Ricciardi thought about it. A bridge joining the world of the living with the world of the dead. If he himself had been a shepherd in the scene, they would have placed him squarely in the middle of that bridge.
Those thoughts aside, in any case, the symbolism of the manger scene struck him as quite intricate. It would be much harder than he’d anticipated to understand just what the murderer had been trying to convey by breaking the statuette of Saint Joseph. Provided he had been trying to say anything at all.
“What about the characters, Padre? Do they have meanings, too?”
Don Pierino nodded.
“Naturally, Commissario. You see the market, in the background? Each character represents a month. January is the butcher, February is the man selling ricotta, and so on, all the way round to December, which is represented by the fishmonger. There are twelve of them. The gypsy girl, with her basket full of iron tools, predicts the future, while the iron symbolizes Jesus’s fate, to die on the cross. The man sleeping on the ground by the flock of sheep . . . this story is a choice one . . . represents the fact that the coming of Christ woke us from the sleep of ignorance to the true faith. He therefore symbolizes the stupid, and he has always been called, by popular tradition, Benito. Well, these days, for obvious reasons, no one calls him that anymore. Now they just call him ‘the sleeping shepherd.’ But everyone knows his real name, and they all just cover their mouths and laugh.”
This still wasn’t the information that Ricciardi needed.
“Padre, what about the Holy Family? Does it have a symbolism, too: a significance?”
Don Pierino spread his open hands.
“Of course it does, Commissario. Forgive me if I’ve been rattling on, I could talk about the manger scene for hours. The Holy Family, naturally: Baby Jesus, childhood, wisdom, candor and innocence. The Madonna, motherhood, intercession, purity. Saint Joseph—”
Ricciardi bore in.
“Saint Joseph?”
“Saint Joseph, Commissario, represents a number of different things. He’s the most human, being neither a virgin mother nor a son of God. He’s a man, and in fact, as you can see, he’s dressed as a shepherd. But he’s also the putative father of Jesus, as well as a carpenter. For Christianity he represents, in addition to fatherhood, hard work, the labor that life demands of us so that we can raise our children, daily sacrifice.”
Ricciardi asked the question he’d been wanting to put to the priest since the beginning.
“And, in your opinion, Padre, if someone profaned just that one statuette in a nativity scene, the one of Saint Joseph, what might that mean?”
Don Pierino raised his hand to his chin and stroked it, thoughtfully.
“It’s certainly not a very nice thing to do, Commissario. I have no idea. I believe that the reference would have to be to work, and to fatherhood. Someone who wished to express their unhappiness at having been stripped of one of those two rights, especially the right to work, to earn a living. Saint Joseph is the patron saint of workers. That’s all I can tell you.”
The commissario stood for a long time staring at the manger scene of the church of San Ferdinando, illuminated by a thousand tiny lightbulbs and by the candles lit by the faithful. Graces asked and received, wishes, symbols, saints: what a complicated city, he thought.
“Thank you, Padre. I’m grateful. I may come bother you again, we’re working on a rather complex case.”
Don Pierino smiled at him, blissfully.
“It’s always a delight to see you, as far as I’m concerned, Commissario. You know what I think of you: in your heart there’s more love than you could even imagine. See you soon, come back whenever you like.”
Don Pierino walked the commissario all the way outside, to the front steps of the church. Before taking his leave, Ricciardi turned to face the priest and said:
“Padre, one last thing: Why was Saint Sebastian killed with so many arrows?”
Don Pierino scratched his head.
“Saint Sebastian, did you say? One of the earliest martyrs. He was the head of the guards of Diocletian, a Roman emperor who was a terrible persecutor of the Christians. Sebastian converted to Christianity, and when the emperor found out, he had him tied to a pole and shot full of arrows by a platoon of archers. That’s why he’s depicted that way, with all the arrows sticking out of him. And that’s why he’s the patron saint—”
“Of the militia, yes, I know. Thanks again, Padre. Your help is always invaluable.”
And he left, followed by the gazes of the priest and of a woman hidden behind a metal roller blind that was lowered halfway.
XXII
Bambinella went to Mass regularly.
He’d been going since he was a little boy, every blessed Sunday, and sometimes in the middle of the week, if for any reason he wanted to feel closer to God.
He remembered, in particular, a priest from when he was ten years old or so, and he already felt different from the other little boys his age. That difference was familiar and recognizable, something the city had always accommodated, but a difference nonetheless, and children, as we know, can be terribly cruel. Bambinella took refuge where the other boys lacked the courage to pursue him, and spent his time in the comfortable coolness, surrounded by the scent of incense.
That priest would sit beside him and talk with him as if he were a grown-up. He’d talk to him about life, about how hard life could be. Bambinella didn’t understand at the time, but now that he thought back on it, he thought that perhaps Don Corrado—that had been the priest’s name—was speaking to him about his own difference, even though the priest had chosen another way of living it. Bambinella had liked that priest. Maybe he’d even fallen in love with him, though nothing ever came of it.
