“Yes, he lives nearby. His name is Salvatore Cortese, and he sells copielle, sheet music for songs, and he travels around the city with his pianino. But he wants to be a singer, he has a beautiful voice.”
“And do you know where this friend of yours was, on Thursday night?”
Sisinella didn’t answer for a long time. She stared at Maione, as if trying to read his mind. Her lips were pressed together, and her hands tormented her rings. Then, in a firm voice, she replied: “He was here, Brigadie’. He was here with me, that night.”
XXXI
The funicular that carried them back down toward the center of town was populated by a different crowd than the one that had taken them up into the hills. Now, for the most part, the passengers consisted of well dressed young men out to have themselves a good time in fashionable bars and clubs.
Maione turned to Ricciardi, pensively: “Well, then, Commissa’, now we have another hypothetical tosser of professors out of windows: the secret boyfriend of the lovely Sisinella.”
Ricciardi looked out at the darkness of the tunnel through the carriage window.
“I don’t know. I wonder what interest the young man might have. After all, Luongo’s economic welfare came in handy for him too.”
Maione replied, somberly: “What about jealousy, Commissa’? Can you imagine the thought of your woman with another man? Someone else’s hands on her skin, someone else’s eyes seeing her . . . the way that they shouldn’t, someone else’s ears hearing certain words? Jealousy’s a nasty beast, Commissa’. A big nasty beast.”
Maione’s tone of voice, more than his actual words, made Ricciardi turn to look at the brigadier.
“Certainly, I can imagine it. But jealousy, my dear Raffaele, needs to have some basis in reality. There should be evidence, the same as in the work we do. This Cortese met Sisinella after the professor, not before him. Now, let’s go ahead and imagine that he had decided to get rid of him, that he wanted to put an end to the girl’s relationship with Iovine, benefits or no benefits. All they’d have needed to say to the professor was that he could have his apartment, his furniture, and his jewelry back, and they could have gone on their merry way, couldn’t they? What could the professor have said to them? They even had the tools to blackmail him by telling his wife and everyone at the university that the professor had such a young lover. They could have ruined him. Why kill him? It doesn’t make sense.”
Maione insisted: “What about a burst of rage, Commissa’? Maybe Cortese had gone to tell the professor exactly that, and the other man insulted him or refused to let the girl go; so he threw him out the window.”
“Certainly, it’s possible. But given the condition of the room and the marks on Iovine’s body, that doesn’t add up to me. If you have a fight like that, you raise your voice, you break things: you don’t just grab someone and throw him straight out the window. No one heard a thing, we didn’t find anything out of place, the victim had no marks on his body, aside from the scratches on his back and the marks on his neck where the murderer grabbed him. Does it strike you that there could have been a struggle?”
Maione shrugged his shoulders: “There are still too many things we don’t know. But what fits best with the picture you’re painting, Commissa’, is someone who went there expressly to kill him, someone like the Wolf, who’d sworn he would, or the guy from the clinic, who wrote that letter. The sad thing is that, as usual, the deeper you dig the more people you find with a good reason to want someone dead. What a mess humanity is.”
It was dark by the time they got back to headquarters. The next day was Sunday, their day off. Maione offered to continue questioning witnesses but Ricciardi said no: “I don’t think that’s necessary, Raffaele. Neither one, the Wolf nor the doctor, has any interest in running away, it would amount to a confession. Let’s start up again Monday; maybe we can meet and talk it over first. I’m going by the office now to organize some papers and then I’ll head home. You go ahead, and put your mind at rest.”
The brigadier headed off reluctantly. Ricciardi was thinking about his strange demeanor when the policeman standing watch at the front entrance came over to him, agitatedly: “Buonasera, Commissa’. You need to head over urgently to Pellegrini Hospital. They’ve already called three times.”
XXXII
Maione was dragging his feet.
There was no respite from the heat, even after sunset. In fact, it got worse.
