The Bottom of Your Heart

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  The first beneficiaries of the new Maione were the policemen at headquarters who had seen a tempestuous giant in uniform, quick to anger and violence, leave the building, only to witness the return of an indulgent, avuncular superior officer, inclined to praise and kindness. The suddenness of the change had thrown them into a state of confusion, and for a while they had continued to steer clear of him, but before long they ventured closer and took advantage of his new demeanor to ask for a more permissive drafting of the schedule for summer vacation time.

  Then Maione had hurried to order a bouquet of wildflowers, arranging for delivery before he arrived home. The gesture, however, hadn’t produce the hoped-for effect: a weary, overheated Lucia had received it shouting in exasperation that she hardly saw the point of wasting money—hard-earned money that their household barely had enough of to make ends meet every month—for such frivolities as an oversized bouquet of flowers that the girls could go and pick for themselves in the neighboring countryside. Who knows how much that thief of a florist had charged, taking advantage of her husband’s credulity.

  And by the way, now that Lucia stopped to think of it, did this mean that he was asking forgiveness for something? Because if a man decides to send his wife flowers, on no special occasion and for no other conceivable reason, then the explanation can invariably be traced back to some unspeakable misdeed and the need to assuage his remorse-plagued conscience.

  Fortunately for Maione, he had an excellent memory and a lengthy string of special occasions and anniversaries, and he promptly reminded his wife of their first kiss on a warm, hopeful July night, in the coolness of the forest of Capodimonte; actually, the date was at least a couple of weeks away, but Lucia didn’t have his same steel-trap memory and she believed it, replacing the rebukes with smiles, and rewarding the brigadier with a night that was worth an entire grove of trees, forget about a bouquet of wildflowers.

  All the same, Maione had willingly sacrificed a few extra hours with his family when he might have enjoyed his newfound domestic peace because he had an errand to run.

  Who knows why he’d thought about it first thing after leaving that café in the possession of news that had restored his equanimity. Over those last few days, the conviction that he’d lost the love of his life, and that he’d probably never even possessed her at all, had driven him to act in ways that were very distant from his true nature; at the same time it had made it clear to him how important that emotion was, and how terrible it must be to be forced to live without it.

  For that reason, he’d come to a decision the night before. Taking advantage of Ricciardi’s request that he go over to the general hospital and see what time Rispoli’s shift ended, Maione had made his way into the office that had once belonged to Iovine. He’d looked around and wondered just how much of a role love had played in that ugly story. The commissario had confided the theory that he’d come up with, a theory that had been bolstered by their visit to the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and Maione had been forced to admit that it all added up; but as a husband, a father, and a man, he still hoped that it wasn’t true, that the commissario had misread a fact or made some other blunder.

  And for the first time he had the sensation that his commissario, his friend and companion, had revealed himself—the truth, right down to the very bottom of his self—to him. It wasn’t the pang in his heart that he always experienced when he thought of his solitary superior officer. The absence of love, hope, and family. No woman at his side, no children. To know everything that there can be in a man’s life, and to go without. You have to love someone, Maione reflected in his unassuming way; otherwise, what are we here for? When poor Rosa was gone, who would the poor commissario have left in his daily life? Aside, of course, from Maione himself.

  The funicular discharged its cargo onto a sun-drenched piazza. From the surrounding countryside came a faint breeze that improved the brigadier’s already good mood as he headed off toward the apartment house on Via Kerbaker that he had already visited twice in the past few days. From a distance he thought he heard the notes of a pianino, and this made him furrow his brow for a moment: there are people, he mused, who were born to take advantage of others. They might not do so explicitly, they might conceal their cold calculation behind a warm smile or a seductive song, but they’re much more dangerous than those who do it professionally, out in the light of day. Or under the light of a streetlamp, on a street corner.