It wasn’t long after that that men first started reaching out to him, touching him, and Bambinella discovered that it was easier for her to be a woman than a man, easier than trying to conceal her true nature, which expressed itself forcefully in her graceful movements, her long eyelashes, her large brown eyes, and her tender heart.
Still, she continued to attend Mass, because of how comforting she found the dim light, the smell of incense, and the memory of that priest who would sit and talk to her for hours. She would go early, to the first service, the seven o’clock Mass. The other attendees were typically those who worked on Sunday and could not attend the later services, along with the elderly religious fanatics who started praying in the front pews and stayed there until nightfall, reciting countless rosaries between one Mass and another, and gossiping under their breath at regular intervals.
Bambinella knew everyone, and she knew everyone’s personal history. Her profession was accepted as one of the facts of life, and in a microcosm in which social differences were determined solely by the ability to procure food at least once a day, she was even considered a privileged citizen. And since she was always willing to help those who were in serious trouble, she had eventually become a confidant to one and all, a spider at the center of an immense web of gossip that covered the entire city.
No one knew or remembered Bambinella’s real name, because as a boy he’d lived on the streets, homeless and without a family, sleeping and eating wherever chance offered; but the song by Viviani that had given him his name was so beautiful and famous that it fit him like a second skin. Bambinella, from above the Spanish Quarter.
The people out on the street at seven in the morning on a Sunday were few and largely complicitous. The lanes and vicoli in the neighborhood, usually thronged with people and cluttered with goods, stretched out at that hour in a dim gray silence, broken only by the whistling wind and the sudden rays of sunlight momentarally released by the black clouds scudding across the sky overhead. Bambinella’s clicking heels announced her arrival from afar, and here and there smiles appeared under the visors of flat caps pressed low or from behind the lapels of overcoats stitched an
d patched so many times that they’d become as threadbare as an old shirt. A wave or a nod from a distance, like in a small town, before the day began and the city starting spinning giddily like a whirpool, revolving around an empty center.
As she climbed the last flight of cold, dark stairs to her apartment, wrapped in the long overcoat from which only her black stockings and high heels protruded, Bambinella found herself face-to-face with a sight that she’d never have expected: sitting on the top step, his face in his hands, was none other than Brigadier Maione.
“Ooh, Madonna mia, Brigadie’, what a fright you gave me! I thought you might be a thug or a hooligan! What are you doing sitting here in the early morning, in this cold, if you don’t mind my asking? You’re likely to catch your death! Up, up, come inside.”
Maione’s face was covered with stubble and showed all the signs of a night without sleep.
“Hey, Bambine’, you’re finally home. But where do you go this early on a Sunday morning, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Theirs was an odd and confidential friendship. Once, years earlier, Bambinella had been arrested with a group of prostitutes who were trolling for customers not far from the Teatro San Carlo. Her beauty and youth contrasted clearly with the appearance of the other hookers, whose advanced age kept them out of the warm, safe authorized brothels, of which there were hundreds in the city. When the reason that Bambinella couldn’t have hoped for such a position either became evident, Maione let her go, prompted by an impulse that he still didn’t fully understand today. Perhaps it was a simple desire for consistency, since that strange long-legged creature was so different from the other whores caught in the sweep, with her broad shoulders and her slightly horsey features.
They’d established an odd friendship; Maione soon realized Bambinella’s immense potential as a source of information, and the femminiello, or fetching young transvestite, had become fond of the gruff policeman who was oblivious to his own weakness.
And so every time he hit a wall during an investigation into some crime, or whenever there was a sensitive piece of information that needed to be checked out, Maione endured the immensely fatiguing climb all the way up to the garret apartment behind Vicolo di San Nicola da Tolentino, with its terrace covered with pigeon guano, where Bambinella practiced her profession. The center of the spiderweb.
“Brigadie’, what a romantic gesture: a suitor waiting outside the door of his lady love, early in the morning on the Sunday before Christmas. A girl comes home from Mass and who does she find? This strapping handsome man waiting for her. Not even at the moving picture house could I hope to see such a touching story!”
Maione rubbed his eyes, in an attempt to clear his head.
“And in fact you’re not seeing it here either. Listen, Bambine’, spare me the chitchat, this morning I have a headache you could photograph. I haven’t slept a wink. I told my wife that I had something important to do for work and I went out, before she had a chance to start peppering me with questions.”
Bambinella put her hands with their long painted fingernails over her mouth, in a gesture that couldn’t have been more feminine.
“Ooh, mamma mia, then it must be something serious! I’d better make you a cup of ersatz coffee first thing; that’ll help you to get over your headache. Have you already eaten your breakfast? I have a tray of roccocò and mustacciuoli, a client of mine who works in a pastry shop in the center of town brought them for me, would you like some?”
Maione grimaced.
