The brigadier threw both arms wide: “Well, tell me all about it, this light of day. That way we’ll both know what you’re talking about.”
Bambinella once again put her hands together.
“Well then, Brigadie’, a few years ago, maybe it was two, the professor happened to be examining a girl who was working in the Speranzella bordello. You know the place, it’s on the cheap side: students, soldiers, sailors, that kind of clientele; a line stretching down the stairs, the madam at the cash register, and four or five rooms for the whores. This one was very young, not even eighteen, and she came from a neighboring town; she’d been a maid, then she’d been fired because the master of the house had lost his head for her and his wife had figured it out. In short, a girl has to eat, she wasn’t welcome back home, and so she found a position at the bordello.”
Maione laughed: “Sure she did, she found a position, as if they’d hired her at city hall. Well, all right, go on.”
“As you know, in our line of work we run certain health risks, so to speak; in a luxury bordello they provide medical care, in second-rate bordellos, that’s more rare. To make a long story short, she caught an unpleasant disease and went to the hospital. The professor, as I heard from a girlfriend of mine who’d been at boarding school with the girl, noticed her as she was being examined by one of his assistants, and was struck dumb. He insisted on taking over her case and they began seeing each other. Then he took her out of the bordello and set her up in a little apartment all her own in Vomero. He bought an exclusive on her, in other words.”
Maione sighed: it wasn’t an uncommon thing for wealthy men to indulge in that pastime: purchasing the lives of very young girls.
“I want the girl’s given name, surname, and address.”
“Don’t you even want to hear how the story ends? Anyway, the guagliona’s name is Teresa Luongo, but everyone knows her as Sisinella. She lives in Vomero, on a street that crosses Corso Scarlatti, which I happen to know because a customer of mine who sells vegetables in that neighborhood sees her come and go. But now she’ll have to find another special client.”
“You said that there’s more to the story?”
“For the past few months, there’s been a rumor going around that Sisinella has a sweetheart. Another one, that is, aside from the professor. A musician who plays the pianino, you know, the ones who go around town selling sheet music.”
Maione narrowed his eyes: “Were they seen together?”
“No, no, a girl who’s lucky enough to be kept by a rich man doesn’t gamble that away for love, Brigadie’. No one saw them. Still, the young man buzzes around her relentlessly, and he sighs and sings. When someone looks up at a window, sighs, and sings, there’s usually a good reason for it.”
“I see. And what’s the singer’s name?”
“Now let me think . . . his name is Tore. Salvatore Cortese. A handsome young man, from what I hear.”
Maione got to his feet: “All right, you’ve told me enough. But don’t be surprised if I drop by again, because it strikes me that this is one of those cases where you open one door and you find two more.” As he was about to leave, he stopped for a moment and turned around: “One last thing, Bambine’. Do you know a certain Pianese, Ferdinando Pianese, Via Toledo, no. 270?”
Bambinella furrowed her brow: “Why, what does he have to with what happened to the professor? What has Fefè done?”
Maione pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead: “Nothing, he has nothing to do with it. It’s a completely different matter. So, you know him?”
“Why, who doesn’t know Fefè? He’s a mouthpiece, a two-bit lawyer who never has work. He lets himself be kept by a couple of old biddies he flatters, and spends all his money on cards and women. Every once in a while he comes to pay a call on one of us, too, or he invites us out to one of his parties that go on all night long. A guy who likes to have a good time, in other words. But why do you ask, Brigadie’?”
“Nothing, no reason. It’s just a name that came up in another investigation, money that was involved in the numbers racket.”
“Typical of Fefè, some little old lady must have died and until he finds a replacement he’s trying his luck. He’s not a bad-hearted boy, but he does have his weaknesses, and he’s no match for temptation.”
Maione feigned nonchalance: “Weaknesses? What weaknesses?”
“Oh, he likes to drink, for one thing, and he likes to go to the racetrack. But I’m surprised to hear that he might be involved in the numbers racket, it must mean he finally figured out that you can’t get rich betting on the ponies. But his biggest weakness, the one he spends most of his money on, is clothing: he’s a dandy, he certainly doesn’t skimp on fine fabrics. And then there’s his other weakness, the reason he dresses so elegantly in the first place.”
“What reason is that?” Maione asked, immediately regretting the question.
Bambinella replied: “Blonde women. He’s just crazy about blondes.”
And she burst out laughing.
XXVIII
Mastro Nicola Coviello finished polishing the brooch with a rag and then laid it on the workbench beneath a ray of light that angled in through the low open door.
And he sighed.
He always sighed, when he finished a project. It was a form of detachment, an instant of relaxation after the pangs of birth. He imagined that women must do just what he did, he who kept inside him, sometimes for a long time, something that was at first only an idea, an image, until he started working on it, shaping the cold, inert, soulless material. And little by little, something began to emerge, something perhaps even more beautiful than the vague idea he’d had in the beginning; finally he polished it, worked away all the sharp edges, eliminated the imperfections, until he found himself holding a piece of jewelry that was complete unto itself, with an aesthetic autonomy that transcended the heart and soul of whoever had commissioned it.
