Glass Souls

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  “Then let me inform you that, though you may not be expecting anyone, there’s someone waiting for you. There’s a veiled lady sitting outside.”

  Maione glanced at Ricciardi and headed over to the door. The commissario pretended he had just remembered, and slapped his forehead with his palm.

  “How stupid of me. It’s a personal visit, Dottore. She’s a friend who . . . ”

  Garzo put on the face of a man of the world.

  “Ricciardi, Ricciardi. I understand. But take it from me, the office is serious business: don’t let me hear any complaints about who you entertain in your office, someone much less indulgent than yours truly might see you. Since this is a pretty quiet period, just ask me if you can take off early if you’re planning to . . . meet someone. Understood?”

  Ricciardi took a long, deep breath, methodically counting to ten.

  “Grazie, Dottore. It’s just a piece of information I’m expecting to receive, I assure you, otherwise I’d have never . . . ”

  Garzo’s smile widened.

  “That’s quite enough. We understand each other. And I promise on my honor that I won’t breathe a word of this to anyone, least of all the widow Vezzi. See you tomorrow: this evening I have the theater.”

  He turned and left, as stately as a ship steaming out of harbor, stopping at the threshold for a moment to glance curiously at the mysterious female visitor that Maione was ushering into the office.

  When the door closed behind him, Ricciardi spoke to the woman.

  “Contessa, it’s not exactly an intelligent move to keep on coming in here. The man you just saw leaving here could suspend us from duty in the blink of an eye, which would mean we’d have to stop investigating a murder that, as far as the police are concerned, has been a closed case for months now. I thought I’d made myself clear on this point.”

  Bianca lifted her veil and calmly gazed at Ricciardi.

  “Buonasera to you too, Commissario. Forgive me, I hadn’t quite realized the clandestine nature of our meetings. I’d naïvely supposed that a citizen had every right to expect support from the police, if it’s a matter of bringing to light the truth about a murder that is still shrouded with too many shadows.”

  Ricciardi accepted the point. He had been rude.

  “I apologize, Contessa. Buonasera. You are quite correct, you’d have every right to much greater satisfaction, but as you know, the preliminary investigation has been completed and . . . ”

  Maione coughed gently, scuffing one police boot across the floor, the way he always did when he wanted to attract his superior’s attention.

  “Commissa’, forgive me if I break in, but it might be better if you accompany the signora outside of the building. That imb . . . I mean Dottor Garzo, just might decide to come back to see if we’re still here, and if we are, he might decide to demand an explanation.”

  Ricciardi nodded.

  “You’re right, Raffaele. Come with me, Signora. We can talk in the street.”

  XXX

  The September evening was an invitation to stroll and out in the street, people were lingering in front of the shop windows. With a view to lengthening the shopping day, merchants were keeping their establishments open later than usual.

  Ricciardi was walking side by side with the Contessa di Roccaspina toward the large piazza where everyone slowed to a stroll to enjoy the gathering sea breeze. They seemed like any of the many couples busy getting to know each other better, but the subject of their conversation was very different from what you might have expected based on their appearance.

  “Well, Commissario, you met with the lawyer today, I understand. And you’ve also . . . Did you go to Poggioreale prison?”

  “Yes, Signora,” Ricciardi replied. “I went there. And I have to confess that I’m still quite confused.”

  Bianca walks into the large visiting room and sits on this side of the thick metal grate. Beside her is a skinny woman holding a little boy on her knees. The little boy is crying.

  “How . . . how is he?”

  There are so many people. All the seats are taken. There are women, mostly, and children; but also old men and women. Here and there, people dab nervously at their tears, while others laugh as if they were perfectly at ease.

  “I can’t tell you, Signora. Certainly, his appearance wasn’t very reassuring.”

  Bianca clenches her hands in her worn gloves, feeling guilty because she’d rather be anywhere but here, because she wishes she’d never come. The prisoners, led by guards, begin to come in.

  “That place. That place is . . . is terrible, don’t you think?”

  There’s an intolerable stench. Smoke, mold. Filth. Sweat, bodies, fluids. Bianca presses a handkerchief to her nose, inhaling the perfume to ward off the smell. She notices that many of the visitors are glaring at her angrily, because she is an intruder, a strange, incongruous intruder who has nothing in common with that place, and nothing to do with any of them. And yet.

  “Yes. Yes, I understand. Even though I went in with the lawyer, so I’d imagine that the situation is quite different for . . . for family members, I mean. Or at least, so I’d have to believe.”

  Bianca observes the prisoners stretching out their hands, touching the grate, doing their best at least to brush the fingertips of their family members through the rusted bars. The guards tolerate it, turning their bored gazes elsewhere. Last of all enters Romualdo, and with downcast eyes he sits down across from her, in silence.

  “The last time I saw him . . . I haven’t gone very often. Perhaps not as often as I should have.”

  “Why not, if I may ask?”

  For a long time, he keeps his eyes downcast. Bianca doesn’t know what to say. She waits. Last time, the only other time, Attilio was present and in practical terms, he’d done all the talking, obtaining a few monosyllabic replies. Now she’d like to ask him how he is, but her voice sticks in her throat.

  “I don’t know. Uneasiness, I guess. We never even spoke when he was out and a free man, and inside there, to see him like that . . . ”

  Skinny. My God, how skinny he’s become, thinks Bianca. That bony neck sticking out of his shirt collar, his clean-shaven head, the whiskers gone too. He looks younger, she thinks, and yet much, much older too. What did you think you could do here? What makes you think I want to see you at all?

  “Another thing is that it was my impression that he wasn’t particularly happy for me to come visit him.”

  “I don’t think that’s it, Signora. Sometimes, you know, people are ashamed to be seen in certain conditions.”

  I’m still your wife, she replies. Her voice is low, flatter, harsher than she would have liked. The pale woman beside her gives her a glance of comprehension and then turns back to look at the old man across from her. That must be her father, she thinks. Romualdo raises his eyes and stares at her. He says: We have nothing to say to each other. We’ve never had anything to say to each other.

  “But to you, did he say anything to you?”

  “He recognized me. I didn’t think he’d remember me, given the situation he’s in, as well, but in fact he remembered perfectly.”

  “He remembers everything. But sometimes he just wants to forget.”

  Not far away from them, near the café’s outdoor tables, a tall young man was playing a mandolin with virtuosity and passion, and singing a song with heartfelt intensity.

  The old man sitting next to Romualdo is weeping, though he smiles at the child. Every so often, he irritatedly wipes away a tear, as if brushing off an insect. He speaks quickly, while the pale woman listens attentively, and cries as well. Romualdo shoots her a glance and says: You see him? He’s old, isn’t he? You assume that he’s her father, but really he’s her husband. He’s my age, only he’s been in here for ten years. I won’t wind up like him, of that you can be sure. I won’t wind up like him.
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  “What is it that he wants to forget? Tell me: Everything can be important.”

  “He . . . he’s aware of what he did. He knows it. And he wanted to change, I believe. Change everything.”

  But what about you? What happened to you? he asks her. There was a time when you laughed, you know? You laughed and you could even shed tears. Once we were walking on the grounds of your parents’ villa and we saw a puppy. You don’t remember, do you? I do. It was sick, it was whimpering to break your heart. You burst into tears, there was nothing I could do to cheer you up. I had to take you away. But now you’ve lost your heart. You’ve always behaved impeccably, no doubt about that, but what kind of wife have you been to me? I’ve never felt you close to me. Always icy. Always distant.

  “What did he want to change, your husband? Did he have specific plans? Something that might have led him to . . . ”

  “No, no, Commissario. At least not as far as I know. He was just well aware of what his life had turned into.”

