[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Maione thanked his lucky stars for having allowed him to meet Lucia, and he congratulated himself for having managed to persuade such a lovely, intelligent, cheerful woman to marry him. Like every other time that the thought occurred to him, when he tried to imagine his life without her, he felt a chill spread inside him. It’s love that makes life worth living, he thought. Love and nothing else.

  These thoughts made him think of something and someone. It was Monday evening, which meant that almost a week had gone by, and he had received no more news, and no one had sent for him.

  He looked up at the sky: there were no stars, but then it wasn’t raining either. Since he had finished his duties at Poggioreale Prison sooner than he expected, perhaps dinner could wait a few more minutes.

  He sped up his pace and turned up the steep uphill route of Via San Nicola da Tolentino, realizing as he climbed that he felt slightly uneasy: he really had no idea what to expect.

  As he was huffing and puffing up the steep staircase that led to the apartment on the top floor, he crossed paths with a man in his early thirties who was trotting down the steps whistling a tune, a broad smile plastered beneath his wispy mustache. Maione shot him a grim glare and the other man ducked his head, brushing one shoulder against the wall of the landing, clearly attempting to make himself invisible. From a gramophone came the very loud music of a tango, whose lyrics told the story of a cat that was made of porcelain, and was therefore unable to yowl in the heat of love.

  Maione tapped at the half-open door, more because the last thing he wanted to witness was some unseemly act, than out of any considersations of etiquette.

  Bambinella’s deep and well modulated voice said: “Come in, come in. I’m free.”

  Maione entered.

  “Ciao, Bambine’. I hope you’re decent.”

  The femminiello emerged from the bedroom, fastening the sash of her flowered dressing gown. On her face, the marks so violently inflicted by Lombardi’s men were still visible, but the bruises were starting to heal and the heavy makeup concealed them nicely; only the one eye was still partially swollen shut. Otherwise, she was the old Bambinella he’d always known.

  “Oooh, Brigadie’, what an unexpected pleasure! It’s a good thing you came, I was just thinking of making an ersatz coffee. I have to get rid of a nasty taste that I have in my mouth on account of . . . ”

  Maione raised both hands.

  “For God’s sake, Bambine’, go immediately and wash yourself, otherwise I can’t even think of looking at you, much less letting you make an ersatz coffee with those filthy hands of yours.”

  Bambinella laughed her horsey laugh, covering her mouth with one hand.

  “Whatever are you saying, Brigadie’? Ah, you met Ciccillo who just left, isn’t that right? But I’m already all washed up and clean, personal hygiene is my first priority, as you know. Just relax, my ersatz coffee is the purest nectar.”

  Maione grunted, uncertainly.

  “Just don’t bother making it, though, it’s late in the day to drink it, and then I won’t sleep. But how is everything?”

  Bambinella waved around the apartment with a generic gesture.

  “What can I tell you, Brigadie’, I’ve got things back on track. I cleaned up my house and set things straight. I removed all the disorder, in my thoughts as well as my home. And I’ve resumed my old life. I’ll just let you imagine, as soon as word got around they poured in from every quarter in the city; any more of them come and they’ll have to start forming a line, like in the fancy brothels. What can you do about it, I’m unique. Everybody knows just how well I can give a . . . ”

  Maione sighed.

  “Bambine’, please! I just wanted to know how you were, not what you give.”

  The femminiello swept brusquely around and stepped over toward the cheap kitchen stove, where she began vigorously preparing the coffee pot to make espresso.

  “Why, who could be happier than me?” she chirped. “I have lots of girlfriends and just as many boyfriends who love me as much as I love them. They come and tell me all about their lives and their business and I hand out advice freely to them all. The men ask me what the women think and the women ask what the men think. You know, people like me always do well for themselves. And I’m just happy to be able to bring a smile to people’s faces.”

  Maione stared at his friend’s broad shoulders.

  “And did you hear anything else about Donadio?”

  Instead of answering, Bambinella started humming along to the closing notes of the tango playing on the gramophone that enjoyed pride of place on a small chest of drawers in the Chinese style, in the middle of the room.

  “But isn’t this music lovely, Brigadie’? I can just imagine dancing to it in a great big ballroom, the kind they have in the palazzi down along the Chiaia waterfront. I can just see myself now, dressed in red and black, with a rose in my hair, in the arms of a big strong man like you. What do you say, Brigadie’, will we ever dance a tango together, you and I?”

  Maione said nothing. Without turning around, Bambinella continued in a neutral tone of voice: “Anyway, Gustavo has kept the promise that I made him swear, on your advice, and he hasn’t come back. I heard that in the end Lombardi’s men managed to catch up with him, but he was at home, playing with his children. They let him be: just as you predicted, they won’t lay a hand on fathers, the heads of honest households. In fact, they offered to let him work for them, because he has solid gold hands and a well-known skill at slipping into places through the sewers. But his wife stepped in and said that if he wound up behind bars one more time, she’d evict from their home with one swift kick in the ass, and after that, they would be more than welcome to kill him. And so it seems that he’s found himself a job as an assistant in a delicatessen on Via Toledo. Let’s just hope he can stick to it.”

