Day of the Dead

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Modo interrupted him:

  “Don’t get all worked up. I said that I found something, not that there’s something to investigate.”

  “But what does that mean? Tell me, then, what killed this child?”

  “Let me tell you the whole story. First thing, I took a look at the heart, and it was in the systolic phase, as I expected: big as a watermelon. And then there was the rigor mortis, extreme and much longer lasting than normal. The cyanosis and the spotted bruises . . . In other words, there were just too many signs pointing to convulsions. So then I had to resign myself to assessing the nervous system.”

  Ricciardi was listening very attentively.

  “Why, is there some connection?”

  “Of course, if there are convulsions then it’s quite likely that the nervous system is responsible in some way, don’t you agree? And in fact both the meninges and the spinal cord were full of blood. I even found a few areas that were outright hemorrhagic. Our young friend didn’t die peacefully. Not at all.”

  “And yet he seemed so serene, in the position he was in when we found him.”

  Modo shrugged.

  “That doesn’t mean anything; you know that. An instant before dying, he might have relaxed, and perhaps the only reason he was sitting up and not flat on the ground is that the wall was supporting him. In any case, at that point I took samples from the brain and from the spinal cord and I sent them to the laboratory, where luckily a friend of mine was on duty. He was on his regular hospital shift, fully paid, and I was on a special shift ordered by Commissario Ricciardi, working completely free of charge.”

  Ricciardi made a face.

  “You’re getting really obsessed with money in your old age, you know that? Fine, I’ll buy you a pizza at the Trattoria Da Nannina, around the corner.”

  Modo snickered.

  “Well, I’ll be! Then it’s true what they say: you’re filthy rich but still a skinflint. Anyway, as I was saying, I sent those samples in for analysis, along with the food remains that I found in the stomach and duodenum. I’m still waiting for the written results, but an hour ago my friend came to see me in the autopsy room and told me what he’d found.”

  Ricciardi waited.

  “Well? Are you going to tell me what the hell killed this child or not?”

  The doctor crushed his cigarette butt under his heel and exhaled the smoke in a theatrical plume.

  “You were right. He didn’t die of natural causes, he didn’t die of an infection, malnutrition, or some disease. He was in bad shape, there’s no denying that, but he was strong and he would have gone on living for many years to come. But I was right, too, when I brought up the possibility of accidental death with you earlier.”

  “Which means what?”

  “The child died from poison. Strychnine, to be exact. He must have simply ingested a handful of poison bait, those little clumps of sugar and flour that they put out to kill rats.”

  Ricciardi stood there openmouthed.

  “Rat poison? The boy ate rat poison?”

  “Surprised, are you? Well, that’s because you don’t see the things I see, day in and day out. They eat everything they find. You eat or you die. They dig through the garbage, they fight dogs for scraps. They’d eat the rats themselves, if the rats were easier to catch. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, though I have to say that they usually stop before they ingest a fatal dose, because strychnine has a bitter taste; but such a frail child would only have to eat a tiny amount for it to kill him. And then those bastard shopkeepers, to protect their disgusting merchandise, they hide the poison in bait balls made out of bread and cheese or sugar: a tasty little morsel, in other words.”

  The commissario was perplexed.

  “But couldn’t someone have given him the poison? Intentionally, I mean.”

  Modo gave him a long hard look, then said:

  “Listen, Ricciardi: I don’t know why you’re devoting so much time to this child and his death. You know I admire your dedication, and I feel as much pity, if not more, for the poor people who die of privation in this city that the Fascist regime has made so utterly perfect. Unfortunately, for a child to die from accidentally eating some rat poison is a normal turn of events. The dead should be left in peace; and the world this little boy spent his short life in is far too murky and filthy for us to delve into. I told you that this is a case of accidental death, and I have no intention of writing anything else in the report. Please, just accept it.”

  Ricciardi had nothing more to say. He squeezed the doctor’s arm.

  “You’re probably right, Bruno. I just have a couple more questions for our friend the priest and then I’ll be done. Thanks again, and let me know when I can buy you that pizza.”

  With the doctor’s gaze following him, he headed back to headquarters. In the rain, by the hospital’s main entrance, he saw a dog looking in the direction of the morgue.

  XI

  Rosa Vaglio fastened her hat in place with a couple of hatpins, picked up her umbrella, and went out, double- and triple-locking the door behind her. She was only going to do a little shopping in the neighborhood, but she wasn’t taking any chances: even if people said that everything was safe these days, it was still a rough quarter.

  Actually, the whole city scared her. They’d moved there ten years ago, and she still wasn’t used to all those people, all the hustle and bustle, and the fact that you could go out every day and walk around for hours and never run into anyone you knew.

  Back home, in the village of Fortino, in the southern part of the province of Salerno, almost in Lucania, things were quite different. Everyone knew everything about everyone: they never had strangers visit from other towns, or when one happened to pass through, they looked at him as if he had two heads, until he felt so uncomfortable that he left, and then everyone heaved a sigh of relief. There was no need for strangers, back home.

