. . . To get rid of any trace of you at the crime scene. So that no one would think it might have been you . . .
“ . . . I waited with the body. I felt like I was in a dream. After a minute, or maybe a year, I heard Michele’s whisper outside the door. I opened it, to let him in . . . ”
. . . After he had bumped into don Pierino on the stairs, who mistook him for Vezzi . . .
“ . . . He told me he had to switch his shoes, which were muddied: otherwise he would leave tracks on the stage, where he would shortly return. That’s when I woke up: I realized I had to hurry, that I could save my child from ruin. This time, he waited for me in the dressing room and I went up to the fourth floor. I said I had come straight from the sick nun’s convent and I asked Maria to lend me her smock . . . ”
. . . Too big for you, as I recall . . .
“ . . . I got the shoes and brought them down. No one notices us seamstresses when we come and go. I held them under the smock, which was too big for me. Michele put the clean ones on and gave me the muddy ones and I went upstairs again to put them back in place. He took care of the keys . . . ”
. . . The locked door, that Lasio had to break down . . .
“ . . . Then I took the costume and told Signora Lilla that it was ready. I had finished it. I had made the final adjustment, the final cut.”
. . . The final cut.
XXXIII
The wind was whipping through the Galleria, relentlessly. Now that Maddalena was silent, it sounded even stronger. Time seemed to stand still. The woman stared into space and saw her own ghosts; the only thing keeping her moored to the present was her hand resting on her stomach.
Ricciardi shifted in his chair and drew her attention.
“Signorina, listen to me carefully. Your destiny, that of Nespoli and above all that of your child are forever bound. You cannot think of building the child’s life around a lie and on the punishment of an innocent man.”
Maddalena went on staring into space.
“I know a lawyer who owes me a favour. He’ll see to defending Nespoli, who, if he sticks to his current story, hasn’t a chance. If he were to change it, however, there could still be some hope.”
The woman roused herself and looked at the Commissario.
“Hope? For Michele? What hope?”
“Honour killings are punishable by imprisonment up to a maximum of three years. You will have to say—and this is my condition for letting you go free—that Nespoli intervened because Vezzi tried to sexually assault you and you called for help.”
“And me? My child?”
“Nothing at all will happen to you. You’re a victim. The concealment of evidence will fall on Nespoli and impact his sentence. You must say that you two were about to be married. That you told Vezzi that when he made his first advances, which you firmly rejected. That you didn’t tell us everything right away because you were afraid, because you’re pregnant, and the child is Michele’s.”
Maddalena started.
“But it’s not true, I know it!”
“Believe me, the child can only benefit from it. In any case, you have no choice. The alternative is prison.”
The woman lowered her head, considering the gravity of the situation. She had no other options.
“I understand, Commissa’. It’s only fair, it has to be this way. I’ll wait for Michele. But will the judges believe these things? Vezzi was an important figure and we’re just modest people. What hope do we have?”
She looked at Ricciardi, and all of a sudden big tears began to flow from those limpid blue eyes.
As he skirted the Royal Palace, struggling against the stiff wind that hampered his progress, Ricciardi was thinking about hunger and love. This time the two old enemies had joined forces to perpetrate their crime. He had left Maddalena, vulnerable and alone, with her kerchief covering her blonde hair and the assurance that tomorrow, after work, she would appear at the lawyer’s office. Ricciardi himself would inform him of events. And it wouldn’t cost her anything. Then he decided that the long day wasn’t yet over.
The sky was clear, swept by the wind. The moon and stars lit up the deserted street, while the lights hanging in the centre of the road swayed wildly. Love. A sometimes fatal illness, but a necessary one. Maybe you can’t live without it, Ricciardi thought as he walked against the wind, his hands in his coat pockets. Eyes peered at him from dark alleys, recognized him and decided that he was not an opportune prey for the final pickpocket of the day. Now he was at the corner of Via Partenope. To his left the sea’s high waves crashed on the reef. On the right were the big hotels.
At home, in her kitchen, Enrica had finished doing the dishes with her usual meticulous attention. She had already checked the window across the way a number of times: its curtains were closed. Tonight she felt an anxiety that wrung her heart, though she didn’t know why. She felt alone, abandoned. Where are you tonight, my love?
Livia watched the sea’s fury from her window on the third floor of the Hotel Excelsior. She was smoking and thinking. Tomorrow she would leave the city and try to resume her life once again. Would she find the strength? She glanced at her suitcase, already packed and ready to go. What am I taking away from here? And what am I leaving in this city, with its sea howling in the wind?
Her thoughts did not go to Arnaldo; she felt as though she had never known him. What she saw through the smoke was a pair of feverish green eyes. The arrogance, the disillusionment in those eyes. The loneliness and yearning for love deep in that soul. And the sorrow: that immense sorrow. Why didn’t you let me relieve that sorrow? Inhaling a last mouthful of smoke, she looked again at the riotous sea. In the surge of foam that sprayed on to the street, she saw a figure walking against the wind. She recognized it. And her heart leaped into her throat.
