She was different. That was the truth. Her eyes were different, her hands were different, her mouth was different. Different. She didn’t belong to their world, even though she was born there just as he had been, even though she had breathed the same air and eaten the same bread, even though when it was a feast day she put on her Sunday best and linked arms with him so that he felt like the king of the world. She was different.
When she had told him, right on that spot, as they were watching a steamship depart, that she was going to be leaving, but leaving him, he had died. He’d felt the blood stop in his veins, and if he hadn’t spoken, if he hadn’t shouted out his despair, it was only because he didn’t want to sever the thread that still held them together.
Because love—he thought to himself as he watched a woman pick up her toddler, who was unable to climb up the gangway on his own—love is a germ. A disease that springs from a tiny seed and takes root in a specific spot. At the bottom of your heart.
She had promised that she’d come back. That it was just a matter of time, the time needed to gather the strength, the money, and the prosperity so they could stay together for good.
She had promised that they’d never be apart again and that, however long it took, sooner or later their paths would converge again.
She had promised.
But she was different. She belonged to another world, not to his. And he, who was of that place, of that neighborhood, would never have another woman, because she was his companion, and she had been on his arm the night of the festival, when they set fire to the bell tower and made a wish.
He had her. He had no one but her.
At the bottom of his heart.
LIII
That evening, Maione’s feet were not really what carried him to no. 270, Via Toledo. His encounters with Sisinella and Cortese, Vomero with its heady romantic atmosphere, the heat he’d suffered on the funicular, a vivid image of a descent into an inferno of despair: all these things had conspired to sow in his tormented soul an irresistible desire to gaze into the eyes of the man who was pitching woo with his wife.
He posted himself in the atrium as he had the day before. The doorman pretended not to see him and went straight into the inner courtyard with a chair, the evening paper, and half a cigar. The brigadier prepared for a wait that he expected would be short: this was the right time of day.
And in fact, after no more than half an hour, Lucia emerged, tucking her hair under her scarf. Just like the night before, she shot a quick glance around her and then headed for home. Maione wondered where she’d gathered such confidence, this stranger who had been at his side for so many years. How had she learned so well to master the arts of dissimulation and untruth?
No more than ten minutes, not even the time to sink into a state of bitter rancor, and out came the damned Ferdinando Pianese, the horrible Fefè that Bambinella had told him about, the debauched useless creature capable of poisoning even his troubled sleep in those nightmarish days.
He gave him a few yards’ head start and then set off after him. There weren’t many people out on the street; the heat discouraged strollers, and a number of shops had closed early. The two men, Maione and Fefè, couldn’t have looked any more different. The brigadier’s pace was that of a policeman hard at work: hands in his pockets, cap pushed back on his head, eyes darting from a shopwindow to a beggar, from a newsstand to a married couple out with their children; Fefè, on the other hand, ambled along like a dandy waiting for dinnertime and in the meanwhile calmly mulling over the various possible places to enjoy an aperitif, smiling at life and at a bright future. To all appearances, two characters among so many in the city; not a ravenous predator stalking his unsuspecting prey.
The brigadier’s brain was scheming, planning out the instant in which he’d face his rival head-on. There, he thought, now he’s turning the corner of Via Chiaia . . . there are still too many people out walking in the street . . . then he’ll head downhill toward Piazza dei Martiri, and he’ll stop at the café with all the other good-for-nothings to pester other people’s women.
I have to stop him before that.
Just a few yards short of the last stretch of street before the piazza so popular with the city’s high society—an ideal hunting ground for people like Fefè—Maione lengthened his stride and caught up with him at the mouth of a narrow vicolo, a broad, dead-end flight of steps; he grabbed the man by one arm and dragged him into the shadows.
The man seemed more surprised than frightened: an enormous policeman, grim-faced and sweaty, in uniform and with a pistol on his belt, was gripping the immaculate white sleeve of his summer jacket with huge fingers; that sleeve would most likely never be the same again. No doubt, a case of mistaken identity, Fefè reassured himself. The policeman need only take a close look at my face.
Instead the brigadier slammed him carelessly against a wall. Two young men who had been completing some transaction that required a certain degree of privacy decided that it was probably wise to take to their heels. Now Maione and Fefè were all alone.
The slim dandy opened his eyes wide: “But . . . but what do you want from me, Brigadie’? There must be some mistake, I’ve done nothing.”
“Nothing, Piane’? Nothing? There’s been no mistake, it was you I was looking for. And if you examine your conscience, that is, if you still possess such a thing, then I think you’ll have no doubt about what I want from you.”
Pianese did his best to think quick, but he was finding that easier said than done, because now Maione had released his grip on his sleeve and had grabbed him by the neck; he clutched in his enormous fist collar, bowtie, and jacket lapel, all scrunched up together and pressed so forcefully on the lawyer’s throat that he couldn’t take a breath. In a glimmer of lucidity, it dawned on the policeman that the man was suffocating, and he loosened his grip ever so slightly.
Fefè took a deep, sharp breath, and moaned: “Brigadie’, you must have taken me for some other person, I can assure you that I’ve done nothing, I . . .”
