Blood Curse

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  Ricciardi looked him in the eye. Then he nodded his head.

  “All right, you go ahead. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a good night.”

  They walked together through the bright lights of the Pignasecca market, the doctor trudging wearily and the commissario with the wind in his hair. The doctor pushed his hat back on his head and lit a cigarette.

  “Say, haven’t you noticed this gentle warm breeze? It’s springtime, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome. A joyful soul like you can hardly have missed the fact.”

  Ricciardi snorted in annoyance.

  “Could you tell me what you find so damned funny about the fact that you’ve just spent hours digging around inside the body of a man who stabbed himself in the heart? Did you know that he has three children? And the whole thing started with the late Calise, who was kicked across the floor of her room. If that’s springtime, you can have it, thanks very much.”

  Modo laughed.

  “You kill me! What are you saying, that human lunacy is dictated by the seasons? Why don’t you take a look at our government, for example!”

  Ricciardi feigned a despairing expression.

  “No, I beg you, not politics! I’d rather go home and suffer through Tata Rosa’s pasta and chickpeas!”

  “Okay, fine, if you’re happy giving up your freedom in its entirety, I won’t try to change your mind. But the best thing to do is laugh about it, that’s what I was trying to tell you. Do you know that it’s been three or four years since I last prescribed a purgative, just to avoid being taken for a Fascist?”

  Ricciardi shook his head with a smile.

  “Look, Bruno, if you keep this up, one of these days I’m going to find an order on my desk to arrest you and ship you off to internal exile on Ventotene. I’m not worried about that so much, but if they ordered me to stay there to keep an eye on you, then suicide wouldn’t be drastic enough.”

  They’d reached the pizzeria. Ricciardi looked around.

  “A place like this. Filled with smoke, hot air, the smell of food. Everyone has their own dreams. And this is the dream that Iodice is dying for. Was it worth it?”

  Modo played a little with his cigarette.

  “You know something, Ricciardi? When I perform an autopsy or a last-ditch operation like the one I did today, I think the same thing every time. There’s a moment when a person starts to die. No, I’m not talking about the death itself. What I mean is, there’s a moment when an irreversible process is triggered that leads ineluctably to death. Maybe it takes years, but there’s no stopping it. A glass of wine, a cigarette. The proverbial drop that makes the glass overflow. I find tumors, pulmonary lesions, ruptured livers. Or it could even be a word, a glint in the eye. A love affair. A child. Who can say when someone starts dying?”

  Ricciardi listened, fascinated in spite of himself.

  “Unfortunately, we can never get hold of that moment, never catch it as it passes.”

  Modo smiled, suddenly looking much, much older.

  “No, my friend. And that’s a blessing. That’s how we can go on living. Can you imagine if each of us were aware of having triggered the irreversible process that eventually leads to death? During the war, I saw the corpses of lots of men, torn to shreds by shrapnel from Austrian mortar shells, and I wondered what they’d been thinking, what dreams they were nurturing when they enlisted. I always found myself wondering whether at the end, in the instant that they realized they were about to die, whether any of them understood that it had been that dream, that ideal that had killed them. And that’s why all these lunatics you see strutting around the city, singing about death and war, fill me with pity.”

  Ricciardi laid a hand on his friend’s arm.

  “All kidding aside, Bruno. I understand where you’re coming from, and maybe, I’m saying just maybe, I’d even be inclined to agree with you. Still, and this is a point you have to concede, I think it’s naïve and foolish to open yourself up to a world of trouble, serious trouble, just for the fun of hearing yourself talk. Think of all the people who rely on you, on your work, on your hands.”

  “You’re right. It’s not worth it. Let this nation of idiots take it up the ass, if they like it so damned much. Perhaps the moment in which we as a people triggered our own irreversible process has already come and gone.”

  XLI

  The minute he turned onto the vicolo he’d caught sight of the woman at her front door, looking in his direction. “Welcome, Brigadie’,” she had said. “I was expecting you.”

  She was expecting him. And it was almost pure chance that he’d come at all.

  “You look tired. You must have had a tough day. Come in, sit down. I’ll make you something to eat.”

  “Don’t go to any trouble,” he had replied. “I’m sure I’ll find something to eat at home.”

  “I know,” she had said to him. “But just a little snack.”

  And the next thing he knew he was sitting at her table, eating a bowl of pasta with tomato sauce, simple, but to him, delicious. And he had told her about his day, about Calise and Iodice, though without naming names. And about Ricciardi, that strange superior officer of his, who worried him as though he were his own son.

  Then, without even realizing it, he began talking about Luca, and it dawned on him that that was something he never did. And as he listened to his own words, he felt a sharp stab of familiar pain and he discovered something he already knew: that it was impossible to resign yourself to that loss, and yet life still went on.

  Filomena listened to him, her eyes sparkling in the semidarkness of the basso, smiling or shaking her head in dismay. It was nice to be able to talk to her, nice to have her listen.

  Gaetano came home and Filomena put food on the table for him as well. A dark, silent young man, but well-mannered and intelligent; Maione could tell from the few words he spoke. Gaetano asked him about his work as a policeman and Maione talked to him with a mixture of frankness and melancholy.

