Vipers

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  The young woman stood up and gave the elderly lady a kiss on the cheek, then she ran for the door. Rosa’s words followed her down the stairs:

  “And tomorrow we’ll talk about the ragú!”

  She had just stepped out the front door when he appeared before her, as if they’d made a date. Buonasera, she said to him. Buonasera, he replied.

  She even liked his voice: deep and full of emotion. She found him irresistible; she could understand why a woman like that Signora from up north, that rich, elegant, and shameless woman who drove around in a car with a chauffeur, would have developed a crush on him, though she could have had all the men she wanted. But she was also convinced that the way to his heart that she had chosen was the right one.

  She hesitated, then stopped and said:

  “You know, Signora Rosa . . . that trembling in her hand is getting worse, I think. Sorry, I know it’s none of my business, but . . .”

  He interrupted her, in a sad voice:

  “Don’t say that. Your visits give her great pleasure; she’s so happy, I leave her alone for far too much time. I know, she’s not well. But it’s not easy for me to think that she’s growing older. You know, I . . . I have no one but her.”

  She wanted to hold him tight, crying out that it wasn’t true—that he wasn’t alone and would never again be alone, if only he could say that’s what he wanted.

  Instead, she just said: buonasera.

  IX

  On the morning of March 22nd, the springtime decided on a sudden and precocious change of attitude. The sky turned gray and the wind sprang up, a hot wind that stirred the sweet smells together with the rank odors that rose from the vicoli down in the harbor and in the Spanish Quarter, disorienting dogs, horses, and people who had believed that the season had changed once and for all.

  Ricciardi, as usual, got to police headquarters very early. He’d had a restless night; the thought of Rosa’s worsening health gripped his heart in a clenched fist of anguish. Enrica’s few words at the front door had made him think about how often the mind forces us to ignore what we fear; how unprepared we are when those we hold dear grow old and fall ill.

  And as always, the murder he’d encountered contributed to his troubled dreams. In his dreams he’d found himself face to face with the corpse of what had once been a wonderful young woman, full of life and perhaps hopes for the future, and from her dead mouth the references to who knows what perversion continued. The commissario wondered, as he covered the last few yards of Via Toledo before turning down the narrow street that led to his office, what corrupt passion could have brought someone to suffocate that life and those hopes under a pillow.

  There were two men waiting for him at the entrance. The sentinel saluted and said:

  “Commissa’, buongiorno. These two men here have been waiting for you for some time now, they showed up in the middle of the night. Should I tell them to go on waiting or would you like to speak with them?”

  Ricciardi walked closer. One was blond, with two deep circles under a pair of light blue eyes and a face creased with unmistakable suffering. The other one was little more than a boy, with similar features and the same light blue eyes, but with black hair.

  The blond man stepped forward.

  “Are you Commissario Ricciardi? The one who’s . . . who’s in charge of the murder at Il Paradiso?”

  Ricciardi confirmed that he was, without taking his hands out of his overcoat pockets. The man’s voice was deep and hoarse.

  “Yes, that’s me. And with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

  “I’m Giuseppe Coppola, and this is my brother Pietro. I believe that I was the last person to see . . .”

  He ran a hand over his face. His lower lip was quivering, and he bit it to make it stop; he seemed to be gripped by powerful emotions. He went on:

  “I was in Rosaria’s room, before . . . before what happened to her happened. The last person to see her alive. Except for the murderer.”

  Ricciardi gestured toward the staircase and headed upstairs toward his office, followed by the two men. First, though, he told the officer on sentinel duty to have Maione wait for him with the merchant of sacred objects in a separate room. He had a feeling that for now it would be best to avoid any confrontations.

  He pointed the Coppola brothers to the two chairs that stood facing the desk, then opened the windows on the piazza below, which lay immersed in the gray light of that morning, the branches of the holm oaks tossing their leaves uneasily in the wind. Strange weather, for this young spring; strange also not to have that moment of solitude that was the main reason he got to the office early, a time he used to reorganize his thoughts and plan out his activities for the day. But the two men he was about to talk to might well have very important information about Viper’s murder.

  He sized them up attentively. Giuseppe was a few years older, thirty or so at the very most, though hard work and general privation often made guesses at age spectacularly inaccurate; the man had a handsome face, even if his unmistakable grief and anxiety had deformed his features. He wasn’t tall, and his taut, muscular physique spoke of days filled with hard labor, as did the gnarled hands, covered with cuts and abrasions, which he kept twisting.

  The younger brother had declined the offer of a chair and remained standing, as if this were yet another way of expressing his subordinate role. He was a tall, powerful-looking young man, not especially intelligent in appearance, clearly ill at ease, like many people when they find themselves inside police headquarters.

  Ricciardi sat down at his desk and said:

  “Now then, from what you’ve told me, you were Viper’s last customer. Is that correct?”

  Coppola turned even paler than before.

  “Commissa’, I must beg you never to call her by that name. That’s not her real name, her name was Maria Rosaria, and everyone who knew her called her Rosaria. If you call her Viper, you’re doing her wrong.”

