[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Amitrano clicked his heels for the umpteenth time.

  “Yessir, Brigadie’. Only for something serious. You can sleep peacefully, I’ll take care of things here.”

  Maione wasn’t particularly comforted by that thought.

  “Eh. Now that you’ve told me that, sure, I’ll sleep peacefully, no doubt about it. Do your best to make sure nothing happens, Amitra’. Just assume that even if there’s a general uprising, as far as I’m concerned, it will all be your fault.”

  Considering the level of staff on duty, Raffaele decided to take off only his boots, and to hang his uniform jacket from a hook. Better to be ready to go, in case it proved necessary. As soon as he laid his head on his pillow, and after turning his last rational thought to how uncomfortable that cot was for a brigadier tipping the scales at 265 pounds, he fell into a sleep so deep that he almost immediately began dreaming.

  The dream, or rather the nightmare, was a strange one. There he was, stretched out on the cot, and there was Amitrano, too, standing beside him and shaking him by the arm. It was all so real and believable that a feeling of disquiet began to rise into his mind, at first faint, then increasingly distinct and heavy, until his eyes snapped open of their own accord. And he found that what he thought he’d just been imagining was actually bitter reality.

  Just a few inches from his face was Officer Amitrano’s dismayed visage. Maione felt around with his hand in search of his pocket watch, which he had placed on the side table next to the cot: it had been fifteen minutes since he had laid down.

  Amitrano continued shaking him. Out of Maione’s chest rose a dull roar, like distant thunder.

  “Amitra’, what are you doing?”

  The other man seemed relieved.

  “Ah, so you’re awake, Brigadie’.”

  With a dangerously unruffled tone, Maione replied: “Excuse me, Amitrano, but isn’t that obvious?”

  Amitrano’s voice took on a conversational tone.

  “No, because what I ought to tell you is that my father sleeps with his eyes open, so you can never tell whether or not he’s awake. Since he’s more or less the same age as you, I thought to myself: maybe the brigadier sleeps the same exact way. So then I decided, I’ll just shake him until he answers me. With my father, who’s an old guy just like you, that’s the way we do it. Was I wrong?”

  Maione’s right hand shot out, clutching the officer’s arm just above the wrist.

  “I’m so sorry for your father, Amitra’. He’s an unfortunate man struck by the grave misfortune of an idiot son. And when it comes to being old, we’ll just have to wait and see how old you get to be. People like you often get murdered at an early age. The point is, though: what was the reason you woke me up? I’m going to ask you calmly, you see? But unless you answer me right now, I’m going to get a lot less calm.”

  Trying to wriggle out of the grip, Amitrano stammered: “B-but Brigadie’, y-you ordered me to c-c-call you if anything . . . ”

  “ . . . If anything serious happened, that’s right. So now you’d better tell me that someone blew up City Hall, that they murdered His Excellency the Prefect, that war has broken out and that enemy warships are bombarding the harbor. One of those three things. Tell me now, before I rip your arm off.”

  The other man, red in the face and unable to speak because of the pain, tossed his head toward someone who was standing behind him. And a boy appeared, seven or eight years old, evidently rather frightened by the scene he had just witnessed.

  Maione pulled himself up into a sitting position and glared at the officer, without releasing his arm.

  “Just who is this, Amitra’? Explain. On the double, trust me, you don’t want to waste my time right now.”

  The unfortunate man answered all in a single breath: “He came to the door. He said that he needed to talk to you, and I asked him: Is it something serious? Because, unless it’s something serious, I can’t call him. And he told me: Yes, it’s something serious. So I told him: All right, then, come with me, that way you can tell the brigadier himself, otherwise he’ll get mad at me.”

  Maione let go of Amitrano and rose to his full height, towering over the child.

  “Who are you? What are you doing out on the streets at this hour? Who sent you here? Why did you ask for me by name? And what’s happened that’s so serious?”

