At the corner of Largo della Carità, as on the last several mornings there, Ricciardi saw the image of a man who had been the victim of a pickpocket: he had fought back and had been savagely beaten with a stick. Brain matter oozed from the crushed skull and blood covered one eye; the other still flashed with rage, and the mouth with its broken teeth kept repeating incessantly that he would never let go of his things. Ricciardi thought about the thief, by now impossible to find, swallowed up by the Quartieri; about hunger, and the price paid by the victim and his killer.
As usual, he was the first to arrive at the Questura. The policeman at the entrance snapped to attention in a military salute and Ricciardi responded with a brief nod. He didn’t like walking through the crowded halls of the municipal headquarters once life at Palazzo San Giacomo reached the mayhem and bedlam stage, or making his way through the detainees’ venomous invectives, the guards’ loud calls to order, the lawyers’ strident arguments. He much preferred the early morning hours, with the still-clean staircase, the silence, the nineteenth-century feel.
When he opened the door to his office, he noticed the familiar smell as he did every day: old books, prints, a bit of dust left by time and memories. The leather of the old desk chair, of the two chairs facing the desk and of the worn olive-green desk blotter. The ink in the crystal inkwell set in the letter-holder. The pale wood of the desk and the overflowing bookcases. The lead grenade fragment brought back to Fortino by the old war veteran Mario, once used in so many imaginary battles as a child, now a dubious paperweight. The sun’s light forced its way through the dusty windowpanes, reaching the wall and illuminating the portraits like a divine investiture.
“Such beauties,” Ricciardi quipped to himself with a half-smile. The little king without power and the great commander with no weaknesses. The two men who had decided to expunge crime by decree. He still remembered the words of the Questore, a dapper diplomat whose life was dedicated to providing absolute satisfaction to those in power: “There are no suicides, no homicides, no robberies or assaults, unless it is inevitable or essential. Not a word to the people, especially not to the press: a fascist city is clean and wholesome, there are no eyesores. The regime’s image is granitic, the citizen must have nothing to fear; we are the guardians of assurance.”
But Ricciardi had understood, long before studying it in books, that crime is the dark side of emotion. The same energy that drives humanity can divert it until it becomes infected and festers, then explodes in brutality and violence. The Incident had taught him that hunger and love are the source of all atrocities, whatever forms they may take: pride, power, envy, jealousy. In all cases, hunger and love. They were present in every crime, once it was pared down to its essentials, once the tinsel trappings of its outward appearance were stripped away. Hunger or love, or both, and the pain they generate. All that suffering, which he alone was a constant witness to. And so you, my dear Mascellone, Ricciardi thought sadly, gazing at Il Duce’s protruding jaw, can issue all the decrees you want; unfortunately, however, you and your black suit and debonair hat will not be able to change men’s hearts. You might manage to frighten the populace rather than make people smile, but you won’t change the dark side of those who continue to experience hunger and love.
Maione appeared in the doorway, after a discreet tap on the door frame.
“Good morning, sir. I saw your door was open. Here already? Can’t sleep well, even with this cold weather? Spring doesn’t seem to want to come this year. I told my wife, we can’t afford the cost of wood for the stove for yet another month. If this weather keeps up, the kids will get chilblains. And how are you this morning? Shall I bring you a so-called coffee?”
“Same as usual. And no thanks, to the coffee. I have a mountain of reports to complete. Go on, go. I’ll send for you if I need you.”
Outside, amid the first cries of the street vendors, a tram rumbled by and a flock of pigeons flew up into a still-wintry sun. It was eight o’clock.
IV
Twelve hours later, the only thing that had changed in Ricciardi’s office was the light: the dusty desk lamp with its green shade had replaced the anaemic late-winter sun. The Commissario was still bent over his desk, busy filling out forms.
More and more often he thought of himself as a clerk in the land office, obliged to spend most of his time transcribing words and listing numbers: the accounting of the offence, the rhetoric of the crime.
He had succumbed to hunger around two, going out in the cold without an overcoat to get a pizza fritta at the cart downstairs from the station; the dense smoke from the pot of boiling oil, the inviting smell of fried dough, the warmth of the glowing hot crust, had always been irresistible to him. This was one of those moments when he felt the city nourished him like a mother. Then a quick espresso in Piazza del Plebiscito, at Caffè Gambrinus, as usual, watching the passing trams with their typical cargo of jubilant street urchins in tow, balancing on the rails, clinging to the coach.
As his frozen fingers clutched the hot cup, a little girl came up to the window, pouting. Hanging limply at her side in her right hand was a bundle of rags, perhaps a doll. Her left arm was missing: a fragment of white bone protruded from the torn flesh, splintered like a piece of fresh wood. Her hip was staved in, her chest cavity crushed. A tram, Ricciardi thought. The girl stared at him then, all of a sudden, held out the rag doll to him: “This is my daughter. I feed her and bathe her.” Ricciardi set down the cup, paid and went out. Now he would feel cold for the rest of the day.
At half past eight, Maione appeared at the door again.
“Do you need anything, sir? I’d like to go, my brother-in-law and his wife are coming to dinner tonight. I ask you: don’t these two have a house of their own? They’re always on my back.”
