Vipers

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Ricciardi pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Madame, who distractedly dabbed at her tears.

  “And he wanted a place of our own, for our son; only he didn’t know how to make money, and since he was good at cards he gave that a try and he started to win. But then he started to lose, until one day they killed him. In broad daylight, one afternoon, they killed him. When does that ever happen, Commissa’, that loan sharks come and kill someone in the afternoon?”

  A lamb, on a nearby terrace, emitted a high-pitched bleat that sounded like the cry of a baby.

  “And now my son has started gambling too, right where his father left off. Instead of thanking Almighty God for how things turned out, the way that the two of us have managed to make do on our own. And I can’t stand the idea that he might wind up like him.”

  Ricciardi listened attentively.

  “And how do you think you can stop him, Signora? By continuing to pay off his creditors, with money you extort from whoever you can blackmail?”

  “Commissa’, I don’t blackmail anyone. It’s true, I do take advantage of the friendship of some of our most loyal customers, I ask them to give me a little something in advance; but I give the girls their share out of my own pocket, and I assure you that they’re not going without, no, not at all.”

  “And the most important of these customers, the one who was most willing to provide these, as you call them, advances, was Ventrone, wasn’t it? Look at that, coincidentally the one whose business was most vulnerable to gossip and backbiting.”

  “Do you really think that I would blackmail Ventrone? No, Commissa’, I’ll say it again: I don’t blackmail anybody. The Cavalier is an old client, perhaps one of our dearest ones, and a friend. It’s just that his son . . . you’ve met him, haven’t you? He’s a young man, but he has the mind-set of an old one. All that contact with priests, ever since he was little—maybe he’s become a little bit of a priest himself. I’m sure that it’s him, that he’s locked his father up at home so he can’t come see us.”

  Ricciardi tried to grasp the meaning of those words.

  “Why, do you think that even without Viper the Cavalier would come all the same?”

  Yvonne laughed mockingly.

  “Commissa’, you need to listen to me: if someone is disposed to come to a place like this, they’ll just come, no question. It’s not a matter of this whore or that whore, it’s just the place. Ventrone, like so many others, used to come here even while his wife was alive, in fact, when his wife died they came to tell him right here in this drawing room. And there’s nothing wrong with that, if you think about it: when you’re grieving, you look for a place where you can concentrate on other things. It’s not the sex, it’s the state of mind. If Ventrone could come here, he would, the way he did before Viper, and the way he will again, long after the pleasures of the flesh are a distant memory. You’re not the kind of man who would come here, I know that. But if you did, you’d see how many people come even though their thingy is only good for peeing, and they pay plenty of money to hide behind a curtain or under a bed, just to hear and watch and especially to remember. And what’s so bad about that? It’s not as if the only thing we’re allowed to do in this life is suffer.”

  If only certain forms of suffering could be avoided, Ricciardi thought. If only all you had to do was give someone money, in order to stop seeing. Even if only for an instant.

  “Then why did you go looking for Ventrone? If you’re sure that he’ll come back, that it’s just a matter of time, why did you go to the shop this morning?”

  “I was hoping not to see him at all in his shop. Because if he wasn’t there, it would mean that he was still afraid to to be seen here. And if he was there, then it meant that he was going somewhere else. Men like him, Commissa’, they just don’t give up coming to a brothel. Not for long.”

  Ricciardi understood that he wouldn’t be able to pry any more information out of the woman.

  “Signora, just as there are men who can’t stop coming to the brothel, there are others who are slaves to the card tables. Your son, as you know, is heading down that path, and he owes considerable sums to some nasty people who, luckily, given his youth, will no longer extend credit to him; but if that’s the way he was heading, let me tell you from experience, sooner or later he’ll start back down that path. Keep him on a short leash for now. He’d be well advised not to be seen in certain parts of town.”

  The woman sighed.

  “What do you think, Commissa’, that I haven’t tried? He’s turning into a full-grown man, he’s been coming into places like ours for years now. He’s an adult. A mother can’t do much in this situation. I can’t keep him locked up in his room.”

  And Ventrone, with his advances, had been helping to pay off the debts that young Tullio was running up at the gaming tables, Ricciardi thought to himself.

  “Another thing, Madame: Coppola, the fruit vendor, has he come back? Have you seen him again, since the murder?”

  “No, Commissa’. The only reason he came was to see Viper, he’s not the kind of man who would patronize Il Paradiso or any other cathouse. He’s a different kind of person; nothing exists for him but his work and his family. In fact, he never really came for Viper: he came for Maria Rosaria, the guaglioncella—the little girl—from Vomero whom he’d known when she was young and whom he wanted to marry. He paid for his time just so that he could see her. He didn’t even come here to deliver fruit, until the one time he came and ran into her by chance. And it would have been better for everyone if he’d never run into her at all.”

  “And why do you say that?”