  The night before he had thought of Maria and Benedetta: the daughter born of his blood and his love, and the little orphan who had also become his daughter, even more so. He’d suddenly seen them, so grown-up now, capable of taking care of their younger siblings, better and better at imitating their mother as cooks and seamstresses; they were no longer playing, messing around with flour and water or poking holes in rags with a needle. Now they were completing tidy little pieces of work, competing to draw cries of pleasure from their papà when they brought him dishes of fritters that were identical in every detail to the ones produced by Lucia.

  He’d imagined them fully grown, adult. The first coquettish glances at a boy, the first heartbreaks, the occasional tear. And then he himself in dress uniform, walking them, beautiful and flower-bedecked in their long white gowns, to the altar.

  And then he’d imagined something happening to him: getting stabbed with a knife, like Luca; or being shot by some criminal he’d caught red-handed. Or some sudden disease. Poverty, despair, the demands of survival; and the grief, the grim sorrow of loss, which could push them toward who knows what, or into the arms of who knows who. His daughters, his sweet, beautiful daughters, condemned to who could say what fate.

  That sudden thought, which came while Lucia and his girls were laughing happily at some clownishness he’d engaged in at dinner, hadn’t been reflected on his face, and hadn’t dulled his merry laughter; still, it had chilled his heart like a gust of icy wind from the north. Now that he had glimpsed the abyss, he was a hundred, a thousand times more terrified at the thought of losing his family, and that his family might be dispersed. And then his thoughts had gone to Sisinella, the young whore who had believed for a very short season that she was escaping from the inferno in which she had lived, and whom he, Maione, had treated unfairly, as if she were the worst of evildoers.

  The image of the girl, fighting the tears in her eyes, had infested his night. And his ears echoed with the words she had spoken in response to his threats: You don’t scare me, Brigadie’. You don’t scare me. I’ve known people who would gut you like a fish for the fun of the thing, so just imagine how scared I am of you. What a life she must have lived, that woman who had grown old in her soul while she continued to live in such a young body. What a curse her beauty must have been to her.

  That was why he now found himself in the lovely courtyard of the Vomero apartment house. The doorman, Firmino, came over to him with a smirk on his face: “Oh, Brigadie’, good morning. So easy days are over for the signorina, eh? And about time. To see a penniless nobody giving herself airs like a lady, a whore being worshipped as a signora—it was simply too ridiculous, no?”

  The man must have overheard the altercation between the brigadier and Sisinella, and he was clearly on Maione’s side. A little camaraderie among real men, with real values. Maione felt like smashing his face in.

  He stared at him coldly and said: “Don’t you dare to presume we’re friends, Firmi’. In fact, I’ve noticed at least a dozen irregularities in the maintenance of this apartment building and I’m inclined to slap you with a hefty fine; if you want to keep that from happening, then take care not to sling mud on people who live here. Slanderers go to prison too, and nothing would make me happier than to lock you up. So watch your step.”

  The man stepped back, blanching.

  “Certainly, Brigadie’. Forgive me. It won’t happen again. Please, be my guest, go right ahead: take your time, I’ll stay here, on lookout.”

&n
bsp; With a shudder of disgust, Maione realized that this individual had assumed he’d come around to take advantage of the girl. A rush of heat rose to his face and he grabbed Firmino by the throat, lifting him like a sprig of wheat, and jerked him close to his face. With a hiss, the doorman exhaled all the air in his lungs and turned purple.

  “Firmi’, another broad hint like the last one and you’ll be a dead man. I swear on my children’s heads: you say one more word about that poor girl and I’ll murder you with my bare hands. Do you understand? Do you understand? Nod your head yes, if you do.”

  When the man repeatedly nodded his head in assent, Maione let him go. The man flopped to the ground like an empty suit, coughing and hungrily sucking air into his lungs. Maione shot him one last disgusted look and headed up the stairs.

  The door to Sisinella’s apartment stood ajar. Maione knocked and called out, asking if he could come in, but there was no answer. He stepped inside.

