Maione nodded.
“Yes, I know that. I’m not here in an official capacity: I wanted to speak to you, actually, Signo’.”
The woman’s expression hardened.
“If you’re not here in an official capacity, then you can turn right around and leave. No one asked you to come. Have a good evening.”
She tried to slam the door, but Maione was too quick for her and got his foot between the door and the jamb. He got his toes slammed for his trouble.
The policeman cursed under his breath and added: “A little bit of manners wouldn’t do you any harm, you know. I told you already that I wasn’t here in any official capacity, but that doesn’t authorize you to slam the door on a police uniform, does it? I can always dig up some problems to bother you with, you know, even if your husband doesn’t live here anymore.”
The woman took the time to think things over for a moment, then turned around and went back into the ground-floor apartment, the basso. Maione followed her in.
The apartment consisted of a single room, which was a fairly typical set up in this kind of place. A curtain separated the grownups’ bed from the children’s; in one corner was the fireplace, in another was the latrine, it too concealed behind a length of cloth. In spite of the unmistakable poverty, though, the room was very clean and tidy.
Maione let his gaze wander and, with a small pang in his heart, he returned in his memory to the home where he’d grown up. His voice turned gentler.
“What is your name, Signo’?”
The woman, who had started washing dishes in the sink, said: “Ines, is what they call me. So now, can we pick up the pace? I have a child with a little fever and the older one, the one who answered the door, doesn’t want to go to sleep.”
Maione spoke to the little boy, who was leaning against the wall now, staring at him with a mixture of fear and attraction.
“And what’s your name, young man?”
Seeing that the boy didn’t answer, the mother intervened: “Salvatore, is his name. Too bad that the cat’s got his tongue and he can’t answer for himself.”
Salvatore objected loudly: “That’s not true, Mammà! The cat hasn’t got my tongue, I have it, you see?” And he stuck his tongue out all the way.
Maione burst out laughing. When he was done and had turned serious again, he went over to the sink with his hat in hand.
“Signo’, I need to talk to you about something important. Maybe if . . . ”
Ines shot him a chilly glance, as she went on scrubbing pots and pans.
“Brigadie’, every morning at six o’clock my mother comes to take care of the children because I have to go clean house until five in the afternoon. After that I go to a trattoria where until eight o’clock I wash the dishes, just as I’m doing now. So try to understand if I don’t stay to chat. Let me say it again, if you have something to say, say it and get out.”
Maione sighed and started counting silently, in order to stave off a cutting response. By the time he got to five, he was ready to reply: “Signo’, everybody has their own problems, and believe me, I’d have far better ways to spend my time than to stand here begging for an audience with you. Let me further say that this puts me in an awkward position, because my job is to throw crooks behind bars, not try to help them. But this has to do with your children’s future. Is that a subject that interests you in any way? If it doesn’t, please let me know that in no uncertain terms, so that I can set my conscience at ease and be off to my own family, because I’m cold and I’m tired.”
The woman froze for a second with a plate in one hand, then she went on with her work.
“Go ahead, Brigadie’. Tell me everything. And please forgive me if I keep working, but I’d rather not look you in the face while you speak.”
In a rapid summary, Maione told the woman what kind of situation her husband Gustavo Donadio, better known as ’a Zoccola, whom she had tossed out of the house, was slipping into: a burglar and small-time fence, now facing a reprisal from a gang of murderers.
At first, Ines listened with apparent disinterest, then, even though she still didn’t turn around, she stopped working and clutched the edge of the sink with her fingers until her knuckles turned white. Maione didn’t sugarcoat the bitter pill: the problem existed, and how, and the only hope of solving it depended on her.
The brigadier concluded: “Lord knows, Signo’, the decision is yours and yours alone. But if you’ll allow me to offer a word of advice, it’s one thing to send a man away because he’s made a mistake, or he’s done wrong; it’s quite another to spend the rest of your life looking your children in the eye and realizing that you did nothing to save their father’s life, a father they won’t even remember they ever had.”
The woman fell silent for some time, then she picked up a rag and dried her hands. At last she turned around; on her face, worn as it was with weariness and suffering, Maione was surprised to suddenly recognize, for the first time, the remnants of a lost beauty.
“Brigadie’, what you’re asking me is a big, difficult thing. But, as you say, this has to do with my children, and they’re all that I have. All right. Let me talk to her.”
The policeman looked down at the hat in his hand for a moment, and then said: “She’s outside. It’s no good the two of you talking in here, why don’t you come out. I’ll stay in the doorway, that way if the children call for you, I’ll hear them.”
The woman put on a threadbare overcoat that hung from a hook on the wall, knotted a scarf over her head, and went out the door. Maione followed her to the doorway. In the dim light of the rain-pelted vicolo he watched her walk a short distance and then stop next to the figure that emerged from the atrium where it had been sheltering: it looked like a woman, tall, wearing a long dark overcoat and a quaint little flower-bedecked hat with a broad brim and a small netted veil. The two silhouettes faced off, whereupon Ines asked a question and prepared to listen to the answer. Her stance was hostile, fists braced on her hips, her head jutting forward. Maione sighed, as he shook his head.