If by day you could blame the sunlight, that terrible pitiless light that showed no mercy, that wounded eyes and skin and made you wish you could just soak in a basin full of ice water, or made you dream of the worst possible winter, with downpours and windstorms, anything rather than that inferno without peace; if by day you could put the blame on the damned cowardly sun, which extended its fiery fingers down into even the hidden spots where you might hope to find a hint of cool shade; if by day you could complain and hope to find some reciprocal understanding in cafés and in the atriums of the apartment buildings; by night, when the light, the sun, and the scorching heat might all have been expected to retreat, then the suffering was simply too much to bear.
So just think, the brigadier said to himself, how it is if the soul is torn with grief.
Maione was worried. Worried that his anxiety would be visible, that his sadness would show to the outside world. He expected the women who put their chairs outside, in the street, seeking respite from the muggy heat of the bassi and launching into the endless conversations with their neighbors that would last until dawn, to say to him: Buonasera, Brigadie’, what happened? You have an expression on your face that’s too terrible to even look at.
Instead, no one noticed a thing. Everything seemed perfectly normal.
At last he arrived, after beating every record for slowness. The stairs, the children staging the usual ambush; the hello, the girls kneading dough, Lucia at the stove. Everything as it always was. He went into the bedroom to take off his uniform and his sweat-soaked shirt, and his gaze fell on Lucia’s purse, which wasn’t in its usual place. I don’t want to see it, thought Maione. I don’t want to notice that her purse is on the chair instead of in the armoire.
In the kitchen the usual cheerful atmosphere prevailed. Lucia said to him: “Hey, how did your day go? Are you tired?”
Impossible that they can’t see it on my face, thought Maione.
“A little, yes. We went to Vomero to question someone, and we took the funicular. How about you?”
A moment’s hesitation. Just an instant, or had it been an illusion?
“Me? Yes, I went out, this afternoon. I went to buy a couple pairs of shoes, for Maria and Benedetta, the old ones were falling apart.”
Really? With what money?
“And right nearby, I found a great deal on shirts for you, Raffae’. You need lighter fabric, in this heat. Maybe I’ll buy you some tomorrow.”
Was this just a way of assuaging her conscience? In Maione’s mind, through a link that was at first wholly subconscious but which then caused a sharp pang in his stomach, he saw Sisinella in her nice apartment, with all her dresses and jewelry. Money. Money, comfort. I knew it wouldn’t last forever.
“No, thanks. I don’t need them, I’m happy with the ones I have, if you have time to iron them.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? When have you ever found your shirts left unironed?”
Little Immacolata whined: “Papà, you know that mammà goes out and won’t take me with her?”
Maria mocked her: “Mammà goes out . . . and why should she always take you with her? You’re a big girl now. You see that you aren’t even ticklish anymore?”
And she scratched her on the belly; the little one laughed and spat out some of her pasta.
Maione slammed his fist violently down on the table, making all the plates bounce and knocking over a couple of glasses: “That’s enough! That’s enough, I
said! How on earth were you raised, in this house? Can’t a poor man get some peace and quiet the one time all day he sits down to eat at his own table like a civilized human being? All of you, go to your rooms. On an empty stomach, without dinner! And I don’t want to hear a fly buzz!”
Around the table, seven pairs of eyes as large as saucers stared at him. The littlest one started to cry and Maria took her in her arms, continuing to stare at her father with a frightened gaze shot through with reproach. The six children left the room, heads bowed, leaving six plates full of food.
Lucia’s blue eyes were wide open in astonishment, and her lips were pressed tight. Their economic situation must truly be dire if it led her husband to an outburst like that, something that he had never done in all their years together, not even in the terrible days following Luca’s death.
Maione stood up. His chin was quivering with rage; a muscle was twitching uncontrollably on his jaw.
He opened his mouth to speak, staring dementedly at his wife. Then he turned on his heel and went to get his jacket.
He’d better go out.
XXXIII
Ricciardi was out of breath when he arrived at Pellegrini Hospital. He’d tried to call back, but the switchboard operator had told him that Dr. Modo was in the midst of an urgent procedure and couldn’t come to the phone; would the commissario care to try again later?