Maione’s hissed whisper turned bitter: “Nothing. Sure. It’s nothing to wreck a family, introduce a serpent into an honest household, take a mother away from her children. It’s nothing to destroy a life, shatter the heart of a man who thought that the woman beside him was a faithful loving wife. It’s nothing to take someone’s sunlight and fresh air away. You’re a bastard, Piane’. You’re a rotten bastard.”
The other man looked wildly around him, hoping in vain that someone might come to his aid. He was afraid to shout for help, fearing that if he did, that uniformed lunatic would simply snap his neck by squeezing his hand shut.
He tried to think. If the man hadn’t already killed him, if he was talking to him, he might still have a chance. This had to be about Lucrezia.
After a courtship that had lasted months, he’d only recently managed to work his way into the good graces of the Marchesa Lucrezia Carrara di Morsano, one of the city’s most prominent matrons. The woman was hardly delightful to behold, with her big bug eyes, her long skinny legs, and the frizzy yellow hair that did its best to escape the confines of every little hat, forming a sort of cloud around her forehead; still, the money that her husband possessed—an elderly landowner with vast holdings whose only real interest was in food—more than made up for it, and she, in exchange for his sexual favors, was happy to disburse considerable sums on a regular basis.
Lucrezia, who was sailing blithely toward her sixtieth birthday, had two children, a son and a daughter, but thirty-six and thirty-four years of age respectively, both married and with children of their own: to talk about taking a mother away from her children struck Fefè as something of an exaggeration. Also, Fefè had to wonder why the elderly and gluttonous Marchese di Morsano should have requested and obtained no less than the violent intervention of the legal authorities to settle a matter that could have been handled with a gentlemen’s agreement, th
e dispute placed in the wise hands of some common friend, as was generally the procedure.
Hoarse from the choking, he coughed out: “Brigadie’, calm down, for the love of all that’s holy. Tell the marchese that I understand and I’ll act according to his wishes. Just reassure him that the marchesa . . .”
Maione paid no attention to the man’s stammered words, having decided in advance that he’d ignore all excuses: “Now listen to me, and listen good, you cowardly bastard: if you see her again, even once, just once, I’ll kill you, you get it? I’ll kill you. And when I’m done with you, your own mother won’t be able to identify the corpse, do you understand me? Not even your own mother. Say yes. Say it now, and say it loud.”
If it meant escaping alive from that situation, Pianese would gladly have admitted to being the star ballerina of the dance troupe at the San Carlo opera house, proving his claim with a few demonstrative demi-pliés right there on the uneven cobblestones of the vicolo.
“Yes, yes, Brigadie’, don’t worry, never fear. And tell the marchese that he can be sure that I’ll never, never see the marchesa again as long as I live.”
Maione roared. That man was intolerable, and now he was mocking him, too.
He felt disgusted with the man, with the vicolo, with Lucia, and even with himself. He dropped Fefè and the man fell to the ground, panting; then he got to his feet and broke into a shambling run.
In the shadows of the evening now falling, the brigadier covered his face with his hands and wept.
LIV
On his way back, he felt at peace.
This was the first time that he’d felt that way in as long as he could remember. His soul had been in a state of tumult for so many years now that he’d become accustomed to that basso continuo of pain, regret, remorse, and incompleteness that had given his life the color that it now possessed.
Preparations for the festival were reaching their feverish finale. The quarter was teeming with frantic activity, everyone seemed to be carrying something from one place to another, hanging up festoons, applying ornaments.
Along the way he’d looked around him with the greatest possible watchfulness: it would have been a terrible twist of fate to be robbed now of all times. But everything had gone perfectly, according to plan. It had taken three extra days, that was all. To complete his masterpiece. But everything had worked out perfectly.
As he walked his usual route, one step after the other, he breathed deeply. He took the baking hot air, freighted with odors, into his lungs. He felt no sadness whatsoever, none of the sadness he’d expected; he’d preferred not to think about it, choosing instead to remain focused on the work he was completing, in accordance with the plan he’d sketched out first in his soul, and then in his brain.
Readying, completing, and fine-tuning every detail—it was the first thing he had done for himself in too long. Now that he was walking, avoiding the busy pedestrians, now that he was striding past places he’d known since his childhood, he didn’t regret a thing. Not even the words he hadn’t spoken—he didn’t regret them either. They wouldn’t have done a bit of good. They wouldn’t have changed the course of his life, they wouldn’t have added or subtracted a thing. Better to remain silent, then.
The thought formed before his eyes. The usual face. Like every other time, every single time, a hundred times a day for years and years. He walked along the wall, and instead of tasting the air, instead of looking out at the sea or climbing the hill to admire yet again the silhouette of the mountain against the blue of the sky, he reconstructed her face. Not the way she was now, her features marked with hardness and sorrow. No, her face the way it had been then. The way it had been the night of the festival, years ago: when he’d walked with her on his arm, fiercely proud of her smile, of her white dress.
They’d been beautiful together. The rest of his life wasn’t long enough to remember her light pressure on his arm, her hand, the hand that was like a light-winged butterfly.