  What’s more, there was respect. When she walked down the main street of town (the only street, for that matter) everyone doffed their hats at the sight of the Barone di Malomonte’s tata. She knew it, and she strode proudly, head held high, eyes straight ahead. No one dared to address her, unless she spoke to them first. She had been chosen to raise the next baron, and that was all anyone needed to know. She made her rounds of the farms and workshops, checking to make sure that no one was stealing, that everyone set aside the finest products—the fattest hogs, the best cheeses—for the family that lived in the castle. That’s how it was meant to be, and that’s how it was.

  Circumspectly walking down the staircase of the apartment building, Rosa sighed as she thought about what it must be like back there, now that everyone had been left to their own devices. In the past, her mere presence had been enough to make big, strapping farmers tremble; they knew all too well how capable her sharp eyes were of detecting even the slightest deception. But then, someone had to look after things. The baron had been dead for years, and the poor baroness, the Good Lord love her and keep her in glory, had never been up to such duties.

  As always, the thought of that gentle, petite woman brought a smile of tenderness to Rosa’s lips: her childlike face and lovely green eyes. Immediately after meeting Rosa, at the time a twenty-year-old housekeeper with strong arms and red cheeks, the baroness had decided that when she became a mother, this would be her child’s tata. Many years went by before that came to pass; in the meantime Rosa had helped the baroness to keep things running smoothly during those long periods when her migraine headaches and lethargy forced her to stay in bed. But then the baby boy was born.

  Her baby boy.

  Rosa had immediately set about caring for him, with simplicity, and without any ado. From the very beginning she dedicated her life to him, as if she’d been born for this purpose, as if the years she’d lived before setting eyes on him had been nothing more than a long period of preparation.


  She’d loved him unreservedly, unconditionally, unquestioningly. As the baroness had told her—before her extended stay in the hospital, culminating in her death—Rosa would have to be the child’s mother in her place; and so she had been.

  Not that she understood him, she thought as she looked out at the water pouring down. She’d never understood him. His habitual silences, the way he stared into empty air, his sudden bouts of melancholy. In every respect, and for all intents and purposes, he was just like his mother, with the same clear green eyes, looking out at a world that they alone could see. But it wasn’t Rosa’s job to understand Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi, Barone di Malomonte; her job was to take care of him, to make sure that he lacked for nothing.

  And that was what worried her. Time was passing: she was past seventy and he was thirty-one years old, an age by which most men had already established a family and were raising their children. And he hadn’t even found a fiancée.

  Simple soul though she was, Rosa understood that there were emotions stirring in that tightly closed heart. She saw him night after night, looking across the way at a certain window, when he thought she was asleep in her bedroom; instead she got up and, on tiptoe, she’d peer through the crack in the door, which he purposely left ajar so he could listen to her snore.

  So why did he persist in this absurd loneliness? Even though she knew she was looking at him through the eyes of a loving nanny, she found him very handsome, sensitive, and good-hearted. And wealthy, too, though he was absolutely (and, to her eyes, culpably) disinterested in his estates. He had everything necessary to charm the best woman in the world.

  But the signorino, the young master, as she called him, behaved as if he’d taken a vow: no woman, no family.

  She believed it was her duty to perpetuate the Malomonte name. She considered it a crime to knowingly bring such an old and venerable family to an end. But what could she do?

  A few months earlier, she had noticed that under a certain loose tile in his bedroom, the signorino had hidden a book. Laboriously, because she knew only her numbers and capital letters, she’d copied the title. Then she’d gone to ask the hairdresser who’d attended parochial school for a couple of years and had learned to read from the nuns to confirm it for her. And in fact, the title was: Il moderno segretario galante. She’d asked around and had discovered that it was a collection of love letters, to be used as models.

  She didn’t know how to read, but she could put two and two together. In the window across the way, she knew that it was Enrica Colombo who sat embroidering, the eldest daughter of the owner of the hat shop on Via Toledo. And her signorino watched her embroider.

  She didn’t know whether he had actually made use of the book after buying it, but she certainly hoped he had: the girl seemed good-hearted and honest, and she came from a good family, as far as she knew. The hairdresser, who was a sort of living neighborhood newsletter, had maliciously told her all about how Enrica had spurned a potential fiancé whom her mother was encouraging, a rich and handsome young man: Rosa had heaved a sigh of relief, inwardly commenting that there was no one as handsome as her own signorino. What she couldn’t tell though was whether the hairdresser was a two-way street: that is to say, whether or not Enrica also had occasion to hang on the hairdresser’s words, whether she had learned of the interest expressed by Donna Rosa, Commissario Ricciardi’s old tata, in this affair of the heart.

  After pulling her shawl tight around her neck and opening her umbrella, Rosa ventured out into the rainy street, thinking that the damp weather was inflicting a decidedly harsh punishment on her aching bones. She needed to take action, she thought to herself. Fate does as it pleases, but sometimes it needs a little push. The girl was sitting across the street, reservedly, clearly waiting for him to make the first move, while he waited for his own shyness to melt away. It was slow to melt! In fact, it would probably never melt, and in the end the girl was bound to get sick of waiting and accept some other suitor. And they’d both live unhappily ever after, some fifteen feet apart, lacking the courage to ever speak to each other.