  It was all very different from the first time he’d been there. The apartment was bare, stripped of life and cheer. The furniture was the same, the light was the same, the place was still clean and well kept, but now it lacked that giddy energy, that garish, coquettish harmony that had first struck the brigadier. Maione noticed that the curtains had been taken down, a carpet was missing, and a few embroidered antimacassars had been taken off the sofas.

  In the kitchen there was large bundle wrapped in a sheet and containing some household furnishings; other items had been stowed in two pillowcases. Maione glimpsed Sisinella sitting with her back to him, out on the terrace: she was smoking a cigarette as she surveyed the trees and countryside behind the apartment building. He knocked lightly at the balcony door: “Excuse me? May I?”

  The girl half-turned: “Ah, it’s you. What else do you want? Have you come to gloat at my fall back to my old life?”

  Maione stepped out onto the terrace. The air was hot but sweet-smelling, and the birds were singing.

  “Nice place, this. Really pleasant. You’re doing the right thing, Sisine’: it makes a person want to sit down and just think.”

  The woman emitted a mocking laugh: “Think? Better not, Brigadie’. Better not to think. Because if I start to think then I realize what a stupid idiot I’ve been, and then I’d kill myself. Better not to think.”

  Maione took the other chair and sat down not far from the young woman.

  “But why? What did you do wrong, Sisine’? Lots of people turn out to be different from how they seem, it’s not like you can always know right away.”

  From this close vantage point, he realized that the girl was silently weeping. Tears were running slowly down her face, leaving behind them a black streak of makeup.

  “I loved him. For the first time, I loved someone. I believed that he was going to marry me and change my life; what a fool I was. I was willing to work hard, to earn for him so I could have an honest life. But maybe girls like me aren’t destined to have an honest life.”

  Maione said nothing. The girl turned and looked at him: “Happy now, eh, Brigadie’? You have your confirmation. A whore is nothing but a whore. That’s what she does, and she’ll do it for the rest of her life. You were right.”

  The brigadier tilted his head toward the kitchen.

  “I see that you’re packing your bags. Where are you going to go?”

  Sisinella shrugged.

  “I only took my own things, the things I bought with my own money. The things that Tullio bought me, I left them all here. You know, it was like a frenzy had come over him, he had fun, as if he were a little boy. For him, this apartment was just a game. He said that the other place, the apartment at Quattro Palazzi where his wife lived, with all the gold and silver and old paintings in it, seemed like a museum to him, but that here he felt at home. What a nut, eh?”

  At the memory, she’d smiled through her tears, and just as Maione had imagined the women that his little girls would one day become, he now saw the little girl that woman had once been. The idea tugged at his heart.

  “You know, Brigadie’, I think that Tullio really did love me. Sometimes he didn’t even want to do that thing, you know, he would just sit and gaze at me. I’d sew, cook, clean the floor, sing, and he’d watch me as if he were at the movies or the theater. I was all the show he wanted to watch. Poor Tullio.”

  She stood up, sniffing loudly and wiping her face with the sleeve of her nightgown.

  “You asked me where I’ll go. And all I can tell you is that I won’t die, Brigadie’. Sisinella won’t die, not even this time. Sisinella is leaving with her head up, with a few dresses and a couple of pairs of shoes, and she won’t die. For now I’ve sold off the gifts Tullio gave me, a few little jewels that I kept for myself, and I’ve rented a little room in a tenement not all that far from here, in Arenella. A new quarter, people who don’t know me. I want to try and see if, by some chance, I can find a place as a servant, or some business that needs a salesclerk. Because the news is this, Brigadie’, I’m not going back up there, to the place you know. A whore isn’t always a whore, you’re wrong about that. She can change.”

  Maione stood up too.

  “You’re right, Sisine’. And I was wrong. I’m here to apologize for what I said to you the other time I was here, it wasn’t what I really thought. I shouldn’t have said those things to you. I was going through a period . . . whatever I was going through, I shouldn’t have allowed myself to talk to you like that, and I shouldn’t have judged you. I’m here to beg your pardon.”

