“Christmas, right. Christmas. No, I need to talk to you right away. Let’s go into that tavern, over there; I’ll treat you to a glass of wine. Half an hour, no longer.”
And he set off, without waiting for an answer.
XIX
From her kitchen window, Rosa Vaglio was scanning the street. The wind was chilly and her bones ached, but she feared neither one nor the other; she was from the high countryside. The mountains of Cilento, wild and treacherous, with snow that fell unexpectedly even on sunny days, clouds lurking behind the peaks, invisible until it was too late.
Once she had seen a wolf.
In the hope of bringing some color to the cheeks of his perennially pale bride, Luigi Alfredo’s father, the Baron of Malomonte, had moved his family to a farm he owned in Sanza, at the foot of Mount Cervati. The green-eyed baroness, silent and smiling, had asked Rosa to accompany her on a walk in the surrounding countryside and they had been caught by a sudden rainstorm, cold and stinging. They’d taken shelter in a small shack that was used to store wood, and when it had finally stopped raining and they emerged, they’d found themselves face-to-face with that magnificent specimen, its fur practically black and its eyes a luminous yellow. The beast stood as tall as one of the ponies that the baron bred to race.
Rosa had immediately shooed the baroness back into the shack and turned to face the animal herself, staring it right in the eye, long and hard. She hadn’t glimpsed anything savage in its gaze: just intelligence and curiosity, and great loneliness. Then the wolf had turned and trotted off, silently, moving up toward the peak.
Who could say why that memory had returned to her just now, so many years later and so many miles away, as she was looking down into the street from the balcony, high above that city that she’d never really understood, awaiting the return of her young master, late for dinner, as he was every night. Perhaps the animal and the commissario had the same disease in their eyes.
When she’d first held him in her arms, more than thirty years ago, she’d stopped thinking of herself as simply his servant and had begun to love him. She had been the mother that the poor baroness, who died so young and had always been so frail and unhealthy, had never been able to be; but Rosa had never really understood him. Ever since he’d come home from the hospital, after she’d feared for his life, she sensed that he was more painfully alone than ever. It was just a feeling, but she knew she was right.
In her simple, uneducated mind, she understood that her boy was torn, tormented by some inner conflict, and she didn’t know what it was.
She guessed that the Colombo girl, the eldest daughter of the haberdasher who lived across the street, had something to do with it. She’d stopped her, she’d spoken to her, she’d even had her over to the apartment when he wasn’t there. She’d hoped that Luigi Alfredo’s pathological solitude might finally come to an end with her; but then she’d vanished the day of the accident, to be replaced by that strange outsider, that widow who was too aggressive, too beautiful, too sure of herself, too everything.
She didn’t like that Livia. She didn’t seem right for her boy. “Wives and oxen from your own villages,” the saying went; and if not from Cilento, which would have been ideal, at least a nice young lady from the south, serious and well-mannered, like Enrica had seemed to her. Certainly not that signora, a woman who smoked and swiveled her hips so that heads turned everywhere she went.
Rosa squinted into the wind as she saw Ricciardi approach in the distance, hatless as usual, hands in his pockets and his head bowed. She felt the usual tenderness touch her heart, and she decided that sometimes fate needs a little help.
There weren’t many customers in the tavern. The week before Christmas, anyone who had a home and a family wanted to spend their time there, with them.
Maione and Massa found a corner table in a quiet spot and ordered half a liter of red wine to take the chill off. The brigadier tried to break the ice.
“How are you? As I was just saying, Lucia and I had been planning to invite you over for Christmas Eve. You know, things are better now; we’re talking to each other again, and she’s doing well. She’s rediscovered her love for her home. And the kids, too . . .”
“Raffaele, forgive me. I have to tell you something that may cause you some pain. Forgive me.”
