Time ground to a halt around Ricciardi. The four men sitting at nearby tables all held their breath, as anxious to hear his reply as Livia herself. He opened and shut his mouth, once and then twice. If he answered in the affirmative he’d be lying, but he’d also get himself out of this sticky situation, possibly once and for all. But was that what he wanted? Livia was beautiful, cheerful, and passionate. He liked her and being around her gave him an odd, unsettled feeling that was more than just simple queasiness. In good conscience, however, he couldn’t say that his heart was entirely unfettered.
“No. I don’t have a girlfriend. But . . . I do have feelings for a person, yes. She doesn’t know it, but I have feelings for her.”
As he whispered such a profound and personal thing, in the crowded café, his head spun: he felt as if he had a fever. It was as if a cloud passed over Livia’s face, and her eyes were tinged with pain. Ricciardi felt as if he’d just beaten her. But it was over in an instant: she immediately got to her feet with a smile on her face.
“Well, then, my dear man, I’ll go on fighting. It seems to me that I still deserve a little happiness, and that you have this happiness tucked away somewhere. I intend to seek it out, find it, and seize it for myself. Tell your would-be girlfriend, deep in your heart, to pack her bags and get ready to move. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get going: I have some apartment-hunting to do.”
And she left, her progress followed by dozens of eyes.
XLV
Sunday is a holiday. But it seems like a war.
The armies are summoned by the bells, pealing out the announcement of the seven o’clock mass in scolding tones: how could you have failed to think of God first thing, instead of lolling on your pallets, with open windows, trying to obtain the faintest whiff of a breeze? For shame!
And the armies respond, descending from the quarters inhabited by the poor to take the best seats, on the steps of the churches or in the streets popular with strollers: no one is out yet, but to lose a position means being forced to find another way to make a living, another way to fill one’s belly. It’s an army of a thousand colors, the army of beggars: purple mutilations, verdigris uniform jackets worn by veterans just returning from the front, gauze bandages concealing, variously, empty eye sockets or perfectly healthy eyes, parakeets in their little cages, trained to extend little notes to passersby, telling their fortunes. And an army of a thousand sounds, accordions, ocarinas, mandolins, old violins with cracked soundboards. Even wrinkled black shirts, to win the pity of the newly powerful.
Shortly after dawn, the sound of hammering began to ring out as improvised stages were built: upon which bands would play, beneath which pickpockets would buzz like bumblebees, slipping deft hands and light fingers into pockets and purses, without marring the delighted smiles on the faces of the many listeners—at least, not until they got home that night.
Sunday is a war of commerce, for the street vendors who take the place of the shops, closed for a day. Cobs of corn, golden brown or scorched black, an irresistible aroma wafting in the air; seeds and nuts, advertised by the shrill whistle of the peanut cart; doughnuts sprinkled with silver and particolored dots of sugar, with a fat female vendor shooing away flies with a fan; juicy slices of watermelon, liquorice sticks, greasy fritters. Rattletrap old ice cream carts, shaped like a ship’s prow with an umbrella to ward off the heat of the sun, and wooden penguins carved into the sides. All of them snatching the best locations, whoever arrives last is poorly lodged: Sunday is a holiday but it seems like a war.
And like all wars, here comes the cavalry riding into the fray: most of the carriages rolled in shortly after dawn, though some of them had been there all night long, with the coachmen fast asleep, hats on their faces and whips under their arms, stretching in discomfort from the dankness in their bones. The straw scattered under the dray horses, capturing their urine and feces, if not the foul smells that poison the surrounding air.
Sunday is a war, for the children as well; the luckest ones have been dreaming of this day all week long, with ink-stained fingers, breathing in chalk dust, at their desks or behind the blackboards, on their knees in punishment. The other children have thought about it too, chasing barefoot after the rats in the vicoli or fighting off stray dogs for a scrap of stale bread in the garbage discarded by the well-to-do palazzi of Santa Lucia. They’ll meet later at the Villa Nazionale, casting greedy glances at the toy stalls, dreaming of floating away hanging from a red balloon on a long string or making their stern fathers jump in the air at the sound of the firecrackers that can be heard going off every so often; the fathers targeted by the vendors with their smiles as they hawk their wares, the children driven off rudely with clubs and sticks.
