Before leaving the Piro home, he had asked the widow if everything was the same in the study as it had been when the lawyer was killed. Laconically, the woman had replied that, of course, they had put away the papers upon which her husband had collapsed, but all the furniture and accessories were as they had been. He had then asked her whether anything was missing, and she had said no. Then Ricciardi had recorded the presence of a paper knife, two pens, and a silver metal punch: all of them objects which might have been the fatal weapon, but which had not in fact served that macabre function.
Another point which remained to be cleared up, the commissario asked himself, as he closed the door to his office and headed off down the stairs: with so many objects available, why use anything else? And why carry it off, only to dispose of it in a ditch or in the sea or down the mouth of a sewer? Maybe, at first, the murderer hadn’t planned to confess. Maybe he’d made that decision only after a sleepless night, spent tossing and turning in his bed in the solitary room next door to that of his wife, who lay there confident her husband had never set foot outside of their home.
Maybe, he thought, Maione had a point. Maybe it really had been the count who committed the murder. But he had kept his eyes fixed on Bianca’s eyes, with their indefinable color, and in them he had recognized the firmness of absolute conviction, the certainty of truth. He wondered whether it hadn’t been precisely that ineradicable impression that had left in him the sense of uneasiness that had, in turn, made him believe that there was still something more to be investigated about that murder. Or whether what it was really about was his need, in that terrible phase of his life in which he so greatly feared every new day, to have something to hold onto.
To keep from going under.
That’s what he was thinking when a man emerged from the shadows along the side of the broad thoroughfare that would take Ricciardi home. He was holding a visored cap in one hand, and Ricciardi could make out the silhouette of a large black car. He recognized Livia’s chauffeur.
“Commissa’, buonasera. Forgive me if I intrude upon your privacy,” the man said, clearly uncomfortable, “but my mistress asked me if you could please come with me.”
Ricciardi was surprised.
“And where is it I should come with you? It’s late, I’ve had a long day and . . . ”
The chauffeur heaved a deep sigh. The task he had been assigned was not one he liked.
“The signora said that it’s for an important reason. That’s what she said. And she asked if you could please come with me.”
Ricciardi looked at his watch.
“Tell her that it’s dinnertime and that . . . ”
The man repeated, like a scratched record: “The signora asked if you could please come . . . ”
“ . . . with you, I understand. All right, let’s go.”
The chauffeur, visibly relieved, deferentially held the car door open for him as he got in. In a matter of minutes, after motoring through the empty streets, they were pulling up in front of the building where Livia lived. A housekeeper was awaiting them in the courtyard, and with a bow took charge of Ricciardi and accompanied him into the house, inviting him to make himself comfortable in the living room.
Ricciardi sat down on the sofa. The light was subdued, the music of an orchestra came over the glowing radio. After a few minutes, announced by her usual perfume, Livia entered the room.
She was wearing a cream-colored silk housecoat that hung down to her ankles, fastened at the waist by a broad sash. Her feet were shod in a pair of coquettish slippers, with low heels and pink pom-poms. Her hair hung loose, freshly brushed, and formed a gauzy brown halo around her lightly made-up face. Ricciardi decided that she might not be dressed to go out, but that she had certainly prepared meticulously.
“Buonasera, Livia. What’s happened?”
The woman laughed.
“Ciao, Ricciardi. Does something necessarily have to have happened for you to come pay me a visit? I just thought that, instead of trying for the umpteenth time to talk you into taking me out to the theater, and being met with the usual polite refusal with all the usual excuses, I could try to organize a kidnapping.”
Ricciardi shook his head, amused in spite of himself.
“Well, is that right? I’m in such pitiful shape that I need to be kidnapped to keep from splitting myself between home and work. You should talk that over with Bruno Modo, you both have the same opinion about my case. Excuse me, but I’ve had a complicated day and . . . ”
Livia went over to a side table upon which stood a cluster of bottles and glasses.
“You always have complicated days, Ricciardi. You just mentioned the doctor, and you’ve given me an idea. Let’s just pretend that tonight I’m acting as your physician, and I’m ordering you to take a medicine that will help you to rest easier. All right? Drink a bit of this cognac and let yourself go.”
Ricciardi protested.
“Livia, I haven’t eaten dinner and drinking on an empty stomach certainly won’t do me any good. Listen, I promise you that . . . ”
Livia handed him a glass, pretending to be confident and determined.
“No arguments. Empty stomach or full, a little shot of brandy will let you see life from a different point of view. And you know very well, I’m quite stubborn: I’m not going to let you go, unless you take your medicine.”
The commissario sighed and accepted the glass. The liquid scalded his throat as it ran down, giving him a faint but immediate sense of vertigo.
Livia had taken a seat in an armchair facing him. She looked at him the way a lioness eyes a gazelle at a water hole.
Ricciardi noticed that her housecoat had pulled open slightly in the front, displaying the generous curve of her breasts. Continuing to gaze at him from over the rim of her glass, Livia crossed her legs and started playing with her slipper, which she coquettishly dangled from her bare foot.