  “Because the only new thing that happened was that Peppe asked Viper to marry him, in fact. And she died as a result. And no one knows what she had decided to tell him. In any case, no, he hasn’t come back. He’s not one of those men who can’t live without seeing pretty girls, even if it’s only for fun. Just to spend time in a place that’s playful, amusing. To keep from dwelling on one’s troubles. You should come here yourself, sometime, Commissa’, lots of your colleagues from police headquarters do it. And after all, you could come with your friend: the doctor.”

  Ricciardi pulled out his watch and wondered anxiously, for the thousandth time, whether what Livia was doing would have the hoped-for effect and what he would come up with if it didn’t.

  And suddenly, the tiny window that had been laboriously creaking open in his mind over Viper’s murder slammed shut.

  L

  As always, Maione had arranged not to be on duty during Easter Saturday and Sunday: the children loved that holiday so much, and the family had its own little traditions. The brigadier, though, couldn’t have foreseen that he’d be riddled with anxiety and eager for news about the fate of Dr. Modo, so he was distracted and unusually taciturn.

  Lucia, who knew the reason for her husband’s bad mood, watched him anxiously, careful not to alter what she usually did on Holy Saturday in the slightest, also because this was the first Easter that the young Benedetta would spend with them. She’d even whispered to Raffaele, as he pulled his watch out of his pocket for the hundredth time, that he should pay more attention to the little girl, who doted on him specially ever since he had brought her home with him the previous Christmas; he’d nodded his head, lost in thought, then he’d called all the children over, taking the smallest into his arms.

  “Now then, while mammà makes it, I’ll tell you the story of the pastiera. Do you want to hear it?”

  As if at an agreed-upon signal, Lucia started laying out on the table all the ingredients necessary for the preparation of the pie: shortcrust pastry dough, mixed and kneaded in the early hours of the day when everyone else was still asleep; the sheep’s milk ricotta, in a basket of woven straw; the wheat, boiled in fresh milk; refined white sugar; lard, eggs, cinnamon, and lemon; candied citron and cucuzzata, the squash marmalade for which Lucia was so renowned
; and the tremendously delicate orange blossom water, made by steeping the blossoms of the bitter orange tree in hot water and then filtering it: the true scent of springtime in Naples.

  Every noise from below, every passing automobile engine brought Livia to the window where she scanned the street to see if someone was coming to her front door with news from Falco. For hours, the woman had been prowling her apartment like a lioness in a cage; anxiety was swelling in her chest minute by minute.

  She had urged Ricciardi to wait and not to contact her. But right now she wished he was at her side, not out of fondness but for support.

  She wondered once a minute whether Falco would be successful, and even though she had every reason to believe him, whether he’d actually make the effort. She had decided to trust him, but in all likelihood, she told herself, it was out of necessity rather than any real conviction.

  She stubbed out her umpteenth cigarette in the crystal ashtray. The lack of sleep and food combined with the tension, making her head spin. The future was full of uncertainty.

  Enrica was looking to the future with a renewed faith. For the first time since she realized that she was in love with Ricciardi, she had some hope of persuading him to open himself to a genuine relationship, giving body and words to the tender gazes they exchanged every time they saw each other.

  Rosa’s invitation to dinner on Sunday, after an initial burst of anguish, now seemed exciting. She would go, of course she would. She’d sit across the table from him, they’d eat and talk, and at the end of the evening they’d say goodnight with an arrivederci.

  She had made a decision: she wanted to make something with her own hands. She wanted this Easter to be different from the others, for her and for him. She would prove her love in silence, not with words but with flavor: the finest flavor that she knew how to create.

  She’d make her pastiera.

  As the children of the Maione family stood gaping at the array of delicious food that Lucia had laid out on the table, the brigadier said:

  “Long, long ago, when this city was young, there was nothing here but a small fishing village by the sea. And from the sea came almost everything there was to eat, fish, shellfish, mussels, everything. But then one day came a terrible storm, and the fishing boats couldn’t go out anymore; the storm went on and on, the weeks passed, and by then the people had used up their stores of food, there was nothing left.”

  Maione punctuated his account with all the requisite sound effects, thunder and lightning, towering waves. Even the older children, who’d heard the story a dozen times, were still captivated and listened openmouthed.

  Smiling, Lucia expertly mixed the ingredients.

  Smiling, Enrica mixed the boiled wheat, lard, milk, and lemon zest together in the stockpot.

  She was thinking that the true meaning of love is in sharing. Not that she was an expert, she reflected, but who ever said that you have to experience something to understand it completely?

  She, for instance, had read widely and dreamed extensively about love. She’d listened when her girlfriends and her sister confided in her, and she’d watched romantic movies accompanied by heartbreaking scores at the movie house near Piazza Dante, and on hot summer nights she had heard the sweet serenades of lovers. She knew everything about love.

  And she knew—as she methodically mixed the batter to eliminate all clumps, one eye on the wall clock to mark the ten minutes prescribed by the old recipe—that disappointments only drive a person away from love; that love has no need of experience to come into being and to grow stronger, in fact, if anything, experience hardens and embitters you.

  Perhaps it’s better not to be so experienced.

  That’s right, she thought, taking the stockpot off the heat.

