Marangolo’s voice had a hypnotic cadence. Ricciardi felt as if he had been at the duke’s side in the very moment he first glimpsed Bianca. He wondered what it must be like when a glance, a single glance, takes you and carries you away. To him, it had happened a little at a time, from behind a pane of glass, looking across at another pane of glass. Two souls separated by two transparent slabs, fragile and impregnable.
The account continued.
“She was young. She was simply too young. I spoke to her, I tried to cast the spell of my immense wealth. What a mistake I was making. How wrong I was. There are women, Baron, who have no interest in that sort of thing. There are women who love a man’s weaknesses, not his strengths. I didn’t have the wit to understand that. And I lacked the courage to court her openly; the difference in age was too great. Once I realized that I should have, it was too late. Romualdo had already beat me to it.”
Another sip of coffee. Now the sun was shining at the window. The man’s unnatural complexion became even more evident.
“He was an impossibly handsome young man, too; I have to admit that, together, they were perfect. She seemed happy to me, which is what kept me from fighting for my own life. You see, Baron, all that mattered to me was her welfare and happiness. I only wanted to see her smile. In all these years I’ve done a great deal for Bianca, and she always thought that it was out of generosity. It isn’t true. Mine were acts of extreme selfishness; I was paying a pittance for the food my soul required: that smile. You’ve seen it haven’t you? She lifts her upper lip ever so slightly, tilts her head to one side, and her eyes emanate a strange light, like late-afternoon sunlight, the last ray of light before nightfall. I was there when she became engaged. I was there when she was married. I was there when Romualdo started squandering everything within reach. Including Bianca’s soul.”
Ricciardi listened carefully. A seagull flew close to the window and perched on a craggy rock, stopping to gaze expressionlessly out at the sea.
Between the duke and the seabird there was a strange, grotesque resemblance.
“I witnessed Romualdo’s ruin. At a certain point, I tried talking to him, I wanted to understand what could push a man to such demented behavior if he had had the unspeakable good luck to marry a woman like her. He told me in quite harsh terms to mind my own business. Perhaps I should have put an end to his destiny right then and there. No, Baron, not by killing him, heavens preserve us. That’s not my style. I ought to have bought up all his debts and forced him to quit gambling. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to find out just how far he would go.”
Ricciardi murmured: “And just how far did he go?”
Marangolo turned, slightly surprised, as if he had forgotten that the commissario was there.
“He lost everything he owned. Then he even gambled away money he didn’t have. And when the gambling tables of civilized society stopped taking his promissory notes, he started losing money to people who don’t forgive those who don’t pay.”
“And what about after that?”
The duke turned back to look at the sea.
“That’s recent history. A year ago, more or less. Bianca came to see me; she did that rarely, a little more often since I got sick. After her fashion, she does care for me, and this piteous affectione wounds me more than hatred ever could.”
He coughed into a handkerchief.
“She told me that he’d been beaten. That she’d found a torn shirt and a bloodstained handkerchief. They hadn’t been sleeping together for a long time, now, but she could hear him come in and leave. She had heard him moan during the night, and he had avoided crossing paths with her for almost two days, until they finally came face-to-face: Bianca had seen his swollen bruised face and his arms, hanging stiff at his sides. She was afraid, and she came to tell me so. I asked around and learned what kind of people he’d gotten involved with. He was risking his life, and he didn’t know how to get out of that bind. That was when I decided to help him: when I saw the smile die on Bianca’s face.”
Ricciardi nodded. He had understood.
“And this is where Ludovico Piro comes into the story.”
Without turning around, the muscles of the duke’s face tightened.
“Exactly. There was this small, pathetic loan shark who was desperately trying to work his way into our social circle. One of those people who had been lured in by the false glitter of a world they don’t understand and from which they will always be excluded. He glimpsed the possibility of achieving his wildest dreams the day that I summoned him for an interview, right in this same room, in fact. I told him that he should approach Romualdo and offer him help, at a normal rate of interest. I would finance the operation, he could earn on the margin. Naturally, if and when Romualdo failed to pay back his debt, I would be glad to honor the promissory notes. The only condition was that no one, no one could ever know where that money came from.”
The seagull on the rocks let out a shrill cry in the direction of the sea. The sound, so sudden and powerful, caught Ricciardi off guard and made him jerk in his armchair. Marangolo didn’t even seem to notice it.
“Soon enough, from one promissory note to another, Ludovico became Romualdo’s sole creditor. All the man had left was the building he lived in, whose total worth was less than the amount of the debt, but I couldn’t allow Bianca to lose the home she lived in. From time to time, I’d go and see her, but she had guessed something, I have no idea how. The last few times, bringing up some excuse or other, feeling indisposed or alleging some prior obligation, she avoided seeing me entirely. I was hurt, but at least I could tell myself that I had saved her from utter ruin. And that’s certainly something, no?”
Ricciardi didn’t answer the question. Instead, he asked: “And so we come to that fatal evening, Duke. Exactly what happened?”