  The boy, who was wearing a pair of trousers at least two sizes too big for him, took a step back, eyes fixed on Maione’s face, and then answered: “Brigadie’, Bambinella said that you need to go to her house right away. That it’s a very urgent matter. That it’s a matter of life or death.”

  Once he’d delivered his unsettling message, he darted through the door that Amitrano had left open behind him and took to his heels.

  Maione clamped his mouth shut and turned to look at his subordinate officer.

  “So you woke me up for this? On account of a scugnizzo carrying a message from a deranged femminiello? Couldn’t you wait until tomorrow morning?”

  Amitrano, who hadn’t stopped massaging his arm in a vain attempt to restore circulation, whimpered: “How was I supposed to know, Brigadie’? I asked if it was something serious, and he told me yes, it was. And since you’d said that . . . ”

  Maione was already getting dressed.

  “Amitra’, get out from underfoot, otherwise, do you see these boots of mine? You do? Well, your behind will see them even more vividly. I’m going to find out what’s happened to Bambinella. I’ll be back as soon as possible. If anything happens, wake up Cozzolino, who lives right across the way. For the rest of the night, I don’t want to have to lay eyes on you again. I don’t want the sight of your ugly mug.”

  VII

  After dinner, Cavalier Giulio Colombo had made it a habit to take half an hour all for himself.

  His haberdashery—the family shop that specialized in hats and gloves—absorbed him for many hours a day: his customers always wanted advice, and then there was the cash register, his relations with his suppliers, the order sheets to be filled out, and the account ledgers that needed to be kept up to date. Nor could he overlook his most important job, that of husband and father, so when he returned home and until the end of the family supper, he spent time with his children, spoiling and indulging his first-born grandson, a recent gift from his second-eldest daughter Susanna, who lived at home with her husband, and listening to the incessant complaints of his wife Maria about their apartment, about the behavior of this or that person, about how much money they had to spend, and for some time now, and in particular, about Enrica, the eldest of their five children, still unmarried and threatening to become an old maid at the venerable age of twenty-five. Twenty-four, he would usually correct her, doing his ironic best to lighten the tone of the discussion, but he wouldn’t be able to rely on that gambit for much longer, since it was only a matter of days now till the young woman’s birthday.

  In any case, even Maria respected his right to that limited time he spent reading the paper, listening to the radio with the volume turned down low, and smoking a cigar with the pleasant company of a snifter of cognac. That was a gift he indulged in before going to bed, so that he could gather his thoughts and get comfortable with himself, in order to pursue some of the interests that business had forced him to abandon, such as history, philosophy, and politics.

  Truth be told, there was nothing to be particularly pleased about, as he scanned the news. Giulio often discussed current events with Marco, his son-in-law, who helped out in the shop as a sales clerk and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Fascist Party: the signals he was picking up on from the real economy clashed sharply with the euphoric optimism circulating among the ordinary people, fed regularly by the confident speeches that thundered out across the streets from the loudspeakers placed in front of the shops selling radios. Other than observe, though, there wasn’t much an old liberal like him could do. The atmosphere was growing heavy for those—and they were few and far between—who had the courage to expres
s an openly dissenting view, and the cavalier preferred to keep his views to himself, to avoid causing problems for his family by some reckless behavior.

  As he was mulling these thoughts, sipping his cognac, someone knocked softly on his study door. Even before calling out, “come in,” Colombo smiled. There was only person in that home who felt authorized to interrupt Papà’s famous half hour; the only one who could rely on his benevolence at all times, without exception.

  Enrica appeared in the doorway.

  “Am I bothering you?”

  Once again, Giulio noticed just how closely his eldest daughter resembled him.

  “Come in, sweetheart, come in. I was just about to go to sleep. Well, how are you? Have you decided what you want for your birthday?”

  Enrica took a seat in the unoccupied armchair, her gaze gentle behind her eyeglasses.

  “Really, Papà, there’s nothing I need. And after all, you know that Mamma will take care of it by adding a few items to my trousseau.”