  Before he knew it, silence had descended on the vicolo. He pulled out his old pocket watch and discovered, to his surprise, that it was almost eleven o’clock. He stood up to say his farewells, expressing his thanks and adding, without even realizing what he was saying: See you tomorrow. The smile that he received in return glittered in the darkness of night like the moon.

  He started for home, his heart half happy, half sad.

  Ricciardi was afraid to go home. This too was an unfamiliar sensation; anxiety had taken the place of the yearning for serenity that drove him to his window every night. It was late. Both Iodice’s unexpected act and the pizza he’d eaten with Modo had allowed him to put off this moment. But now that he was climbing uphill toward Via Santa Teresa and toward home, he was afraid that the window across the way would be shuttered. Shutting him out, leaving him in the dark.

  He silently cursed the Calise investigation and his job itself for having placed him face-to-face with Enrica and leading him to show her disrespect, however unintentionally. Thus prompting the anger he’d seen in her suddenly compressed lips and the flashing glare behind her eyeglasses. He couldn’t get that picture out of his mind: the tension in her shoulders as she turned her back on him and strode out the door.

  Last of all, the thought that she might be unwell tormented him. His naturally analytical mind also entertained the hypothesis that it might be a matter of someone else’s health: a family member’s, a friend’s. How he wished he could speak words of reassurance to her.

  But, as his steps echoed across the empty street that ran alongside the construction sites inhabited at this hour only by the dead, he realized that he now thought of her as a woman. Before today, Enrica had been a symbol of a world, a creature from an unreachable planet. Now he could revisualize lips, eyes, flesh, shoulders. As well as hands, a pocketbook, shoes. He could still smell on himself the faint scent of lavender that he had greedily breathed in as she left the office. And the tone of her voice, calm but firm. Suddenly, he was overcome with the desire to look out
his window. He went up the steps two at a time.

  Enrica had emerged from her bedroom after everyone else had finished eating. She said that she felt a little better now and, with her heart in her mouth, careful not to alter a single gesture, a single expression of her regular routine, she kept looking over at the dark window in the building across the way, always just out of the corner of her eye, with a fleeting glance. Then she turned on the table lamp and, taking a seat in her armchair, went to work on her embroidery.

  Nine thirty, a quarter to ten, ten. Every time that the pendulum clock in the dining room chimed the hour, her heart clutched a little tighter in her chest and the anxiety constricted her breathing. Ten fifteen, ten thirty. As she embroidered, she counted to sixty and then totted the minutes. A quarter to eleven. One more minute and then I’ll get up. Now, just another minute. Never, never once in the past year had he been so late coming home. The window looked like a bottomless abyss.

  She began putting away her embroidery long after she’d heard the door of her parents’ bedroom click shut for the night. She turned off the table lamp. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

  She closed the shutters, reflecting on her own meager solitude as she did.

  And that’s exactly when the window across the way lit up.

  Deputy Chief of Police Angelo Garzo kept a mirror in one of his desk drawers. The functionary did this because he understood the importance of one’s image, and had built a substantial part of his career on his own.

  Aside from his physical appearance, recently enhanced by a handsome thin mustache of which he was immensely proud, he believed that image depended largely on a certain status: a growing family, two thriving children and one on the way, a beautiful wife who was active in society and whose untarnished morality was absolutely unquestionable; the fact that she was also the niece of the Prefect of Salerno, whose own career was flourishing nicely, didn’t hurt. An almost maniacal cultivation of social relationships: there wasn’t an event, a performance, or a concert that didn’t see the deputy chief of police seated in the second row, beaming and gleaming in attire that was always just right for the occasion. The obsequious court he paid to the chief of police, whom he actually detested with every ounce of his being, and whose position he coveted, with discretion.

  But more than anything else, his true strong point was an inborn ability to sense power relationships. He unfailingly chose the winning side of every barricade and emerged triumphant after each battle, but reliably and comfortably just behind the front line, so that he could always do an about-face, should the need arise, without doing harm to his career.

  Having checked on the progress of his mustache the way a horticulturist would check on his orchids, he put the mirror away in its drawer and let his gaze roam around his office with a feeling of satisfaction. It looked like the study of a luxury apartment, so different from the other rooms at police headquarters. Furnished with leather-upholstered sofas and armchairs, as well as dark-walnut tables and chairs, bookshelves lined with untouched but handsome bordeaux-colored leather-bound volumes, which were perfectly coordinated with the overall color scheme. The walls lined with framed family pictures and medals, certificates, and diplomas, with photos of the Italian King and Il Duce in the prescribed places of honor.

  He was well aware that he was no one’s idea of a good policeman, and yet he thought of himself as a useful and necessary link between the enforcers of law and order and the political institutions that he held in such great respect. He’d met many capable and responsible individuals on his way up the ranks, and he knew they were still right where he’d met them, spinning their wheels in the morass of small-time provincial police stations. His chief ability, the only one that was really necessary, was that of knowing how to treat his inferiors: the thornier the personality, the greater the merit in handling it.