  “That’s right,” Brigadier Maione told his children. “The sea wouldn’t hear of it, he wouldn’t calm his stormy waves. And since springtime had come and the children were hungry, the fishermen decided to venture out anyway, even if the tempest was still howling. The wives and children were despondent at the thought of their fathers and husbands daring those waves that towered higher than their houses. Every night they gathered on the beach, in the driving rain, and prayed and wept and despaired, imploring the mean old sea to send back their papas with their boats. What should I do, should I stop or do you want me to go on?”

  With his skills, he held the children’s attention while, with just as much of her own, Lucia’s nimble hands composed their own symphony, blending ricotta and eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, sugar, and orange blossom water. She noticed with a hint of pride that though Maria and Benedetta were listening to every word of Raffaele’s story, they weren’t missing a single thing she did.

  Go on, she thought.

  Go on, said the children, in chorus.

  “Come in!” said Livia, startled by the light knocking on the living room door.

  She had just nodded off in her armchair, overcome by exhaustion. Her heart leapt into her mouth, her eyes darted to the pendulum clock hanging on the wall. Early, she thought. Still too early.

  The housekeeper appeared at the door, uncertain.

  “Signo’, excuse me. May I?”

  “Yes, what is it?” Livia asked brusquely.

  “I beg your pardon, Signo’. You haven’t eaten in two days and . . . I mind my own business, you know that, but it breaks my heart to see you like this, especially now that Easter is on its way. So I just thought, since I make it at home the day before Easter because then I come to work and I don’t have enough time, well, I just thought . . .”

  The woman’s dithering was starting to annoy Livia.

  “Clara, just say what you have to say: you just thought what?”

  “I just thought: this year, I’m going to make a small one, just for my signora. And I’ve brought it to you.”

  “What is it, what did you bring?”

  The housekeeper pulled out a small bundle and, blushing, extended it to Livia.

  “The pastiera, that’s what I’ve brought you, Signo’. A special pie that we make in our city.”

  “Our city,” said Maione, “was small then, like I told you. But the children and the women were the same as they are now: when they cried they sobbed so loud that it was impossible not to hear them. And in the end a siren, or mermaid, which is to say, a woman with a long fish tail who lives under the sea, Parthenope was her name, came out of the water and said: Why on earth are you crying and sobbing day and night, so I can’t get a wink of sleep?”

  The little girl who was sitting comfortably in his arms, hugging him tight, said:

  “Because they wanted their fathers!”

  “Good girl, that’s exactly what the children said to the siren Parthenope. And since she was a good siren, she took pity and said: lemme see what I can do. And she plunged back under the waves and went to speak to her father, the Sea. She told him that all those wives and children were waiting for their men to come home so they could get to eat and hug them again.”

  Lucia kneaded together the dough with the kernels of wheat boiled in the milk, adding the cucuzzata and the candied citron cubed fine. Her son reached out a hand to snatch a piece, but she was faster than he was and gave him a light slap, saying:

  “Not yet!”

  Not yet, Enrica said to herself under her breath. It’s not yet time.

  She thought that she’d understood how Luigi Alfredo worked: it was counterproductive to try to drag him out of himself, forcing him to do or say things that didn’t come naturally.

  She didn’t want to employ strategies, she wouldn’t even be capable of doing so. As she rolled out the pastry dough in the pan, careful not to leave it any thicker than a quarter inch, creating the hollow that, like a woman’s womb, would accommodate the mixture of boiled wheat, ricotta, and a myriad of scents and spices, she thought about herself and about the man she loved, and she tho
ught about the pie she was making: something complex, intricate, and difficult that would lead to something else, something that would be much more than the sum of its parts.

  Enrica smiled.

  Livia smiled, a little tightly, and thanked her housekeeper. Her short nap had left in its wake many new thoughts, dense as clouds heavy with rain.

  She wasn’t only anxious at the thought of the doctor; there was also her uncertainty about the future, what she should do tomorrow, whether to leave town, as she had decided after a sleepless night, or stay, and take another chance at winning herself a tomorrow.

  She looked at the slice of that strange pie that her housekeeper had made for her, and for an instant she was tempted to just toss it into the trash can: the last thing she wanted to do right now was eat. Then the sweet smell of orange blossoms wafted to her nostrils, and her empty stomach rumbled.

  “The Sea rumbled,” said Maione, “because he didn’t want to let the fishing boats get home, he was having too much fun with his tempest. Also, he was hungry, and that made him grumpy. Parthenope, who knew him well, hurried back to the mammas and children assembled on the beach, and they had a meeting to decide what to do next. That was when the littlest girl of all had an idea: since it was springtime, and the Sea didn’t know that, she thought it might help to show him all the wonderful things that come with that season. And so they prepared lots of bowls full of all the earth’s bounty: ricotta and flour, symbols of the fertile countryside; eggs, symbols of how life renews itself; wheat kernels boiled in milk and orange blossom water, symbols of the meeting of plants and animals; sugar, the symbol of sweetness; and spices, a symbol of distant peoples and the brotherhood that grows thanks to the sea. And they put everything out, right next to the beach.”