“For Pete’s sake, that’s all I need now, a tray of roccocò first thing in the morning, you might as well just take me directly to the Pellegrini hospital. Just an ersatz coffee, please: it’s filthy stuff, but at least it’ll scrub the foul taste out of my mouth.”
Bambinella snickered as she set to work at her stove.
“You’re always so kind, grazie, Brigadie’. I know what you meant to say. ‘Bambine’, the way you make ersatz coffee, with those golden hands of yours, no one else comes close.’ And if you only knew what else I know how to do, with these golden hands of mine; just think that a client of mine, who’s a butcher in Torretta, says that my hand could wake up a dead man, especially when—”
“Bambine’, please,” Maione broke in brusquely, “I can take anything this morning, except for you confiding in me about your work. Moreover, if you make me think about what you do with your hands, then I’m going to have a hard time keeping this ersatz coffee down, so let’s just drop it.”
“Whatever you say, Brigadie’. It’s just that a girl likes to share certain professional accomplishments, every one in a while, at least with her friends. Well, to what do I owe the honor of your visit, so early on a Sunday morning? I don’t recall us ever meeting before on this day of the week. And we’re almost in the midst of the Christmas festivities. Ah, let me guess: it’s about what happened in Mergellina, is that it? Husband and wife, the man from the port militia, no?”
Maione shook his head, stunned.
“Incredible. But you’re illiterate, and if you don’t know how to read you couldn’t have read it in the papers. Do you mind telling me how you found out?”
Bambinella scratched the hairs that kept sprouting up on the backs of her hands, which she’d so carefully shaved.
“Ah, Brigadie’, by chance, purely by chance. I have a few girlfriends who ply their trade over at the Torretta brothel, you remember the place, one time you and I went over together to question one of them who happened to have some piece of information—I can’t even remember what, but it was something you needed, I know that much. Well, they also work with fishermen sometimes, and with the local loan sharks. Of course, it’s not like the fishermen can pay much, but they do bring them fresh fish and the girls eat them, even though the madam yells at them when they cook in their rooms because she says that a bordello ought to smell like roses, not fried fish . . .”
Maione lifted both hands in the air.
“For the love of all things holy, Bambine’: just once, stick to the topic. I’m in a condition today to chase you through all the vicoli in the city. Let’s just discuss the facts.”
Bambinella put on a fake pout, pooching out her painted lips.
“Bad, bad Brigadier, why won’t you let me talk the way I want to? Anyway, I met one of those girls and she told that all anyone’s been talking about is the murder of this . . . what’s his name . . . Garofalo, I think. And that people are saying lots of things about him.”
“Well? What are they saying?”
Bambinella giggled coquettishly, her long fingers covering her mouth.
“Ooh, Jesus, how would I know? It’s not like I took the time to ask about it, I didn’t know that you and the handsome green-eyed commissario, the one who brings bad luck, were working the murder. If I had, I would have found out more, naturally.”
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times,” Maione snapped, “I don’t like it when you say that the commissario brings bad luck! First of all, it isn’t true, and besides anyone who thinks that needs to come say it to my face, that way I can knock it out of their mouth, along with their teeth, once and for all!”
Bambinella fluttered her false eyelashes.
“But I say it on purpose just to see you lose your temper. Mamma mia, Brigadie’, you know how much it excites me to see a manly man get angry like that.”
“Bambine’, you insist on kidding around but I’m here about very serious matters,” Maione replied wearily. “Now listen to me carefully, we have no time to waste and there are two things I have to ask you. First, you need to go see your girlfriends at Torretta right away and find out everything they know or have heard about this Garofalo. Above all whether anyone had it in for him or had threatened him.”
Bambinella listened, taking noisy little sips of her ersatz coffee from a Chinese-style demitasse, her right pinky extended, red fingernail protrud
ing into the empty air.
“And the second thing, Brigadie’?”
Maione furrowed his brow. He didn’t like what he was about to do, and it was something he’d never done before: use a professional tool for personal ends. He took a deep breath, then said:
“I need something else. This is highly confidential, Bambine’, no one else can know, absolutely no one. I need you to find for me a certain Biagio Candela. He ought to be young, very young. I couldn’t tell you what he does or where he lives, but I need you to track him down. But I can tell you that his brother, who was named . . . is named Mario, Mario Candela, is in prison, at Poggioreale.”
Bambinella listened raptly, her eyes fixed on the brigadier’s, her face expressionless. Then she nodded her head and said, in a low voice, free of her usual affectations:
“I know who Mario Candela is, Brigadie’. I also know that he was killed last week, in a prison brawl. And of course I know why he was in prison, among other things.”
She paused, caressing the back of her hand against the grain of the hairs.
“You shave them, and you shave them, but they always grow back, these hairs. That’s just the way nature is, no, Brigadie’? You can’t keep it hidden. A girl can fight it, but nature doesn’t change. Are you sure that you want to track down this Biagio Candela? Have you thought it over carefully?”
By My Hand Page 12