The clerk at the hotel reception desk did not want to notify Signora Vezzi. That wet, dishevelled man, his green eyes raging with fever, frightened him. He was thinking of calling a couple of porters to help chase him out, when the signora stepped out of the elevator, breathless. Livia’s eyes were lit up, shining. She had thrown her coat on over her dressing gown, run a comb through her soft, thick dark hair, slipped on some shoes and rushed down. Her heart was pounding in her ears, her mouth was dry. He had come to her.
Enrica sat down in her chair and took out her embroidery box. Another glance at the window. Nothing. Her anxiety would not let up. She felt like crying.
Ricciardi looked at Livia: she had never seemed so beautiful. The luminous eyes, the full lips smiling broadly. He told her that he had to speak with her. It was important. She asked him where he wanted to talk, and he said, “Let’s walk.”
Outside, they found themselves accompanied by the wind and sea. The lights hanging in the centre of the road swayed, illuminating at times one side or the other. Livia shivered and clutched Ricciardi’s arm. He began to speak.
“The truth is not what it seems, sometimes. In fact, it hardly ever is. It’s a bit like the strange light of these lamps, you see, Livia: sometimes it falls here, sometimes there. Never on both sides at the same time. So you have to imagine what you don’t see. You have to intuit it from a word, spoken or unspoken, from a trace, an impression. From a note, sometimes.
“Those who do my kind of work have another eye: they’re able to see things that others can’t see. And that’s how it was this time, Livia. It didn’t seem right that someone like your husband should have died because of an insult, a remark. And in fact, he did not die for that reason. Do you want to know why your husband died? He died because of hunger and because of love. That’s why he died. I’ll tell you about it.”
Livia listened to Ricciardi’s voice, mingled with those of the wind and sea. She no longer felt cold. She was walking down dark streets, eating scraps in doorways, surrounded by rats and stray dogs. She was learning to sew beside an elderly nun. She wanted
to sing, in a village in the mountains, in Calabria. She slapped an elderly professor at the Conservatory. She felt the hands of a horrible old goat of a tailor on her. She fell under the spell, once again, of a rich and famous tenor. Once again she carried his child in her womb, a child who was still alive, and not yet born. And again, all that blood.
Ricciardi’s voice lulled Livia; she wasn’t even aware of the tears streaming down her face along with the sea spray carried by the wind. She walked along, clutching the strong arm of the sorrowful man with the upturned coat collar, sensing all his love for the suffering of others.
“Do you see, Livia? If there isn’t someone in court to say who Arnaldo Vezzi really was, they’ll slam this young man in Poggioreale and never let him out again. And the girl will remain alone, because in this city no one will want a penniless, dishonoured woman. And the child will be fodder for the criminal world, in the best of cases, if he doesn’t die first, under the wheels of a carriage or killed by some disease.”
Livia took a few more steps, then said to the wind and the upturned coat collar: “And I, what can I do? Don’t you see that I am now the honoured widow of a great man? I would become a vile ingrate who spits on someone who can no longer defend himself.”
“Think of the child, Livia. Think of the opportunity you have to give this child a family and a hope for the future. If you want, if you like, think about your child as well, about what he would ask you to do, if he were alive.”
The woman squeezed the arm she was clinging to. She sighed in the wind that blew her hair about.
“And you? What about you? Don’t you have a hope for the future? Why not give me your hope, let it become mine as well?”
They walked on in silence. They found themselves back at the entrance to the hotel. The desk clerk, behind the glass door, looked at them, puzzled.
Ricciardi stopped and looked at Livia, there in the wind and sea.
“It’s not my time, Livia. Not my place. You have a right to be happy, you’re entitled to the good fortune that you haven’t had. You’re beautiful, Livia, and young. You have that right; I don’t yet.”
Livia looked at him through the drops of sea spray and tears, and smiled.
“All right. I’ll be there too, in court. I’ll do it for my Carletto. And for you.”
And she stood and watched him walk away, in the wind and sea.
The young woman who sat embroidering felt the grip of anxiety loosen in her chest. Even before raising her eyes from the embroidered pattern, she knew that the curtains in the window across the way had opened.
As she went on embroidering, Enrica smiled.
TRANSLATOR’S AFTERWORD
The year is 1931, the period of Mussolini’s fascist regime. In fact, the regulation portraits hanging in Commissario Ricciardi’s office (Chapter III) are those of the King and Il Duce: the wry references are to the small physical stature of Victor Emmanuel III of the House of Savoy, King of Italy from 1900 to 1946, and to Mussolini, known as Mascellone or Big Jaw, and his cult of macho strength. The ‘so-called coffee’ at the end of that chapter was an ersatz coffee used at that time, a coffee substitute made from roasted grain.
Pizza fritta (Chapter IV), Ricciardi’s favourite lunch when he’s not enjoying a sfogliatella, is a popular Neapolitan street food that enjoys a cult-like reverence among the locals: the toppings are sealed between two layers of pizza dough and deep-fried until crispy.
The “little monk,” munaciello in Neapolitan dialect (Chapter V), is the bizarre spirit who always behaves in an unpredictable way and who is the source of infinite urban legends and popular sayings.