  But what could she do? she wondered as she zigzagged through the rain to the spice and grain shop to buy some chickpeas. How could she strike up a conversation with the young woman and explain to her that that blockhead of a signorino of hers loved her in silence, from a distance, but lacked the courage to live his life?

  As she was crossing the street a pair of eyes, from behind a pair of glasses and a window, caught sight of her. The owner of those eyes then hurried to her closet where she grabbed the first hat that came to hand and an umbrella, and then galloped down the stairs.

  Rosa was just thinking that Ricciardi didn’t even wear a hat, so she couldn’t arrange for him to visit Enrica’s father’s shop, when, right in front of the grocer’s, she found herself face-to-face with Enrica, who was courteously stepping aside for her.

  Smiling brightly, she looked her in the face. It’s now or never, she told herself.

  XII

  Water.

  Water that doesn’t clean.

  Water that flows down in a thousand rivers without a sea, washing mud up to the front doors of the bassi and then inside, spreading filthy fingers over the rammed-earth floors, into the blackened straw of the pallets. Water that beats against the windows and stirs the sleepers, or carries specters of ancient sorrows into dreams. Water that leaves black marks on the high tufa-stone walls, finding its way into old buildings to undermine their foundations. Water that muddies polished shoes and tears umbrellas out of hands, because it wants to eliminate all obstacles that prevent it from entering people’s souls, bringing with it the damp of depression.

  Water that separates.

  Water that becomes a cold wall between lovers, removing the smile from their eyes and hearts. That keeps people away from school, the workshop, and the office, creating a sea between them, a sea that’s impossible to navigate. Water that turns streets into slippery rivers, that sucks any chance of encounter down into its whirlpools. Water that takes toys away from children, forcing them into imprisonment on a chair or in a room.

  Water that steals.

  There will be no one to buy from the vendors’ carts, to give alms to the poor, to be defrauded. There will be no one to buy balloons or toys in the Villa Nazionale. There will be no one to listen to the pazzariello, the street crier, announcing in song the opening of some new shop. There will be no one, and there will be nothing to eat.

  Water that frightens.

  Frightens with the thunder that rattles the night, with the lightning that illuminates the silence. Fear that makes your heart lurch in your chest, that makes you draw your head between your shoulders, waiting for the worst. Water that makes the walls creak, and makes you think that nothing is a sure thing, that nothing will ever end.

  Water that never ends.

  Ricciardi was walking back to police headquarters, through the rain that never seemed to stop falling. The question that filled his mind, leaving no room for any other thought, was this: Why wasn’t he there? Why didn’t I see him?

  The cause of the child’s death had been poison. Strychnine. There were no other causes, Modo had ruled them out decisively: the boy would have lived many more years, he’d said. But in that case, if he’d died from poison, why hadn’t Ricciardi seen his ghostly image?

  The terrible company of the Deed had marked his whole life, from the time he’d seen the first dead man to speak to him in his family’s vineyard, when he was five years old. God only knows how many times he’d wished he could be spared from this curse.

  In contrast with what he usually did—try his best to forget what he’d seen—Ricciardi summoned up memories of the poison victims he’d seen in the past. He thought of the first one, a classmate at boarding school who for who knows what reason had eaten an entire box of matches; perhaps it was on a dare, some stupid game with a friend. He remembered the boy, smiling an
d translucent in the recreation yard, immersed in an incessant retching gush of blood and a perennial diarrhea, saying over and over again: I won, did you see? I won the bet. And the convulsions of his two university friends who had gorged on mushrooms purchased from a street vender, one of which was poisonous—just one. The specter of one friend, trembling like a vibrating guitar string, his eyes rolled back in his head, was saying to the other: good, aren’t they? And they were so cheap. And then there was the brokenhearted suicide he’d seen just a few months earlier from the San Martino belvedere, clutching his belly and vomiting a yellow froth as he said: I can’t live without you.

  He saw them, the poisoned dead. There was no doubt about it. So why hadn’t he seen the little boy?

  He knew the Deed, and its few but exceedingly strict rules. He saw the image of the dead person the way they’d died, repeating their last thought in the very place their broken life had flowed out of them. Therefore, only one answer could be possible: the child hadn’t died where they’d found him.

  The thought exploded in his head just as there was a crack of thunder, an accompaniment to the pelting rain. If he hadn’t died there, it meant someone had moved the body.

  This didn’t necessarily mean that the boy had been murdered, Ricciardi realized. But it did mean that someone, for some reason, had decided it would be worth the trouble to move the body and leave it in a place where the child’s presence might seem to be the result of chance. Who could have wanted to do such a thing?

  On the opposite side of the street, through the curtain of rain, he could make out the dog’s spotted coat. He decided that he’d hunt down whoever it had been to move the body and find out why they had done it. He’d do it because it was the right thing to do, and because a child isn’t just a disposable thing.

  And because there was something about that dog that made him determined to keep going.

  Rosa entered the shop, followed by Enrica. The heavy rain had forced the proprietors—the husband manning the counter, the wife at the cash register—to light their oil lamp. There were no other customers. The shopkeeper, a strapping, jovial man with thinning hair and missing teeth, greeted Rosa affectionately: