After examining the patient and administering a generous dose of quinine, he pulled the belt of his damask dressing gown tight and said:
“It’s nothing but a powerful cold. His larynx is badly inflamed. But now the fever ought to fall, and then he’ll need a few days of undisturbed bed rest.”
Livia was wringing her hands with worry.
“But quinine . . . are you afraid he’s contracted malaria?”
The doctor dismissed that possibility in no uncertain terms:
“No, absolutely not. I just gave it to him for its antipyretic properties. Don’t worry, Signora: your . . . friend will certainly recover, if he’s given adequate care. Were you planning to look after him yourself? Were you going to keep him here?”
The chance to supply that harridan of a wife of his with succulent new gossip was too tempting an opportunity to pass up by just saying goodnight and leaving. Livia realized exactly what he was up to and she didn’t like it one bit. As usual, she reacted with a counterattack:
“I certainly hope to, doctor. If he’ll let me, then I really hope to. But Commissario Ricciardi from the police headquarters of Naples, that’s his name and rank, does as he chooses. We’ll see how it goes. In any case, I thank you for your courtesy, and once again I apologize for having asked you to come up on a Sunday night. I hope you’ll give my warm regards to your delightful wife.”
Mirante read between the lines and gave in.
“Why, it’s no trouble at all, Signora. As you know, the doctor’s life is a mission that has no holidays or time off. If you like, I’ll be glad to drop by tomorrow morning and take another look at that larynx. I’ll certainly convey your regards. Good evening.”
Ricciardi collapsed into a deep sleep, populated by disconnected specters and images. His fever came and went, leaving behind it scattered thoughts that blossomed into nightmares.
The dog was always there in his dreams, looking at him from a distance and every once in a while emitting a single mournful howl, just as it had when the morgue attendants first took the dead Tettè away. The little boy never appeared–at least his face didn’t–but Ricciardi met with the image of his dangling neck, and the rivulets of water dripping off it onto the pavement, an image that was always accompanied by the sadness it had instilled in him from the outset.
In his dream, he looked out the window and saw Enrica doing her needlepoint. He called to her but she couldn’t hear him; so he went to Rosa, but she couldn’t see him either. It was as if he himself had become a ghost. Rosa would glance at the pendulum clock on the wall, sigh, and brush away a tear. Ricciardi could tell that his tata was worried about him, but he had no way of reassuring her.
Then he found himself back out in the rain on Via Toledo. He saw Maione go by; he called to him but he couldn’t seem to make himself heard, so he chased after him, trying to catch his attention, unsuccessfully. The brigadier walked past Sersale but didn’t recognize him, because he’d never seen him before. Ricciardi tried to warn him, but no voice issued from his lips. I’m a ghost, he thought. A ghost, and no one can see me.
Livia went to check his temperature every half hour; around one o’clock it seemed to her that his temperature was rising, and she decided not to leave the guest bedroom again. She took off her housecoat and stretched out next to him.
The light from the streetlamps filtered in through the open shutters, allowing her to glimpse Ricciardi’s profile. His clenched expression told her of the nightmares he was still living through. She wished she could enter into his dreams and somehow heal them, give him peace: the peace that he refused himself when awake, at least to quieten his nights.
In the partial darkness Ricciardi’s features struck her as even more handsome: he looked like a very young man, lost in thoughts of something much bigger than him. “The boy,” he seemed to be murmuring; “tell the dog that I can’t see him.” Still in the throes of delirium.
She dampened his brow with a wet cloth, and he fell silent, perhaps comforted. Then she ran her fingers over his lips, his throat. She caressed his chest, and he seemed to breathe more easily. She felt a certain languor, a tightness in the pit of her stomach. She found herself wondering when she had last made love, and not being able to remember.
She pulled the sheets aside and let her fingertips slide down his belly.
The clock in the hall chimed. Outside, the rain lashed against the window.
Ricciardi dreamt that he was back in his own office, with Livia. He could smell the scent of her cinnamon perfume, he saw her face, her full lips, her fascinating, mysterious smile, even in the dark. She was beautiful, and he felt his usual blend of attraction and fear.
She got up from her chair, took off her hat, and walked toward him, circling around his desk. Her feline gait, her heels echoing on the floor, her dark, liquid eyes, staring into his. Ricciardi wanted to stand up and move away, but in his dream he was incapacitated: he sat there, motionless, his fingers digging into the armrests of his chair, his heart racing furiously in his throat.
When she was finally right in front of him, she caressed him, long and slow, with a smile. She was as desirable as she’d ever been, but he was also terrified of her. He couldn’t move, as if hypnotized by her gaze.
His thoughts tried to turn to Enrica, but without success.
Livia placed her lips on Ricciardi’s mouth. She was lying down next to him, her hand on his belly. She could feel the warmth of his body, his racing, feverish heartbeat.
She realized that what she was doing wasn’t right, that she should have respected his wishes, that he was sick and might be dreaming of another woman, the other woman he claimed to have in his heart. But still, she was a woman, and she’d been alone for far, far too long. She, too, had her dreams, and that man was at the center of them.
She kissed him, long and slow, tenderly and with growing passion. She sought him in the depths of the shadows, she took him by the hand, and she led him out of the storm, into still waters. She felt him react to her with a long shiver. And in the end, he uttered her name.
In the mists of fever and dreams, Ricciardi saw Livia sitting upon him, her magnificent long legs sheathed in sheer stockings. He felt himself immersed in her scent and her stunning, breathtaking eyes.
He called out to her, telling her to stop—telling her not to stop. He wanted to be strong and he wanted to tell himself to be weak.
Then it was silk and warm velvet, under the trembling flesh of his hand; it was snow crystals and wind, and a slow climb up to a highland, and looking down into the bottomless precipice in the absurd realization that he could fly.
All around him, all the sorrows of the countless deaths that plagued his existence took a step back, in silence, to keep from intruding; and for once life, with all its deafening noises, fell silent.
Between dreaming and full waking, with the scent of spices and her sighs penetrating his soul, he sampled all her flavors, both sour and sweet, and found them at once alien and familiar.
He surrendered to her flesh, hoping in some hidden part of him, the part that insisted on keeping watch, that this was nothing but another dream, less painful than the others; but the whole time knowing that it wasn’t.
To hear her name on his lips as she kissed him reassured her and made her happy. He was thinking of her, perhaps in a fever dream, perhaps in the depths of a soul finally stripped bare; he was thinking of her.
And then she remembered everything about being a woman. She lingered in full awareness that she was teasing out a very fine gossamer thread, tugging it ever so carefully, because it might snap at any moment. She took pains not to frighten him; the last thing she wanted was for him to regain consciousness and retreat from her once again, rediscover the principles and thoughts that always kept him so remote. She took her time. With every fiber of her being, she hoped that Ricciardi might not simply be dreaming, but that he was too lost
in sleep to withdraw into his distant world—no, not that, not now that she could feel him as a man and herself as a woman, in a way that she’d missed for far too long now.
She forgot that she’d ever been selfish and shallow, and discovered that she could be generous and nurturing. She guided his hands, his mouth, his body: calmly, gently. This was even newer for her, who had had lovers in the past, than it was for him, who had always denied himself everything.
She took the pleasure she’d been dreaming of, the pleasure that she’d missed for so long, the pleasure that she considered to be her birthright. She took for herself the moment of heaven that she’d been yearning for, and when she was done, she plunged her mouth into her pillow and let out a long, muffled sigh.
At last, she smiled in the darkness, gentled now like a sated tiger.
LV
Monday, November 2, the Day of the Dead
At dawn, the rain took a break, transforming itself into a myriad of drops suspended in the cold air. As if it were aware of the sadness of this day, it colored everything a melancholy gray.
Ricciardi walked out the entrance to Livia’s building and into the empty street. He felt exceedingly weak but decided he no longer had a fever.
He’d found his clothing neatly folded on the armchair by the bed, a bed he couldn’t remember getting into the night before; they were still slightly damp but warm, because there was a hot stove nearby. The hollow he’d found in the mattress, a body-sized dip beside him, and a black hair on the pillow had immediately revealed to his analytical mind, now finally lucid, that what he remembered all too clearly had not been a mere dream, fueled by his raging fever.
He’d dressed and left the apartment without making a sound. As he walked past Livia’s bedroom he’d seen her silhouette, stretched out on the bed in the half-light, and his head had started spinning.
He was confused; he felt a deep sense of guilt toward Enrica, feeling deep down that he’d betrayed her, but also toward Livia, for having taken her without feeling true love for her.
But what do you know about true love? he thought. Have you ever experienced it? Have you ever shared all your thoughts, desires, and hopes with another person? That sentiment that moves the dead lips of those who killed themselves or were murdered for love, that emotion you’ve dismissed as absurd so many times; have you ever really felt it?
Inconsistent. As he walked in that strange watery suspension, as if swimming beneath the surface of an airy sea, he felt inconsistent. He hadn’t had the strength to push Livia away when he realized that her hands upon him were no dream, that his lips upon hers were all too real.
If possible, Livia was even more beautiful than she’d seemed when she walked into a room and attracted the gaze of every man present, like a powerful magnet.
Even now as he was doing his best to push her memory away, he understood the sensations she could impart, he was more aware than ever before that she embodied everything a man could possibly desire in a woman: she was educated, captivating, wealthy, and passionate.
Then why did he feel that he’d been nothing but a weakling and that, out of weakness, he’d allowed something to happen that was profoundly wrong?
With a shiver, he thought of Enrica, the letters they’d exchanged, the relationship that, amidst endless second-guessing and fears, especially on his part, was so laboriously germinating between them. He thought of how this fragile, new love was growing in spite of everything that he’d always believed, in spite of his certainty that there was no woman upon whom he could inflict his curse.
Now what would he do? How could he talk to her about this, if they’d only exchanged the occasional stilted greeting until now? And how should he act with Livia, for that matter? How could he pretend he didn’t remember what had happened?
At the corner of Via Toledo, in the empty dawn street, he saw Tettè’s dog. It was sitting on its haunches, alert, one ear cocked as if to catch his footstep. It had been waiting for him.
Ricciardi’s heart lurched as his mind went back to the little boy, his death, and the fact that just the night before he’d spoken with Sersale, the man with the limp; it was the last thing he could remember, before Livia. His ears echoed with the man’s hatred for his sister-in-law, who stood between him and his half brother’s fortune.
He’d finally become convinced that the boy’s death had been the result of neglect and hunger, those stubborn, age-old enemies; but it was possible that Carmen herself might be in danger, and he wanted to warn her as quickly as he could. He remembered that he’d been heading for her house, to tell her about Sersale and his ham-handed attempts at extortion, and to find out whether she thought that her brother-in-law could be capable of such extreme acts of vendetta. He had seemed to Ricciardi to be well aware of the woman’s love for Tettè, a love similar to what a mother might feel for her son.
Like a mother. His thoughts turned to Rosa; he never failed to let her know if he would be out late, and this time he’d neglected to do it. He hoped she’d gone to sleep and was sleeping still, so that he could just tell her he’d come home late and gone out very early in the morning: a little white lie, to keep her from feeling she was no longer up to the job of looking after him. He decided that that’s exactly what he’d say to her, when he got home.
But first he wanted to see Carmen. He thought he knew where he could find her, since today was the holiday of the commemoration of the dead. He’d wait for her there, by Tettè’s grave. He headed off toward Poggioreale cemetery, his heart heavy with new worries, a new sense of disquiet.
Rosa woke with a start to the mournful sound of the first bell from the nearby church. She looked around, baffled. Then she remembered: she’d fallen asleep in the armchair in the living room, facing the front door, waiting for Ricciardi, who hadn’t come home the night before.
She understood that he was a grown man now, with a right to take the time he needed for men’s pursuits, and that, of course, the work he did sometimes entailed staying out all night, and indeed that had happened a few times before. But this was the first time that he’d failed to let her know before he left, or send a man to inform her.
The behavior she’d noticed over the past few days had been worrisome; and Maione’s visit and the snippets of conversation she’d overhead had done nothing to reassure her. And there was a woman mixed up in this, a woman who brazenly went to call on him at police headquarters. A signora, what’s more: not even a respectable signorina.
She laboriously raised herself up from the armchair, doing her best to ignore the excruciating complaints of her creaky old bones. There was nothing she could do except wait to hear something. She forced herself to rein in her worries. The signorino was a respected and responsible person, a commissario in the mobile squad. He certainly wouldn’t run unnecessary risks.
She went into her bedroom, planning to lie down for a few minutes. She glanced out the window and saw, wrapped in a blanket, another person looking out of her bedroom, across the street in the Colombo apartment, in the uncertain, misty half-light of dawn, on the Day of the Dead.
Enrica hadn’t been able to rid herself of the oppressive sense of anxiety that had accompanied her the whole night through. She had slept badly, with long stretches of wakefulness, lying there listening to the rain rattling against the shutters.
She was a rational, no-nonsense young woman, and feeling worried for no good reason was something that she found hard to take, something she found disorderly and objectionable. But then, when the light in Ricciardi’s window had failed to come on for their little evening appointment, it had become clear to her that her anxiety was perhaps an inexplicable form of premonition.
At dawn, she’d gone into the kitchen to get a glass of water, because her throat was parched. She’d looked at the building across the street through the half-opened shutters and she’d realized that the curtains in Ricciardi’s bedroom hadn’t moved since
the night before. That never happened; he always pulled them closed before going to sleep. And the faint light in Rosa’s bedroom, which normally stayed on all night long, was also off. What was going on?
Her growing worries would certainly keep her from falling back asleep; and so, wrapped in a blanket, she sat down by her bedroom window to wait for any sign of life from the apartment across the way.
Outside, the rain had been transformed into a strange gray light.
Livia had never found a daybreak to be quite as magnificent as the gray morning of the Day of the Dead.
At first, of course, she’d been disappointed: she hadn’t found him in the bed, where she’d left him sleeping easily, just before dawn. She’d gone to her own bedroom to lie down for just a few minutes, but instead she’d dropped into a deep, serene sleep, filled with that gentle weariness that she thought she’d forgotten. When she woke up, she found that he’d left, and knowing him as she did, it hardly came as a surprise; he surely needed to do some thinking, to delve deep down inside himself to discover the true significance of what had happened the night before.
Stretching like a cat, she smiled happily. If he had asked her, she would have been capable of telling him exactly what had happened.
Love, she would have told him, is a strange, dark thing: you think of a hundred or a thousand possibilities and you imagine so many situations, only to discover that there’s just one element that needs to be understood, to be taken into consideration: being together. Faced with the naturalness of touching each other and kissing and being one inside the other, all the structures that the mind and society spend so much time and energy building simply collapse, like a castle made of playing cards.
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