Maria had started to raise an objection, but for once Giulio had silenced her: if their eldest daughter wished to go out for a walk, she had every right to do so. Wasn’t it Maria who was constantly telling her that she was now of an age to be considered a grown woman?
So Enrica had donned her hat and overcoat, taken her handbag and umbrella, and gone out into the street. She certainly wasn’t going out to wander around in the rain: what she needed was fresh air, not cold water. Firmly resolved in her intentions, she had headed over to Via Toledo, but after a few hundred yards, as the crowd thinned with the advancing hour, she began to be assailed by doubts that clustered around her like a small, ferocious enemy army pouring over the defensive trenches.
What would he think of her? That was the question. They had met only rarely and almost always by chance; their conversations were always absurd and surreal. In practical terms, they hardly knew each other, no one had ever formally introduced them. There had been days, months, and years of furtive glances, gazing from afar, true, but was that the same as actually speaking to each other, looking into each other’s eyes?
As she approached Largo della Carità, the point of no return, she had started to slow her pace as her mind filled with a teeming host of pictures and memories. The first time, near the strolling vegetable vendor, when he had turned and fled, leaving a trail of broccoli scattered in all directions. The time she had been summoned to police headquarters, during the investigation of the murder of the elderly fortune teller, a woman who read Tarot cards; her anger at having been taken unawares and the astonished silence that had taken hold of him when he saw her there. The Christmas Eve when—and her heart still trembled at the memory—she had simply trampled on every barrier and convention and had placed her hand on his face and her lips on his, in an unforgettable kiss. The previous summer, by the seaside, where she had gone in search of consolation only to find him, instead, and where she had asked an absurd question: “What good is all this sea?” And finally, little more than a month ago, in the street outside her home; it had been him waiting for her this time, to stammer out a few nonsensical phrases about moths and flames, and he had even smiled at her.
A smile that Enrica could still feel in her heart, like an indelible brand. A smile through which she had been able to glimpse the sweet, gentle, sensitive man who lived as a captive in that cage of grim sorrow. A smile capable of convincing her that, with calmness and perseverance, brick after brick, she would succeed in dismantling the fortress that Ricciardi had erected around himself.
In the meantime, Manfred had arrived. Sunny and smiling, full of plans, as straightforward and orderly a man as any girl could dream of. Manfred the safe, Manfred the strong, Manfred the untroubled. Manfred who wanted from life exactly what she herself had always desired.
All the same, she, Enrica, apparently so solid and down-to-earth, so quiet and so determined to live a normal life, could think of nothing but that one, tender smile and that stolen kiss. Maybe she was too romantic, as her mother always told her; perhaps she should listen more closely to her body, which in the still of the night called out for a physical union for which the time had already come; maybe she should have yielded to the need she felt for a home of her own. But that kiss, and to an even greater extent, that smile, were hard to forget, and in some strange and unconventional fashion, they stirred in her the need for a conclusive, open discussion.
It had taken her a while to reach that decision. She was afraid that he might consider such reckless behavior on the part of a young woman to fall well beyond the pale. He might think to himself: just who does she think she is? What on earth does she want from me? For a word, a smile, a kiss in the falling snow, she dares to come to me speaking of certain subjects in the middle of the street? If someone had told her about it, she’d have judged it rash to the point of folly.
That she’d been able to make up her mind at all was thanks to the chat she had had with her father, who knew her better than she knew herself. Children, he had said to her. How important is to you to have a future with children? How necessary is it, for you, to start a family of your own? That was what she had always wished for and dreamed of since she was a little girl. Love could not be the opposite of that, love had to be the completion of it.
And so it was that two equal and opposing forces had forced her to a halt at the intersection with Largo della Carità. Driving her forward were her determination to rid herself, once and for all, of her doubts, to finally get a clear idea of what was at stake, in each of the plates of the scale. Pulling her back, back to the reassuring safety of the walls of her home and the strong arms of Manfred, was the fear of shattering with her impulsive behavior all the rules of good manners and a proper upbringing, thus giving a mistaken and disappointing impression of herself.
