Vipers

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  He took what he needed, and he left in a hurry.

  LV

  Ricciardi didn’t have to wait long, once he was back in his office. He was sitting at his desk, his thoughts lost in a reconstruction of what had happened, when Maione knocked at the door.

  “Commissario, he’s right outside. When he saw us coming, he tried to run, but I’d brought Special Agent Palomba, you know him, that kid is fast and he caught him right away. The crowd messed him up a little, those guys, you know what they’re like, savages. We had to fire a couple of shots in the air, and that quieted them down.”

  Ricciardi said:

  “I was expecting him. Bring him in.”

  The door swung open and two officers brought in Pietro Coppola in shackles, the younger brother of Peppe ’a Frusta, Joey the Whip.

  As soon as he saw the commissario, the man started right in:

  “Commissa’, what does all this mean? To come and take a respectable citizen out of his home, on Easter Sunday, what is this, the moving pictures? And after all, I’ve been perfectly forthcoming the whole time, would you explain to me . . .”

  Ricciardi raised one hand to halt the river of words.

  “Coppola, let’s not waste any time, let’s just skip the part where you get indignant. The more straightforward our conversation, the less painful this will be for all of us. You should understand that to bring you in, and in shackles, we must have good evidence.”

  “Commissario, you’ve got it all wrong! I don’t have anything to do with it, I was just covering up for my brother, who . . .”

  Ricciardi opened one of his drawers and set down an object on his otherwise empty desktop. The man fell silent; his lips kept moving as if he were murmuring something, but no voice emerged.

  A long silence ensued, at the end of which Coppola slumped forward, as if his soul had left his body. The officer at his side held him up and, at a signal from Ricciardi, sat him in the nearest chair.

  The man’s gaze was fixed on the object on top of the desk: the inlaid wooden brush, in which what looked like long blond human hairs were tangled.

  LVI

  Commissa’, in truth, my brother—you never actually met him. The person he used to be, the man, the worker he once was. You never met him.

  He’s the best young man in the world, or actually, he was. Always cheerful, always thinking about the business, all the work we do he dreamed it up himself. We were poor, we were starving; we had a vegetable garden that didn’t even produce enough for us. And as long as he was with Maria Rosaria, when they were kids, they were satisfied with what they had.

  That woman, Commissa’, she robbed my brother of his will. When he had her, he didn’t want anything else.

  Then, when that man took her for himself and fathered her child, my brother resigned himself to it and started working, and he changed all our lives.

  I don’t know if he was doing it was so that he wouldn’t have to think about her, or because without her he found other motives, like love for his own family: but he became another man. Little by little, with hard work and sweat, we became what we are now. We all work for the company—you saw my one sister, and the other one that you never met, and I take care of the carts and the animals: but the one who decides, who makes the choices, who points the way for everyone else—that’s my brother; without him we’re nothing. Without him we’ll just go back to being the miserable yokels we were before.

  I met Ines three years ago, when we weren’t much more than kids. She’s not from where I grew up, she came with her sister who, like I told you, is a schoolteacher. We fell in love immediately, but we have nothing, she lives on that miserable salary and I depend on my family. But then I talked my brother into hiring Ines to help us out, and we started to hope. We set a date; at first we’d live together with the family and later we’d build a house of our own.

  Everything was going fine, Commissa’. Everything.

  And then, the one time I didn’t make the round of deliveries to our customers, and let my brother go in my place, they happened to see each other again.

  Bad luck, Commissa’. The worst luck. Bad luck for my brother, whose peaceful life ended; bad luck for Ines and for me, because we were forced to forget about getting married; and bad luck even for her, for Maria Rosaria, seeing how things went in the end.

  He went out of his mind, went right back to where he’d broke off when he lost her. He stopped working, he spent all our money on her, to spend time with her, to buy gifts for her. We saw all our hard work go into the house where Maria Rosaria’s mother lived, which grew, one room after another; while he told me—his own brother—that there was no money for me and Ines to get married, that we’d just have to wait. For a whore, Commissa’. Because that’s all she was: nothing but a whore.

  But it wasn’t her fault, it was my brother’s fault. He had become convinced that he couldn’t live without her, that he couldn’t lose her again; he decided to marry her, if you can believe it.

  You don’t know what it means to hear those words, one Sunday at lunch: he wanted to marry her. We couldn’t get married anymore, Ines and I; and the company would slide into ruin, and we’d lose everything, because my brother couldn’t see beyond her and wouldn’t have cared about anything else anymore.