Marangolo turned around and went back to sit in his armchair. Now Ricciardi could clearly glimpse on his face the signs of impending death.
“Piro had decided not to allow any further extensions on Romualdo’s promissory notes. I have no idea why. I summoned him, but he wouldn’t come to see me. I went to his home, but he refused to receive me. I sent word to him that I wished to pay off the debt in full, but he sent word that he wasn’t interested. He was determined to ruin Romualdo. He wanted to see him in debtors’ prison, or else a suicide. The promissory notes were in his name, I was helpless to do anything about it.”
Ricciardi stared at the duke over his interlaced fingers, in the position he always assumed when he was seeking the greatest possible concentration.
“A person might suppose, in light of the story you’ve just told me, that it was you who desired the count’s ruin. You were finally certain that the arc of his existence would soon come to an end, whether in prison or by a pistol shot. And so you would finally be able to obtain what you had yearned for all your life.”
The duke started, and in the room’s dim light he resembled nothing so much as a skull. He relaxed, morosely.
“So one might think, if it weren’t for the fact that I myself am about to die. If it weren’t that my liver had decided that I don’t have much time left to me, in defiance of the nonsense that I continue to hear spouted by the physicians I pay so generously but who are still determined to bleed as much cash as they can from me. And if it weren’t for the fact that I know Bianca, and I know that she would never, never ever, accept a man out of gratitude or pity.
“You see, Baron, all that Bianca has left to her is her reputation, and the opinion that she has of herself. She has nothing else. A name and an image in a mirror. So I will never have Bianca, for the very simple reason that she does not love me.”
Ricciardi stood up.
“Why did Piro put an end to this pantomime? He was looking at enormous, reliable earnings. He could have continued on with it and nothing would have happened. So why did he do it?”
Mar
angolo put his hands together, fingers intertwined.
“I don’t know. I swear that I have no idea. I’ve asked myself a thousand times, and I just can’t seem to fathom why such a miserly, money-grubbing, cowardly man should have decided to wring the neck of the goose that laid so many golden eggs. And paying for it with his own hide, by the way.”
“Then you’re convinced that it was the Count of Roccaspina who murdered Piro. Is that right?”
Marangolo seemed exhausted.
“Yes, Baron. It was him. Who else could have had any motive to do it? Piro wanted to demand full payment of his promissory notes, the name of the Roccaspina family would be dragged through the legal mud, and it would have spelled his utter ruin. The only alternative would have been to take his own life.”
“Then why did you go to call on the contessa, that night?”
“To warn her. To tell her that matters were plummeting out of control, to tell her not to ask me why, but that I knew, that I was certain that her husband might be on the verge of doing something extreme. Except what I had in mind was suicide, not Piro’s murder. I confess, Romualdo caught me by surprise: I never thought him capable of such a thing.”
Ricciardi nodded his head. The seagull took to its wings with another shrill cry and vanished from sight. The sea continued its motion in utter indifference, but now it was frightening.
The commissario said farewell to the duke, but just as he was about to leave, he turned around and asked him: “One last question. You knew, or at least you’ve said, that the contessa would never accept you; and you had excellent reasons for hating the Count of Roccaspina, who took away any chance you might have had of winning her, and who then ruined her youth. So why did you help him?”
Marangolo smiled again.
“Do you really not understand, Malomonte?
“I love her. I will love her until the day I die. And long after that, too.”
XXXVI
Enrica had felt an urgent need to go down to the sea.
It wasn’t something that happened often. For the most part, if she was free of obligations to tutor children, look after her siblings, or tend to housework, her main inclination was to stay home. Moreover, now they had the change of seasons to think about, a titanic undertaking that involved the putting away of all summer garments and the extraction of all winter clothing, much of which would have to be washed and ironed. But today, giving in to a sudden impulse, she had grabbed her hat and, without a word to anyone, she’d gone out.
She needed to see the horizon, a little blue.
Blue was the color of that city, her father liked to say. You see, sweetheart? Blue is the sky, at least for most of the year. Blue is the sea, when it heaves unexpectedly into view as you come around a curve, or reach the top of a steep incline. Blue is the light that filters into the interiors, through the windows but also the street doors, the minute you open them. A city of blue. And so, he would tell her, if you’re looking for equilibrium and serenity, what you should look for is blue. You’ll feel better instantly.
Did Enrica lack equilibrium? Was her state of mind not serene? Why did she feel this sudden need? Ever since she was small, she had always been capable of attaining a state of equilibrium without difficulty. Even when everything around her was shifting, changing, or being altered, her personality was capable of shifting her mood to a new point of view. It was a gift, she knew, she wasn’t the kind who tended to despair, or cried over spilt milk, or became pointlessly upset. She was sentimental, she was introspective, but she was also quite rational. She knew how to accept change, if it didn’t lie within her power to do anything about it.
She adapted.
