Everyone in Their Place

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Then, that spring, while interviewing witnesses in the course of an investigation, he’d found her sitting across from him. And the distant picture, the faraway glimpse of normality, the painting by Vermeer suddenly became a flesh-and-blood human being, a woman with a scent, a skin, and a pair of eyes that he’d remember. He couldn’t say whether it was better before: certainly, when Enrica was simply a name and a portrait of someone else’s life, his loneliness had a different hue. Now, when he greeted her every night with a wave of the hand, and she responded to him with a slight tip of the head, he felt as if he were standing on the brink of cliff from which he might tumble at any moment.

  But he certainly wouldn’t live without it.

  Today, moreover, his memory had played a trick on him: he’d remembered Livia. He almost smiled to himself: a whole lifetime spent bearing the cross of a nature that forced him into a life of solitude and contemplation. And then, in the same year, in fact, over the course of just a few months, he’d found himself confronted with emotions that he’d never expected to experience himself. Livia, too, had disturbed him in some fashion, unmistakably conveying to him that she wanted to get to know him better, for the man that he was.

  He couldn’t deny that for a lengthy, extended moment he had been torn: unlike Enrica, Livia had provoked in him a whirlwind of sensations from the very beginning, with her spicy perfume, her soft skin, her full lips, her feline gait, and when they had said goodbye, the hot and womanly tears that streaked her face in the rain.

  As he climbed the stairs in his building, Ricciardi had three women in his heart and in his mind: one was closeby, one he believed, at least, was very far away, and one was dead.

  IX

  Today was a different awakening for you. After all these years, finally, a new awakening.

  Not that anything has changed, to all appearances. You saw day dawning from your bed, as always; as always, the pillow beside you was untouched. You looked at that pillow, your heart crushed by the usual sorrow; as always, you were the first to get up, and you moved through the silence of an apartment that was so different from the way you like to remember it, when the children were little and they laughed and quarreled and ran, and your husband looked up at you and he smiled.

  You make breakfast, a breakfast that someone may or may not eat. There are times when you put dishes and utensils away and throw away whole meals, untouched. You say nothing, you don’t complain. You wouldn’t even know how, you’ve never complained in your life.

  Is it a crime to no longer have the strength to cry? To shout out your shame, your fatally wounded pride? Is is a crime to look away, to see your happiness slipping through your fingers like sand?

  You believed it, when you swore that it was for always, on a luminous spring morning. It’s been a hundred years since then. You can see pity in the eyes of your neighbors, your relatives, your friends. You know that along with that compassion there is also a certain derision, for your silence, for the way you bow your head and look away. Sweetness turns into cowardice. If I were in your place, they all say. You feel as if you can hear them.

  The sun starts to filter through the kitchen window. The heat never subsided, all night long. You think of him. And you think that by now he’s heard the news.

  With slumped shoulders, facing the wall by the kitchen sink and waiting for your children to wake up, you laugh. Softly, you laugh.

  Ricciardi looked around at Monday morning, on his way into police headquarters. In the summer, the beginning of the week seemed to be more of a day of regret, as if Sunday were a missed opportunity; as if people still needed an extra dollop of rest or enjoyment.

  The commissario sensed it when he saw the barefoot, half-naked street urchins, their skin roasted by the hot sun, pouring out of the vicoli and chasing after the first, early morning trolley cars to hang on for the ride, the dangerous ride down to the sea on the Via Caracciolo. He sensed it when he saw that the earliest opening shops were still shut, the same shops that he normally found open for business on his morning walk; instead, now he saw only a few sleepy stock boys still wrestling open the heavy wooden shutters and setting out the display merchandise under the cover of the thick canvas awnings.

  He sensed it when he saw the windows still closed, pilfering a little more sleep and shade from the sun, which was already high in the sky and scorching hot.

  Ricciardi had another especially well developed faculty: his sense of smell. That rainless summer was therefore particularly painful for him. The odor of rot that wafted out of the sewers and gusted through the vicoli was nauseating. Everything that rotted in the hot sun and wasn’t carted away made him gag as it permeated the street with its miasmas, befouling the air and making it impossible to breathe. Every day dozens of children and old people fell ill from poor hygiene, dying in their homes and at hospitals, to the utter indifference of the press and the radio. Ricciardi wondered how it could be that the newspapers conspired to whitewash that terrible situation, and instead chattered on in dulcet tones about the visits to the city of royal princes and transoceanic aviators. Everyone has their ghosts, he thought: it’s just a matter of knowing how to ignore them.

  When he got to the office he found Ponte waiting outside the door, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if he urgently needed to go to the bathroom. Unlike the usual state of affairs, for once the deputy chief of police was already in his office, and wanted to see him immediately. With a sigh, Ricciardi followed the clerk who continued to look everywhere except at the commissario’s face.

  Mario Capece was smoking on the balcony of the newspaper’s offices. He always stayed later than all the others, after the frantic night’s work that preceded the daily celebration as the paper’s first edition rolled off the presses. He usually liked to watch the newsboys with their stacks of fresh newsprint on their shoulders, eager to shout the first headlines to a city that was still asleep. But today’s headline was one he’d never have wanted to hear.