  As he sang the song, the young man with the mandolin seemed to tell a story that had something to do with himself. A couple of girls at a table looked at him and laughed. He was poorly dressed and ill fed, but he was singing with all his heart, his expression rapt, as if he were following some distant thought.

  He goes on talking, his eyes fixed on her, his lips clamped in disgust. I’m more alive than you are, he tells her. I’m more alive, even though I’m deprived of liberty, of decent food, of clothing, of soap to wash myself. I’m more alive, though I have no name and no dignity, I have no peace and no sleep. I’m more alive than you, because my heart still beats. Does your heart still beat, Bianca? How long has it been since you felt the beat of your heart?

  The young man sincerely tells a moth to go away. To avoid being burned, along with his hand.

  “Signora, I can’t fathom your husband’s attitude. He seemed determined to confirm his confession, to obtain a guilty verdict. But then he told his lawyer to do whatever he could to obtain a reduced sentence, to get him out of prison as early as possible. It seems like a contradiction, don’t you think?”

  “Is that what he said? I don’t understand, Commissario. I really don’t understand.”

  She says to him: Why, Romualdo? Why did you confess? I know that it wasn’t you who committed the murder. I know that you were at home, in your bed, that night. He laughs, and it frightens her, because he laughs mirthlessly, with desperate fury, as if he were weeping. The old man next to him turns for a moment to glance in his direction, then goes back to talking to his woman. Romualdo says: what do you know about where I was? About where I am, and where my heart is? You know nothing about me. All you know how to do is judge, you’re cold as marble, sealed up in your tomb even though you aren’t dead yet. You’ve never experienced love, Bianca. But I have, to my good fortune. I have. And I have so much life left to live.

  “Don’t give up trying to find out the reason why, Commissario. I’m begging you. I know that it’s difficult, I know that if you’re not allowed to rely on the full resources of an official investigation, it isn’t easy to get answers, but I’m pleading with you, don’t stop. Because I know that it wasn’t him. I don’t love him anymore, that is true, and this determination of mine to find out the truth goes against his wishes, but I need to understand what his plan is. Because he’s not crazy, even if he acts like he is. He’s not crazy.”

  Ricciardi seemed to be lost in listening to the song of the young man with the mandolin, his brow furrowed as if he were trying to remember where he’d heard it before.

  “No, I won’t give up, Signora. Because I know what it means to feel as if you’re behind bars even if you’re out loose on the street. I know what it means to be a prisoner of yourself. I know what it means to stare at a ceiling waiting for either dawn or sleep to come, and neither one ever does.”

  Bianca was thinking that it had been a long time since she’d felt as close to someone as she did to that green-eyed stranger.

  He tells her: now everything is taken care of, Bianca. You can rescue your few, miserable possessions. The stones of the palazzo, those few pointless sticks of furniture that still remain, the jewels that you hid from me . . . And you were right to do it, because I’d have lost those, too, in my attempt to regain the splendor of days gone by, and the love in your eyes. Pointlessly. And you’ll give me a life, a new life. Which I’ll know how to rebuild for myself.

  “I can’t help but think that he did it for me,” the contessa said in a low voice. “To save me from his debts, to fix what could be fixed, by disappearing. Without love, I’m certain of that, just to pay me back for the life he took away from me.”

  Ricciardi nodded, without taking his eyes off the mandolin player.

  “It might be, even if it’s a demented solution, as your lawyer points out, and he could have obtained the same effect by just running away. In any case, all we can do is find out what happened. Discovering the reasons why will be up to you.”

  The young man with the mandolin let out a last, heartbreaking chord. A man stood up and handed him some money, while the woman he was with dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. From the tables there arose a brief, awkward round of applause.

  Bianca said: “Thank you, Commissario. Let me thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  Ricciardi turned toward her, his gaze harsh.

  “Don’t thank me, Signora. There are a few things I’m going to need to understand about you, to have a complete picture of the situation. Where can I get in touch with a certain Duke Marangolo, and how can I arrange to speak with him?”