Obviously Mastro Nicola didn’t think of it in these exact words: in his life, he’d only worked, he’d never had the chance to cultivate an emotional vocabulary with books and music. Still, he had a strong aesthetic sense, and he knew when the time had come for an object he’d made with his able hands to begin its own life. But he couldn’t ward off a hint of sadness when that time came.
Mastro Nicola liked his profession. He’d always liked it, ever since he was a child and would spend hours playing at the foot of the bench on which a distant cousin worked; that cousin had imparted to him the rudiments of the art. His father was a fisherman, but the proximity of the goldsmiths’ borgo to the port had created an incongruous contiguity between those two very different activities, and as a result both professions were practiced in many families.
Nicola didn’t like fishing, and even though the sea appealed to him, it frightened him too; the sea had swallowed up his father. One day, after a terrible storm, the boat his father had sailed out in with three other fishermen was found drifting, empty. That was not the life for him.
Far easier and safer to craft precious metals, the profession that constituted the other pillar of the borgo. And since the son of Gaetano the fisherman showed enormous talent and applied himself assiduously, it wasn’t hard for him to wangle an apprenticeship.
Nicola himself, however, didn’t especially like apprentices; they were generally careless and lazy, they failed to reserve for their work that sense of the sacred that he demanded. But they were a necessary evil: the unwritten code of the goldsmiths demanded that the profession and the skills that went with it be handed down and kept within the bounds of their guild. Every workshop passed from one generation to the next, following a line of descent not always governed by ties of blood.
An apprentice necessarily ought to be involved with what his master is doing, but Nicola liked to have his little secrets. He worked on different objects in different moods, and he transfused his hidd
en temperament into whatever he was shaping.
To see him from without, his body deformed by constant work, he gave the impression of a sad man, introverted, taciturn to the point almost of mutism, but from his large, skilled hands came veritable masterpieces of the goldsmith’s art, jewelry that never failed to elicit marvel and admiration in the salons where it was worn.
Nothing, thought Nicola as he looked at the brooch. Almost always, those who received one of his creations as a gift understood nothing. Rich, spoiled women, illicit lovers, proud kept women who showed off his creations as if they were trophies, investitures, symbols of the role each played alongside wealthy, coarse men. Money. These jewels—fragments of the sky and the stars, the results of subtle, delicate invention and technique—were only as valuable as the money that had been paid for them. How squalid.
The brooch multiplied the shaft of sunlight it captured into a thousand glinting rays, illuminating Nicola’s gloomy workshop like some tiny star.
Sergio, the apprentice, let out a soft whistle. He alone among the apprentices had been able to keep up with the incredible pace demanded by Coviello. He’d been working with him for almost a year, but he still couldn’t help being surprised whenever he witnessed the ritual first display of a finished piece of jewelry. He murmured: “Mamma mia, Mastro Nico’, it’s so beautiful! Look at it, it seems to be made of light!
Nicola continued his critical inspection of the object: a fleur-de-lis reversed; flat, antique cut diamonds, gold-filled or doublé d’or, in a collet setting; fine sheet fretwork, welded and engraved in a detailed pebbling. Springing from the lily petals, each of which housed a series of diamonds decreasing in size toward the center, were gold stalks, each in turn supporting a natural pearl. On the reverse, a gold pin with an ornate fastener. Not bad, thought Nicola. Not bad.
Then, the face of the man who had commissioned that piece of work appeared in his mind, a fat, ignorant shipowner who had grown wealthy on the backs of hundreds of longshoremen, and who would be pinning that tiny masterpiece on the chest of the equally oafish peasant woman he’d married. Nicola’s brooch would end up being gazed upon by dozens of half-wits, who would only have one question: how much had it cost?
As always, the thought put him in a foul mood. He gestured to Sergio to take over the polishing and then to put the brooch away in its case; he’d already lost interest in it. Once again, the battle against the inert resistance of matter had been won.
He shoved the heavy workbench into the best light, then went over to the monumental gray safe that took up a substantial portion of the room. He pulled out the key, turned it in the lock, rotated the burnished metal handle, and extracted a package from the interior. The young man handed him the brooch in its case and Nicola put it back on one of the shelves, closing the door; he turned to Sergio and told him he could go. His apprentice had seen enough for one day.
Once the young man had respectfully ducked his head and left the shop, Nicola unwrapped the package on the workbench. The dark wood welcomed the black velvet at the center of which lay the piece on which Mastro Nicola had been working, always alone, for months.
His mind went to Professor Iovine del Castello, to his face, and to the expression he’d glimpsed behind the gold-rimmed spectacles when he’d delivered the two rings to him. Had he told the whole story to that commissario with his strange eyes that looked like a pair of flawless emeralds, and to the oversized brigadier? No, perhaps he hadn’t.
Maybe he should have told them about the chilly glance with which the professor had opened the case meant for his wife and the loving tenderness with which he’d peered into the case for the other woman. The way he’d extracted this second ring, with the bigger stone, from its case and had held it up into the light, so he could make sure the name engraved on the interior had been spelled correctly. How those hands, with their soft manicured fingers, like a woman’s, had hefted the weight and tested the surface of the stone’s setting.