  Mario Capece was crying. His colleagues watched him from behind, from inside the newsroom, unable to do anything to comfort him. When earlier that afternoon an exceedingly young copyboy had galloped into the newsroom, breathless and fearful to reveal his news, it was immediately obvious that something very serious had happened. From his office, Capece hadn’t seen the boy arrive, and so the copyboy was first able to inform his deputy editor, a close old friend, fellow veteran of a thousand battles.

  The man had taken upon himself the terrible assignment of breaking the news to Capece. The other journalists had seen him shut the door behind him, they’d waited through the moment of silence that ensued with bated breath, and then they’d heard their boss’s despairing shout of extreme grief and sorrow.

  The affair that Mario Capece, city editor of the Roma, was carrying on with Adriana Musso di Camparino was public knowledge; but what only a few close friends understood was the sheer power of the journalist’s emotions. Emotions that had sabotaged an otherwise brilliant career, a career that had screeched to a halt just short of the editorship of the city’s oldest newspaper; emotions that had exposed him to the ridicule and the pity of his adversaries, and that had isolated him, creating a vacuum around him. They had also chased away from him not only his wife but also his children, who were rigid and conservative as only the very young can sometimes be.

  Capece had renounced everything for his love. In order to accommodate the whims of a beautiful and unstable woman, shallow and neurotic. A thousand times Arturo Dominici, Capece’s deputy editor and his best friend, had tried to reason with him. And a thousand times he had run headlong into the virulence and power of an emotion that was as deep-rooted and incurable as a tumor.

  It had fallen to Dominici to break the news to Mario, at the end of a day during which his friend had been more on edge and irritable than usual. He’d expected Capece to rush to the dead woman’s side instantly, but instead he’d remained in his office until dawn.

  On Saturday evening, Dominici hadn’t see
n Capece in the newsroom, and he’d only come in much later that night, and dead drunk to boot. The deputy city editor had attributed his friend and editor’s pitable state to yet another fight: those fights were coming thick and fast these days. He’d helped him to stretch out on his office sofa and he’d reassured him. Once again he would take his place and supervise the production of that day’s edition. Before falling asleep, slurring his words, Capece had said to him:

  “It’s over, it’s over, Arturo. This time it’s over for good.”

  Dominici hadn’t believed him, of course. He’d heard the same phrase repeated a thousand times over the last three years. This time, however, his friend, gripping his arm, had pulled something out of his pocket and had showed it to him.

  It was a ring.

  Garzo was on his feet as he welcomed Ricciardi into his office, striding to the door to meet him. The commissario had learned to fear his superior officer’s cordiality far more than his imperious tone of voice or his professional lack of discernment: from the two latter qualities he could defend himself with competence and wry irony, but the only way to combat his cordiality was try to reestablish a sense of distance and formality.

  This time, however, he perceived a psychological state that he’d never glimpsed before in the deputy chief of police. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all night: his tie was loosened, he had bags under his eyes, and his face was even covered with a shadow of whiskers.

  It was a surprising thing: Angelo Garzo, a bureaucrat who had used image and personal relations as the engines of his career, never allowed himself to strike a pose or have an appearance that was anything less than formally impeccable. In those years, when every serious matter was referred to Rome, his remarkable diplomatic skills made him the most important man in the department. The chief of police turned constantly to Garzo for all contacts with the ministry and he, who didn’t really know how to do anything else, was happy to oblige. Among his underlings, one particular statement of his had become famous. It had to do with the discovery of a guilty party through a chain of reasoning he had been unable to follow: shaking his neatly groomed head, he’d said that if you want to understand evildoers, you need to be able to think like them, and he, who was an upright person, would never be able to understand a murderer.

  That Monday morning, however, it was a very different person who greeted Ricciardi. He pointed his underling to one of the two chairs across from his uncluttered desk, brusquely waved Ponte out of the office, and sat down in his turn on the same side of the desk as the commissario.

  “I heard about the Camparino murder. It’s a very grave matter, all our fates depend on this investigation. How are we doing?”

  Ricciardi was baffled. He couldn’t figure out what made this murder different from any other.

  “She was killed in her home, probably with a gunshot between the eyes. I’m waiting for the autopsy results. Dr. Modo was in charge of that. If necessary, I’ll go to the morgue later myself.”

  Garzo was wringing his hands.

  “Did you talk to . . . did you question anyone at the Camparino residence?”

  Ricciardi had no intention of giving his superior officer any more rope than necessary.

  “For now, I’ve only talked to the help. That’s three people. Later, we’ll talk to the other residents of the palazzo, the family. And after that, suppliers and neighbors. According to procedure, in other words.”

  Garzo grabbed Ricciardi’s arm.

  “Right, exactly. Procedure. We’re not going to follow procedure this time, Ricciardi. No, we’ve got to move carefully, very, very carefully.”

  Ricciardi managed to extract his hand from Garzo’s grip with some difficulty, and he looked his superior officer right in his reddened eye.