  The guard says: time’s up. Back to the cells. The old man grips the grate with both hands and his wife does the same. The child weeps in despair. Romualdo gets up hastily and says: don’t come back, Bianca. Don’t ever come back. I don’t want to see you again, it will take me a long time to recover from your contempt. Start yourself a new life and remember nothing of our time together. He turns and leaves, and never looks back.

  The contessa blinked in surprise.

  “Carlo Maria? But why on earth would you want to . . . No, fair enough, and I certainly don’t want to meddle. I’ll get a message to him first thing in the morning, and you’ll be able to meet him at the same club as Attilio, at aperitif time. He’ll answer any questions you might have for him. But I beg you, don’t imagine that I have any reason to . . . Carlo Maria is a good friend. If you think it necessary, then go ahead and speak to him.”

  Ricciardi looked at her for a long time.

  “Yes, Signora. I do think it necessary. I know that the evening of the murder, this man came to your home when the Count wasn’t there.”

  He’d hurled those words at her as if they were an insult. Bianca blushed beneath her black veil.

  “It’s true, Commissario. But I refused to see him. Perhaps your informants haven’t reported all the details to you.”

  And she left, without turning to look behind her.

  XXXI

  Manfred talked, and the eyes of the whole family were glued to him.

  Almost the whole family.

  Giulio Colombo was watching Enrica.

  The day had been so different from the usual run of events. The early-morning arrival of flowers for Maria, accompanied by a discreet note in which the German officer thanked her for the invitation to dinner, accepting joyfully, had put into motion a succession of activities that verged on the frenetic. Luckily Giulio, who even in the midst of such extraordinary events as these still had his shop to run, had managed to avoid the family chaos, which was only heightened by his wife’s immense anxiety.

  This wasn’t the first time that the Colombo family had entertained a visitor with a view to a daughter’s marriage. The parents of Susanna’s husband Marco had been guests many times prior to the wedding, but in that case everything had taken place well within the standard confines of tradit
ion, and Susanna herself, though still quite young, had worked energetically to ensure the perfect functioning of that secular ceremony which attached to an engagement. Now Susanna, as Maria liked to emphasize when speaking with Enrica, every time the opportunity presented itself, was a daughter who had never caused her mother any worries. A real woman ever since she was a young girl, who had put marriage, children, and a home of her own first as her dream and lifelong ambition.

  Well, maybe not the part about the home of her own, Enrica would have replied, if she hadn’t loved her sister so well, seeing that Susanna still lived with them, nor were there any indications of plans to move in the near future. Still, though, Susanna, who was indeed the younger sister, already had a two-year-old boy and had been married for three years, after a five-year engagement. While Enrica had spent all that time stiching a dowry that perhaps she’d never even use.

  Over time, Maria had tried to arrange meetings with the families of acquaintances who had a son of the right age, hoping a spark would fly. With one of these, Sebastiano, Enrica had even agreed to go and get a cup of coffee but then, like always, the thing had withered on the vine.

  But now, everything was different. Now it had been she, Enrica, who had met a man, who had spoken to him and who had undertaken a correspondence, and who had told her mother, you know, Mamma, there’s this person I’ve met, he lives elsewhere but he comes to the city on business, and so, if it’s not too much trouble, well, I think I’d like to invite him over sometime. Maybe for dinner. You know, Mamma, he’s all alone, we made friends on Ischia, he was there to take the waters at the thermal spa. Oh, and Mamma? He’s a German officer.

  And I think he’s interested in me.

  These few phrases, dropped casually by Enrica in infrequent moments of confidence over the course of a month, after her return from the summer colony where she had worked as a teacher, had caused an earthquake in the Colombo home. Starting with her first, cautious confession, Maria had begun to lay siege to her daughter, and with her own anxiety she had soon infected one and all. That her elder daughter, whose discretion and shyness were proverbial, should meet a man and now want to invite him to dinner constituted a momentous event.