Maybe he should have told them how much love went into the second gift, and how little—none at all, really—went into the first.
It would be pointless to try to explain to the policemen the differences that can be detected in people who commission a piece of jewelry, he mused as he stared at the tools lined up on the workbench: it’s a matter of gazes, of tones of voice, not money. He who puts his meager funds into the hands of the goldsmith might be making a greater sacrifice than the man who lavishes a vast sum, but perhaps only to assuage a dirty conscience. Pointless to explain to a pair of policemen, their hearts hardened by the violence they encounter and the violence they’re obliged to inflict, just how much love it take to extract emotions from metal.
He stroked the tools that were extensions of his hands, that made his every gesture delicate and soft. The knurl, the perloir, the flat chisel, the gemstone-setting tools, the graving tools, the burins with oval-section wooden handles.
The sun was setting; he’d work deep into the night by the light of a gas lamp. In the end, he’d lose his eyesight just as he’d lost his stature, the shape of his spinal cord, plenty of friends, and any chance of a woman in his life. But the beauty that sprang from his fingertips was more than adequate compensation.
He brushed his fingers over the object to which he’d devoted so much attention. A goldsmith, my dear professor, is very different from a surgeon, even if both work with their hands, and with an intense focus, even if the mistakes of both are irreversible, and the outcomes both produce are unmistakable. You surgeons, professor, are required to try equally hard no matter what part of the body you’re operating on, whoever that body part may belong to. A goldsmith, on the other hand, can devote lesser or greater consideration to a job, depending on how much he cares about it. You all are doctors, professor. We are artists.
He picked up his long graver. He slid his finger along the blade, he tested the tip. No sharpening required. He heard his cousin’s voice echoing down from three decades ago: take care of your tools, guaglio’; your tools are the first thing. And the light. The right light.
It depends on who hires you, professor. Your work was brought to you: they’d summon you urgently and either you fixed the broken machinery or else you watched it grind to a halt. Not me. I can decide whether or not I like the piece of jewelry I’m called upon to make, whether I like the person who gives me the material, or the money.
He looked down at the object lying before him, and it gleamed back at him, a cautious golden glow. Its beauty was absolute: but it failed to extract so much as a smile from him.
It won’t be long, he said to himself. It won’t be long now till it’s finished.
He spared a thought for the person for whom the piece was meant, a thought of distant tenderness.
And he started filing away again at the fluting of the golden flame, working with fine, patient gestures.
XXIX
My dear papà,
what a magnificent place this island is! How green, how blue, and what wonderful smiles I receive from everyone when they see me in the road, leading my line of little girls!
If it weren’t for how much I miss you all, and you especially, my sweet papà, I’d certainly say that as the days pass and I become more accustomed to the courtesy of the inhabitants, I’m beginning to think that this really is heaven on earth.
People like us, dear papà, are far better suited to life in a place like this than in the big city. Here people talk in low voices and when there’s a lull in conversation, they listen to nature, which never stops singing its song; in the city, people never stop running around, morning, noon, and night, and whether they shout or sit silent, they never find a good middle ground. You’d really like it here, believe me. It would be worth considering a vacation: perhaps even mamma might calm down in a place like this.
Life flows like always, here in the summer colony, punctuated by the day’s schedules and by whatever might come up. We�
�ve started a new project for the celebration of the Festival of St. Anne: the girls, under my supervision, will embroider a panel depicting the saint in conversation with her daughter, Mary. The boys, with their teacher, Maestra Carla, will build the wooden frame to hold the embroidered panel. We will donate the resulting creation, if we finish it all in time, to the little church of the bay of Cartaromana. If you could only see how hard the little scamps work, dear papà! And the girls, even the naughtiest ones, are doing their best. At night, after they go to sleep, I work on it a little myself, helping the embroidery along, but without overdoing it: I don’t want them to realize it, that would undermine the satisfaction of doing it themselves.
I try to stay as busy as I can to keep from thinking about you know what. I want the sacrifice of this distance to be justified by the remastering of my heart. The girls help me a great deal, and Maestra Carla, with whom I’ve established a genuine friendship, keeps me good company.
The one source of disagreement with her is our differing opinions concerning an officer in the German army, a certain Manfred, who is here for the mud baths. He comes every morning to the beach where we take the children, because he paints landscapes (though I’ve never been able to see them, since he always keeps the canvas turned toward himself). We met him under strange circumstances: he dove in and pulled one of the little girls out of the water, not because she was in any danger, but simply because she refused to come out. Since that day, for one reason or another, this gentleman insists on greeting us and speaking to us. I think Carla flirts with him a little, and he is always courteous and never more than that, but I find him somewhat annoying and, according to Carla, I show my irritation with unnecessary harshness.
I have to admit that he is one of those men that girls tend to like: blond hair, tall, with a nice smile and all the rest. But I don’t know how to further my friend Carla’s hopes, except by keeping to myself as much as possible.
The Bottom of Your Heart Page 16