Lucia had made polpettone: a small but extraordinary family event that was generally celebrated for the treat that it was.
Making that dish took time and the costs were considerable, especially if you took into account the wolves she was raising and feeding, disguised as children. Another factor to be considered was the hunger of Raffaele, who came home evenings staggering with exhaustion, and hungry enough to devour an entire ox, alive. But when it was time for polpettone, it was time, and since in that wonderful month of September the brigadier had been given a nice bonus at Ricciardi’s recommendation, Lucia decided that the good news should be celebrated with the whole family; they’d think about their own private celebrations later, when the children were asleep, well fed and happy, and the two of them would finally be all alone in the bedroom at the end of the hall, the one with the high bed and the nightstand with the Madonna who, Lucia certainly hoped, would understand the situation and be quite indulgent.
And so she had spent the entire afternoon working on the components that would, before long, make up her justly famous polpettone, a magnificent baked meat loaf, under the attentive gazes of her daughters Benedetta and Maria, who seemed to be watching as if they were studying to be the mothers of their own families. With them, Lucia had developed the habit of telling them everything she was doing, step by step.
Take this slice of nice lean meat, you see? It should be nice and big, but tender. You need to flatten it thoroughly, without breaking it, otherwise it will spew out its contents. Season it with salt and pepper. Now, separately you make a very fine mince of prosciutto, garlic, parsley, and a little marjoram. Not too much; marjoram can be terrible, if you overdo it, then all you taste is the marjoram. Now a little bread crumb, squeezed out thoroughly after soaking it in water, with two egg yolks. Mix it all together until it amalgamates, then spread it on the meat and sprinkle it with pine nuts and raisins.
The girls were a sight to behold, eyes wide open, jaws dropped; Maria, who was the glutton of the two, every once in a while dipped in a finger for a taste, while Benedetta, the adopted daughter, absorbed the lesson like a sponge.
Now you roll up the meat and tie it; you need to preheat the pan, you know we’re not done yet. The lard, the pancetta, a few rings of onion, celery, and a carrot. There you are. Then you add a cup of water and a teaspoonful of tomato paste, the conserva nera.
At the dinner table, the result of so much effort lasted such a short time that she was almost sorry she had gone to such trouble; but the ecstatic moans and groans from the men of the household were, nonetheless, gratifying.
But Lucia noticed that Raffaele seemed distracted. Not that he didn’t gobble down everything that came within reach, let that be clear, but he was uncommonly taciturn, and she didn’t like the expression on his face.
As if he were sad.
When dinner was over and the children had been put to bed, and she was drying the dishes while he read the newspaper, she asked him: “Raffae’, can I ask what’s got into you? You haven’t said a word all evening, I don’t know if it was really worthwhile making polpettone if you were just going to scarf it down like that.”
Maione looked up, startled, and put down his newspaper.
“Forgive me, Luci’, you’re right. It’s just that I’m a little worried about the commissario.”
Lucia smiled at him, shaking her head.
“You just can’t do it, can you? I mean, you just can’t help being a father. It’s the thing I like best about you, so I can’t complain: but with Ricciardi you can’t, you know. That’s the way he is, taciturn. Like you when I make a polpettone.”
“Oh, go on, you can joke about it. But he’s not his usual self, I know him too well. He’s got something inside, right here,” and he pounded his chest, “that he can’t get rid of. Now he’s not even seeing Signora Livia anymore; I was hoping that she’d be the one, such a beautiful woman that . . . ”
Lucia hurled a dishrag at him.
“Hey, don’t you dare talk like that, understood? Pretty is as pretty does: beauty isn’t everything. Maybe one lady is beautiful but leaves a man indifferent, another lady is less so but he falls for her all the same.”
Raffaele protested, laughing.
“And what could you know about that? You’re beautiful as can be and I’m head over heels in love with you, so we’ve put together the whole package. On the other hand, he doesn’t even seem to think about having a family. And he’s already over thirty.”
“You see? A person would think you were talking about your son. But he isn’t your son, and he has every right to live as he chooses. There are people in this world who don’t care about family, maybe he’s one of them.”
“No. If he were happy, I’d be fine, I’d be happy for him. But the man isn’t happy, and no one can get that out of my head. And who knows what he has in his heart.”
Lucia walked toward him, swinging her hips.
“I don’t know what he has in his heart, but you in your stomach, you’re carrying half the polpettone I made, and do you know what that means? That you need to digest. And here, in the Maione household, we take care of feeding but also digesting. That is, if the idea interests you, naturally.”
Maione leapt to his feet and in a single lithe movement took Lucia in his arms, striding briskly toward the bedroom. She started laughing, but he gently hushed her.
“Quiet, otherwise if those little devils wake up, there’s no chance of anyone getting any digestion around here!”
And he carried her off, thinking all the while how lucky he had been to meet her in the first place, one morning almost forty years ago, next to a certain fountain he knew.
