It was always so simple. So very simple. Too simple, at times, to see at first glance. Hatred, jealousy, and revenge were unsubtle actors in the daily performance of emotions, and before long you wound up not even noticing their presence. You got used to them, in the end.
Still, thought Ricciardi, there was a piece missing from the puzzle. The most important piece. Even though he knew the outline and the colors, even if he’d intuited its features, the general image remained incomplete. He needed to have one last, definitive conversation.
When he reached that point in any investigation, when the knot had been untangled and he clearly understood the motive for the murder and how it had been carried out, for a brief moment he grew shy. As if to stare with full awareness into the abyss of hatred, into the cold determination to kill or desire the death of another human being, was to glimpse a terrible and all-devouring panorama; a necessary act but one he would gladly have done without.
It was the same this time. The professor’s murder had been a simple, brutal act, but it had deep roots. Roots that ran far back, in time and space.
He had almost reached police headquarters, and at the corner of the street he glimpsed a silhouette that struck him as familiar. A tall man, middle-aged, nicely dressed and standing stiffly. As he drew closer, Ricciardi was increasingly certain that he didn’t know the man, yet there was something about him that rang a bell: he wore a pair of spectacles and carried a walking stick.
The man stood motionless, as if he were waiting for someone; he too saw Ricciardi, and he tilted his head to one side in an instinctive gesture of recognition. His heart skipped a beat as the commissario realized that that man was Enrica’s father.
How the man resembled Enrica, was the only thought he managed to formulate. He couldn’t be certain that the man was actually looking for him, but how could it be a mere coincidence? He looked the other man in the face, as if requesting some new sign of acknowledgment. The man took half a step forward and, lifting his hand to his hat brim, asked in a barely audible voice: “Commissario Ricciardi, by any chance?”
Ricciardi stopped. His heart, for some reason, was pounding in his throat.
“Yes, Signore. With whom do I have the pleasure . . .”
The man was ill at ease. He doffed his cap with a bow and extracted a calling card from the breast pocket of his jacket.
“I am Cavalier Giulio Colombo, from Via Santa Teresa. We . . . I believe that we’re neighbors, Commissario. We live directly across the street from each other, in fact.”
I know that well, thought Ricciardi. Oh, how well I know that.
“Certainly, Cavalier. Certainly. Would you care . . .”
He looked around him, in search of the proper words. Invite him up to the office? But if the man had wished to meet him there, he would have found him seated on the bench in the hall, waiting for him. Ask him what he wanted, right there in the street? Or else . . .
The cavalier saved him from his quandary: “May I be so bold as to invite you to take an espresso with me, Commissario? That is, of course, if you have nothing urgent to attend to. I only want five minutes of your time.”
“Don’t think twice, Cavalier. No problem, not at all. Where . . .”
“Is Gambrinus all right with you? I usually . . . That is, the coffee is very good there.”
Ricciardi nodded: “It would be a real pleasure. I go there frequently myself.”
They headed off. It was no more than a hundred yards to the café, but both men felt as if they were scaling the Himalayas. They walked side by side, without glancing at each other, at a brisk pace. They exchanged the occasional laconic comment on the heat, and they crossed paths with a few people who recognized the cavalier: the gentlemen tipped their hats, the ladies smiled and bowed their heads, and the man responded with formal courtesy.
He is clearly every bit as ill at ease as I am, Ricciardi thought to himself. What could the cavalier possibly want from him? A vast array of different possibilities crowded into his mind. The first, and the most upsetting, was that Enrica might not be well, and that was the reason that for so many days now she hadn’t appeared at the window; that was especially plausible because Rosa, who lay unconscious in a hospital bed, was the sole contact that the commissario possessed with his own neighborhood, and therefore he wouldn’t have found out from anybody else. So perhaps the father had come to give him sad news.
Another thought was that perhaps Colombo had come to demand an explanation for the moments of intimacy Ricciardi had enjoyed with his daughter, without ever obtaining his permission. He had written to her, he’d spoken to her, and he’d kissed her in the street, on Christmas Eve, even if not at his own initiative. Had the family maybe seen it happen, peeking out the window? But that was absurd: seven months had passed since then. That couldn’t possibly be the reason. In that case, what had the man come to tell him?
As they entered Gambrinus, each man distractedly headed for his usual table: Colombo toward the little dining room that overlooked Via Chiaia, where he customarily read his newspaper; Ricciardi toward the inner room, which tended to be less crowded and overlooked the main piazza. They both stopped at the same moment and, laughing in an unexpected complicity, opted for the central salon, taking one of the tables off to the side.
Through the plate glass window they could see the corner of the Royal Palace, which marked the beginning of the Teatro San Carlo portico, and a strolling vendor doing his best to sell hazelnuts and sweets; at the vendor’s side, visible only to Ricciardi and to his curse, was an old beggar woman who’d been suffocated in her sleep by her own vomit. The beggar woman was slurring out an ancient, absurd lullaby: nonna nonnooo, nonna vo’ fare chesta nenna bella, nonna vo’ fare mo’ ch’è piccerella. Who knows what she was dreaming about when she died.