The tall figure started to reply, gradually warming up in the process. From the gestures of the begloved hands, it was clear that she was trying to explain, clarify. Maione wondered what words that sad, awkward individual might be seeking in order to express her bizarre sentiments. Then he saw that she was lifting her veil and that Ines, in reaction, had taken a step back, her hand covering her mouth. A slow minute went by, then Donadio’s wife reached out her hand, delicately lowered the veil, and went back downhill.
When she came even with the brigadier she looked at him. Her eyes were welling over with tears.
She nodded her head, just once, went inside, and shut the door behind her.
Maione heard the bolt turn twice.
XXXVIII
For some time now, Ricciardi had had the sensation that Nelide’s cooking, at first an identical copy, in both form and content, of Rosa’s cuisine, was starting to veer toward a slightly more digestible variant. This development gladdened his heart, since he had struggled all his life to handle the excess of condiments and ingredients that had been his sweet, now-dead tata’s way of communicating to him her unconditional love. Still, every so often, in a moment of idle curiosity, he would wonder what the reason might be.
In part, that was because, in all other aspects of her housekeeping, the young woman showed no inclination for compromise and continued to operate in strict compliance with what her aunt had taught her, admitting of no novelties. The identical behaviors and the incredible physical resemblance between the two women sometimes gave Ricciardi the impression that Rosa, his actual mother during his solitary adolescence, had never really left at all. And in fact, for some obscure reason, he still sensed her presence, as if her spirit were floating between the walls of the apartment to keep him company.
Whenever the commissario ate a meal, Nelide stood beside him, silently, and watched to make sure he ate every bite of what had been set before him. There was only one rule
, and it was quite simple: if every bite on that plate wasn’t consumed, then it was removed from the table and replaced with another; and so on, until the white flag of surrender was hoisted, in a mute plea for mercy. So he might as well just go ahead and polish off the first delicacy that was placed before him, resigning himself to the necessity of ingurgitating one mouthful more than was humanly tolerable, and hoping that his natural tendency toward slenderness and the long walks he invariably took might assist in the difficult, daily enterprise of digestion. But now, fortunately, some unclear motive was in fact directing the young woman’s culinary arts toward dishes that contained seasonal vegetables, rather than meat. The basic techniques remained those of the Cilento—Lord only knows, that was unchangeable—but at least the vegetable content tempered somewhat the massive burden on the alimentary tract of the underlying recipes.
For that reason, the commissario took great care to make no show of bafflement or surprise, and indeed missed no opportunity to loudly declare his delight. The thing is, though, these comments seemed to be falling into a void. In this realm, Nelide was even more inscrutable than Rosa had been. She limited herself to a bluff nod, with lips compressed and unibrow furrowed, before heading off to the kitchen to prepare the postprandial espresso.
In short, the causes underlying that culinary transformation seemed destined to remain shrouded in mystery. She must have found a discount supplier, thought Ricciardi as he stood up from the table. So much the better.
In any case, failing to satisfy his curiosity about a topic of the sort certainly didn’t constitute a problem. There were far worse things bothering the commissario.
That evening, for instance, he felt a new sense of disquiet troubling him. And as was so often the case, when he had this feeling, he went over to his bedroom window.
For some time now, the serenity that had once descended like a gentle sunset over his soul every time he observed the young woman in the apartment across the way in the process of going about her everyday affairs, as she tidied up, embroidered, or read a book, had been replaced by something quite different. For months now, perhaps for years, he had been convinced he was spying on her entirely unbeknownst to her, with the same state of mind as a penniless child eyeing the toys behind the plate glass of an expensive shop in the center of town. For months now, perhaps for years, he had drawn from that tall and lovely young woman, with her measured ways and infinitely sweet smile, the moral sustenance to face up to the sorrow and pain that pelted him from every corner of the city. And he had done so without the slightest inkling of her feelings.
But now he knew. He knew the content of her heart. He knew of her wish for a man who could lead her into a normal way of life. He knew of her wishes, her desires, and he had even sampled the taste of her lips. The image behind the window panes on the other side of the street had become a concrete person, and by now the tall girl was Enrica to him. To him, to his heart, to his mind. And after that had come the torments of jealousy and frustration over a life that he could not have, but which he desired with every sinew in his body.
He was reminded of the words Sannino had murmured next to the seaside rock that was just like so many others and yet so different: the torment of loving from afar, all the love of an ancient torment.
The window that Ricciardi was looking at just now was also the same as so many other times in the past, and yet very different.
In the Colombo household, preparations were churning. Ricciardi could see Enrica’s mother and sisters coming and going in the living room; tables large and small were being moved, discussions ensued, whereupon the tables were moved again. He wondered what event could possibly justify such hectic maneuvering. And he wondered why Enrica was not taking part, but instead remained off to one side, sitting with a book in her hand in a chair in the corner, a book that she was not reading, however. A couple of times, her mother spoke to her, perhaps asking her opinion, and Enrica’s lips moved as she replied. Even from this distance, though, it was clear that she was not in the throes of any particular excitement.