Maione shut his eyes. He’d read the concern in his friend’s eyes the minute he’d seen him; he knew the man too well, and there was no mistaking it. He’d hoped, coward that he was, that it was Massa’s problem. He’d have done everything in his power to help him, but at least he’d have preserved his own peace, so fragile, so laboriously regained. But no.
“I don’t really have a choice, do I? If I did, you wouldn’t be here now. You’d have made the choice for me.”
Massa took a long drink of wine.
“Yes, that’s true. But I don’t have that right, unfortunately. Listen: you know that since I was put in command of the prison guards I no longer make the rounds in the corridors doing direct prisoner surveillance. I work out the shifts, I assign the teams, that sort of thing. But my boys know that there are certain things I keep track of personally, and if there are any developments they come and report them to me right away. Last week there was a brawl among the prisoners, don’t ask me what it was about, in the dining hall. For the most part they’re brutes, forced to keep their violent impulses bottled up inside them. But sometimes all it takes is a look, or a word, or even a tone of voice . . . To make a long story short, they threw chairs, they kicked and punched, until finally my men arrived and restored order.”
Maione waited, his heart pounding in his throat. Massa went on.
“But it was too late. One man was on the floor; he’d been kicked in the head after he fell. They took him to the infirmary, but it was immediately clear that he wasn’t going to make it. You already know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”
Maione shut his eyes. Him. Him. He was dead; fate had done its work. He almost stopped listening to Massa, who had gone on talking.
“They called me right away. They knew that everything about that man’s health, the details of the life he led, every single sigh of unhappiness was to be reported to me. Every single day of his sentence was a gentle caress to my grief. Every single day.”
His voice had lowered to a hiss, quivering with hate; his lips clamped, his gaze lost in the middle distance. With a surge of sadness Maione realized how much his friend must have suffered during the last few years, unable to find comfort in the other children and Lucia, as Maione had.
“I went right away, as you can imagine. I positioned myself right next to that bed. I wanted to watch him suffer, minute by minute. It was a huge wound, a boot to the temple; no one thought he’d ever come to. But then, he did.”
Maione opened his eyes wide. What the hell had happened?
“He woke up, and he asked for a priest. That black soul of his, that demon wanted to save himself from hellfire at the last minute, with a sniffle and a benediction. He couldn’t see anymore, so I grabbed a chair, I placed it next to his bed, and I became his priest. I became his priest, Rafe’. I became his priest.”
He repeated it to himself more than to anyone else. Maione shook his head. He suddenly felt like crying.
“Poor brother of mine. Poor brother of mine.”
“I’m not afraid, Rafe’, believe me. I’ve already spent far too much time in hell, I’ve seen too many things with my own eyes, to be afraid of the afterlife. I wanted to hear from his own lips exactly what he’d done. I muttered a few words in fake Latin, and that illiterate cretin fell for it and started to talk. As you can imagine, I know his criminal record by heart, I’ve read it through so many times. He said the whole black rosary, theft by theft, robbery by robbery, and even the murders, one, two, three. Even one he’d never stood trial for.”
Maione was hanging on his every word.
�
�But what did he tell you about Luca? Did he tell you how it happened, if he said something, if . . .”
“Wait. Let me tell you the whole story. At a certain point he stopped talking. I thought he must be dead, at last. Instead, he went on breathing, so I asked him, ‘And Luca Maione?’ He was silent, then he asked me, ‘But Padre, how do you know what happened with the policeman?’”
Maione sat waiting, almost afraid to breathe.
“I answered him, ‘You’re at God’s feet, and God knows all. Lying now won’t bring you forgiveness.’ He was silent again, then, in a voice so low that I had to lean forward to hear him, he said, ‘It wasn’t me who killed the policeman.’”
All around them people were talking, the music and the songs of Christmas wafted in from outside, and the wind rushing through the vicolo droned incessantly. But to Maione it was as if a profound silence, like the one you hear in church on a summer afternoon, had descended around him.