  That very Sunday, after lunch, Ines and I made our decision. There was only one way to save our future. Only one way.

  I could pass undisturbed through the little side door, everyone knew me both because I delivered the fruit and vegetables, and because I often went to call my brother, when he lost all sense of time and forgot about the rest of mankind. It was opening time, when all the girls are busy and no one notices anything. I waited for my brother to leave and I immediately slipped into the room.

  I wanted to know what Viper had decided. If she was going to tell my brother no, she’d still be alive now.

  But when she saw me, she said: I want to surprise your brother. I’m going to give him my answer on Easter Sunday, in less than a week. I’m going to tell him yes on Easter Sunday. I’ll only make him wait until the holiday, and then we’ll take back the future that was taken from us.

  You understand, Commissa’? They were taking back their future, and taking away mine and Ines’s. Love at last, she told me: do you know what love is? She asked me, me of all people. A whore who wants to teach me about the meaning of love.

  That’s when I picked up the pillow.

  I didn’t realize right away that I’d dropped my horse-grooming brush; when I couldn’t find it anymore I just thought I must have lost it while I was driving the cart, it’s happened to me before.

  I loved Maria Rosaria, you know. I’m not a monster. When I was a child, since I went everywhere with Peppe, she treated me like a younger brother, I still remember.

  She used to make fun of us, she’d say: ah, here they come now, Peppe ’a Frusta avanti e ’o Frustino appresso. Joey the Whip leading, and the Little Whip trailing behind. That’s what she always used to call me, Commissa’: my little whip.

  I loved Maria Rosaria.

  But what I did, I’d do again. A hundred times over, I’d do it again.

  LVII

  When the officers had taken him away, Maione and Ricciardi sat in silence. Outside, the sun was setting on the first Sunday of spring.

  The brigadier said, as he sat scratching his head:

  “Crazy, eh, Commissa’? When you hear the motives people have for murder, they always seem ridiculous. Maybe all he would really have had to do is talk to his brother, tell him what he wanted, they could have found a solution, and now they’d all be nice and cozy, sitting around a lovely Easter table, enjoying themselves.”

  Ricciardi started in surprise:

  “Oh, Raffaele, I’m so sorry, I completely forgot that today is Easter! I made you miss your lunch!”

  “Don’t mention it, Commis
sa’; when I left to go pick up Coppola, I did a quick calculation and it became clear that I wouldn’t make it in time; so I sent someone to alert both Lucia and Dr. Modo to push everything back to supper tonight, so I’ve got plenty of time, work is work, and that poor girl deserves respect too. But satisfy my curiosity: how did you know? What made you realize that Pietro Coppola was the murderer?”

  Ricciardi sighed, vaguely waving one hand in the air.

  “Luck. Pure dumb luck. Do you remember yesterday, when the doctor told that story about the donkey-hair wig for Il Duce?”

  “How could I forget, this morning I was still laughing all by myself.”

  “Exactly. But what occurred to me is that what I thought were long blond hairs on that brush, hairs that I thought belonged to Lily, the prostitute who often shared toiletries with Viper, might not even have been human hairs. And we had already seen hair like that, when Coppola was grooming the sorrel mare, that time we went to Antignano to question Viper’s mother.”

  “That’s true, exactly. And then he started whittling a piece of wood, while we were talking to his brother, I remember clearly.”

  “Right. Then I remembered the blind man with perfect eyesight who plays the accordion out front of Il Paradiso, right on the side where the tradesmen’s entrance is, do you remember?”

  “Of course I do, the man whose accordion the Fascists broke the other morning. And what did he tell you?”

  “He told me that Monday afternoon he saw Peppe ’a Frusta leave the building, happy as he always was when he’d seen his girl; then a minute later, Pietro went in, and he wondered why on earth Pietro would have made a special effort to avoid his brother. But since he’s blind, of course, he kept it to himself, because he didn’t want to give himself away and lose his source of income; after all he’d seen Pietro go in plenty of times, he was one of the chief suppliers for the brothel’s restaurant, so he didn’t think it was all that remarkable.”

  Maione shook his head.

  “Incredible. If he hadn’t dropped the brush, he might even have gotten away with it. And he might even have sent his brother to prison; after all, he was still the last person to have seen the girl alive. Which is why he defended him so furiously.”

  Ricciardi checked the time.

  “It’s almost seven. Go on home, Raffaele, and give Lucia and the children my best Easter wishes.”

  “Grazie, Commissa’. But what are you going to do? Aren’t you going to go home and celebrate?”