Someone called out to him, from a stand on the street. In this moment of peace he’d now attained, he thought about his people, about the struggle against hunger and privation. He thought of the faces of those who had stayed; he’d never thought about those who had left in these terms, and there had always been a light in his eyes, even in the midst of the blackest sorrow. Those who had stayed behind, on the other hand, no: that light, many of them had never had it.
He caught a few surprised glances from the women seated in the strip of shadow from the apartment building. After years of precision, of absolute predictability, here he was overturning all his routines. But it was necessary to complete that last step. Without the delivery, you couldn’t say that a job was finished.
He opened the door and went in. He pulled the heavy door partially shut and allowed a shaft of morning sunlight to filter through. Not that he’d need it: in that cramped space which he knew so well, he could move around in pitch darkness without even brushing against furniture and objects; still, he decided to light the lamp. Its warm golden light had kept him company so often: it seemed right to him that it should illuminate this as well.
He went back to the door and locked it from inside. He looked around, the way he did every night before leaving.
Before leaving.
Everything was in order. He felt serene, contented. Full of hope, absurdly enough. He felt like those about to embark and leave. As if he too, now, were one of them. The sea, then America.
He went over to the workbench. He took the strongest of all his tools and made the last engraving. Then he picked up the rope he’d had ready for the past two days, stepped up onto the wooden surface, and ran it over the rafter.
He was at peace. His eyes went to the steamship on the wall.
He put his head in the noose and hauled himself up with both hands. He thought about her the way she had been, seated amidst the ropes and hawsers, watching the ship and the sea. There you are, at the bottom of my heart. There you are. I just wonder if I’m there too, at the bottom of your heart.
And at last he set off on his voyage.
LV
Enrica would never have admitted it to herself, but by now she expected him.
She was shooting covert glances from the beach up to the ridge where Manfred set up his easel; she was awaiting the arrival of that courteous man, the sunlight glinting off his blond hair, the wave of his hand in her direction before he sat down on the stool overlooking the water.
It had become a morning ritual of sorts, and an agreeable one. By now Carla, the other teacher, had given up in the face of the German officer’s clear preference for Enrica. Carla had even started giving her advice on how best to rope him in, offering to take her evening shifts watching over the children so Enrica could go out with him.
Deep down, Enrica split the day into two parts. Daytime, when there was sunshine and the shouts of playing children and the cries of seagulls, the smiling greetings of the island’s inhabitants and the gentle sea breeze; and nighttime, when the scent of flowers and the chirping of crickets filled the air and the soul, when the mind wandered in search of something to caress. Daytime housed Manfred’s spiky accent, the stories of his far-off land, snack time with the children, at which the German was a regular guest; nighttime housed the thought of Ricciardi, his green, feverish gaze, the passion that quivered beneath the surface of a placid pool of water, apparently so tranquil.
At night, Enrica understood how deeply in love with him she still was. At night, when her brain ceased building castles of rationality, when she could no longer battle against the facts of a situation built out of silence and solitude. At night, when she felt his eyes upon her and inside her, across the sea that separated them.
And yet, she welcomed Manfred’s company. She liked his witty conversation, his keen sensibilities; he wasn’t entirely without an inner gentleness, even though he practiced a harsh and violent profession: it was a
contrast that made her shiver, but which bespoke a complex and intriguing personality. The stories he told her took her to other worlds, made up of country celebrations and battlefields, deeds of honor and bitter defeats.
She liked Manfred’s stubborn confidence in the future, too, a confidence that hadn’t been dulled by the harsh experiences of a brutal past. When the figure of his dead wife emerged from his recollections, Enrica never sensed regret or suffering: only a hint of melancholy for a time gone by. Greater sorrow, and a hint of rage, came with his memories of the war and the harsh sanctions that had subsequently been levied on his nation, a nation he loved passionately, and to which the officer was sworn with an absolute devotion.
Even with regard to that topic, though, what prevailed was optimism. The upcoming elections, he had said to her while looking out to sea, would once again make people aware of German might, and of the country’s desire to raise its head, to reaffirm the role that Germany must play in the international panorama.
Enrica wasn’t especially interested in politics and ferocious and irreconcilable disputes seemed to her a particularly fruitless way of passing the hours. But she certainly understood enthusiasm, the desire for a better future; and weighing the gleam of optimism that she could glimpse in Manfred’s blue eyes against the hopeless sorrow that lurked in Ricciardi’s was a new feeling, and it bewildered her.
From the wave that Carla had given her, she knew that he had arrived. She turned toward the ridge and he, blond hair tossed by the sea breeze, raised his hand in her direction. Enrica responded without displaying anything more than a faint smile.
Who knows why, but she felt sad. As if she were leaving home.
Ricciardi shook off sleep and sat up straight. The hospital room, the lights of dawn filtering through the drawn curtains. It was already hot.
He looked at Rosa’s serene profile, her faintly furrowed brow; he listened to her profound, regular respiration; he stared at the sheets that rose and sank over her body. He checked his watch: it was 5:40 A.M. He’d slept for two hours. In the shadows, Nelide sat in a chair, wide-awake, arms crossed, her eyes on him. That girl never sleeps, thought Ricciardi.
The Bottom of Your Heart Page 30