Three, Imperfect Number

by Patrizia Rinaldi

In his search for a parking place, Sergio drove a couple of times around the stadium. He turned off the MP3 player.

  “Sometimes I’ve just got to hear a song, that one song and no other. Then I turn it off, wait ten minutes, and play it again. Full volume, no earbuds. I could go on like that for hours. I fixate on a couple of lines and wait for them. Like: Scream for mercy, he laughs as he’s watching you bleed... How do you think I’d do as a cop?”

  “What does that have to do with anything, right now?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that sometimes I worry about the years going by and me sitting here, same as ever, going nowhere, in other words. I’m looking around for an emergency exit.”

  “‘Nice victory, then, is yours! In cases like this, you should give flowers to policemen, my friends.’ You know who said that?”

  “Search me.”

  “You should give flowers to policemen, not leftovers. My addition. Why don’t you go find out who said it, I’m not going to tell you. Here where we live, the only possible revolution would involve following the rules, but it bothers me even to think about explaining it to you.”

  “Whatever you say, Auntie. But you want to know something? When you come back from work, it’s like you left a piece of yourself there. You’re a mess.”

  “You obviously sleep too late. Even at this hour of the night, you’re still talking and talking. See you tomorrow. And try to be punctual.”

  Blanca took her shoes off on the landing and went in without making noise. She managed to move with slow, controlled silent motions.

  She felt a need for solitude. She put her purse on the couch and went into the kitchen, sticking her hands under a trickle of soundless water, and then ran them over her arms. She did the same thing for the benefit of her forehead, her mouth, and the back of her neck. Her hands were her mirror, her way of recognizing her vital boundaries in the absence of a gaze.

  Night and home took her back into a closed shell where she could rest. Where she could surrender.

  She got some leftovers and a glass of red wine and sat on the floor, near the half-empty door that gave onto the terrace.

  The muggy air turned her a little feral. She ate without silverware, quick bites, licking the crystal glass and the solitude she’d sought. Blanca, when you come back from work, it’s like you left a piece of yourself there. She told herself that she needed to stop letting Liguori invade her personal space. It was starting to become obvious.

  She glimpsed a flash that lit up the stadium through the glass: once again, uncertainty whether it was deception or actual perception. The truce had been short-lived.

  She couldn’t seem to tell whether the image did or didn’t correspond to the landscape. She thought she could see a diffuse light illuminating the oval of the upper perimeter, the exterior structures, and the slight upward tilt of the pavement. Then the flash became the usual blaze and died out without warning. Blanca tried to bring back the image, but all she was able to master, with an exhausting effort of her eyes, was a high halo that could even have come from the moon.

  She blamed it all on Liguori.

  Impulses that should remain in the depths multiply in you, and because of you. Dark impulses. I don’t want to concede anything to you, least of all the laborious answer to my troubles. I don’t want anything from you. Do you hear me? I don’t want anything from you. The intention did no good, in fact, if anything, it made the thoughts race faster. So she found herself yearning to kiss him long and slow, to learn the other tongue with her own, the faint wrinkles of his lips.

  Blanca needed to find a distraction. And so she focused on her work: an inspection of the stadium, that’s what she needed now. The next morning she’d ask Sergio to take her there. But first she’d have to ask Malanò’s permission. She already knew that Martusciello wasn’t going to like it.

  The pounding and the flavors faded to a tolerable intensity.

  She got a blanket and stretched out on the couch; she’d sleep there. She had no desire to lose what little sleepiness remained to her.

  She heard Nini’s voice. She’d forgotten to say hello.

  She got up and headed back to the girl’s bedroom, barefoot. As she turned into the hallway a whispered phrase wafted toward her:

  “You need to calm down, Tita. What do you think they’re going to do now: kill all of Vialdi’s women? That’s impossible.”

  Blanca froze, slowed her respiration, and waited to hear more.

  “What if the serial killer really exists? How would we know? All I know is that my mother’s turned into a ghost: skinny, ravenous, and stupid. Did you know that she even told my father? Now, I know that he’s not much, but to hear that your wife is head-over-heels in love with some bastard singer, neomelodic, and dead to boot, is too much even for him! I can’t take it anymore. I wish I’d picked better parents. Still, I’m sorry for her and I don’t want her to die.”

  “Keep your voice down, if Blanca comes home she’ll hear everything.”

  “But we’re whispering! Plus the music’s playing. You’re just paranoid.”

  “My mother can even hear me dreaming.”

  “Your mother? But isn’t your mother someone else?”

  “Sure, Margherita, but my real mother was also a daughter. Blanca is a mother and nothing else. It’s hard to explain. I have two mothers and zero fathers, that’s just how it went. You want me to tell her about it? She’s a policewoman, you know.”

  Blanca felt the word mother throbbing in her temples. It pounded all the way into the bonfires of her eyes: mother, mother, mother. She’d never heard the girl utter that word.

  “Don’t even think about it, Nini.”

  Blanca went and put on her shoes and then entered Nini’s room, making sure the sound of her footsteps announced her well ahead of time.