She was standing there, wavering, when she spotted him on the other side of the street. Along with the usual lurch of the heart, she had felt the strong certainty that she had just been given a sign: if it was true what she feared (feared or hoped?), namely that Manfred was on the verge of making an open declaration, on the occasion of her birthday, then she needed to know. That was why she had crossed the street. And now she stood face to face with him, with the rain running off his hatless hair and the shoulders of his overcoat, the expression on his face a mixture of surprise and terror, just she as imagined her own must be.
She heard her own voice saying: “I need to speak to you for a moment, sir. If it’s not a bother. That is, if you have time.”
Ricciardi couldn’t say whether Enrica was real or a projection of his mind. Directly or indirectly, he had been thinking of her more often than usual in the past several days, and as if that weren’t already enough, the Irace murder had forced him to observe the desperation of love from up close. Above all, he had been struck by Sannino’s story, of the way his life had been sustained by the distant memory of the face of a young girl smiling at him on a rock by the water. For him, too, the image of Enrica at the window had become the indispensable source of support that allowed him to carry on amidst the pain and sorrow that besieged him on every side. And he had to admit how he still suffered from the pangs of jealousy every time he was reminded of the scene of her allowing herself to be kissed by that German major, in the light of the moon, to the sound of crickets and the scent of the island’s aromas, that evening last July.
“Signorina, buonasera. I didn’t . . . I hardly expected . . . Certainly, of course. Is something wrong? Do you need me for . . . Do you need to talk to the police?”
Enrica was bewildered.
“No, no, certainly not. I want to speak with you, you in particular. If you have a moment.”
Ricciardi came out of his trance and looked around. About thirty feet away he spotted the sign of a small café that held out heroically against the lack of customers and the falling darkness.
“Can I treat you to something? So that . . . that way you could get in out of the rain. Yes?”
Enrica decided that it was he who needed shelter, much more than she did, because he didn’t even carry an umbrella, but still she smiled and murmured her thanks.
Ricciardi held out his arm, and she slipped her hand between his body and his elbow. A simple, customary gesture. And yet each of them feared that the other might hear the bounding of their heart, which seemed to be shaking their respective ribcages.
The café was small and smoky, but also warm and dry. They sat down at one of the three small round tables next to the plate glass window and ordered a cup of tea for Enrica and an espresso for Ricciardi. Then they lingered in embarrassed silence for a while. After thinking it over at such great length, the young woman no longer knew where to begin, while the commissario couldn’t get Sannino’s seaside rock out of his mind.
Enrica decided that the absurdity of the situation was so great that the last thing she needed to worry about were details of comportment. She took a deep breath and almost whispered: “I’m well aware that all this must seem m
ad. Here we are, now, the two of us. I . . . perhaps I ought to have written to you, inside of coming to see you, but what would I have written? What words could I have used?”
Ricciardi, accustomed by the work he did to intuiting the intentions and thoughts that lay between someone’s words, struggled as he tried to parse out even a crumb of meaning. But the last thing he wanted was to run the risk of offending Enrica, or even worse, to chase her away with an inopportune question. And so he replied: “Certainly. In person is better. Perhaps. Don’t you think?”
Enrica nodded. She clutched her handbag tight in her lap with both hands and she hadn’t taken off her hat.
“Yes. Because, you see, in a few days it’s going to be . . . In a few days, we’ll be receiving people at home. And one of those people . . . I need to know, do you understand? I need to know. Because if I don’t know, if you really can’t tell me now yourself, looking me in the eyes . . . then I’ll never really be sure.”
Ricciardi wondered what she was talking about, but he felt a strange disquiet growing in his chest, like when you’re expecting bad news, and you do everything possible to defer the moment when it comes.