Instead of subsiding, the uneasiness that Ricciardi felt deep within him grew. In that family panorama, he sensed a note that somehow heightened his disquiet, and the same thing must have been true for Enrica’s father, who at a certain point stood up from his armchair and left the room.
The commissario, on the strength of an impulse, grabbed his overcoat and headed for the door, telling Nelide that he had an errand to run and that he’d be back soon. He also told her that she was free to go to bed, even though he was inwardly certain that when he returned he would find her standing there, waiting for his return, exactly as Rosa had always done.
Outside, there was practically no one in sight. The inclement weather kept loiterers and time-wasters off the street, and even the cafés and trattorias had only a sparse sprinkling of customers. Ricciardi crossed paths with only a few pedestrians, hurrying along and bundled up against the cold, and even these few were walking along warily, steering close to the walls and sheltering against the fine rain with their umbrellas. The city, at this time of night, was transformed. It turned into something treacherous and subtly ferocious, something alien and distant. Something to be feared, to be walled out. Something to be avoided.
And yet Ricciardi went out into it bare-headed, his thoughts ranging freely down unfamiliar tracks, devoid of any precise direction. From time to time faintly luminescent images appeared before his eyes of corpses variously protesting their innocence, pleading for a lover’s caress or a mother’s forgiveness, inveighing against a cruel and unnatural fate. Runaway horses, railings imprudently clambered over, poorly built scaffolding: causes of death, causes of tears, causes of new burdens weighing down his heart.
I’m crazy, he said for the umpteenth time. I’m just a poor lunatic. A madman who conceals his folly instead of simply asking to be locked away in a room with bars on the windows, as I rightly ought to do. A miserable wretch who has inherited his disease from his mother the way other people inherit hair color or height. You, Sannino, he thought, you felt the need to see with your own eyes whether a seaside rock even existed, because you had actually started to doubt, and that only fed your desperation. But I don’t even have a seaside rock to go and see, I have nothing as firm and solid as a rock rearing up out of the waves. I have no sweet memory to cherish and nurture. Between the two of us, you in prison and me out here walking freely, which is the worst off?
As he walked, hands plunged into his overcoat pockets and eyes trained on the ground ahead of him to avoid glimpsing both the living and the dead, the darkness intensified. The streets grew narrower and then narrower still and, before he knew it, he had turned a corner and found himself face to face with Irace’s ghost, on his knees where he had been murdered, arms hanging at his sides, his face puffy and injured.
Ricciardi froze to the spot. A couple of young men who were smoking and laughing nearby under the shelter of an overhanging eaves turned to look at him, then looked at each other and hurried away, infected by some sudden sense of awkwardness that even they would have been unable to explain.
The dead man, still clearly visible in his wet, new overcoat, kept repeating incessantly the same phrase: You, you again, you, you again, once again you, you again.
Who is it you’re talking about? wondered Ricciardi. Who is it that presented themselves before you yet again? Were you expecting them, or were you caught off guard? And if it’s true that there were two of them when they dragged your body, why do you speak of one person? There was no sense of a plural, of “you two” or a “the two of you” in the repetitive litany.
Was it Sannino? Sure, he was drunk and he killed you before Biasin could catch up with him and prevent it. Then, the two of them moved the corpse together to make sure it wasn’t found immediately. Sannino, devastated by the wreckage of a life from which you, by marrying Cettina, had removed the one and only true purpose. Sannino: the torment of loving from afar, all the love of an ancient torment.
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br /> Or was it Merolla, driven by his despair at his financial ruin, foretold and imminent? Merolla, certainly, with two daughters who were never going to find husbands. Merolla, reduced to stark hunger by a deal that you were on your way to complete, even though it would have solved all of his problems. Merolla, who might have come to beg you for mercy, and whom you spurned instead, treating him only to your contempt. Who can say, perhaps he was in the company of the unfaithful sales clerk who had since repented of his abandonment.
For as long as he could remember, the commissario had identified in hunger and love the two core elements around which hatred slowly constructed its murders, slowly, laboriously, and ineluctably, like an oyster with its pearl.
Hunger and love, primary instincts as powerful as murder.
Who was it, Cavalier Irace? Who unleashed their fury on you until they ravaged you like this? Did they come with the intention of killing you, or had they only wanted to talk, only to have the discussion degenerate?
Whatever the question, the corpse always replied with the exact same answer: You, you again, you, you again, once again you, you again.
No, Ricciardi replied to him in his thoughts. Not me. I’ve never met you, except in this sad incarnation.
Suddenly he was reminded of Bianca. Who knows why, whenever his green eyes met her violet eyes, he felt a slight spark, as if those eyes guessed at something of the slime lurking in the depths of his soul. Bianca, who had suffered, was suffering still, and would continue to suffer. Who remained a stranger to the world that surrounded her. Who had a yearning for love against which he was unable to fight.
Who knows, maybe he could have told her about it. Perhaps she would have understood. Perhaps, after all this time, all these words, all this whispering in the dark, Bianca was the one person capable of taking in his pain and finally giving him shelter.
Hunger or love? Ricciardi asked Irace’s ghost. Which of the two passions killed you? Which sentiment did you experience, before dying?
[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade Page 28