Ricciardi took another sip.
“Well then, Ricciardi, how are you doing? And don’t talk to me about work, if you please, you know that that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t have much besides my work, Livia. It’s a constant commitment, and I’m happy that it is.”
Livia took a cigarette out of the silver case on the coffee table and lit it. She gracefully let out a plume of smoke straight up into the air. The music continued to flow softly, as did the air from the September evening, pouring in through the half-open window.
“I meant, how you’re doing inside. If you’re feeling a little happier now that you’ve returned to service after your loss. By the way, how is the new housekeeper working out, the one that . . . I can’t remember her name.”
“Nelide. Her name is Nelide. She’s very good, in fact sometimes I almost think that she’s . . . she’s good. But I miss Rosa, terribly. More than I ever would have thought.”
Livia got up from the armchair and, her hips slightly swaying, went over to sit on the sofa, next to Ricciardi.
Now the commissario’s head was spinning even faster.
“It’s only logical that you miss her,” the woman said to him. “You grew up with her, she’s taken care of you since you were born. Like a mother, even more devoted than a mother. But life has its phases, and that phase had to come to an end eventually, don’t you think?”
Her voice had dropped a tone, until it faded to a whisper. Now that he had her close to him, Ricciardi realized how inebriating that perfume was and how irresistible the lines of her body, sheathed in silk, really could be.
He could almost convince himself that he had been drugged, if he hadn’t known that Livia herself was a kind of drug: the most beautiful and seductive woman that you could ever hope to meet. Sitting stiffly on the sofa, he took another sip of cognac.
Livia moved even closer to him, whispering just inches from his ear.
“Have you ev
er thought that now you could allow yourself to sample another type of happiness? To share a little bit of your life with someone else?”
Ricciardi would have liked to stand up, but somehow he couldn’t do it. Suddenly, Livia put a hand on his leg. He could feel its warmth as if there were no trouser fabric between hand and leg. He looked down at that hand and it seemed like an animal endowed with a life of its own: the long fingers, the finely enameled and well cared for fingernails, the soft brown flesh. A ring with a gold knot, a bracelet of red and green stones.
He looked up and his gaze met Livia’s eyes: a pair of dark lights, as liquid and alluring as an abyss. Her lips half open, her teeth gleaming white, her neck bare and throbbing. She irradiated life, desire, love. Her chest was heaving under her housecoat, just a breath away from his arm, her thigh pressing against his.
The savage perfume took on another equally subtle hue, a harsh aftertaste that told quite another story.
Ricciardi leapt to his feet, his heart in his throat. His mind and his heart were fighting a terrible battle against every fiber of his being, his body which was eager to lunge into the whirlpool.
“Livia, I have to go. Now I really have to go. Forgive me.”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her teeth clamped down on her lower lip, while her cheeks burned red.
“But . . . but why? I know it, I can feel that you desire me. I know men’s desires, and I can feel yours. Then why don’t you take me? Why not?”
Ricciardi opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Then he said: “I . . . I can’t do it, Livia. I’m not . . . I can’t. Don’t ask me why, I beg of you.”
The tears began to roll down the woman’s face.
“It’s me, isn’t it? You don’t have enough respect for me. You think that I’m just a superficial little woman, a stupid woman who knows nothing about love. One who only knows how to flirt, who . . . ”
He interrupted her.
“No, no, what on earth are you saying? You are absolutely perfect, you’d make any man deliriously happy. You’re beautiful, well read, and intelligent. It’s me that . . . ”
Livia seemed not to be listening.
“You think I want who knows what from you. But I don’t, you know? I don’t want a family or children, I don’t want a home or money. All I want is you, because it’s you I’ve fallen in love with. It’s the thought of you that gives me life, that makes me want to laugh and sing. Only you have this power over me, and not one of the other hundred or so men who send me flowers or come here to wait hours to see me, even though I never receive them.”
Ricciardi tried to calm her.
“I’ve told you, but you refuse to listen to me. I told you from the very beginning, I never offered you any illusions. I can’t have a woman near me. I just can’t.”
Livia leapt to her feet. Now she was a wounded wild beast: her dark eyes glittered in the low light, her arms hung at her sides with fists clenched, the muscles of her face were rigid. Her lips spat out the words.
“You’re a damned liar! The truth is, you’re thinking about another woman, and I know exactly who that dreary little wench really is, that nothing of a girl, that lifeless kitty-cat you’re in love with. Well, just so you know, she has a fiancé already. She wants nothing to do with you. So please, stop coming around spouting lies!”
Ricciardi stood in silence, staring at her face. The image of Enrica kissing a man through the branches of the trees, beneath the moonlight, appeared before his eyes again as if he were back at Ischia, the night that Rosa died. Right then and there, for the first time, he felt the stabbing remorse for having gone after Enrica, instead of holding his tata’s hand as she breathed her last.
Remorse. Regret. The life that he had had, the life that he’d never have. The past, the future.
“No, Livia,” he said in a cold whisper. “Not even her. I don’t want any woman near me. I can’t.”