  The brigadier coughed.

  “Mm-hmm. And who brought you all these fine reports?”

  The femminiello hesitated, still humming under her breath. Then she turned around: her eyes were brimming over with tears.

  “It was Ines, the wife. She came to see me, just yesterday. She even thanked me, just think of that. And in the end, we even hugged goodbye.”

  Maione coughed again.

  “What about him?”

  Bambinella shrugged her shoulders.

  “This is what he deserves, isn’t it, Brigadie’? A normal life, with a normal family. I’m too much for him. I’m too much for anyone, I can never belong to just one man. Bambinella belongs to everyone, because she has an enormous heart, and lots and lots of people can fit into it. Bambinella is love, isn’t she? And love is something you can’t deny anyone. How much sugar, Brigadie’?”

  At that point, Maione did something that in the years following he would never admit to a soul: he went over and embraced Bambinella, letting her hot tears and melted mascara drip onto his uniform jacket.

  Love, he thought. What trouble it all is, this thing we call love.

  EPILOGUE

  What trouble it is, this thing we call love.”

  The old man uttered the phrase all of a sudden, in a clear, profound tone of voice, free of any hesitancy. The young man started on his stool.

  After he stopped singing, the old man nodded off. It always happened, as if that activity, so intense and so natural to him, the way he sang with the voice of a young man, running his gnarled, deformed fingers over the instrument’s short and narrow neck, somehow shook him to his core, drained him of all energy.

  For the whole time that he’s singing, the old man seems to go away somewhere else, into a private and hidden dimension, into a treasure chamber where he can grab magic by the overflowing handful. Then he drops off into a deathlike sleep, but in reality, it’s just an intermission of thought.

  At certain moments, there is a part of the young man that hates him for the talent that, he can tell, he’ll never have. And yet, he has to admit that the time he spends there is changing him for the better. The p
assion that the old man has sown in his chest is budding and putting out leaves, and perhaps, sooner or later, it may even bear fruit. He hopes so with all his heart, because it’s one thing to imagine that there are people in the world who play and sing like the old man, and it’s quite another to know so for certain.

  There’s one thing he has understood: every word the old man utters, every thought, even the most bizzare ones, even when it just seems as if he’s speaking aloud, has to do with music.

  “What are you trying to say, Maestro?” he asks. “What do you mean, when you say that love is trouble?”

  The old man smirks, his eyes still shut. “Trouble, that’s right. A person might find a state of equilibrium, a certain peace. They convince themselves that they’ve attained a modicum of serenity, which is an important achievement. Then along comes love, with its phantom of happiness, and it makes everything look gray and pointless. What you have becomes paltry, a small, useless, petty thing.”

  The young man sits for a moment, lost in thought. Then he replies: “But if there is no love, Maestro, then nothing is worth doing, right? Music, songs, poetry . . . ”

  The old man smiles, his head lolling back against the headrest of his armchair, and continues: “ . . . and the sea, the sky, wine, food, and the air. You’re right, none of it means anything. I told you before, guaglio’, that’s why love is so much trouble, serious trouble. Because when you have it, you could lose it.”

  The young man shrugs his shoulders. He has a girlfriend, and he’s been with her for a long time. Since before he became successful, before the concerts. Sometimes she’s a bit of a burden; he’d like to be able to have the time and the freedom to go out with some of the beautiful women who watch him alluringly at his shows and, if they are able, approach him. He’s caught himself sometimes wishing that he didn’t have a girlfriend at all.

  But then, when that happens, he feels like a bad person. And he always stops to think about what his life would be like if he couldn’t rely on always seeing those sweet and familiar eyes in the front row. If he really didn’t have her anymore.

  “I don’t know, Maestro,” he says. “I imagine you’re right. Maybe we take things for granted until we lose them.”

  The old man opens his eyes wide and turns to look at the young man. That obvious, banal consideration has made an impression on him, who knows why. He nods, slowly, and with great gravity replies: “Yes, until we lose them. That’s why love is such serious trouble.”

  He lays his head back again and falls silent.

  The young man feels uneasy; he wonders whether the old man will play again or whether the lesson is over. Outside the rain beats down harder and bounces off the window panes.

  Suddenly the old man says: “Yes, love is trouble; but there’s worse.”

  The young man, then, feels his heart skip a beat. He understands that he’s on the verge of discovering a very important secret.

  “Worse, Maestro? What could be worse?”

  The old man gets to his feet with a litheness that is astonishing. He takes a couple of steps and then looks out the window as if searching for something.

  Or someone.

  When he speaks, it is as though his voice is coming straight out of hell.

  “Betrayal,” he says. “Betrayal is worse than love.”

  FINALE

  He had tried not to think about it.

  He had tried, but the approach of the fated day had been a noisy one, all the same, inside of him, almost as if he were sensing the onset of a physical pain, a dull suffering, similar to the outcome, or the foreshadowing, of a massive migraine.