  By now, Enrica’s trousseau had become a minor family legend. Maria never missed a chance to cite it as a metaphor for the passing years and the engagement that never materialized. “We’ll be forced to rent a warehouse, eventually,” she would say. “You have more bedding than a boarding school.”

  “We’ll have a little party in the afternoon, right?” asked Giulio. “And, is . . . anyone else coming, beside the family?”

  It wasn’t actually a question tossed out nonchalantly, as it might have seemed. For more than a month now, at least one day a week, the Colombo family had received a visit from a German officer named Manfred, whom Enrica had met the previous summer on the island of Ischia. Once for coffee, another time for an afternoon greeting, a couple of evenings for dinner, at Maria’s invitation: little by little, the presence of that man, tall, fair-haired, courteous, and agreeable, with his distinctive, slightly guttural accent overlaid upon a perfect spoken Italian, had become routine. The younger ones, on the sly, would ask Enrica: so when is your fiancé coming over again?

  The point was that Manfred wasn’t Enrica’s fiancé, even though he seemed to have every intention of attaining that status, to Maria’s satisfaction and delight, and likewise that of Enrica’s sister Susanna and most of the neighbors. Giulio, however, who profoundly loved that eldest daughter of his, so similar to him in her preference for silence and mental pursuits, could tell that something wasn’t right. The girl seemed anything but eager to receive a formal declaration.

  Cavalier Colombo was well aware of the sentiments that Enrica felt for Ricciardi, the police commissario who lived in the building across from theirs. She herself had revealed her feelings to her father some time ago, and he’d even made an attempt to intercede on her behalf. It hadn’t been easy for him to pay a call on a perfect stranger and offer him the heart of his first-born daughter so that he could take the initiative, if such were his intentions. In order to muster the courage, he’d been forced to leap over a great many barriers erected by his upbringing, his personality, and his pride. During the course of the brief conversation the two men had had, though, he’d caught a whiff of something. Accustomed as he was by his work selling articles of clothing to pick up on people’s tastes and impressions, he’d realized that behind the young man’s silence, there was none of the embarrassment you might detect if the feelings in question were not reciprocal, or if he was actually a misanthrope by nature, or even a confirmed bachelor for who knows what obscure reason. Ricciardi, Giulio felt certain, was actually afflicted with some immense sorrow, as if he were pervaded by a grief that he had no intention of sharing with anyone. A few words and a glance or two had been more than sufficient to persuade him that that melancholy, troubled man had no wish to inflict himself upon Enrica.

  The young woman shook herself out of her rapt reflections to answer the question: “That’s just what I wanted to talk to you about, Papà. Manfred, that is, Major von Brauchitsch, would really like to come to the party. He told me that . . . Well, I think that he wishes to speak with you.”

  Giulio took a puff on his cigar.

  “And what do you think about it? I mean . . . do you want him to?”

  Enrica turned her gaze into the empty air and fell silent for a moment, which spoke more eloquently to her father than any number of words could have, then said: “I think I do, Papà. It’s clear by now that . . . I don’t think there are really any alternatives, are there? You know how happy it would make Mamma.”

  Giulio shook his head.

  “The point here isn’t Mamma’s happiness. It’s yours. You know it, I can always come up with some story, tell him that I have no intention of seeing you go far away, that your ties to the family are too strong to even think of imagining you in Germany raising your children far away from us. I can tell him that I’d rather wait, to see how your relationship grows. That it might be better if you saw each other for a few more months so that . . . ”

  Enrica interrupted him: “What good would that do, Papà? I like Manfred. What girl could ask for anything more, even if she weren’t like me, a . . . even if she weren’t as grown up as me, and with no other prospects of a family on the horizon? I might as well just say yes and make everybody happy.”

  Giulio slammed his fist down on the armrest of his chair.