  The girl stared at him, baffled: “But . . . no harm done, Brigadie’. Thank you, actually, for what you’re saying to me now. And maybe you did some good, because you gave me the strength to act. It’s just that . . . I’d set my heart on Tore. I gave him my heart. And now I’ve lost it.”

  “No, Sisine’. That’s what I came to tell you. You never lose your heart. Your heart can be wounded, battered, but you get it back. Especially the young, beautiful heart of a girl like you.”

  The girl smiled at him, hesitantly.

  “I’ll try my best, Brigadie’. I promise you, I’ll try my best.”

  Maione smiled then too. Then he slapped his forehead: “Ah, I practically forgot. Here, this belongs to you.”

  And he pulled a small jewelry case out of his pocket. Sisinella opened it, doubtful, and then sat there, slack-jawed.

  “It’s a gift that the professor commissioned for you, Sisine’. The artisan delivered it to him the same night he died, and he would have given it to you as soon as he came back here. I just thought that in the end it was only right for you to have it, no? Because that is what the professor would have wanted.”

  The girl pulled the ring out of the case. The enormous precious stone glittered in the light like a second sun.

  “Brigadie’, but I . . . how . . . how can you give me this? The widow . . . I have no right to this ring, Brigadie’.”

  “His widow already has plenty of money, don’t worry about her. This apartment, whose existence she doesn’t even suspect, is hers, with everything in it. But inside this ring, if you look, you can see your name, so it’s yours and no one can deny it. It was just a matter of making up my mind to give it to you.”

  The girl couldn’t tear her eyes away from the diamond set in gold. The craftsmanship was splendid.

  “But this must be worth a fortune, Brigadie’.”

  “That’s right, a fortune. I asked a friend of mine who’s a jeweler on Via Toledo, and he told me that with the money they’d give you for this ring, you could buy a little house and even start up a small business of your own here in Vomero, where the prices are low. Or, of course, you could run through it quickly and then go back to being a working girl. In other words, now you have that choice.”

  Sisinella pressed her lips together decisively: “Yes, Brigadie’, now I can choose. For the first time in my life I can choose. And hav
e no doubt, I’ll make the right choice.”

  She walked over to Maione, stood on tiptoes, threw her arms around his neck, and planted a loud smacking kiss on his cheek. He smiled, lifted his hand to the visor of his cap, and turned to leave.

  There was no trace of the doorman in the courtyard.

  LXV

  With the words of Iovine’s assistant still ringing in his head, Ricciardi suddenly felt all the weight of weariness he’d built up in the past few days. He headed back to headquarters, in no hurry.

  There was the usual frenzy in the streets, only slightly dampened by the muggy heat hanging in the air like a casting of molten metal. This would be no ordinary weekend: there was the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, that week. There would be the festival, the festival of summer and heat, the festival of the Black Madonna and of the Graces requested and received, the festival of dancing in the piazza and the burning of the bell tower.

  But Ricciardi, walking along slowly with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground, hatless as usual, wasn’t thinking about the festival at all. He was thinking about love, and about death.

  What the doctor had told him was important. How could he have overlooked the fundamental clues to the solution of the case? Right from the first questions, from the first interviews; it was all there, it was all clear and understandable from the very beginning. And yet he’d had to run smack into it, facefirst. Like someone walking in the dark.

  Perhaps, he thought, as he stepped around a skinny peasant woman balancing an enormous basket of cheeses on her head, it had always been like that, his profession. A walk in the dark, banging one’s face against evidence before recognizing it as such; and yet he wouldn’t have known any other way of doing it. The investigators who solved their cases by tracing the murderer thanks to infinitesimal details caught on the fly in a barren locked room lived in novels from across the Atlantic and across the English Channel; they wore funny hats, smoked pipes, and played the violin. The street, the smell of blood, the slimy swamp of twisted emotions—these were entirely another matter.