The lines “Io sangue voglio, all’ira m’abbandono, in odio tutto l’amor mio finì . . . ” (I will have vengeance, My rage shall know no bounds, And all my love Shall end in hate), first quoted in Chapter VI, are from Cavalleria Rusticana, Act One, Scene IX.
The seamstresses in the theater’s wardrobe department use charcoal irons to iron the costumes (Chapter VII): the base of these irons was a container in which glowing coals were placed to keep the iron hot.
In Chapter VIII, the Carso, Kras in Slovenian, is a plateau in southwestern Slovenia and north-eastern Italy.
The “dolesome notes” in Chapter IX are from Dante’s Inferno, V: 25-27: “Or incomincian le dolenti note / a farmisi sentire; or son venuto / là dove molto pianto mi percuote.” They have been variously translated as “the dolesome notes” (Longfellow), “notes of desperation” (Mandelbaum), and even a “choir of anguish” (Ciardi).
The barefoot children racing in the wind in Chapter XII, their too-large, hand-me-down shirts billowing like sails, are playing “barca a vela,” pretending to be sailboats.
The crystal bottle and four cordial glasses in Garzo’s office (also Chapter XII) are for serving rosolio, a popular Italian liqueur derived from rose petals.
The mention of Verga in Chapter XIII alludes to the fact that the libretto for Cavalleria Rusticana is adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga, based on his short story of the same name; it is considered one of the classic verismo operas. Prevalent in late nineteenth-century Italy, veristic operas tended to feature passions which ran high and led to violence.
In the same chapter (XIII) Maione gives Ricciardi a military salute because at that time the Polizia di Stato was a military force; it became a civil force in 1981, with the enactment of Italian State Law 121.
The Funicolare Centrale (Chapter XVIII) was a funicular railway line that opened in 1928. Also in this chapter (XVIII), Irpinia, a region of the Apennine Mountains around Avellino, is mentioned as the site of the 1930 earthquake. Avellino, a town in Campania, Southern Italy, is about 25 miles east of Naples. The Pollino (chapter XXV) is a mountain range in Calabria.
The Sicilian serenade which don Pierino summarizes for the Commissario (Chapter XXVII) is in dialect: “E si ce muoru e vaju ‘n paradisu / si nun ce truovo a ttia, mancu ce trasu . . . ] [O Lola c’hai di latti la cammisa / si bianca e russa comu la cirasa, / quannu t’affacci fai la vucca a risa, / biatu pì lu primu cu ti vasa! / Ntra la puorta tua lu sangu è spasu, / ma nun me mpuorta si ce muoru accisu . . . / e si ce muoru e vaju ‘n paradisu / si nun ce truovo a ttia, mancu ce trasu.” O Lola, with your milk-white blouse, / white-skinned, with lips like cherries / your laughing face looks from the window, / and the first one to kiss you is blessed! / Blood may be spilt on your doorstep, / but to die there is nothing to me. / If, dying I went up to heaven / and found you not there I would flee!
The reference to the passing of “a rare car” (Chapter XXXI) denotes the fact that carriages or trams were the prevalent mode of transportation at the time, rather than automobiles. According to the author, Naples was a city characterized by great wealth in the hands of a few aristocrats and great poverty on the part of the proletariat; a merchant middle-class was just developing, so cars were still uncommon.
Also in Chapter XXXI, Maddalena explains that her name is Esposito because she was abandoned when she was born: the author clarified that the surname Esposito derives from the Latin ‘expositus’, exposed, since abandoned newborns were ‘exposed’, displayed, for a few hours to allow their real mothers to change their minds and reclaim them. Once that period of time was over, the orphaned babies were entrusted to the care of institutions or convents, or given up for adoption with that surname. In effect it was a kind of brand or label.
Finally, I was curious about why Ricciardi puts on a hairnet before going to bed. The author, who scrupulously researched the historic details found in the novel, explained that it was a widespread custom among the bourgeoisie of that era. Hair was washed relatively infrequently, and fixatives such as brilliantine or other preparations were commonly used. That, coupled with the fact that Ricciardi doesn’t wear a hat in the blustery wind, means that he has to use a net to hold his hair in place during the night. Despite the hairnet, that wayward strand of hair insists on escap
ing and falling over his eyes.
Anne Milano Appel
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are a few people Ricciardi must thank for the fact that he is here.
First of all, Francesco Pinto and Domenico Procacci, for their lucid, intrepid minds. Rosaria Carpinelli, whose attentive hand is present in the text from the first to the last word. And Aldo Putignano, a man who can fly while keeping his feet on the ground.
He must also thank Michele for his constant assistance, and Giovanni and Roberto who give meaning to everything.
Finally, speaking for myself and not just for Ricciardi, an immeasurable expression of gratitude goes to my dearest Paola.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maurizio de Giovanni lives and works in Naples. In 2005, he won a writing competition for unpublished authors with a short story set in the thirties about Commissario Ricciardi, which was then turned into the first novel of the series. His books have been successfully translated into French, Spanish and German, and are now available in English for the first time.
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