  With a sigh, he thought of Ricciardi. The finest of his colleagues: young, intelligent, capable. The most skillful when it came to solving mysteries, and the least diplomatic of them all. In the last three years he had often found himself mending rifts with prominent local figures whose toes the introverted commissario had stepped on; far more often, though, he had enjoyed praise for Ricciardi’s extraordinary successes. All things considered, they were perfectly suited to each other. All the commissario seemed to care about was investigating crimes and solving cases, whereas what mattered most to Garzo was recognition, reward, and the esteem of his superiors—and the less he was obliged to get the actual guano on his hands, the better.

  If only Ricciardi didn’t give him such a sense of uneasiness . . . He couldn’t make out the personality behind all those silences, the ironic half-smiles, the hands in his pockets even in Garzo’s presence. And, most of all, that impenetrable gaze.

  Still, he had to admit he was talented. After the Vezzi case was solved, the one about the tenor who had been murdered at the San Carlo opera house, he’d actually received a personal telephone call from Rome. He still trembled at the thought: he had said, “Yes sir, yes Your Excellency,” three times in succession and, as switchboard operators and personal secretaries had passed the line up the ladder and he waited to be connected to Him, he had hastily combed his hair and snapped to attention, as if they could see him through the receiver. His name—Angelo Garzo—on the desk of Il Duce himself: his dream was beginning to come true.

  Which was exactly why he needed to act prudently, to let Ricciardi go on working according to his instincts, but without rousing any of the sleeping lions in the wealthy neighborhoods, the ones overlooking the sea.

  He glanced at his telephone, the receiver still warm. One of those lions had been awakened. And it had just finished roaring.

  XLII

  The first Sunday of springtime is different.

  It begins with the church bells, just like any other Sunday, and just like any other, it’s silent in the early morning; but it brings different promises, and it wastes no time in fulfilling them.

  It has a new smell, and it imparts its secrets to those few who awaken at dawn, looking down from the balconies on the upper stories. You will see them sniffing at the air like dogs, and smiling to themselves for no reason.

  It has a new taste, as anyone can tell you who breakfasts on the fresh milk that a boy will sell you on the street. It’s the same boy who was there just yesterday, but the milk has a freshness that regenerates your throat.

  And it especially has new sounds. A pagan feast, with rituals and songs; you’ll hear it in the cooing of the doves on the rain gutters, even before the sun is up. And you can hear it in the melodies of the washerwomen as they walk toward the fountains, and in the calls of the strolling vendors on their way in from the surrounding countryside. The wares they hawk bear the scent of the season: violets, wheat for ricotta-filled pastiera cakes, young rue, or herb-of-grace, and other aromatic herbs. Even the hens scratching at the ground in the vicoli cluck with renewed energy.

  Nearly a month late, this is the first Sunday of genuine springtime.

  That morning, Ricciardi decided to go to the beach. It was something he did from time to time, when Sunday caught him off guard and he had an investigation in full swing.

  He would spend time there, though he was a man of the mountains, to regain his equilibrium and his concentration.

  He hadn’t gotten much sleep, a couple of hours at the most. The thousands of thoughts running through his head were demanding that he establish a bit of order.

  He liked to go sit and think on a small out-of-the-way beach at the foot of the Posillipo hill, not far from where the fishermen’s wives sat mending nets. They watched him curiously from afar as they worked; but he was safe behind the bulwark of his unfamiliar attire, and no one bothered him. Sitting on small shelves of rock, he waited, silent and calm, for the wind to kick up. No spray, nothing: just the ebb and flow, the respiration of the green water a few feet below him.

  A month earlier, like a retreating army, the winter had decided to unleash one la
st desperate assault. A furious storm had pounded the coast for two full days, incessantly, flooding the beachfront roads. Many of the inhabitants had fled inland in search of shelter.

  A fishing boat, driven by hunger and necessity, had ventured out for one last sortie, hoping to get back to harbor in time, and it didn’t make it. Once good weather returned, a number of other boats had set out to retrieve the bodies and bring them home to the wives and mothers, but they hadn’t found anything at all.

  Now, at the same distance but in the opposite direction from the black-clad women stitching up the tears in the long fishing nets, Ricciardi could make out the forms of the three dead fishermen, whose souls had washed up with the incoming tide. Two of them older, one little more than a child. Their clothes in tatters, their flesh gnawed away by fish, the marks of the fractures and contusions that the angry sea had visited on their bodies as it slammed them against the wood of the fishing boat, before carrying them down to the bottom of the abyss. Ricciardi clearly perceived their thoughts, one of them cursing the saints with a deep, hoarse voice, the other one calling on the Madonna’s mercy. The boy, with his lips and tongue swollen from suffocation, was still calling his mother’s name with all his heart.

  Nothing new there, thought Ricciardi. Between the grief of the dead and the work of the living, the commissario decided that he’d have to make sure his own feelings didn’t distract him from his investigation into the murder of Carmela Calise. The clear cold state of mind that he needed in order to evaluate the evidence he had in hand must not be destroyed by the thought of the closed shutters of the window across the way. He had to get his priorities straight: the image of the old woman beaten to death was asking him for justice, incessantly repeating an old proverb in the bedroom of the apartment in the Sanità.