  “Hi, what are you two up to?”

  “Nothing, just talking. I didn’t hear you come in. I didn’t hear the sound of the door closing.”

  She leaned over Nini, kissed her cheek, and breathed in her wisteria scent.

  Nini walked out of the room with some excuse so she could leave her alone with Tita: she was hoping her friend would take advantage of this opportunity to confide her fear. She went into the kitchen, saw the plate in the sink, the terrace door left ajar. On her way back, she noticed the blanket on the couch.

  “She heard everything,” she thought.

  20.

  From his office window, Detective Liguori was watching Blanca as she stood motionless outside the police station’s front door.

  Sergio got out of the car and walked toward her. She spurned his help, brushed the car door with her body, identified the appropriate movement, which struck Liguori as particularly graceful, and got into the car.

  The young man’s helpless stance as he waited, his rapid strides around the car to the driver’s side, the hand extending out the window to adjust the rearview mirror, all reminded the detective of his own youthful hesitations.

  Not that they’re by any means all gone now, he thought, but the emptiness where they once existed has since been filled in. There’ve been countless moves, sheddings of skin, annoying starts, the choice of a scandalous line of work that, when you come right down to it, I don’t quite get what all the scandal is about, the satisfaction of knowing how many people I was able to dissatisfy, including myself. The latest companion did her best to sweep away the prior couplings. Not very successfully, but she did do her best. She left, perhaps for someplace safe. Soon relief took the place of pining and yearning and the various vicinities all filled in. I’ve stopped trying to clear up misunderstandings and I’ve begun, once again, to cultivate them. So much the better, because I’m no good at pretending to encourage ramshackle ambitions of eternity. A slice here, another nugget there, a quick dismissal after many long hours of enjoyment, rapid mental seductions, subsequently discarded. F
or now, I just go on arguing in favor of marvelous chaos, and with time we’ll see what happens. If Martusciello could hear this line of thought, he’d probably shoot me. Tonight, I just don’t feel like going home.

  He switched on his cell phone and selected the right message according to his present whims.

  He found himself in Via Duomo with Carolina, a longstanding friend of well-established amorous detachment; he had accepted the invitation for an evening’s entertainment in a small theater, fifty seats, in one of the numerous Neapolitan middle grounds between city center and far-flung hinterland.

  Liguori decided that in any case he’d enjoy himself, that he’d even tolerate the chic evangelistic pedantry of the cultured nothingness. The frenzy for life that he’d rediscovered in himself gave him a sense of speed and pleasure. For him, that was enough to make it a fun night out.

  They started off into the warren of alleys and lanes, allowing themselves to be surprised by the piazzas, unexpected occasions for spaces, and the successive narrowings where historic palazzi, solemn and tumbledown, once again brushed cornice against cornice.

  “Did you know that lately I don’t even feel like such a foreigner? What a wonderful thing.”

  “Next you’ll be sloughing off boredom and indifference, at which point I won’t even recognize you anymore. Or else they’ll eat you alive.”

  “So what’s this evening’s show about?”

  “It’s a monologue based on the Saramago novel Blindness. The actess is really good, Santina D’Offerta. She’s a friend, I’ll introduce you after the show.”

  “Let’s hope for the best,” the detective laughed. “Your friend happens to have the same name as my boss’s wife.”

  “And what’s so odd about that?”

  “Well, Santina is hardly a common name.”

  In the small space in front of the ticket office they stood alone. Liguori and Carolina looked around them with the embarrassment of a mistaken appointment.

  The detective had not lost the desire to be there. For a few minutes he closed his eyes and concentrated on the smells of wood, dust, and idle cellar space. He even mistakenly convinced himself that he’d been able to distinguish the perfumes of creams and ointments coming from the dressing room.

  That effort carried him to Blanca, and he recognized in the thought of her a mix of fragility and majestic strength. That woman possessed a spare and savage essence that shredded all pretexts. One after another.

  The show started, Santina D’Offerta performed for the two of them alone. And she was good.

  Liguori had a series of lapses in concentration, he failed to take in the entirety of the monologue. Santina was barefoot, and her feet were petite and vibrant. Her hair was long, unruly, and as she moved, it revealed sections of shoulders and rapidly framed the slender swelling of breasts, only to cover them again, stirring expectations.

  In the end, to avoid offending her with the applause of a mere four hands, Liguori stopped his friend from clapping and stood up to bow.

  Carolina smiled.

  “I get it, I’ll introduce you to Santina and leave the rest to the two of you.”

  Liguori hurried through a summary courtship, had dinner with the actress, and accompanied her back to the hotel.

  He found a strongly detached pleasure with her. As he was putting his clothes on, he thought about Blanca.

  21.

  Once the girls left the apartment Blanca got into the shower. She kept the faucet at the lowest level, she was happy with a weak dribble of water. Her skin had become a veil that could be torn by importunities that were a trifle to others.

  As she got ready to go out, she thought of what Tita had said: once again she had met a girl who’d been forced to grow up too quickly, to confront fears for which her emotional reflexes were unprepared.