Sunday is a war. But it seems like a holiday.
Ricciardi had slept very badly, though that was hardly a change. He recalled a chaotic dream, where he was mixing up Livia and Adriana, both women talking to him in threatening tones about rings and apartments. Behind them, Enrica’s elegant and well-dressed boyfriend, looking at him and laughing at him, for who knows what reason. And he was trying to open a book that he’d bought the day before and immediately concealed from the intrusive and gossipy eyes of his tata, underneath a loose floor tile behind his armoire; but he couldn’t do it, the pages were massive and he had no strength left in his hands.
When he woke up in the morning, his forearm tingled painfully with pins and needles: he’d slept with his full weight on it. He couldn’t move it, and the anxiety of his dream spread to his waking life. On the other hand, the ghosts of the living and the dead were gone, leaving a new and unfamiliar dread in his heart.
He had been tempted to break the promise he’d made to Don Pierino, reluctant as he was to plunge into the frantic chaos of the day, in all that heat: he really didn’t feel like celebrating. But he had more than one debt of gratitude toward the little priest and he didn’t want to disappoint him yet again, and so he trudged off wearily toward the waterfront. Along the way he cultivated fractured thoughts: Livia and her determination to stay on, Enrica and her closed window, Adriana and her sad fate. He thought once again of the book he’d purchased and concealed, and he wondered if he’d ever have the nerve to pull it out and read it. And he thought of his tata, too, and how, when she saw him going out on a Sunday morning, she had smiled and made reference to what she supposed was a date the young master had, perhaps with a woman from out of town: that woman had a gift of second sight, or else some anonymous informer. He hadn’t replied.
There was something different in the air: it was still oppressively muggy and humid, but the sky was gray and it smelled of damp. Maybe it would rain, eventually, he thought. As he walked, he saw the crowd swelling, families and knots of friends going to enjoy one of the city’s most beloved and traditional festivals. By the time he got to Via Santa Lucia, the crowd was enormous, and the neighboring marina, where the allegorical procession would conclude, was already packed.
Ricciardi had heard something about the ’Nzegna festival, but he’d never made an effort to understand the ritual nature of it, nor had he ever bothered to go to it. He knew that the moment everyone was waiting for was the procession and that, as usual, everyone took advantage of the opportunity to dance, sing, and commit every sort of crime imaginable, under the cover of the massive crowds; the holding tanks at police headquarters during this kind of event tended to be incredibly full.
Shoved along by the crowd he found himself not far from the wharf from which, ten feet above the surface of the water, a number of scugnizzi were hurtling straight down in spectacular dives, to the applause of hundreds of sweaty spectators. Not all the dives were successful, though: Ricciardi saw the image of a little boy looking out to sea, standing erect on the wooden structure of the wharf. He was looking out to sea from an unnatural angle, though, because his neck was snapped a little below the nape; the translucent pallor and the wrinkly skin pointed Ricciardi to a delayed recovery of the body and an extended stay in t
he water before the boy died. He heard his message, loud and clear in spite of the noise:
“One last dive. Just let me take one last dive and then we can go.”
And that’s exactly what it was, thought the commissario. The last dive: the very last dive.
Unsuspecting, the kids kept climbing up to the dock and leaping off, each time passing through the image of the little corpse. He wondered where the mother could be, in what madness she was extinguishing her grief. In the heat and the crowd, Ricciardi shuddered and walked away.
XLVI
The entrance to the church was a double staircase, covered with beggars who clutched at the clothing of all those who passed, demanding alms. On the street, musicians and strolling vendors were raising a din, a dissonant concert of shouts and out-of-tune instruments.