Inwardly, smiling, he said: I love you.
XLVI
Inwardly, weeping, he said: I hate you.
In this night of hovering ghosts singing their damned songs of love, I hate you. I hate you with all the strength I have in my chest, for as much as my fibers are capable of hurting and shouting.
I hate you for the way you have occupied my mind, by and large, without leaving me any room to take a step on my own for the rest of my life.
I hate you because you remained alone to guide me like a solitary star in the darkness, and I don’t even know if you’ll remember my face or my eyes once your days will have taken you away from all this fury.
I hate you for the silence that I bestowed upon you and in which I wrap myself to keep from going mad. I hate you because I had already gone mad, and incurably so, the first time that I saw you.
I hate you.
Inwardly, weeping, she said: I love you.
Now that I’ve erased the hope of ever having you, I know that I love you. However much my belly might twist with melancholy, I love you.
I love you for the yearning that you gave me for myself, because I had fallen in love with the idea of you and me, of being a woman in the light of day instead of in this perennial night of sequins and smoke and wine, walking on high heels through the gazes of men’s eyes and feeling desire upon me, without joy or smiles.
I love you for this solitude, for the beauty of recognizing myself without fake flowers and letters and wineglasses. For having given me the gift of myself as I was before I forgot myself, while I fooled myself that I was caressing the line of my belly and a small dead cheek.
I love you for having made me feel like a woman, for having let me worry about you and for having let me dream of being able to bring peace to that green sorrow of yours, which grows in the soul and in the void like a powerful perverse plant. I love you for the grief I have known, for the grandeur of being able to look it in the face without having to flee from myself, carrying myself on my own back the whole time, like a crushing burden.
I love you for having taught me love without having known it yourself, for having explained to me without words that there is no peace in life, except at last in death. I l
ove you in this desert, where the only sound that can be heard is that of my condemnation, my verdict and sentence, and it is a song of desperation that I do not know but I understand, the way you understand magic.
I love you for the music you gave back to me. And I love you for the back you turned on me when you left.
I love you.
Inwardly, weeping, she said: I hate you.
I hate you in the darkness of a building and a body where I thought I would have you and instead you weren’t there. I hate you for the streets you walked down without me, without even explaining to me why you were leaving.
I hate you because I’m still young, and my belly twists in the springtime when I catch a whiff of the heavy scent of flowers and ripe fruit, and out of the night comes the odor of the sea. I hate you for the hands that you wouldn’t let me feel on my flesh, and for the old woman that I resemble.
I hate you because I can’t even bring myself to wish you evil, in the name of a sentiment whose name I know, though not its face, and which belongs to another time and another space.
I hate you for the prison you sit in, and the prison you left me in, prisoner of a name that I no longer want but which I don’t know how to get rid of.
I hate you for having left me a road that I walk step by step, with no idea where it takes me, and unable to retrace my path.
I hate you.
Inwardly, weeping, she said: I love you.
I love you and God only knows how much I wish I didn’t, in order to be born into a new life I don’t deserve and which my days demand forcefully, and yet which deep down I don’t desire.
I love you because no one is like you, and I don’t want anyone to be like you, even though I might perhaps be able to convince myself and imagine and deceive myself, as much as I am able to do what I set out to do, quiet and determined as in everything else in my life. I love you in the light and in the darkess, when I turn around to look at myself and I find myself alone, nude at the center of a room whose walls are lined with mirrors, without so much as a lie to cling to.
I love you every time I hear a song, I love you every time I see a child smiling, I love you if you pet a dog out in the street.
I love you for my heart, which races like crazy every time I walk by a window.
I love you for my eyes, which fill with tears and anger every time I think of how far away you are.
I love you even if I never see you again, and my legs wrap themselves around other hips, and my arms embrace another body.
I love you because I miss you like hell, even though I’ve never had you.
I love you.
Inwardly, weeping, he said: I hate you.
I hate you for having been forced to deceive you, while the night of blood just past was already silent in the light of dawn.
I hate you for the remorse that sweeps over me at the thought of you, for the closed doors and open windows, for the sea that never stops knocking on dawn’s door, and for this immense, cursed summer that can’t seem to resign itself to end.
I hate you for that smile you gave me, for having taken my misery and put it on like the most comfortable of outfits, an outfit you wear still.
I hate you because I had to lie to you, and for the time you’re going to have to wait for me outside of these walls, for the thoughts you will have of finding me, and yet you’ll never find me.
I hate you for the silence to which you and I will be constrained. For no longer being able to talk and talk and tell stories.
I hate you for having had to do what I did, just to love you. And I hate you because I’d do it again a thousand times and another thousand after that, for the blood that I had before my eyes and for the anger that rode my hand.
I hate you.
I love you, said Lucia, laughing, after they had made love. I love you, Brigadier Raffaele Maione.
And I’ll love you forever.