Then why, she wondered, as she walked down the long, gentle slope that ran down from the large piazza to the sea, did she now feel so uneasy?
Was it on account of Manfred, perhaps?
She had feared that dinner, which she had felt obliged to arrange in order to placate her mother. She had feared this renewed encounter with that officer of a foreign army still remembered as an enemy in war; a widower, a German who was proud of his country, which so many considered with suspicion. She had feared the great differences between his political beliefs and those of her father, between which lay a yawning gulf. She had feared that her mother, in her eagerness to allay the solitude of her unmarried daughter, might behave like a merchant eager to unload slightly defective goods, willing to praise them to the skies in order to sell them off. She had been worried about her young brothers, whose naïveté might have betrayed the gossip among housewives that they had overheard, making them especially dangerous.
She had feared that the evening would end in disaster.
Had she feared it or had she secretly wished for it?
An irritating little voice tried to worm its way into her mind, playing on the opposing sentiments that crowded her thoughts: she hushed it.
Pointless fears all: nothing had happened. Manfred—and knowing him as she did, she should have expected it—had won over everybody, including her father, a man who was seldom inclined to express his feelings; Enrica had caught his glance and clearly interpreted his relief. Her mother, of course, had gone head over heels for him, and by now she talked of nothing else; the following morning she had basically called a general meeting of the other tenants in the apartment house to provide her neighbors with a blow-by-blow account of the dinner, including a pathetic imitation of their guest’s coos of appreciation for the food. As for her brothers, they wouldn’t set down the carved wooden toys that he had brought for them, and Susanna had launched into a series of intricate, asphyxiating hypotheses concerning the appearance of the children that Enrica would bear after her now inevitable wedding with that athletic, very good looking, and extremely likable major in the German Reichswehr, the “Defense of the Nation,” as he had explained the word, which in simpler terms just meant the German army.
Perhaps, Enrica reflected when she finally reached the waterfront and could take a deep breath of salty, briny air as she looked out over the rocks, more than a need for blue, what might have driven her out there was a yearning for silence.
But what about her? What had she felt when she saw Manfred eating out of her dishes, drinking from her glasses, sitting in her living room in the midst of her family? Had she perhaps felt a sense of intrusion, as she had with Sebastiano and the other suitors that her mother had tried to palm off on her?
No. She had to be honest. It had been a pleasure, actually, and she had felt gratified to be the subject of such interest on the part of a man who lacked nothing, to be considered both desirable and interesting. He was well read, sensitive, intelligent, even handsome. There were no dark shadows, no mystery about him: Manfred was exactly what met the eye, and what met the eye was more than satisfactory.
Enrica had admired his conversation, she had appreciated the way he had avoided topics that her father might find unpleasant, in spite of her brother-in-law’s attempts to steer him onto more extreme positions. He might even share those opinions, but he had displayed great sensitivity toward Giulio. And she had been impressed by the way he had interacted with the little ones, to whom he had given plenty of attention and with whom he had immediately gotten along famously. He would be a wonderful father, Manfred would.
Of whose children? burst in once again that irritating little voice. Your children? Yes, she replied, mine, and why not? Don’t I have a right to be happy too? Can’t I have a home of my own, a family of my own? Where? In Germany? asked the same little voice. In Bavaria? And will your children be fair-haired? Will they speak a foreign language?
It will be up to me to turn them into the children I want, she told herself proudly. I will know how to raise them as Italians.
She ran her eyes over the wave-swamped rocks, while the sea stroked the land as if it were velvet. Where are you? she suddenly thought. Where are you now? Why aren’t you here with me, to
explain?
Lunchtime was emptying the street. The sun was hitting Enrica’s eyes through the lenses of her eyeglasses; the light breeze that was blowing in from the sea forced her to clap her hat down on her head with one hand, while the other hand grasped her handbag. She turned around.
And she saw him.
It seemed to her that mind and heart had ganged up on her to play a cruel trick. Her heart skipped a beat; it skipped another. Then it made up for lost time by starting to gallop dementedly in her throat and in her ears. Oh my God, she thought. Oh my God, now where can I run away to?
Ricciardi found himself face-to-face with her as he was leaving the yacht club, his mind full of wind and sand as if he had been exposed to a desert storm. The conversation with Duke Marangolo had dug into an intimate personal territory that he would never have wanted to stir up, and now he felt quite uneasy. The reference to his father, to his own family, and to a past that he, irresponsibly, had never paid much attention to. To be called by the title and name that he’d turned his back on for so many years, to understand for the first time that he was not, in all likelihood, the man that his parents had hoped he would become, had shaken him to his very foundations.
And then there was love. He had been in the presence of an enormous, extreme sentiment, which had more than filled a life like that of the duke, a life that could have been full of every other sort of thing. The image of a young woman on a July morning and that man’s existence was changed once and for all. And yet it was clear that Marangolo would never have willingly given up that unattainable and unattained love. He held it close, he regretted nothing, save for not having done more to help a woman who had rejected him.
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