The sidewalk out front was busy with madonnari hard at work, sidewalk artists who specialized in drawings of the Virgin Mary, their hands aglow with colorful chalk, their faces sweaty and focused: the beautiful drawings that they created reproduced the story of the chained crate that Maione had mentioned, showing it being thrown onto the beach of Santa Lucia from a tempest-tossed sea. The crowd, suddenly seized by a new respect for the visual arts, carefully avoided trampling the figures and the landscapes that were gradually covering the sidewalks and street.
It was only with some difficulty that Ricciardi made his way into the church, and more than once he considered giving up and returning home; but he’d made it that far and he wanted Don Pierino to catch at least a glimpse of him, to exchange a wave and a nod, and then leave.
Mass had just begun and the church’s single aisle was packed with people: the air was heavy with incense, the scent of the enormous number of flowers adorning the main altar and many of the side altars, and the sweat of the people inside. Ricciardi saw Don Pierino celebrating mass with two young altar boys. The words, uttered in a language that had been dead for centuries, swelled and flowed in a call and response from the assembled faithful. The churchgoers mouthed the answers without any idea of their meaning; ritual is a comforting thing, thought Ricciardi. Perhaps understanding doesn’t matter. Maybe understanding only makes things worse.
The heat and the murmur of prayers pushed the commissario into a sort of trance, his mind wandering over and over through the same chaotic thoughts. The faces of Livia, Rosa, Lucia Maione, Enrica, and Adriana overlapped into a single blurry, suffering image, depicting all the nuances of pain and loss, apprehension for our loved ones and melancholy; and that image increasingly resembled the face of the statue atop the altar.
After Don Pierino was done with his reading of the Gospel, he scampered with considerable agility up the narrow spiral staircase to the pulpit: a marble balcony atop four columns, overlooking the assembly. He glimpsed Ricciardi in the midst of the crowd beneath him and shot him a rapid smile, to which the commissario responded with a nod of the head.
The little priest began to speak; he had a kind, gentle way of setting forth concepts, modernizing the message of the Holy Scriptures and making it accessible to one and all. Now he was talking about the festival.
“Today we are celebrating the Madonna of Catena, Our Lady of the Chain, to whom we are all deeply devoted. It is simply a painting, ancient and very dark: it is almost impossible to make out the figure. It has traveled a long way to reach us, and it deserves all our love. But today it is not about the Virgin Mary that I want speak, though She is in my heart just as She is in all yours: I want to talk to you about the chain.”
Many of the faithful exchanged glances of bafflement: where was the priest heading with this? They’d be carrying the Madonna in the procession, certainly not the chain. After a pause, Don Pierino went on:
“In fact, the chains that most of us know are bad chains: the chains of slavery, the chains of incarceration. The chains of the soul, of the senses, of wickedness and evil. But there are also good chains, like the ones that protected the Madonna of the painting in its crate, all the way to the beach of Santa Lucia nearly a century ago. But the best chain, the chain most possessed of goodness that can be imagined, is the chain that binds humanity to God, God who fashioned humanity in His image.”
Ricciardi was listening, fascinated in spite of himself. He was no believer, and it seemed to him that, given the life he led, it would be impossible to be one; but faith was a balm he envied others, a comfort to the luckier ones who possessed it.
“The chain that binds God to man is strong, and it withstands nature and the elements. It is the chain that binds a father to a son, a chain that never rusts or wears away with time. A chain that God will never break, a chain that in fact He made stronger through the sacrifice of His only begotten son.”
Ricciardi saw a father, ahead of him, caressing the head of a little girl who kissed his hand in response.
“And so we might think,” Don Pierino went on, “that this chain which can withstand even God Himself can never be broken. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There is a way to shatter this chain: a terrible pair of shears, that can inflict this irreparable damage.”
The priest sought out Ricciardi in the crowd and found him again, gazing straight into his eyes.