“What does that mean? What does that mean, Franco? What did he mean, he didn’t kill him? Then who did kill him, who killed my Luca? He was lying, damn him. He was lying, in the very face of death!”
Massa had downed another glass of wine. From his bloodshot eyes and the red blotches on his face, you’d have thought that he had a high fever.
“I thought the same thing. But then I said to myself: Why would he do that? He’s already confessed to the other murders, even one for which he was never tried, and he knows he’s dying. What would be the point of lying? He can’t hope to fool God Almighty.”
“So?”
“So I thought to myself: I can’t live with this doubt. I said to him, ‘My son, I can’t believe you unless you tell me what really happened. And if I can’t believe you, I certainly can’t give you absolution. I’m sorry, but hell awaits you for all of your sins.’”
“And what did he do?”
“What else could he do? He believed me. And he told me the story. That day he’d brought with him, along with his usual cohort, his little brother, Biagio. This kid had never done a thing; he’d always sheltered him out of respect for their mother, but that day Biagio had insisted. They thought the job would be a piece of cake, and the older brother had said, why not? But Luca tracked them down. He’d staked them out; he was good at stakeouts, he got that from you.”
Maione nodded, lost in thought. He remembered the long hours he’d spent teaching his son all the techniques.
“Luca knew how many men there were, and he watched them go in, counting them one by one. He was good at what he did. Very good. When he determined that they were all inside, he raided them, with his gun leveled; that way none of them could pull a move on him. But he hadn’t taken the kid into account, who’d gone to buy cigarettes. When the kid walked into the cellar, he found Luca with his back to him, Luca who had the drop on the whole gang. The kid panicked and, instead of taking to his heels, he pulled out the knife that his brother had given him to hold on to, and . . . he did what he should never have done.”
Maione reached across the table and grabbed Massa’s arm.
“So, it was the kid? The little brother?”
“That’s right, it was him. The older brother heard the rest of the police arriving and thought fast. He took the knife and told his brother to get out of there, quickly but without running—nobody knew who the kid was anyway—and he took the blame for the murder. He had nothing to lose, he was bound to be convicted in any case, he was wanted for other crimes and other murders.”
There was a long moment of silence. Maione had to assimilate a whole new order of thoughts about something very important that he’d only just managed to put to rest, deep in his heart, at the back in his mind.
“So the actual murderer, the man who killed my son, our son, is still at large. And he’s been roaming the streets freely, maybe killing other people, for three years now.”
Massa nodded.
“The news was upsetting to me, too. I just sat there, mouth agape, until that swine was finally dead.”
Maione stared into the empty air.
“I can’t believe it.”
“But that’s exactly how it is. That’s why I came to find you, even though I knew that I would be ruining your holiday. But now we can finally settle the matter, and restore justice.”
Maione looked at him.
“What are you talking about?”
Now it was Massa’s turn to reach across the table. He grabbed Maione’s hand.
“Don’t you understand? It’s so simple. We have to track down this Biagio and kill him like the dog he is, the same way he did to Luca. I’d have already done it myself, but I was only his godfather; you’re his father, and you have more of a right than I do. If you don’t want to do it, I’ll understand; just tell me and I’ll do it myself. I couldn’t ask for anything better.”
Maione felt as if he were suddenly drunk.
“Would you really do it?”
Massa laughed bitterly.
“Rafe’, there hasn’t been a single day, in these past three and a half years, that I haven’t thought of Luca. I have no children of my own and I haven’t wanted any: that boy was everything to me. I remember him the day he was born, as a toddler, as an adolescent, as a boy and and as a man. We understood each other at a glance, and you know I adored him. Chist’ommo ’e mmerda, that piece of shit, he stole the only real love I ever had in my life. For all these years, I’ve believed it was the brother, and I’ve watched him to make sure that he served his time in prison the way he should, and that’s what I planned to do for the rest of my life, monitoring his punishment day after day. You chose to send him to prison, I would have bitten him to death, chewed him up alive, right there in that cellar. Now, you know the law: you can’t try two different people for the same crime. And what evidence would we have? My testimony, the testimony of a man who pretended to be a priest, and who is also the victim’s godfather?”