Colombo politely asked Ricciardi what he might like, and ordered two espressos. His eyes, behind his glasses, wandered around the interior of the café; he didn’t know where to start, and Ricciardi didn’t know how to help him.
Colombo coughed and said: “I have a shop right there, practically at the corner of Via San Ferdinando. You can’t see it from here. A haberdashery. Hats. That’s not all, of course—also gloves, walking sticks, umbrellas. But mostly hats.”
Ricciardi tried to answer, but his voice stuck in his throat.
He cleared his throat and nodded.
Colombo resumed: “I hope you’ll excuse me, Commissario. I imagine you have a great many things to do. A city like this one . . . A number of your colleagues are my customers, and the things they tell me . . . I notice you don’t wear a hat.”
The phrase sounded to Ricciardi like a reproof, though it had been couched simply as a question.
“No, I don’t. I suffer from . . . migraines, and unfortunately a hat immediately triggers them. I need air. It may be because I come from a town in the mountains.”
“I understand.”
There was another pause of awkward silence, during which both men looked at the movement of automobiles, carriages, and pedestrians in the piazza. The old beggar woman, faded but still visible, continued singing to Ricciardi.
Colombo turned his placid gaze toward the commissario.
“You know, I have five children. All children are dear to you, as you’ll discover when you have children of your own. I live for them. To give them decent lives, and a future.”
He stopped, and Ricciardi waited.
“All the same, it is only natural that one has with some of them, or with one of them in particular, a special affinity. An understanding that requires no words, that can be summed up in a look. In my case, that happens with a daughter. My first-born, to be exact.”
Ricciardi was sweating. It was hot out, yes: but he only rarely sweated, no matter how intense the heat.
Colombo continued: “I’ve sought you out because I’d like to tell you a story. Let me p
reface this by saying that it is quite unlike me to enter into contact in this manner with a stranger: I belong to another generation. I’m accustomed to a proper introduction, I tend to establish a certain acquaintance before opening myself to confidences. So I will make no secret of the fact that I feel quite awkward about being here.”
Ricciardi shifted in his chair, trying unsuccessfully to alleviate his own sense of awkwardness.
“Cavalier Colombo, I beg of you, feel quite at your ease to tell me whatever it is you like. In my work . . . we see a great many things, you said so earlier and you are right. Nothing can surprise us, and nothing could be more uncomfortable than the many sorrowful situations to which, like it or not, we find ourselves witnesses. I assure you that you can speak freely about whatever you please.”
Colombo smiled. And his smile, too, reminded Ricciardi of Enrica. How could that be?
“Work is one thing, and one’s personal life is something entirely different. But let’s just say that I’m here to tell you a story, if you’re willing to listen. I won’t take much of your time.”
“Please, do tell me this story.”
“Now then, let’s imagine a girl. A sweet, gentle girl, good-natured, quiet but possessed of great determination. A dreamer, who when she isn’t working or helping her mother with the housework, reads romantic novels and dreams of a future not that different from her present: a family, a home. A husband, whom she loves and who loves her. Let’s imagine that this girl is waiting for the man of her dreams, for Prince Charming, we might say; and that she’s unwilling to settle for anything less than her one true love.”
Ricciardi listened alertly, with his heart in his mouth. The cavalier’s voice was low and shot through with melancholy; there was no mistaking the tremendous tenderness he felt for his daughter.
“Let’s imagine that this girl believes that she’s found it, the one true love of her life; and that she believes that the man of her dreams loves her in return. I . . . those who know her understand that if she comes to believe something, she has good reasons. That the man must have behaved with her in such a way as to make her think that he loves her.”
Ricciardi felt his stomach tie itself in a knot: “Cavalier, I . . .”
Colombo raised one hand, without looking at Ricciardi: “Commissario, please. Let me finish. This is already hard enough as it is, believe me.”
Ricciardi said nothing. Colombo took a sip of water and continued: “But then something happens, or else perhaps doesn’t happen. The fact remains that this girl comes to the belief—and as I told you, when she is convinced of something it is no easy matter to make her change her mind—that she was only dreaming when she thought that the man loved her back. Or that for whatever reason, the best thing is to get over it, to forget. And that she therefore makes up her mind to leave. To go away.”
Ricciardi leaned forward, his feverish green eyes fixed on the cavalier’s face.
“Go away? But where? And why should she go away? Couldn’t she . . .”
“Not far away, no. But far enough to make sure she wouldn’t have to wait for a glance, a word, or a letter that might never come. I believe it was the right thing to do, you know? But that’s not the point.”
Ricciardi felt removed from reality, sitting there in Gambrinus talking with a stranger about things he’d have been embarrassed to admit to even by himself, in front of a mirror.
“What is the point?”
“The point is that in the place where she goes to forget about that man, she meets another. Another man, who expresses interest in her and courts her in an increasingly unequivocal manner, until he actually asks her out on a date.”