  A ferocious vigilance swelled within her for her own life, that of her daughter, and for those who had not been afforded the rare privilege of growing up with all appropriate slowness.

  Sergio led her on foot to the Fuorigrotta police station, which was only a short walk away.

  Blanca gave him the rest of the morning off; she’d ask Malanò permission for an inspection and then she’d have a cop accompany her to the San Paolo Stadium.

  “If I need you, I’ll call you, I don’t know if I’ll have to go to Pozzuoli afterward.”

  “So this thing you have where you bark out orders, does it all come from your dog-training years?”

  “I doubt it. Dogs are sufficiently blind that they instinctively recognize what is wanted of them by those they love. See you later.”

  A policeman showed her to the waiting room outside Malanò’s office.

  After the first half hour in the waiting room she began to grow impatient. There was lots of activity, people coming and going, slamming of doors, hasty agitated footsteps, alarmed voices interrupting each other.

  The whispered snatches of conversation she caught as people hurried past told her that something big had happened.

  After an hour, she decided that she had waited well beyond the limits of decency. She got up and went in search of the buzz of voices that might have offered her some explanation of all that hubbub. She moved with uncertain steps, since she didn’t know the place and the confusion and racket wasn’t helping her to identify the spaces she needed to traverse.

  She was getting annoyed.

  She stopped to take a few deep breaths, her usual instinct for movement simply didn’t work if compromised by agitation.

  She headed for the door to Malanò’s office. She couldn’t stand there eavesdropping, so she followed the perimeter of the wall. With light finger taps she managed to find a place where the wall was a little thinner. She could even move away from the wall and pretend she wasn’t doing a thing, the sounds from inside would reach her anyway.

  Three different voices came from the room. She managed to isolate herself from the noise and focused on the words that came out of Malanò’s office. The voices blended, interrupting each other, in excitement. There were only a few comprehensible words: serial, again, Verona, poison.

  That was all she needed.

  She gave in to another wave of fury, which she channeled into a powerful, quick-acting, concentrated violence. Then she halted it. She needed a clear mind.

  She had no more time to waste.

  She went back to the door, felt around for the handle so she could go in.

  A police officer standing guard blocked her way. Blanca turned her head and lowered her voice, putting a sense of power into it that the cop hardly expected.

  “You would be well advised to let me through.”

  The man stepped aside.

  When she made her entrance, the three men stopped talking. Blanca reached around for a chair and sat down.

  “I’m guessing that the murder of Julia Marin is linked to the death of Vialdi.”

  “Who are you? Who let you in here?”

  “Buon giorno, Captain Malanò, I’m Sergeant Blanca Occhiuzzi, from the Pozzuoli police station. If I’m not mistaken, you actually requested our help. Tell me about the murder. By the way, I met with Julia Marin just a few hours ago, at your request.”

  “Who gave you this information?”

  “The wall.”

  “That’s a joke in questionable taste.”

  “Where? Where was the corpse discovered?”

  Malanò’s instinct for secrecy and dislike for this woman were overwhelmed by his pleasure in being able to confirm to her the seriality of the murders.

  “Bentegodi Stadium. The corpse was found with legs spread-eagled, back bent against one of the goalposts, face turned toward the back of the net. Clenched in her teeth was a blade of grass from the soccer field. I’ll be the one to decide when and if I wish to receive information about your interview with the victim, righ
t now I have more important things to think about. I’d really like to see anyone dare claim that my hypothesis about the serial killer is groundless.”

  “Is there some prize at stake?” Blanca flashed a sad smile and thought about Tita’s mother and her daughter’s fears.

  “Sergeant Occhiuzzi,” Malanò uttered Blanca’s surname as if it were a threat, “you can go and report to your superior officer. Good day.”

  Blanca remained seated and requested an officer to accompany her to the stadium for an inspection.

  “There’s nothing to be seen at the San Paolo Stadium, and the man who found Vialdi’s corpse has already been amply questioned.”

  “Even if there was anything to see, I wouldn’t be the right person. I’m legally blind, my specialty has to do with wiretaps and environmental listening devices.”

  Malanò pretended to be embarrassed, though that was hardly the case. All he wanted was to get Blanca out of his hair.

  “My apologies. So why do you want to go there?”

  “Captain, you are following your own theory. Everybody has one. You may not believe me, but my blind theories work remarkably well. So, are you going to give me an escort?”

  22.

  What passes is love, thrill, the frenzy of the last instants. What passes is the certainty that I can stop you, hold you, finally have you all for myself.

  It passes.

  The hunger has returned, I wish I could kill you all over again.

  Nothing to be done about that. I don’t get encores. Death has already made your acquaintance: your head lolling, the slight jerk, the definitive slumber, on a well established scholastic schedule, the tiny, inoffensive hole in the center of the mole. And they say that murderers lack a sense of humor: I’m laughing, can’t you see? I’m laughing.

  Perhaps the end I provided was defective, a gunshot fired with a blank, a magic trick performed with the tattered shreds of a rabbit that resuscitates before my eyes.