“No, Maione, thank you. I’m leaving too in a little while. I’ll finish up here and close up shop. Goodnight. See you tomorrow.”
Maione shut the door again, but not before letting in an icy draft that made Ricciardi shiver, as though it were a premonition. And it must indeed have been a premonition, because not even five minutes had gone by when the door opened again to reveal Maione’s burly, thickset figure.
“Forget what I just said, sir; just when I wanted to leave on time for once. Alinei called from the front door, on the intercom. There’s a young man. We have to go see, he says something terrible has happened at the San Carlo.”
V
Don Pierino Fava had arrived at the usual side door at seven in the evening, as agreed. It was the entrance to the Palazzo Reale gardens, the Royal Palace, where Lucio Patrisso was the caretaker. An important friendship. Not that he was more lenient with Patrisso than with his other parishioners, nor did he give him any special considerations. Still, it was an honour for the man to receive a personal greeting when leaving church after Mass.
This reasonable price bought don Pierino the greatest pleasure of his life: the opera. His simple heart would soar and accompany the voices, as his lips silently followed the librettos he knew by heart. From the time he was a child, in Santa Maria Capua Vetere, not far from Caserta, he would sit on the ground in the garden of a villa where a phonograph bestowed magic in the air. He could sit there for hours, heedless of cold, heat or rain, listening with bated breath, his eyes brimming with tears.
Small and plump, with dark, lively eyes and a prompt, contagious smile, he had intelligence and a quick wit that greatly worried his parents, farmworkers with eight other children. What would they do with this clever, lazy boy who always came up with excellent excuses to avoid working? The answer came from the gruff parish priest, who called on him more and more often for small tasks just to have the cheerful sprite around. And so little Pietro became “Pierino from the church.” He liked the cool shadows, the heady scent of the incense, the sun’s rays filtering through the tall stained-glass windows.
But most of all he liked the cavernous, rumbling sound of the
great organ, which he had come to consider the voice of God. And when he realized that he would never want to live anywhere else, he felt called. During the years of study that followed, Pierino’s love for his fellow man, for God and for music remained intact, and he divided his time among these three passions, assisting the poor, drawing examples and lessons from the lives of the saints, and cultivating sacred music.
By the age of forty he had been the Assistant Pastor of San Ferdinando for ten years, a parish that was not large, but densely populated. It included elegant streets and the majestic Galleria, but also the hovels of the Quartieri and the maze of alleys above Via Toledo. In the centre of the district stood another temple, which exerted a pagan attraction on don Pierino’s simple soul: the Royal Theater of San Carlo. He would never admit it, but the theater was the very reason why he had always humbly told the diocesan Curia that he did not feel capable of becoming a pastor somewhere else. He considered it a personal gift from God that he was able to witness the magnificence of the opera’s living art, feel its crystalline ringing, and see human passions performed with so much beauty and power. How present God was in the tears and laughter that he saw on the faces of the audience in the orchestra, in the tiers of boxes, in the gallery; and how much human love and divine grace there was in music that led souls by the hand to places the mind could not reach.
So don Pierino was quite content to continue being the Assistant Pastor to old don Tommaso, who imposed no limits on his immense energy. Much loved by the street urchins, whom he let tease him about his squat appearance, he was nicknamed ’o Munaciello, the little monk, after the legendary mischievous sprite. But he was also known for his frequent denunciations of epidemics fostered by shameful sanitary conditions in the Quartieri. He could be forgiven this one weakness and granted three hours of joy a couple of times a month. The good Lucio Patrisso was there to see to this. For don Pierino’s purposes he was the most important man in the parish’s jurisdiction. The priest saw to it that the eldest son of the theater’s caretaker studied a bit of mathematics and the man let him in through the entrance to the gardens on opening night. His spot was a narrow space behind the curtains from which he could watch the performance unseen. A unique perspective, which the priest would not have traded for anything in the world. And in fact he was there even on 25 March 1931, when Arnaldo Vezzi was killed.
Ricciardi did not like the opera. He didn’t like crowded places, the tangle of souls, sensations, emotions. The way they influenced one another, turning the crowd into something completely different from the individuals it was composed of. He knew from experience what an animal the crowd could become.
Then too, he didn’t like the theatrical representation of emotions. He knew them well, better than anyone else, he knew how they lived on in those who experienced them, rising in a wave that overwhelmed everything in its way. He was well aware that emotions never came in just one flavour, that a passion was never limited to the most obvious aspect; that for better or for worse there were a thousand facets to it, always unexpected and unpredictable. As a result, he was contemptuous of those colourful costumes, those modulated voices, those archaic, cultured words in the mouths of poor devils who were actually starving to death. No, he did not like the opera. And he had never been to the Royal Theater. Still, he knew how it looked from the outside: on important evenings the festive atmosphere of expectation was palpable even to those just walking by.