XLVII
The solution had come to him in the courtyard of the Convent of the Incoronata, while, resigned to an early and imminent death, he was preparing for the drive back to police headquarters in the old Fiat with Maione behind the wheel.
As always, it had been a sudden, total reversal of perspective. It was enough to change the way you interpreted the facts, and what had previously been contradictory, senseless, and discordant suddenly composed an eminently legible picture, free of inconsistency.
Along the way, he’d paid practically no attention to the disasters missed by a hair and the panicky scattering of pedestrians at the automobile’s approach: his mind continued to sort and match the fragments that up till then he had squirreled away one by one, in the hope that sooner or later they would serve some purpose. As absurd as the triggering thought might have been, it now all added up.
He said nothing to Maione. He wanted to continue thinking it over, and he did so for many hours until, in the middle of the night, he collapsed into a deep and dreamless sleep. At dawn he was already awake and ready to see if he could test out his hypothesis.
But at this point, the usual script changed radically. Here it was no longer a matter of going to pick up a suspect and forcing him to confess. Here there were no eyewitnesses to be confronted one with the other.
Here there was no reason to worry about a potential suspect escaping. And above all, here they could not rely upon the official inquiry of the police, on an investigation to be carried out in the light of day to track down the person guilty of the crime beyond the shadow of a doubt. This time, everything was wrapped up and settled, and no one was going to be happy to see a subversion of the order that had been spontaneously restored by Roccaspina’s confession.
No one was going to be happy, that was for sure. Not even the contessa, who had asked him to find the truth in the first place. Because if there’s a dead man, my dear contessa, the truth does nothing to assuage anyone’s sorrow. He had learned that so long ago that it seemed to him he had always known it.
At a brisk pace he made his way through the milky light of early morning to the Roccaspina residence. When he reached the front entrance, rather than ringing the doorbell, he leaned against the wall and checked his watch; a fishmonger, who was laying out his wares in wooden tubs, sprinkling them with sea-water, gazed at him mistrustfully. He waited ten minutes. At seven thirty on the dot he set off, heading in the direction that he imagined the count took when he was still a free man, in his strange morning outings that no one had been able to figure out.
First he walked down a few narrow alleys in another section of the city that was preparing for the new day. Every so often, someone would look up and meet his gaze, failing to recognize him as a customary presence, and immediately turn their eyes away. A man, all alone, and well dressed, was interpreted as an intrusion, a potential danger.
Once again, he became an anonymous figure in the broad thoroughfare, which was already alive with the many bicycles of laborers and factory workers, heading out to the construction sites or the plants on the outskirts of town, with women carrying large baskets on their heads full of vegetables, ricotta, and fruit to be sold in the city’s piazzas and courtyards. Ricciardi continued walking, mulling over the details of the case that had led him to the path of what he believed to be the solution.
He knew what had happened. He was reasonably certain of it, because it was the only explanation compatible with what he’d been told and what he’d seen. What he still didn’t know was the reason why. He knew the effects that certain thoughts and certain passions had on people, and he could also imagine what had propelled the murderer’s hand, but it continued to strike him as truly absurd.
He stopped. This had to be the exact spot where the two routes converged toward the daily destination, and therefore the closest useful spot where they could meet and be alone.
He didn’t have long to wait. Not even five minutes and he saw the person he was expecti
ng arrive briskly. The person who, according to him, had killed the lawyer Ludovico Piro, whose suffering image he had been unable to hear in its last thought, as that thought had gone through the lawyer’s mind on a hot June night, earlier that year.
He emerged from the shadows and greeted that person.
“Buongiorno, Signorina Carlotta. This isn’t the first time that a man has waited for you at this corner, now, is it?”
The young woman didn’t seem surprised. If anything, annoyed. She clenched her jaw and shot a quick glance around, as if she were considering whether to call for help.
“What the devil do you want? I’m going to school.”
Ricciardi looked her in the eye.
“I know you are. Just as you were in the months leading up to June. How many months? Two? Three? Months during which every morning the Count of Roccaspina would come all the way to this corner to meet you. What did you say to each other? What did you have in common, with so many years’ difference between you?”
The young woman shifted the books fastened with a strap from one hand to the other.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about and if you don’t stop pestering me immediately I’ll start screaming. You have no right to . . . ”
“Really? All right then, let’s put it like this: either you agree to talk to me clearly and openly, or I’ll go straight to the magistrate who’s laying the groundwork for the court trial and I’ll ask to be heard as a witness. I’m not saying I won’t do it anyway, let that be clear: but first I want to understand the motive for the murder.”
Carlotta opened her mouth, and then snapped it shut. She narrowed her eyes.
“All right. Let’s hear what absurd ideas you’ve gotten into your head. Even if I still don’t understand what right you have to investigate the case of my father’s murder. I believe that I’ll talk to some of his friends to get an explanation.”
Glass Souls Page 33