  The commissario heaved a sigh:

  “No, I’ll write a report on Coppola’s arrest and then I’ll just be able to make it in time to take Livia to the theater, as I promised I would. We owe it to her, don’t we? If it hadn’t been for her, the good doctor, instead of eating Lucia’s casatiello, lucky man, would be sailing toward some godforsaken island and a diet of bread and water.”

  Maione laughed out loud.

  “You’re absolutely right, Commissa’, I’ll have to tell him that, tonight. Oh, that’ll steam him! And as for Lucia’s casatiello, there’s a big slice just for you. But what are you going to do about Signora Rosa? I’m sure she’s made supper for you, your shift was supposed to be over this afternoon, wasn’t it?”

  “Rosa’s used to it. This isn’t the first time I’ve skipped dinner. She knows that if I’m not back by a certain time, she just needs to wrap up whatever she made. I’ll eat it tomorrow.”

  Maione raised his hand to the brim of his cap in a salute.

  “Well then, happy Easter, Commissa’.”

  “Happy Easter to you, Raffaele.”

  LVIII

  Springtime has no pity.

  She sees herself reflected in the tail end of sunset, draping the night around her shoulders like the finest of capes; she gazes at herself, she admires herself, richly bedecked in new buds and fresh green leaves, and she has no pity.

  She has no pity for the elderly woman who sits at a table of covered dishes, thinking to herself that this may be the last Easter in her life, and she’s spending it waiting for a footstep on the stairs that never comes, her heart gripped by fear—fear for her own loneliness and the loneliness of others. A heart that gradually weakens, in silence, closed in her chest. Beat after beat.

  She breathes in the gusts of air off the sea, springtime does. And she has no pity.

  She has no pity for the long-legged young woman with tortoiseshell glasses who spent the whole morning standing in line at the oven in Via Santa Teresa to pick up the pastiera that she made just for him, and the whole afternoon choosing which of her three good dresses to wear; and she worked up her courage to ask her mother if she could borrow her grandmother’s earrings, and got a hail of questions in exchange, all of which she ignored; and she will spend her whole evening watching the clock, sitting in a chilly chair in an apartment that is not hers, losing every certainty, and she will spend her whole night weeping into her pillow. Believing that her heart is broken forever, feeling a sharp and desperate pang of pain. Beat after beat.

  She strolls in the light breezes from the forest, springtime does. And she has no pity.

  She has no pity for the woman who once again feels her heart beating in her throat, as she puts on a magnificent silk dress and gazes into the mirror at a topaz glittering between her breasts, hoping that in a nearby heart something more than mere gratitude might live. Hoping that that heart might learn to love, even if it’s only a little at a time. Beat after beat.

  She stirs the blood in everyone’s veins, old women and young, springtime does. And she has no pity.

  She has no pity for whole families, gathered around a table overflowing with food, love, and friendship; no pity for all those who embrace and kiss, under the spell of a holiday instituted by men that will go by and come around again, and some will be there when it does, and others will be gone by then. Hearts alone and hearts together. Hearts that gaze at each other and smile. Beat after beat.

  She stirs up life and the memory of death, springtime does. And she has no pity.

  She has no pity for the man who walks through a city made up of both the living and the dead, trying to ignore his emotions, hoping not to err both in what he does and in what he doesn’t do. Shrugging off both his own pain and sorrow and that of others. Thinking all the while that love brings death, and hoping that’s not love’s only gift. Hoping also that one day he’ll be able to listen to every lurch of his heart, without fear. Beat after beat.

  But springtime has no pity.

  No pity at all.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This story exists because Severino Cesari and Paolo Repetti asked for it. It was shepherded by Mariapaola Romeo and Valentina Pattavina. Its architecture was shaped by Antonio Formicola and in discussions with Michele Antonielli. Set design and staging by the fantastic Annamaria Torroncelli and Stefania Negro. Scented and nurtured by the expert hands of Sabrina Prisco, of the Osteria Canali of Salerno. Overseen from the very beginning and cultivated by the marvelous Corpi Freddi. Like all the Ricciardi stories, it springs from my mother’s stories and smiles. All I did was tell it.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Maurizio de Giovanni lives and works in Naples. His Commissario Ricciardi series, including I Will Have Vengeance (Europa 2013), Blood Curse (Europa 2013), Everyone in Their Place (Europa 2013), and The Day of the Dead (Europa 2014) are bestsellers in Italy and have been published to great acclaim in French, Spanish, and German, in addition to English. He is also the author of The Crocodile (Europa 2013), a noir thriller set in contemporary Naples.

 

 

 
(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share