Everyone in Their Place

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  The wheelchair was pushed by Concetta, as imposing and silent as ever, her face impassive. One step behind her came the Sciarras, she in tears with her handkerchief crushed to her mouth and he serious-faced, his eyes sorrowful over his enormous nose; his oversized hat and jacket making of him a pathetic figure in a tragic setting. A line of important personages formed immediately to shake the duke’s hand and speak a few brief words of condolence to him. The impression that Ricciardi and Maione gathered was that everyone, both because of the heat and because of the prevailing atmosphere, was eager to leave as soon as possible.

  A few minutes later something happened which was destined to be the talk of the town for months to come: Ettore appeared in the doorway, dressed in a white suit, with a walking stick and a red tie. His straw hat, likewise bright white in color, shaded a perfectly clean-shaven face, with a broad smile beneath his narrow mustache. He wore absolutely no sign of mourning, neither a black band on his arm nor a black pin on his lapel, where instead he sported a splendid gardenia. After addressing a cordial greeting to the prefect, who was just then paying his respects to the duke, he strolled off whistling cheerfully.

  If someone had thrown a bomb into the middle of the piazza, the effect could not have been more explosive. A loud buzz ran through the crowd. It startled Don Pierino who was raptly praying over the coffin; the priest whirled around in confusion, and when he saw Ettore strolling off jauntily, an expression of intense sadness appeared on his expressive face. There was even a brief burst of laughter from the back of the crowd, followed by an indignant call for respect from a few of the onlookers.

  Ricciardi, who was watching from a vantage point not far from the front door, caught a rapid exchange of glances between Concetta and Mariuccia, as if the two women had just seen clear confirmation of something they’d already discussed.

  The procession, which would accompany the duchess on her final journey on this earth, formed up. Concetta firmly interrupted the line of people greeting the duke and accompanied him back into the palazzo. The man’s expression hadn’t changed the whole time: Ricciardi decided that he must be exhausted. Behind the hearse, walking with Don Pierino and his two altar boys, were the Sciarras, man and wife, and an elderly couple, the duchess’s distant cousins; after them came the local authorities and the crowd. When the door of the hearse was closed, the coachman climbed up on the seat and snapped his whip. The orchestra began playing Chopin’s funeral march and the horses set off, matching their step to the cadence of the music.

  Ricciardi and Maione split up and mingled in the crowd, a few feet behind the front row. They eavesdropped on the comments people made under their breath, comments that for the most part referred to the Camparino family, the performance that Ettore had just delivered, the poor duke and how long he still had to live. There was no shortage of moral judgments concerning the duchess, who was always viewed unfavorably in comparison with the duke’s first wife.

  And Ricciardi realized that there were a great many people wondering where Mario Capece might be and what he might be doing. And whether and when he’d have the unmitigated gall to make an appearance.

  XXV

  I’ll walk with you, my love. I’ll go the whole distance, every step of the way. I’ll stay close to you for as long as I can, for the fleeting instants that remain to me.

  I’ll stay with you because as far as I’m concerned, you never died, and you never will. Because my hands, my body can’t go on living a minute longer if you’re gone. I’ll carry you in my soul, because I gave that soul to you, and it remains your home. No one can take you away, not the horses, not the horrible music, not the fake grief on the faces of those who claim the right to follow you even closer than I can.

  What do they know about your smile, the words you say, the sound of your breathing when we’re alone together? What do they know about my grief and the weight that I feel in my chest?

  That’s why I’m here, hidden in the midst of the crowd so that no one will recognize me; so that no one will feel the need to come over to me and tell me that this isn’t my place.

  Instead, this is my place: as close as possible to you.

  And if someone tried to send me away from here, I’d kill them with my bare hands.