No, the commissario chose to hurry over to the large gray building at the center of the Pignasecca quarter. Along the way, he did his best to imagine what could have happened. An urgent procedure? Could someone be operating on him right now? What kind of trouble had Bruno gotten himself into this time? He was well aware of how his friend, especially after a glass or two, tended to uninhibitedly express his political opinions, which in that period could easily be branded “subversive,” to use the usual euphemism. The Fascists must finally have beaten him bloody. This time there was no way around it.
When Ricciardi entered the ward, he was tremendously surprised to see the doctor walking toward him, without a scratch on him.
“Bruno? But what . . . they told me that . . .”
His friend took him by the arm: “Ricciardi, at last. I’ve been trying to find you since this afternoon. Where were you?”
The commissario was bewildered.
“I was in Vomero, on a case. What’s going on. Are you all right?”
Modo had taken him into a corner; the eyes of the patients and a few visitors were fixed on them.
“Listen, Ricciardi. Today, around three, from what I’ve been able to gather, your tata had a stroke.”
Ricciardi felt as if he’d just been plunged into the worst possible nightmare.
“A stroke? Rosa? What kind of a stroke? Where is she now? I have to hurry home and see her!”
Bruno restrained him: “She’s not there. We’ve hospitalized her here.”
The commissario, who in the past several days had been seriously worrying over Rosa’s state of health, discovered to his horror that he was completely unprepared to lose her. Rosa was strong. Rosa was an oak tree. Rosa was indestructible. This must be somebody’s idea of a joke.
He clutched the doctor’s arm in a convulsive grip: “What are you saying, Bruno? Now . . . now . . . you can save her, you can save her, can’t you? Because you’re a good doctor, you’re the best there is, and you’ll save her, I know you will . . .”
Modo’s face was twisted with sorrow for his friend. Ricciardi the perennially understated one, Ricciardi who never wept or laughed, Ricciardi so bitterly ironic before all human misery, now here he was sniffling like a terrified child, clutching him as if Modo were his last hope, no different from any of the other family members who came to him every day to ask him to work miracles.
“I’m not God, Ricciardi. I’m just a poor army doctor who’s seen plenty and does his best with what little he knows. Now calm down and come outside, so I can explain.”
Ricciardi followed him out into the courtyard. Modo lit a cigarette and ran his hand through his hair. They were immediately joined by the spotted stray that had been the doctor’s constant companion ever since last November, when the dog had lost the boy it had belonged to. The doctor squatted down and scratched the dog behind its ear.
“Lucky you, dog. Lucky you, that you aren’t human.”
Ricciardi took a deep breath: “Tell me now, Bruno tell. Tell me everything. I’m ready.”
Modo stood up, staring at his friend: “No, Ricciardi. No, you aren’t. No one ever really is. Rosa has had an apoplectic fit. In practical terms, a serious problem with her blood pressure. While she was talking, she turned pale and walked over to the armchair and collapsed into it. Then she said she felt weak and it was as if she fell asleep. Her niece was with her, this Nelide, who looks like a younger Rosa, a girl, if you don’t mind my saying so, of a remarkable homeliness, but one you can rely upon. If it hadn’t been for her, Rosa would be dead right now.”
“Then she’s alive! She’s alive, right, Bruno?”
Modo continued speaking as if he hadn’t been interrupted: “Nelide—from what she told me, and getting words out of her was as hard as performing surgery—has already witnessed events of this kind, back in their hometown, which leads me to believe that there’s a family predisposition to this kind of disease. So she recognized the labored breathing, what we doctors call stertorous respiration, and the chilly face and arms in spite of the heat. She tried to wake her up, and once she realized that Rosa had slipped into a coma, she went downstairs to the grocery store and phoned the hospital.”
Ricciardi was confused: “Nelide did that? But who gave her your name?”