  “Don’t you realize that’s not the way to think about getting married? Even when people get married because they’re head over heels in love, with all their hearts, even then lots of times they wind up no longer talking, nurturing resentments. So just think what could happen if you go into it saying, ‘might as well.’ I can’t accept the idea that . . . ”

  Enrica laid a hand on his arm.

  “Papà, Papà. My dear sweet Papà. You can read my mind, and you know perfectly well that it’s a choice between a man who cares for me, who wants to start a family with me, and utter loneliness. Would you really recommend the second solution for me?”

  The cavalier took the time to think it over carefully. Then he said: “You were just a little girl the first time I asked you: What do you want to be when you grow up? You gave me a kiss and you answered: When I grow up I want to be a mamma. Every time I asked what sort of a gift you wanted, you’d ask for a dolly and you put it with the others as if they were all so many daughters. You’ve always been a sort of second mother to your brothers and sister. When your little nephew Corrado was born, you held him in your arms even before Susanna did, and even now that he’s two years old, when he’s crying you’re the only one who can comfort him. You chose to study to be a schoolteacher, and I see how calm and fulfilled you are during the hours you spend tutoring, here at home.”

  Enrica was baffled.

  “I don’t see what you’re driving at . . . ”

  “I’m certain that Manfred is a fine person, and that someday you might love him dearly. But I’m every bit as certain that your heart isn’t set on him. I know you, you’re not a woman who can easily become infatuated, who believes that she’s in love and then suddenly discovers that she no longer feels a thing. I know how hard it is to give up happiness and settle for, in the best possible outcome, peace and quiet. But I also know, in fact, I’m more than certain, that what you want from life is, first and foremost, children of your own. That’s what you were born for.”

  Now the young woman was disoriented.

  “Then what do you think I should do?”

  Giulio smiled at her, with a hint of sadness, and thought back to Ricciardi’s green eyes as the man had looked at him over a table at Gambrinus on the day they met. Those weren’t a father’s, those green eyes. He reached out a hand and caressed Enrica’s face.

  “You need to think it over, my darling. You have to figure out whether the great love of your life wants the same things from life as you do, things that you’re not willing to give up. Then, and only then, whatever your decision, your Papà is right here. I’ll protect you and I’ll help you, always, whatever happens. Even if I have to face that tiger of a mother of
yours, who I know will rip me to shreds if I try to interfere with her plans.”

  Her eyes welling over with tears, Enrica stood up, kissed her father, and left his study.

  VIII

  Naturally, of course, it started raining.

  It was a normal thing to have happen, since they were well past mid-October, Maione knew that, but since he was going to have to climb the entire distance uphill to San Nicola da Tolentino, with an ice-cold wind blowing down the hillside toward the sea, he’d only hoped that there wouldn’t be a driving rain into the bargain, to slap him in the face as he climbed.

  He’d forgotten the enormous umbrella that he prudently carried with him back and forth from home to office. He’d left it in his locker back at police headquarters, and by the time the first drops started falling, he was already too far along to think of going back to get it. In any case, the wind would have torn it to pieces, and what’s more, he was in a hurry now. So he resigned himself to getting drenched. At least, he thought to himself, the cold water will keep me awake.

  He shouldn’t have even budged from his cot. Bambinella was inclined to be more than a little melodramatic, there was certainly nothing that couldn’t wait till the next day. He felt almost certain. But, the fact that the femminiello regularly passed detailed and accurate information to the police exposed her to the risk of some vendetta. In other words, better to go find out just what this matter of life or death was all about. After all, to be precise, Bambinella only passed that information to him, so it only made sense that she should have turned to him if she were in trouble.

  No, he couldn’t ignore that plea for help, even though he was probably getting drenched and chilled to the bone for no good reason. But he was worried at the thought that he’d left police headquarters in the hands of that moron Amitrano and that slumbering lunk Cozzolino, that is, assuming that Cozzolino for once had actually decided to spend the night at home, instead of in some third-class brothel. The very thought gave him chills, and he picked up his pace.