  “Dottore, forgive me but I don’t understand; what do you mean, we’re not going to follow procedure? Is there something I ought to know?”

  Garzo leapt to his feet and starting pacing nervously around the room.

  “Something you don’t know? No. Actually, yes, probably there is. I always forget that you live a somewhat, shall we say, cloistered life, that you don’t socialize. Well, then: Adriana Musso di Camparino is, or I should say, was, a very, very prominent woman in social terms. She led a life that was . . . how to put this . . . well, quite public. Such a lovely, wealthy woman attracted, necessarily—let me be clear, necessarily—gossip and chatter. And we must not listen to idle gossip, must we, Ricciardi? We are the police, and we must stick to the facts.”

  Ricciardi waited; it was obvious that Garzo wanted to say something, but that he lacked the courage.

  “Well then, Dottore, wouldn’t it be best if the person conducting the investigation were to be aware of this . . . chatter in advance, and if possible from an objective source? Instead of going around gathering gossip, in other words.”

  Garzo stopped his nervous pacing.

  “Yes. Of course it would. Now then, Ricciardi, first of all you should be aware that as you proceed in this investigation you’ll necessarily come into contact with . . . very particular sectors of society. Unusual ones, we might say. Where you won’t be able to ask questions as easily as you might if you were interviewing, say, a trolley car conductor or a street sweeper. Prominent, powerful people.”

  Ricciardi leapt suddenly to his feet.

  “Dottore, perhaps the best thing would be for you to assign this case to someone else. Cimmino, for example. I’d be happy to give him a report on the current state of progress, and if it comes to that, we haven’t really learned very much yet.”

  Garzo seemed disoriented.

  “What are you saying, Ricciardi? I wouldn’t dream for a second of assigning this investigation to anyone else. You’re the best investigator we have, and you and I both know that perfectly well.”

  “Thanks very much, Dottore. But it’s also true that I’m not very diplomatic, unfortunately. And that I have another shortcoming: I’m not very obsequious. I wouldn’t want to disobey instructions, unintentionally, you understand.”

  Garzo took a step toward Ricciardi.

  “It’s out of the question, Ricciardi. It’s vital that we find the guilty party as quickly as possible. Quickly, you understand? The fact is that a noblewoman, such a prominent personality, cannot simply be murdered in her home. Not in a safe city, a city like ours and all the other cities in Fascist Italy. The guilty party, surely a madman, a maniac, must be brought to justice.”

  “Well then, Dottore, what’s the problem? We’ll just proceed with our investigation, as usual, and as usual, we’ll do our best.”

  Garzo ran his hand through his hair.

  “The duchess . . . now then, Ricciardi: the duchess of Musso di Camparino was having an affair. She’d been seeing a man for years. The matter was public knowledge, everyone knew about it.”

  Ricciardi remained on his feet, emphasizing the point that he still wasn’t sure that he’d been assigned to the investigation.

  “If it was public knowledge, shouldn’t I know about it too?”

  “The problem is just who the man was. It’s Mario Capece, the chief news editor of the Roma. The newspaper, in case you’ve missed the point, that never misses an opportunity to nail us to the cross, even after the instructions to the press issued in 1928 by the Ministry of the Interior. Now do you get it?”

  Ricciardi understood. In fact, this put Garzo into a situation that was anything but comfortable. Either he investigated until he tracked down the guilty party, which inevitably meant treading on the toes of the most hostile press, or else he held back, running the risk of making a public admission of incompetence by failing to catch the culprit in such a sensational murder case. Garzo, and to some extent this did him honor, had chosen to track down the murderer. Or at least make the attempt.

  “The relationship between the two of them wasn’t the sunniest. The duchess was, let’s say, a little . . . unstable. She liked parties, she liked to dance, she liked compliments. She liked to be courted.
Fifty years ago Capece, and when he was well, the duke himself, would have been fighting duels every day at sunrise. These days, however, the only form of recourse was arguments and bitter, interminable public fighting.”

  “And if I may ask, how do you know this?”

  Garzo didn’t seem offended by the rude question.

  “Everyone who happens to go to the theater knows it. The last fight took place on Saturday night, in fact, at the Salone Margherita.”

  “The last fight?”

  Garzo seemed uncomfortable. On the one hand, he wanted to minimize, while on the other hand he didn’t want to leave out any details that might prove to be important.

  “I believe it was a matter of jealousy. Capece was accusing the duchess of . . . of looking at a young man, who was accompanying the Signora De Matteis, a lady who . . . well, that doesn’t matter, let’s not pursue that. In other words, they started dredging up old events, situations from out of the past. Then he slapped her. We all sat there openmouthed. Immediately after that, he grabbed her hand and yanked off the ring, shouting into her face . . .”

  Ricciardi had leaned forward, interrupting Garzo with one hand.

  “What’s that, what’s that? He took one of her rings? And what did he yell at her?”

  Garzo was disoriented.

  “I can’t remember what he yelled at her. I think it was an insult, you know the word that people say to women when they’re accusing them of being unfaithful. And he told her that she deserved neither his love nor the ring.”