“Signorina, you needn’t necessarily . . . ”
Enrica interrupted him vehemently: “Oh, yes, I do. I absolutely must. I must. Otherwise, what will happen is . . . We look at each other, don’t we? I mean, you and I: we look at each other. We look and look at each other. Don’t we?”
The commissario felt a thud deep in the bottom of his soul. He couldn’t have found a better definition of what they had in common. They looked at each other. His voice grew melancholy.
“Yes. Yes, you and I look at each other. Or, at least, I look at you. I look at you constantly. Even when you aren’t there. Especially when you aren’t there.”
Those words, uttered in a sigh, gave Enrica the courage to go on and warmed her skin a little more than the warmth of the café when they had first come in.
“It isn’t right to pretend otherwise, if you ask me. I think it’s a fine thing . . . At least, it is for me. And you can rest assured that I, too, look at you and think of you. Often. A lot. But I . . . my mother says that at my age I ought to . . . I met a person, a man . . . He’s a foreigner. He . . . ”
The face of a fair-haired man materialized before Ricciardi’s eyes. He coughed, softly.
“Yes. Yes, I know. I saw.”
Enrica blushed, but continued: “It’s going to be my birthday soon. Most of the time, we, like everyone else, celebrate our name day, not our birthday, but this time he . . . And my mother accepted immediately, so I couldn’t . . . In other words, he’s coming. And probably, from what he made clear to me, he’ll want to speak about the . . . the future. The future with me.”
Ricciardi felt a sense of emptiness in his head, as if he were drunk. There it was, the bad news. For a moment, he was tempted to tell her that he’d seen him dancing in Livia’s arms just two nights ago, and that he hadn’t looked a bit like someone who was about to get engaged; but he was immediately horrified at himself for even having had the thought.
His voice grew colder than he might have wished.
“I see. And no doubt you’re overjoyed, I imagine.”
Enrica looked down quickly, and then leveled her gaze at him.
“If I were truly overjoyed, overjoyed in the most absolute terms, then what the devil would I be doing here?”
Ricciardi felt as if he’d been slapped in the face by the compelling logic of that reply, but the cutting bitterness of jealousy wasn’t easy to uproot.
“So, you’re saying I ought to give you some advice, is that it? Or do something to stop you?”
Enrica’s eyes welled over with tears.
“I ought to be happy, certainly. Because what Manfred . . . what that man is offering me is all I’ve ever dreamed of. My dreams are simple ones, you know? No kingdom of my own, no white stallion. I ought to be happy. And you, only you, can explain to me why I’m not. That’s why I’m here. That’s the only reason.”
Ricciardi heard a slosh of rain against the plate glass window a few inches away. Her and Manfred, he thought. The image of the two of them kissing in the moonlight. Her and Manfred, hand in hand. That window, closed forevermore. Her and Manfred, married, parents. I’ve lost her. Her and Manfred, I won’t even be able to dream of her now.
In his mind, there bloomed the words of the nameless serenade, the one that Sannino had sung for Cettina, that he had never stopped singing and that he was singing still. Loss, night, and autumn.
Enrica went on, in a low voice, but without hesitation, clearly enunciating every single word.
“I need to know whether you, in your life, want to have a family. If you want to have children. I already know what you feel for me. Don’t ask me why I know, don’t ask me how, I just do. You already know how I feel about you, and if you don’t, I’ll be happy to tell you every minute of every day that I live. But what I need to know now, before I am summoned to give an answer to someone else, is what you expect from your own future.”
She leaned back against her chair and let her shoulders slump, as if she were exhausted by some immense effort. She’d asked her absurd question in that absurd situation. Now it was all up to him.
Ricciardi’s eyes were wide open, his heart was roiling in tumult, his head was full of gusting wind. That direct, violent, transparent question allowed for no delays in responding. It was true, Enrica had the right to know. Enrica had a life to live, dreams to attain, time ahead of her. She was a normal girl, sentimental and sensitive. And as far as that went, he too was head over heels in love with her.