  The funeral procession was scheduled to travel up the first half of Corso Umberto and then disband at Piazza Nicola Amore: in the local vocabulary of Neapolitan place names, the Rettifilo all the way to the Quattro Palazzi; not a short distance, especially in that baking heat. With every martial step of that team of eight horses, the crowd dwindled as it became clear that by now, with the main protagonists no longer present, the performance would offer no further titillation.

  As the procession passed, the shops that were still open shut their doors, and the women crossed themselves while the men lifted their hands to their hats, in a military-style salute. Perhaps the duchess actually inspired more sincere pity in the strangers following her bier, Ricciardi mused, than in those who were there as a mere formality. Among the many people who stood lining the street to salute the procession as it passed by, the commissario noted one of his old acquaintances, a man who had been beaten to death and who invariably muttered, the words leaving his mouth along with a mist of blood and a spray of shattered teeth:

  “Buffoonish clowns, you’re nothing but four buffoonish clowns. Four to one, for shame, for shame, you buffoonish clowns.”

  Ricciardi, without turning to look, appreciated the lugubrious irony of the phrase applied to the funeral. So many to one, it’s true. And it’s equally true that for the most part the many are buffoonish clowns, he thought, looking thirty feet or so ahead of him at the balding back of the deputy chief of police Garzo’s head.

  When they reached the piazza and Don Pierino imparted his final benediction, there were no more than fifty or so onlookers.

  It was just then that Maione, before heading off downhill toward the harbor, recognized Capece’s silhouette, his face covered by dark glasses and a downturned hat brim. He recognized him from his posture more than his facial features: his shoulders hunched and his legs slightly stiffened by the terrible psychic suffering of the past few days. He signaled to Ricciardi, who nodded back and set off after him: he was interested to see where he’d go.

  You follow him, and you do your best to ensure that he won’t see you. It’s not a problem for you, you’ve become quite the expert in going unnoticed; for so long, you’ve simply erased yourself out of your own thoughts. Your oblivion has given you this one last gift: it’s made you invisible.

  You carefully selected a dark, nondescript dress, a hat that’s out of fashion, your shapeless old shoes. You blended into the crowd. You recognized him just before you saw him, you can still sense him with your flesh, you have no need for eyes or ears when it comes to him.

  You watched him for a long time, from a distance. You saw the pain in the small, unimportant gestures. No one could understand and in fact, no one did: only you understood. You smiled as you realized that, in that piazza crowded with people, there were really only three people: him, you, and her. As always, the way you’ve been accustomed to having it, for years now. You followed him as he walked, under the implacable sun, without stopping, without staggering. She takes a step, he takes a step. You take a step. And of course, no one saw you. No one recognized you. It was just the three of you.

  But for her, it was the last time. You smile again, under your hat, while the heat makes the walls of the distant palazzi shimmer.

  After all, you owed him that much.

  Ricciardi stepped closer to Don Pierino.

  “Father, I just wanted to say hello. I imagine this was no ordinary funeral for you.”

  The little priest was sweating copiously beneath his tunic and his vestments. He had a deeply sad expression on his face, uncustomary for him.

  “As you know, Commissario, a funeral is always painful, it’s a natural thing. It’s the very commemoration of pain and sorrow, of abandonment, of absence
. It’s my job to console, to make it clear in a dark moment that the separation is only temporary. There’s no death, there’s no absence. We’ll all meet again, in a better world. You may not believe it, Commissario, but it’s possible to see the dead again.”

  Ricciardi grimaced.

  “And who says that I don’t believe it, Father? No one knows better than I do that the dead don’t vanish, that they leave a visible trace of their sorrow and pain. It’s to provide solace for that grief that we exist. We, and the law.”

  Don Pierino shook his head.

  “There’s another justice that cancels grief, Commissario. And it’s not of this world. In any case, this time I felt practically useless. Certainly, I saw a sister of mine down the road that leads to a more beautiful home. But all around me I sensed neither love nor grief. Not enough, at least. And no one was offering comfort, except for the good-hearted Mariuccia Sciarra who suffers the grief of simple souls, which vanishes as quickly as it came.”