“This pair of shears is sin: a formidable weapon, which God himself gave to us so that we might choose not to employ it, saving our souls with free will. Sin shatters the chain: it separates us from God and lets us drop directly into hell and damnation.”
With Don Pierino’s eyes leveled directly into his own, Ricciardi noticed a new sense of discomfort spreading inside him; he began to feel his heart racing loudly in his throat, as if he were about to faint. He leaned against a nearby column while he tried to regain his equilibrium. What was happening to him? As if muffled by fog, the priest’s voice came to him, through the subdued rustling of the women’s fans—whipping back and forth incessantly:
“Sin shatters the link, the most important link in the chain. It shatters the link that cannot be replaced, and without it there is no longer any contact between us: the chain no longer exists, only two useless parts of chain exist. The most important iron ring of all those that make up the chain is the one that’s missing. By committing a sin, you’ve removed the link.”
Ricciardi’s jaw dropped: before his feverish, smarting eyes, in his blurred vision, to his mind ravaged by the thousands of instances of suffering to which he was a daily witness, the truth suddenly blazed clearly in its simplest and most unmistakable form. He understood: he understood it all.
Making his way through the crowd of the faithful, while Don Pierino climbed down from the pulpit and went back to the main altar, he emerged into the open air, the gray muggy heat, and he inhaled in long, hungry gulps: the world was spinning around him dizzyingly. He felt like an idiot, a dull-witted fool who’d failed to see what was obvious, the truth that lay right before him.
He pushed past people, making his way upstream through the crowd pushing back toward the marina to enjoy the spectacle of the ’Nzegna. He walked and no one noticed him, no one seemed to see him at all as he made his way upstream through the masses. He was reminded of Sofia Capece, who was convinced she’d become invisible by divine intervention: the angel of death.
Perhaps the woman, in her madness, had had a point. Those who bring death and damnation really are invisible.
The Colombo family was getting ready for the Sunday lunch, but there was something in the air that didn’t seem right.
It wasn’t the humidity, nor was it the gray daylight that filtered in through the open window: it was, rather, a question of atmosphere. Even the children, who usually talked all at once in a cheerful, deafening cacophony, had fallen silent and exchanged baffled glances. There was a reason.
The reason was Enrica.
Usually the young woman was a smiling, quiet presence in the apartment, and she filled the kitchen with her serene, hard-working sweetness. She was part of the family and, in a very real sense, its true core. But today she loomed like an omen of some imp
ending disaster: her eyes swollen, behind sunglasses, her tangled hair, her reddened cheeks.
It was obvious that she had been crying, shut up in the bedroom she hadn’t left since that morning. Her mother and her sister, both worried by that unusual behavior, had gone to knock on her door, but they’d received only a terse reply; finally they’d resigned themselves to making lunch without her, exchanging bewildered glances without a word.
Giulio, for his part, was clearly glowering with grim discomfort: he was no longer willing to tolerate the fact that his daughter was manifestly suffering, and there was no mistaking the reason. He hadn’t worked his whole life so he could condemn his beloved Enrica to a fate that went against her will; if he had to, he’d support her for all the years she wished, and then leave her enough to live on with all due dignity. And if his wife didn’t agree with him, that would be too bad for her.
Just as he was about to put down his fork and express his thoughts aloud, Enrica beat him to it, speaking in a calm and unruffled voice:
“Mamma,” she said, “I know you only want what’s best for me and you’re worried because at my age I’m still not engaged to be married.”
One of her younger brothers stifled a nervous giggle behind one hand, prompting an angry glare from his father. Enrica went on:
“But I would beg you to consider that, precisely because I am now and have been for some years an adult, I am also capable of deciding what I want from my life. And what I do not want. Mamma, don’t take this the wrong way: but I never want to see that man, Sebastiano Fiore, again as long as I live.”
The phrase tumbled out into the silence of the tomb. A distant rumble of thunder came in through the window, sounding like an airplane going overhead.
Everyone in Their Place Page 33