work area for Mimmo.
The priest handed him a torch, as he carried for himself a small chair.
The priest pressed a handkerchief to his nose. Mimmo had just come from the plot of land where the peasants bones lay rotting, and didn't say anything about the comparative pleasure of this job. He simply led the way into the dark and let his torch and his memory, bring him to the spot where a few buckets must be trundled away before visiting day.
The bones of previous generations had been stacked neatly away behind walls and the floors. The relative ease of making a hole in this type of stone, and the fact that cave-ins were so rare made burying people simple.
The priest positioned himself with a rosary and his chair as far away from the smell as he could.
Mimmo went on.
"Now signora," he said, "let's make sure you rest properly -- as you must."
The older corpses sat behind their ropes, dripping very little, and Mimmo combined each smidgen of liquid into one bucket.
"Let's just make sure you're sitting straight again" he said to the newest female corpse. She wore a simple shift, but her dress was nearby. It was a gaudy thing that would be placed upon her bones after she had finished her task of drying out. It was very common for a corpse to slump or wiggle a little bit during the first stages of their preservation. He gently eased her back in place. He took the bucket from under her seat, and replaced it with the fresh one, noticing from the sloshing that the old bucket was nearly full.
With a glance behind him, he knelt and said a prayer for each of the corpses. Nobody ever forbid a convict the act of prayer. But most things were forbidden, so he always felt sinful, even as he made sure each corpse was secure, and this smell would be the least offensive possible as visiting day approached.
Some of the older families had no deaths for several years. A few people were sure to come for visiting day, though. Mimmo made sure if things looked bedraggled, he replaced the dried flowers with those he had collected and dried himself. Roses mainly. By the time a new death came around, nobody would remember the last bouquet that had been left.
He straightened the sign from the one of the more recent funerals. The second burial, held a year after the actual death of a person, never had quite as many tears as the bones were relayed to rest in their final spot. Just before. That's when fancy clothing could go back on the corpses.
As the newly slumbering priest snored against the wall, Mimmo made one more adjustment and glanced around the cave to make sure all was in readiness for the next set of living visitors.
Then, hoisting the two buckets (he made sure the load was more evenly distributed, because nobody really cared about whose drippings might be in those buckets,) and shuffling his feet to attract the attention of the sleeping priest, he asked, "Are you ready to go up?"
"Of course, my son," the priest said, somewhat thickly and piously at the same time.
The torch had to be carried by the priest, this time. Mimmo was carrying buckets.
"Please go slowly," he said, "so nothing spills."
"Grazie per il promemoria," the priest said, thanking him for the reminder.
The wavering light made ascending the stairs difficult. He came out into the crypt, feeling as if he himself had been reborn. But the buckets still made a musical noise. Mimmo had the bushes of the Bishop's garden to fertilize before he went to his meal, back at the prison. If a few of the roses in the bishops garden were just about to be deadheaded anyway, he would place them quietly in his bucket.
The gardener was a large man. Over the years, he had been a source of many bruises.
Mimmo looked around him. None of the prayers could be said In anything more than a whisper. He chose the bushes that seemed to need a boost more than the others. He made sure the liquid splashed evenly along the root line.
Eventually, he was back at the shed replacing the black outfit with the rags he wore to the prison. He hung the roses… three of them this time… upside down, but hidden, and changed back into his prison rags.
Walking among the living, as if he was wearing burlap. He did miss the smells of cooking as he passed open doorways. He never looked at the sounds of young people, from the toddlers who shouted to the mothers with excitement, to the young people who whispered to each other, or the older people who bickered. He allowed the music of the living to carry him up the hill where he would rest on a stone floor after eating a thin soup.
Gustavo may have even saved a piece of bread for him. He doubted it, though. Jealousy affected that one. He would be lucky to find soup at all. This was, after all, a day for buckets, and Gustavo felt it deeply.
When he was alone, though. When the night closed among prisoners, like it did among the families of poor people. Like the families of rich people. Then Mimmo could pray. His excitement over a wedding. His care for the corpses. His concerns about Gustavo. The anxiety that a family treat each person who approached their second burial with the proper respect. All of that he could leave before il Signore, even if words never came into it.
He hoped the God who heard a rich person was the same one who heard a poor person… or a convict.
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