  This was exactly the aspect that Ricciardi wanted to explore in greater depth.

  “And yet, Father, it seems strange to me. The duchess was certainly not well loved; but from what I heard she wasn’t a bad person either, not the sort of person who had done so much evil that she’d have no one close to her. Not even in the midst of all these people.”

  The priest was still wearing the same sad expression.

  “Sometimes we do evil without even knowing it. It’s one of the devil’s cleverest tricks, Commissario: it surprises me that you, who deal with it on a daily basis, wouldn’t know that. He mixes evil in with good, pain in with love. And he conceals it, he makes it indistinguishable. And so, if you love without regard for anything, you can cause pain to someone else; by laughing you can make someone cry. Think about it, Commissario. I wonder if the solution to your doubts lies in this fact.”

  After saying these words, Don Pierino climbed onto the seat of the hearse and set off for Poggioreale. This last part of the journey was for him alone.

  I followed you. I waited for you to go out, I knew you thought I was with my friends. But I lurked in a doorway and I waited.

  I’ve learned to recognize the tone of what you say even when you don’t speak, you know that, Mamma? The expression of your eyes, the movement of a hand. The rooms you go into, the rooms you avoid. You learn over time. Then we think about the same things, even if we don’t talk about them: and when we think about the same things, we think the same way.

  This morning I knew that you meant to go out and I even knew where you were going to go. I understood it from the creaking of your dresser door, the armoire that you never open, the one with your old dresses. I heard you climb up on the chair to get something from your hat rack. I even heard you sing under your breath, when you thought I was still asleep. And I was right.

  Step by step, on the far sidewalk, hiding behind other people: but I could have just walked ahead of you, certain as I was where you’d be going. I got there: all those people. I almost lost you. But he was there too, I saw him even before I saw you. And I found a place to wait, at the far end of the room, I watched the two of you, close and yet so distant. I followed you both, step by step, again, without losing sight of you once, each of you with your grief, each of you with your absence. And me, with mine.

  We were all walking together. But each of us was walking behind a different funeral procession, Mamma.

  Each of us mourning a different death.

  Maione had followed Capece through the vicoli, and it quickly became clear to him that the man was wandering without a destination.

  Every so often the journalist would stop, pull out a handkerchief, and mop his face; sweat and tears, thought the brigadier. At a certain point he saw him slip into a cantina that sold wine. He waited for him for half an hour, and when it became clear that he wouldn’t be coming out in any condition to do anything dangerous to himself or anyone else, he left.

  The duchess’s funeral had been a truly saddening experience for Maione. It reminded him of his own Luca’s funeral, which he could still remember through the mists of the horrifying pain that he’d felt then and still felt now. Fewer people had attended, perhaps, and he certainly couldn’t afford eight horses or a band playing the funeral march: but he was certain of one thing—the love that he’d felt surrounding him, from his family, his colleagues, and the entire quarter. He thought back to the interview with the duke, the gasping voice, the terrible heat, the suffocating odor of death in the room; but he also remembered the man’s words, which had struck home to his soul. A man dies when his life no longer means anything to anyone else. Maione’s simple soul had continued to reflect on this phrase, uttered by a man who was about to depart this world in utter silence. He’d decided that if this principle was true, then so was its opposite; in that case his Luca—whose off-kilter laugh he heard every day of his life, whose cap, tipped back on the back of his head at a rakish and decidedly non-regulation angle, he could see vanishing around every corner, whose expression he recognized every day on the faces of the boy’s mother, brothers, and sisters—had never really died at all.