  It had come out in a whisper, uttered in a broken voice. Pietro, standing behind his brother, dropped his head in embarrassment. Giuseppe resumed:

  “And another thing: I’m not one of her customers. I paid, that’s true, otherwise they wouldn’t let us be together; but I’m not a client.”

  Ricciardi refused to allow himself to be intimidated.

  “Coppola, if we hope to attain any results from this conversation, then your hostility is useless. My objective is to identify the murderer of this poor girl as quickly as possible and to bring him to justice. If you have the same objective, that’s all well and good. Otherwise, I’ll have to question you in a very different manner, and in a different setting. It’s up to you.”

  The tension drained visibly from Coppola’s body, as his shoulders hunched and he once again ran his hands over his face. After a moment, he said:

  “You’re right, Commissa’. Forgive me. It’s just that this thing . . . this news, you understand, it’s got me upset. No, not upset, it’s killing me. Because since last night, when they told me, I’m a dead man too.”

  “How and when did you learn about the girl’s death?”

  “From the cook. We supply fruit and vegetables to Il Paradiso, we bring them late every night so they have plenty of time in the morning to get everything ready. They have a large icebox and that’s what they prefer. My brother, here, makes the last round: we’re street vendors, we have a pretty big company, we have horsecarts and trucks. The cook told him and he came to me with the news. Right, Pietro?”

  The younger man nodded his agreement; Giuseppe didn’t even bother to turn around to look at him, and went on:

  “It was late, very late. But still I hurried over. I had to see for myself . . . They wouldn’t let me in. They said that at your orders the bordello was shut, and that in any case she . . . they’d already taken her away. And so I decided to come here, to see you, and to try to find o
ut more. I’ve been here waiting for you all night.”

  Ricciardi nodded that he understood.

  “Now tell me everything.”

  Coppola smiled bitterly, but on his careworn face it looked more like a grimace.

  “It would take two lifetimes to tell you everything, Commissa’. Two lifetimes, both ended together yesterday. Are you ready for that?”

  Ricciardi spread both arms wide.

  “I’m here in order to understand. Tell me.”

  Giuseppe seemed to be trying to gather his memories, lost in the void behind painful images.

  Outside, a particularly powerful gust of wind rattled the windows. The weather really had decided to change its mood.

  X

  The man began to speak, and his voice seemed to come from somewhere far away.

  “I’m from Vomero, not far from Antignano. Now they have villas there, the well-to-do come in the summer to enjoy the fresh air; and ever since they built the funicular two years ago, some have even moved there to live full-time. But when I was a boy there was nothing but countryside, a few vegetable gardens, and the occasional farmhouse. There weren’t many young people, everyone left early to find work in the factories, at the Bagnoli steel mill, or even overseas, to America. Hunger, Commissa’. Hunger is a nasty beast, it comes hunting for you at night and keeps you from sleeping, and by day it saps your strength and puts you to sleep on your feet, even though you’re wide awake.”

  He paused.

  “Among those few young people, there was us—me and my brother and sisters. My father died young: I’m the oldest, and I can just barely remember him; my brother Pietro is twenty and he practically never even saw him. My mother grew everything we ate, and we took turns standing guard at night to make sure no one stole the few crops we were able to grow in our little garden. Nearby lived our neighbors, the Cennamos. And there was Rosaria.”

  As Ricciardi listened, he noticed the reverence in the man’s voice whenever he uttered the girl’s name: as if she were a goddess.

  “She has always been beautiful, Commissa’. Even when we were starving, in our privation, when her face was covered with dirt and her fingernails were ragged, her legs scratched by nettles: she was still beautiful. It’s as if there’s a light inside her, when she’s there you can’t look at anything else. She’s always been so beautiful.”

  He jerked his head, as if a terrible thought had entered his mind, and he turned to his brother.

  “Was. I have to remember to say ‘she always was so beautiful.’ Because she’s dead now, no? She’s dead, Pietro, and I’ll never see it again, that light that was inside her.”

  There came a strange sobbing sound, a wail from his belly at once high-pitched and deep, that made a shiver go through Ricciardi. The young man standing behind Giuseppe put a hand on his brother’s shoulder and whispered:

  “Go on, Peppi’. Go on, the commissario is listening.”

  Coppola went on.

  “As far as I can remember we were always together, me and Rosaria. We fell in love right away, and everyone knew that we would live our lives together. We dreamed of our children, the house we’d build, the things we were going to do. We spent our days immersed in thoughts of our future together. But little by little, as time went on, it became clear that there was a problem, Commissa’. There was a danger that threatened all our dreams. The danger was Rosaria’s beauty.”

  A clap of thunder rumbled outside, from out over the water.

  “Rosaria was beautiful, and she was becoming more beautiful with every day. No one who came through our farms, the merchants who came to buy broccoli, the butchers who brought us their hogs to fatten, could look at her without being tempted to touch. I was sixteen years old and she was fourteen, and I can’t tell you how many times the others had to hold me back, to keep me from winding up in prison for stabbing someone. But now I understand that such a beautiful woman can’t be born in a place like that. It’s not right. Beauty, Commissa’, it’s something you have to be able to afford.”