  That’s the way it had been since she had first mentioned it to him. Since he had heard it from her own voice during that surreal encounter of theirs in the small, smoky café, as it was pouring down outside. Ever since she had set a deadline, and by so doing, marked the boundary of the ineluctable.

  Enrica’s birthday.

  He knew the date. He’d learned it when he’d filed away the information from her identity document in the archives a year and a half ago.

  He remembered the episode clearly: an absurd interrogation. He’d found himself face to face with her, without warning, after issuing a summons to appear with no idea of who she was, only because her name had appeared in the jumbled, ungrammatical appointment book of an old fortune teller who had been murdered.

  Enrica Colombo, born on the twenty-fourth of October in nineteen hundred and seven. That drizzly Monday, which seemed like a thunderstorm to him, she was turning twenty-five years old.

  Did that make her old, or young? Old enough to want something that he could never give her. And now, just a short while after his display of impotence, a short while after his show of despair, she was going to say yes to the life she deserved. That she wanted. For which she had been born and raised.

  And he, Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi, would only be happy for her. If you love someone, then you’re happy about their happiness. Period.

  But if that’s the case, a voice inside him insinuated with subtle perfidy, why do you feel as if you’re dying? For what reason would you have counted one after another the minutes that separated you from this moment?

  The evening before, he had seen Bianca and had been even more silent than usual, so much so that a hint of concern and worry had appeared in the woman’s stunning, violet eyes. “Are you all right?” she had asked him. “Yes, I’m fine,” he had replied. But in fact, no, he wasn’t fine, not in the slightest.

  Bianca, Bianca. He liked spending time with her. He felt safe in a way that had never happened in the presence of Livia’s passionate aggression. Bianca, the sorrowful aristocrat, the sweet contessa who was acquainted with grief and yet who wanted to live. After that Monday, would he ever find the strength to give himself and Bianca a chance? He couldn’t say. And yet she might mean the opportunity to live a life in the present, a life that didn’t ask him to raise his eyes toward an unattainable future.

  Livia herself, truth be told, who constituted a temptation even for the fairheared German, was still tangled up in the recesses of his mind. Livia, who might well have done him some harm, but who had suffered so much more at his hands.

  There were a great many thoughts that crowded into his brain, but they were not sufficient to suffocate the thought of Enrica. Her birthday party. The new beginning that her life was about to take.

  He had even pondered the thought of going out. For once, he who rejected all forms of pleasure would be glad to drown in wine and music the painful wait for an appointment that had nothing to do with him. He could have gone out and about with Bruno Modo and his free dog, Libero, in search of an inexpensive trattoria that reeked of cigarette smoke. Or else he could invite Bianca to get together that evening as well, to lose himself in a theater performance where actors would have portrayed the emotions of others, or else in a glittering private party, dancing an antiquated waltz and drinking goblets of champagne, one after another after another.

  But both the contessa and his friend the doctor would read the sorrow in his eyes, and he wouldn’t know how to justify it to them. And so, instead, he had fallen back on the idea of going out into the streets on his own, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, his head bare to be drenched by all the rain in the world, in the hopes it might wash away his anguish.

  But then he had realized that he could not help but witness that domestic entertainment from start to finish. In a certain sense, he had been issued a condemnation, and the sentence had to be carried out.

  During his silent dinner, over which Nelide had presided, as usual—standing against the wall, facing the table and ready to satisfy his slightest whim—he had asked himself why he felt so miserable. You know that this is the right solution, he kept telling himself. You know that it’s better this way. You even know that it’s a liberation. So why are you suffering? The truth is that you wish you could fly to the other side of the street, burst into that drawing room, and say: Happy Birth
day, Signorina, and good evening to one and all. My dear Signora and Signore Colombo, I live right across the way, and I’ve been secretly watching your family for a long time now. I’m in love with your daughter. As for you, Herr German Officer, you are free to leave this home, because Enrica intends to marry me.

  But by now it wouldn’t have done a bit of good. Luckily, when Enrica had come up with the demented idea of stopping him and asking him what she should expect from him, he had found the courage to do the right thing. He couldn’t run the risk of further propagating his own madness in the form of a family, and laying that burden on the shoulders of an innocent person.

  Once he had finished his dinner, he told Nelide that he had a headache, and that instead of sitting in the armchair to read, while listening to a little music on the radio, he’d rather go straight to bed.

  He had shut himself up in his room and, without turning on the light, he had sat down in front of the window, pulled slightly back so that not even his silhouette would be visible. And now it was like being at the movie theater, with the images across the way just slightly blurred and out of focus from the rain that streaked the windows.

  On the other side of the narrow vicolo the lights in the Colombo home were sparkling, and the women of the family were engaged in an incessant procession, coming and going with glasses and trays, between living room and kitchen, the two rooms of which Ricciardi enjoyed a view. The commissario’s green eyes were scrutinizing from the shadows everything that happened in the light, trying to decipher the scenes without the aid of a soundtrack; so much the better, because the music, the laughter, and above all, the conversation would have all been too great a burden to bear.