  Two hours later, as he left the sixth tavern, Maione finally decided that this investigative tactic wouldn’t lead to anything for a number of reasons. He couldn’t hope to overcome the mistrust that the proprietors felt toward the police, since every one of them had something to hide or at least something to be ashamed of; the customers that came in every night were too numerous and unpredictable for them to remember someone who, in all likelihood, was also not particularly interested in chatting; and last of all, the ones who were willing to talk to him still felt they had more in common with a man wanted by the law than they did with a policeman, and they tailored their answers accordingly. Conclusion: he’d sweated like a pig, he’d salivated gallons at the sight of all kinds of delicious food, and he’d come up with nothing.

  Maione mopped his brow with his oversized handkerchief, loosened his tie, and made a decision: the time had come to go see Bambinella again.

  XXVI

  From the kitchen, Maria Colombo watched her daughter in the dining room, tutoring three little boys; two of them were the children of a well-to-do lumber wholesaler, and they were twins; the third, tiny and dark-skinned, with bright dancing eyes, was the concierge’s grandson.

  Enrica often talked to her about how extremely intelligent this third little boy had proven to be, how he often did his work twice as fast as the twins, even though he was two years younger. While Enrica received a regular and sizable salary from the children of the lumber wholesaler, from the concierge’s family she received nothing but plentiful smiles and boundless gratitude.

  Whenever Maria pointed it out to her, Enrica would reply that you don’t live on bread alone. There, that was exactly what drove Maria crazy about Enrica: her absolute lack of any common sense. On the subject of marriage, too, which they’d discussed endlessly, that was always at the root of their disagreement: practical common sense. Could it be, Maria wondered, that she was the only person in the family who recognized that time was passing, that youth makes way for old age and that it wouldn’t be long before a fresh face would no longer do Enrica any good? Or did she think that she could just wait indefinitely for her Habsburg prince to ride in on his white steed, to turn her into a queen?

  Most important of all, her daughter wasn’t such a beauty that she’d capture a man at the first glance: Maria, who was her mother, had the courage to admit it herself. And so she’d finally taken charge of the situation, and she’d forced her husband to invite the Fiores to dinner.

  For a whole day she’d waited for Enrica’s inevitable reaction: she knew that behind her sweet and tranquil nature there was a stubborn soul, anything but compliant, and that it certainly would be no easy matter to persuade her to accept this imposition. But it was for her own good, so she’d be able to respond, blow for blow, even at the cost of alienating the girl’s affections for a week or two; then Enrica would understand and even
thank her.

  That’s what a mamma’s for.

  For the second time in three days, Maione knocked at Bambinella’s door.

  “Brigadie’, what do you think, can I start to consider you one of my suitors? Next time you come, though, why don’t you bring, oh, I don’t know, a flower, a box of pastries, just anything. I’ll take you to meet mamma and we’ll iron out the details.”

  Maione was still panting from the climb, and he was drenched with sweat.

  “You’ve got one thing right, I don’t have the breath to breathe, much less to tell you to go straight to you-know-where. I’m a bad man to joke around with, you know that? Better cut it out, or one of these days I’ll come calling on you one last time, and the next thing you know you’ll be sitting in a cell and I’ll be throwing away the key!”

  Bambinella flirtatiously raised one hand in front of her mouth and she giggled girlishly.

  “Madonna, do you know how much I like a fiery man? All right then, Brigadie’, don’t work yourself up into a rage: it just means that I’ll wait patiently, I know that sooner or later you’ll make up your mind. The important thing is that you remember: for you it’s always free of charge.”

  Maione hauled back to throw a slap that Bambinella dodged with a dainty motion. Both of them burst out laughing.

  “So the truth is, Bambine’, that this story of the duchess is deep and complicated. Not so much the facts themselves; it’s that we can’t operate freely.”

  Bambinella, who, as usual, was wearing her silk kimono, walked toward the table where she’d been sitting before Maione arrived.

  “I understand, Brigadie’. You’ve got the press, the nobility, and the authorities to deal with. All of them are people you can’t exactly throw into a cell without thinking twice, like you can with girls like me. It’s less of a headache when they murder poor people, for you cops, eh?”