Brigadier Maione had to admit that his friend had a point. It was true: the murderer would go scot-free. But he couldn’t let Massa destroy his own life. If someone has to do it, he thought, it should be me. I sent the wrong person to prison; it should be me.
“Let me take care of it, Franco. Let me find him, let me look him in the eye. If I can’t bring myself to do it, I’ll call you straightaway.”
Massa studied him, grim-faced.
“Rafe’, you know that Luca needs to rest in peace. And there can’t be peace for him if his murderer goes unpunished.”
Maione got to his feet.
“I know, Franco. And forgive me if after all this time I’d let myself forget about the grief we share. Thank you, thank you for what you’ve done.”
Massa drained his last glass of wine and stood up in turn.
“I should thank you, for giving me the memory of Luca. It’s been the only fine thing in my life. I’ll wait to hear from you, Rafe’. Let me know.”
And they went their separate ways, without saying goodnight or exchanging wishes for the holiday season, or for anything at all.
But they both knew that this wasn’t going to be a very merry Christmas.
XX
The Sunday before Christmas is a distinctly odd one.
In a way, it’s like any other Sunday, because the church bells ring from early morning on; because it has the usual feel of a holiday, with all the rhythms and manners of those days that artfully pretend to make no demands on your time; because many of the shops are closed and some of the wealthier merchants allow themselves an extra hour of sleep; because the girls plot their clandestine assignations, taking advantage of the fact that Papa or Mamma might send them out to run some errand that they’re feeling too lazy to run themselves.
But it’s more than just a Sunday.
In a way, it’s like a holiday, because the beggars swarm around the churches to put the self-rightous face-to-face with p
overty, confident that it’ll mean a few coins flung in their direction; because vendors of balloons and firecrackers occupy choice locations in the Villa Nazionale, with fingerless gloves and woolen rags wrapped around their faces to ward off the biting wind, attracting children with their merchandise while simultaneously frightening them with their appearance; because the smells of candied almonds, roasted chestnuts, grilled artichokes, and fried pizzas waft through the air to every corner of the city, making mouths water and stomachs growl.
But it’s more than just a holiday.
In a way, it’s Christmas, because the sidewalks are brimming over with articles of every kind for sale, laid out on old sheets, and everyone is selling something, legal or otherwise, the length of every thoroughfare and in all the adjacent alleys and lanes; because the potential customers are thus forced to walk in the street, earning themselves blaring horns and splashes of mud from the passing automobiles and carriages; because the shopkeepers selling fruit and cured meats have prepared huge arches of colorful products, and since it would take hours of work for them to break the displays down, they haven’t shut their doors for days now, and they just stay up all night long chatting with one another, bundled to their noses in blankets and gathering close to the fires in the braziers at their feet; because the big capitone saltwater eels dart and wriggle in large basins painted seawater blue, all along Via Santa Brigida, and every so often one of them manages to slip out onto the street, where the fisherman chases it as it squirms between the feet of squealing women who run away in terror.
But it’s not Christmas yet.
Enrica had decided to accompany her father that morning.
Taking advantage of the fact that it was Sunday, and preparing for the challenging pre-Christmas week of shopping that was about to begin, Giulio Colombo had decided to drop by the store to make sure that the gloves, hats, and canes in the stockroom were sufficient in number to keep pace with the hoped-for surge in holiday gift sales. Thirty years of experience in this line of work had taught him that when people were at a loss for a last-minute gift idea, these were often the kinds of products they turned to. It was therefore advisable to order plenty of stock, especially for the lower-priced items. People were struggling, and how: no matter how many articles claiming the contrary the newspapers liked to print.
By My Hand Page 10