As he left the Galleria, heading a small team that included Maione and three policemen, Ricciardi found himself at the top of a short flight of marble stairs leading to the street. There he saw the usual panorama: the imposing Royal Palace, the elegant portico through which one entered the theater, and to the right, the lights of Piazza Trieste e Trento, its cafés teeming with life and pleasure; the suffused sound of music and laughter. To the left, past the Angevin Castle and the trees of Piazza del Municipio, the rumble of the sea at the port.
The area in front of the theater, however, was not how it usually was. And the difference was jarring.
Hundreds of people were crowded around outside the main entrance, standing in an unnatural silence. Heedless of the biting wind that whistled through the narrow portico, elegantly dressed men and women in long silk gowns huddled in their overcoats, their gloved hands holding on to their hats to prevent them from flying away. Children in tatters stood on tiptoe, their bare feet suffering from chilblains, to catch a glimpse of something. Not a whisper, not a word. Only the wailing of the wind. Even the horses, harnessed to the carriages that waited in the street, refrained from snorting or stamping. And there were no cries from the street vendors with their carts of roasted chestnuts and sweets. The gas lamps that adorned the theater’s façade shed dappled light on the crowd, revealing fur collars, fluttering scarves and wide-eyed stares eager for details.
The arrival of the men from the Questura had the effect of a stone thrown into a placid pool of water. The crowd parted to make way for them and a chorus of voices rang out asking what had happened, what the trouble was, why the police were late in arriving, as usual. A couple of kids attempted a timid applause. In the spacious theater lobby, its lavish opulence illuminated and warmed by brightly lit chandeliers, Ricciardi was surrounded by journalists, theater employees and spectators, all talking at once and therefore incomprehensible. Then again, he and Maione both knew from long experience that any really useful information would have to be pulled out with some effort, battling all kinds of reservations. So it was useless, if not detrimental, to listen to that cacophony of words shouted in the excitement of the moment.
Ricciardi identified among the others a little man in evening attire who was bouncing up and down like a coiled spring, sweating profusely. The uniformed staff were looking at him worriedly and the Commissario imagined that he might be the theater manager.
“Deputy . . . or rather, Commissario . . . such a tragedy . . . ” the man stammered incoherently. “Such a thing . . . here, at the San Carlo . . . I must tell you, that never, never! As far back as anyone can remember . . . ”
“Calm down, please. We’re here, now. Tell me, you are . . . ?”
“Why . . . I’m Duke Francesco Maria Spinelli, the director of the Royal Theater of San Carlo. Didn’t you recognize me?”
“Truthfully, no. Please, lead the way. Let’s get out of this confusion,” Ricciardi replied coldly. Meanwhile, the three policemen and Maione had their work cut out for them trying to hold back the swarm of curious onlookers who crowded around. The director took the response as a slap in the face and his expression changed from agitated to offended. Two waiters in livery looked at each other, stifling a laugh, and were frozen by a dirty look. The little man turned with haughty grace and headed for the marble staircase packed with people who stepped aside as he passed, like the Red Sea parting before a dwarfish Moses.
VI
Patrisso, the caretaker at the entrance to the gardens, looked around cautiously.
“Quick, don Pieri’, come in. Don’t let them see you, because if they catch me here letting you in, right on opening night, I’ll be in all kinds of trouble. Run, hurry up, you know where you have to go.”
Don Pierino smiled, happy as a child in a pastry shop. With unexpected agility, hiking his gown up over his ankles, he hastily climbed the main staircase, turned right first, then quickly left into the corridor of the tier of boxes, and took the narrow stairs leading to the stage. There he stopped on a small landing and squeezed into a niche from which he could see, on one side, the corridor with the dressing rooms and the stairs used by the actors, and on the other, most of the stage. He had to crane his neck and stand on tiptoe, but the view was unique and extraordinary: alongside the singers, facing the audience, but also, if he wished, facing the never-ending work that went on behind the scenes. Holding his breath, he was preparing himself. This was ‘his’ evening.
Not because of the programme, to tell the truth. Cavalleria Rusticana
and Pagliacci had a certain charm, but the most important thing was that tonight he would again hear the celestial voice of Arnaldo Vezzi, the world’s greatest tenor. Vezzi was undoubtedly the star of the season’s playbill. His role, Canio in Pagliacci, was not the best. Don Pierino would have preferred him in a Puccini performance, which would have allowed the subtle nuances of his rich, full tones to find the right resonance. Still, the Assistant Pastor suspected, no other role had the exposure that Canio had with respect to the other parts. The score of Leoncavallo’s opera allowed Vezzi to perform practically on his own, to command the stage without anyone overshadowing him.
The orchestra had entered, accompanied by loud applause. The audience of San Carlo loved its “masters,” who were among the best in the country. Directing the musicians was Mariano Pelosi, an elderly conductor of great interpretative rigour. Three taps of the baton on the lectern, his two hands raised: the magic had begun.
At the top of the marble staircase with the red velvet runner, Ricciardi, not pausing, whispered to Maione to send the policemen to close off the entrances, the main one as well as the secondary ones. None of those present were to leave the theater. The little theater director led them through a back corridor and up some narrow stairs to a landing with a small door on the left and two doors straight ahead. Along a corridor on the right, other open doors could be seen.
I Will Have Vengeance Page 2