“Rosa herself, who may have feared the onset of a stroke from one moment to the next. In case of necessity, she’d told the girl to ask for me. An unfortunate habit that you seem to have passed on to her, I’m afraid. Luckily, I was at home: they called me and I came running. Good news for you and bad news for me, because an hour or so later and I would have been comfortably ensconsed at Madame Gilda’s bordello, and no one would have known where to find me.”
Ricciardi couldn’t shake the feeling that he was caught in a nightmare.
“How is she now? Can I see her?”
“No, Ricciardi, better that you don’t. She’s fast asleep, and I don’t think she’s going to wake up anytime soon. Honestly, I’m very concerned; her face was cold and reddened, which leads me to fear a cerebral hemorrhage. I had cold cloths put on her head. A short while ago I measured her arterial blood pressure and found it elevated, which unfortunately only reinforces my diagnosis.”
“What can we do now?”
“Very little. We’ve given her camphorated oil and caffeine to improve her breathing and support her heart, which sounded very weak. I’ve given her a subcutaneous injection of digitalin. I used Knoll Digipuratum, a pharmaceutical I tend to avoid because it’s German, given the political drift I’m seeing among the Krauts once again, but unfortunately it’s the best preparation available. Let’s wait to see if her heartbeat stabilizes, otherwise we’ll have to try something stronger, but not before tomorrow morning.”
Ricciardi stared at the walls of the hospital; his gaze seemed to penetrate them.
“But I can’t go visit her for even a minute?”
“Again, it’s better if you don’t. She’s in a female ward now and if I let you go in there, I’ll never hear the end of it. Also, Nelide, who’s a genuine mastiff, is with her. She never says a word and just stares fiercely at her aunt. Listen, do they just cast them all from a single mold, where you come from? If so, I’ll buy a dozen of them and take care of all my problems with female nurses.”
“But if she were to wake up tonight . . .”
Modo laid a hand on his shoulder: “Ricciardi, don’t hold out a lot of hope of that happening. I don’t think she can wake up, and if it’s true that she’s had a cerebral hemorrhag
e, that might even be preferable. There’s a real danger that she’ll be left a vegetable for the rest of her life. It all depends on how much damage she’s suffered. She’s being well cared for, believe me. I asked the nun to keep her covered up and, if her temperature remains low, to put warm cloths on her legs. The important thing is that she be kept in as close to an erect posture as possible, so that the blood will ebb. And early tomorrow morning we can decide what to do next.”
The dog walked over to Ricciardi, as if it sensed his sorrow, and yelped briefly. The commissario ran a hand over his face. He felt hopeless. He looked up at his friend.
“All right. If there’s nothing else to be done, do you have any objection to my staying here in the waiting room? I don’t want to be far away from her. And could she be moved into a single room tomorrow? I’ll pay, of course. I’d like to stay close to her, hold her hand. You know, when I was little, sometimes . . . if I was frightened about something, I wouldn’t even tell her why, and she wouldn’t ask, she’d just sit down next to me and hold my hand. Just like that, without a word. And she’d wait for me to fall asleep. I want to hold her hand, Bruno. Just hold her hand.”
Modo had seen a lot of things in his time, but he never remembered feeling his heart throb in his chest the way it did as he listened to his friend, there in the hospital courtyard on that scorching hot July evening. With a lump in his throat, he nodded yes.
Ricciardi went on, staring out at nothing: “You know, Bruno, she loves me so much, in spite of how I am. I am . . . I’m a man of many silences. That’s how I was when I was little, too, I had no friends, I played alone. And she followed me everywhere; I knew she was there, I didn’t even need to turn and look. And even later, when I grew up and I continued being . . . I continued being a loner, there was a part of me that knew I could turn around at any time and there she’d be, my Rosa, a warm statue, motionless, following what I was doing with her eyes. You know her, you know what she’s like. She’s stubborn, she’s a complainer, she nags. But she’s all I have. She’s my family, my home, my everything.”
The Bottom of Your Heart Page 18