But Ricciardi’s mother’s life streamed past his eyes in a flash, the few times he had been with her—her illness and her terrible death. He saw her again, beautiful and sad, her large green eyes, filled with despair. She saw her again as she took him to a farm that had been devastated by brigands, and he remembered her horror when she understood that he too could see the dead people and sensed their anguish. He saw her again, wasted and gray, toothless and deranged in her hospital bed. Your legacy, Mamma. Your terrible gift. The curse that you inflicted upon me, the burden that I bear like a cross.
Then, one after another, all the corpses that had murmured their broken last thoughts to him appeared before his eyes. And he felt, all at once, every last scar that he bore on his heart and on his soul, as if they were so many fresh wounds: they were bleeding now and they would continue to bleed.
Is this what you want for your child, Enrica? Do you want him to tell you about shattered teeth, broken spines, and streamers of drool oozing from mouths, while you try to tell him fairytales at bedtime? Do you want deranged sons and daughters, who would curse both you and me every day of their lives for having forced them into this world?
For a fraction of a second, Ricciardi wondered whether he could be selfish enough to find the nerve to reach out his hand, across the little table, past the cups and the teapot that they still hadn’t touched, to take her hand, prying it away from the handle of her little purse, and whisper to her, deceitfully, that yes, he too wanted children. Why couldn’t he just think of himself, for once, and take the happiness he saw before him? Why was he incapable of faking it, perhaps in the hopes that those children would never come, or that if they did, they wouldn’t be like him?
But it was, in fact, just for a fraction of a second.
If you’d only asked me whether I loved you. If you’d asked me whether your eyes and your face flow in my veins along with the blood. If you’d asked me whether the mere thought of you in some other man’s arms was enough to make me lose my mind. Then I would have answered yes, every single time. I would have had no doubts, and I would have swept you up and taken you away with me.
But what you asked about was children. And I remember my mother all too well, and I know my own mad soul.
He stared at the young woman and said, calmly: “Me? No, Signorina. I won’t have children. I’ll never have children.”
Enrica lowered her gaze. She stood up and left, walking into the rain with tears in her eyes.
Ricciardi made no attempt to follow her.
His endless night had begun. Deep inside he sang a mute and nameless serenade, and he’d never stop singing it.
XLIII
Maione had slept fitfully, if at all. As usual, it seemed.
Actually, this time, there would have been time to get some sleep: only Lucia, after caring one by one for her children, who had all gotten sick in sequence, and after taking on the demands of a quite populous household, had finally come down with a case of the flu herself, and so now it was Raffaele’s turn to serve as the family nurse. He’d spent the night making cold plasters for her, bringing her cool water to drink, and checking her temperature every other hour. Then, at dawn, he had entrusted her to the care of a neighbor woman and his own elder daughters, who were by now back on their feet.
It was, therefore, a brigadier reduced to a tattered rag that arrived at police headquarters well before office hours. It might not have been worse simply to have been shot dead, he thought to himself as he walked down that steep, damp, and slippery street, as long as it brought him a little peace.
He wasn’t so much surprised at the fact that Ricciardi was already at his desk as by his appearance. He really did look like a ghost; pale and ashen, his hair hanging greasy and unkempt over his forehead, the dark circles under his eyes, eyes that were even darker and more lifeless than usual. He was wearing the same clothing as the day before, crumpled and creased and still drenched with rain.
The two policemen scrutinized each other and each, to their reciprocal concern, decided that the other one really looked unwell, though neither had the nerve to say so and to ask why.
After exchanging a brief greeting, they immediately went on to study the things they’d need to do next to prove the theory that the commissario had come up with. Of course, they knew that the theory might be disproven entirely, and in that case, they would have to start over from scratch; but that’s the kind of risk every investigator always faces, and they were well aware of it.
[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade Page 31