Ricciardi felt the way he’d always assumed someone who had been shot in the chest would feel.
“A date? And . . . and she, what did she say? This imaginary young woman, I mean, what did she tell him?”
Colombo took a long sip of his espresso, which he had until then left untouched. He seemed exhausted by the effort.
“She’s torn. She believes that this man, the one that she’s met in the place where she’s gone, has strong and sincere feelings for her. That he wants to give her what she has always desired in life; or, at least, what she thought she wanted. That he wants to take her away, carry her off to his distant homeland, and perhaps she’s a little sad about that, as her papà would be sad, very sad indeed, because it would break his heart, though he’s willing to accept any sacrifice as long as it would make her happy . . .” He fell silent as he mastered his deep emotion. Then he resumed: “But she can’t bring herself to forget the other man, the one she had in her heart when she went away. She continues to cherish that dream.”
A tram honked its raucous horn in the scorching heat of early afternoon. Ricciardi felt a tempest raging in his body, shaking every single organ.
“Why are you telling me these things, Cavalier? Why have you come looking for me? If this man . . . if this girl should find what she’s looking for with this other person, then what . . . what could the first person even do?”
Colombo focused on the sun-drenched portico of the Teatro San Carlo and on the vendor of sweets and hazelnuts now seeking a place to shelter from the sun, while still continuing to offer his goods for sale to every passerby.
“You see, Commissario, this girl sends letters home in which she tells what she does every day. These letters brim over with joy, serenity, contentment. She’s doing well. Very well. And in those letters she says nothing about this man, or the other one. Her mother . . . a wonderful woman, let me be perfectly clear, wishes she had gotten engaged years ago, and was already married or about to tie the knot . . . The other daughter, the younger one, actually already has a baby boy . . . But those aren’t the only letters she’s writing. She sends other letters, this girl. To someone else, and to that person, in contrast, she truly opens her heart.”
Continuing to look out the plate glass window, the cavalier slipped a hand inside his jacket and half-pulled out a bundle of cream-colored sheets of paper, which he then immediately replaced.
“And this someone has had to overcome everything he believes in, his own principles and even his own upbringing, in order to do something he would never have dreamed of doing. Because his baby girl—the first child who ever made him feel like a father and therefore a man in full, the only child who is herself able to understand every thought in his head, without his having to speak a word—is fighting against the idea, if you follow me, of settling for serenity, for the rest of her life.”
This time it was Ricciardi’s turn to feel a gust of emotion shaking every last fiber in his being. That man had the right to know why loving someone might possibly mean having to abandon them to their fate.
“Cavalier, you ought to know that I . . .”
The man turned an indecipherable gaze on him: “No, Commissario. Not you. That man. Remember? This is all just a story. An imaginary story. Otherwise you and I couldn’t go on talking. You understand that, don’t you?”
Ricciardi seemed to awaken from a sudden stupor; then he realized that Enrica’s father had a point.
“Agreed. We know nothing about that man. We’d have to investigate, just as we do in our line of work. Because sometimes, Cavalier, if you don’t know the true, underlying motives, an attitude, a way of acting, or even just the expression on a face can appear entirely incomprehensible . . .” He, too, now, focused his gaze on the vendor outside and glimpsed the old dead woman, fading in the sun, singing her long-forgotten lullaby and vomiting out the wine that had killed her. “That man, you see, has exceedingly strong feelings. Strong feelings if ever there were any. But he’s also terrified, because he sees the effects those feelings can have in everyday life. And so he believes that keeping those feelings out of his life, and keeping himself out of the lives of the people who . . . of the people he cares most about, is the best way of doing them good. That’s all. T
hat, perhaps, is the reason why he keeps his distance, in the terrible hope that he will be forgotten; and in the certainty that to be forgotten would be the death of him.”
It was clear to him just how abstruse his reasoning might seem; but Colombo seemed to have grasped it.
“Commissario, I’m only a shopkeeper. I like to read and keep up with events, and I’m interested in politics, which, these days, with everything that’s happening, may be a serious shortcoming. But I stopped studying after high school, and I don’t understand much when it comes philosophical speculation. All I know is that Enrica is about to make a decision whose consequences could last forever. I don’t know the intentions of the man to whom we’ve been alluding; all I know is that it’s his duty at least to look her in the eye and speak to her, the way that the other man who met her is about to do.”
There was a pause. Colombo stood up, reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper, and extended it to Ricciardi.
“Here is an address that might prove useful to you, Commissario. Perhaps I’m doing the right thing by giving it to you, or perhaps I’m not. But I know that my Enrica would want me to. I hope that you find the correct balance, and that you make the right decision. I confide in your discretion, and therefore in the fact that you will never tell anyone, and especially not her, that this conversation took place. Good day to you.”
Ricciardi took the sheet of paper and slipped it into his pocket, stood up as well, and bade the other man farewell with a curt nod.
Then they both left, turning to walk in opposite directions.
The Bottom of Your Heart Page 38