The refrain of that song, which came to him in the night: Go away, moth. Go away. Don’t burn in my flame.
He looked at Livia once again, her magnificent body, her bosom heaving with her tears, the black smears of makeup oozing down her cheeks. A promise of transitory, illusory happiness.
I’m saving you, by not wanting you. Don’t you understand that? I am hell, I carry hell inside me. Run, if you can.
You don’t know it, but happiness is always an illusion. It’s always a dream that you chase, and life is nothing but that pursuit.
For the others. But not for me.
I have nothing to pursue.
He set down his glass, turned, and walked away.
FIRST INTERLUDE
The old man ends the refrain with a strange chord. The young man has never seen or heard a chord anything like it, and yet people say he’s a virtuoso, he’s had prestigious teachers, and he has a natural gift for music. He’s there to learn something new, certainly not technique. But he’s never heard anyone play a chord like that one.
The sound that comes out of the instrument is interlocutory, preclusive, but also sorrowful, full of melancholy self-awareness. A chord of sorrow and pity, a sound of yearning for the future. He sits, openmouthed.
But Maestro . . . that chord you just played. What chord is it? How did you . . .
And he curls the fingers of his hand in the air, in an attempt to imitate.
The old man stares into the middle distance, the empty air, following the beam of light that pours in from the window, from the sea. He grimaces in annoyance.
It doesn’t count. It doesn’t count for a thing. It’s just sound, if you don’t follow the story. Did you hear it, the story? The way what he said in the first line pointed the way to the refrain?
The young man remains with his fingers curled, in search of the memory of a chord. He’s overwhelmed by the idea that the old man was capable of performing such virtuosity and yet he minimizes its value so brusquely.
I . . . yes, Maestro. I listened.
The old man turns toward him, his gaze grim, his brow furrowed.
And what did it say. Repeat to me what it said.
The young man shifts uneasily on the stool.
It said: Watch this moth . . .
The old man slams his hand down flat on the little table in front of him. The half-full glass of water overturns and a number of sheets of paper scatter across the floor.
Not the words, dammit! Everyone knows the words! The story, I said! Tell me the story that he tells!
The thunderous voice, the noise of the objects, the sound of the hand all make the young man jump and the pigeons burst into flight off the rain gutter, in a frantic churning of wings.
The young man experiences a fit of anger and confusion. Just who the hell do you think you are, you damned old man, arthritic and half blind as you are, to speak to me like that? Don’t you know that last night there were two thousand people who came to hear me sing and play? Don’t you know that pretty soon I’m probably going to get a contract for a tour like nothing you’ve ever even dreamed of?
He realizes that the old man is expccting an asnwer, and replies, tersely: What he sees. He tells what he sees, a moth getting close to a candle’s flame. And he tries to shoo the moth away, because he understands that otherwise it will die. That’s what he says.
The old man, surprised, smiles and nods.
That’s right, exactly. Good job. He tells only what he sees. And he makes us see it too, as we listen to the song. And you, as you sing, have to make your listeners see it too, you have to take them to a room at night in late summer, with a hot wind that brings moths inside, in search of light.
Yes, Maestro. And the instrument must tell the story along with me.
Once again, the old man nods, smiling that toothless smile.
That’s right, together. Not accompanying you, but singing the same story along with you. Do you
understand now?
The young man heaves a deep sigh. He’s not sure why, but he senses that the old man is telling him something that’s very important for his art. And yet he refuses to explain that chord.
Maestro, I wanted to know, again, if it’s possible, how you can pull a story out of the instrument? I understand, you have to sing a story, but I . . .
The old man caresses the neck, with his trembling fingertips.
No-o-o, that’s not something you need to worry about. I’ve seen you play. You have nothing to worry about. You just need to think about telling the story, the instrument will take care of the rest. Now listen to me closely.
The young man assumes the old man is going to start playing again, and he readies himself to listen. Instead the old man goes on talking.
Remember, he’s replying to the woman’s letter. She’s told him that she loves him, that she wants him: the man is explaining that the two of them can’t be together. He showed her this little moth that comes in through the window, that starts to flutter close to the flame. But why did he show it to her? What is he trying to say? Do you know?
The young man heaves a sigh, eyes wide open.
No, Maestro. I don’t know.
The old man nods, like a teacher responding to a student’s correct reply.
No, that’s right. You don’t know. So he tells you. And how does he tell you? By talking about her, directly to her. And it’s here, in the second verse, that he answers the letter; that he begins to answer. It’s not just that he could hurt her, but more importantly, it’s she who could rip his heart out of his chest. And why?
The young man is baffled, he doesn’t know what to say. He whispers: Why, Maestro?
Because, young and inexperienced though she may be, she’s still a woman. A capricious, fickle, beautiful, and desirable woman. While he, who is entering the autumn of his years, who is watching his summer end, like a candle burning down, would no longer have the time to be reborn from the death that those lovely smooth hands might deal out to him. That’s why.
Glass Souls Page 16