  A few drops began to pepper the panes of glass.

  “Villages like ours always have a master. A rich man, a nobleman, or a violent man who buys the world at gunpoint. That’s the kind of man we had: he’d managed to become mayor through the power of fear. He was married, he had lots of children, and plenty more scattered throughout the countryside; he had a soft spot for beautiful women. A real weakness. One day, going by in his carriage, he saw Rosaria walking barefoot down the road, with a basket on her head; she was tattered, starving, filthy. But as always she was incredibly beautiful. That man was old enough to be her father, maybe even her grandfather: he had children much older than her. But he saw her, and he wanted her. And he took her.”

  Those last words told the tale of an old wound that had never healed. The man fell silent, and then sighed:

  “There was nothing anyone could do. Of course, I could have killed him, and then I would have been dead: and afterward, who would take care of my family? My brother was still a child, and so were my sisters. My mother looked me in the face, begged me on her knees. That’s how I lost her, the first time. I didn’t see her again for years, that man had sent her far away from his wife. He’d lost his senses too: Rosaria’s beauty is like the vino novello, the light sweet wine that, when the weather is hot, knocks you flat on your back before you know what’s happened. Was. It was like the vino novello.”

  He seemed beaten by his inability to come to terms with Viper’s death.

  “I found out that she’d had a baby, a son. That’s when I realized that I’d lost her for good. That child was the definitive destruction of our dreams, of our afternoons spent dreaming, sitting on the scattered straw under the sun. And that’s when I started working hard: there was nothing else left to me.”

  Pietro, standing behind his brother, whispered:

  “You cared about us, Peppi’. Your family.”

  “Yes, I cared about you. And it was for you that I really started working. I bought a horse and a cart, Commissa’. I brought vegetables into the city. I thought to myself: why sell them for pennies to wholesalers, when I could sell them directly? It wasn’t easy, they don’t let you just bite into their market: they split the districts up among themselves. More than once I found myself with a knife in my face, and I was forced to react. Maybe you know this, Commissa’, but when someone doesn’t care about his own life, it becomes difficult to reason with him. I didn’t kill anyone, but I had no choice but to split a few skulls. But in the end, I won a place for myself.”

  Pietro, standing, had a clear surge of pride that Ricciardi didn’t miss. The relationship between the two brothers, despite the younger brother’s obvious subservience, must have been extremely strong.

  “I spent all my days on that cart, I’ve always liked horses, and that’s why I have the nickname I’ve had since I was a boy. As soon as Pietro here was old enough, we got another cart: and with the money we made we bought another garden, and my sisters started working that one. And then another cart and another garden, until we grew to become what we are today: the biggest fruit and vegetable company in all Vomero.”

  Ricciardi listened very closely.

  “And Rosaria? When did you see her again?”

  The momentary distraction of telling how he’d built his business was swept away like a cloud in the wind, and pain welled back up in the man’s face.

  “I hadn’t heard from her in a couple of years. I’d learned that the bastard who stole her from me met the end he deserved: somebody took a stiletto and gutted him like a fish. Rosaria had left, no one knew where; she’d given the boy to her mother, he still lives with her back in the village. I’d landed a number of important customers—when you deliver to them at home they’re willing to pay extra; one of them was the bordello. One day when I was unloading crates, a woman came into the kitchen and said: ‘Say, do you hav
e any good apples like the ones we eat where I come from?’ Commissa’, you have to believe me: if she hadn’t spoken, I’d never have recognized her. She’d always been beautiful, but the girl I was looking at wasn’t just beautiful, she was a miracle. Still the voice, that voice, I knew it. And I said: ‘Rosa’, is that you?’ ”

  Overwhelmed by the power of that memory, he was speechless. His brother, embarassed, once again put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and he went on.

  “She gave me a look, and who could forget that look. And she burst into tears, and ran upstairs. But like I told you before, Commissa’, I’m a hardheaded customer; so I gathered my courage and one night I walked in through the front door, climbed the stairs, and sat down to wait. Every so often the Signora would ask me: young man, what, are you waiting for a train? And I would say: no, Signo’, I’m waiting for a girl I like, the ones I see here are clearly rejects. Until I looked up at the little balcony where the young ladies parade, and there she was, my Rosaria. And she looks at me, and she doesn’t say a word. I get to my feet, I wait until she gives me a sign, I pay what I’m required to pay for an hour, and I go up to her room. For a few minutes, Commissa’, we don’t say a word: we just look each other in the face. Then, we start sobbing like a couple of fools, and we embrace.”

  The rain, which by now was driving, left streaks down the panes like the tracks of tears. The piazza was filling up with people looking up at the sky in bewilderment, using both hands to grip the umbrellas that the wind was trying to tear away.

  “Six months went by. I have plenty of money, I don’t have bad habits, and the company’s doing well. I’d go to see Rosaria every day: I paid for her time. I’d stretch out on the bed with her, and we’d talk; we had so many stories to tell each other. And of course we’d kiss. But not that, no, we didn’t do that. I wanted to wait.”