[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  By night, and in that weather, the Spanish Quarter took on a ghostly atmosphere. The lamps hanging from wires over the middle of the street tossed and swayed in the wind, flashing random beams of light that illuminated, from one moment to the next, a doorway, a wall, a tabernacle containing a Madonna, Her heart run through with swords. Stray dogs lay curled up in the few corners that offered any shelter, doing their best to stay dry. Small streams of water running down either side of the vicolo swept garbage and refuse down the hill.

  Maione considered that, if something serious had actually happened, the rain wouldn’t have prevented the usual gathering of rubberneckers. Instead, outside the entrance of the last apartment house at the top of the street there was no one at all. He pushed open the heavy wooden door, as usual, left ajar, switched on the dim overhead lamp, and shot a glance at the stairs that rose before him, steep and ramshackle. He climbed them carefully, as always with the distinct impression that he was being watched, and as always he reached the top of the staircase out of breath, panting hard. He didn’t have to knock, because the door hung open.

  He walked through the door; the draft made a shutter slam. Maione listened carefully and heard a sort of choked groan. He pulled out his department-issued pistol, made sure it was loaded, and switched off the safety. Gripping it firmly, finger on the trigger, he ventured further into the little living room decorated in the very worst kind of fake Chinese style. He knew the layout of the furniture, so he ran no risk of tripping over something and making a noise that would give him away. He stopped at the door into the bedroom; the labored breathing came from in there.

  In the dim light, he could just make out a dark mass moving agitatedly. He leveled his pistol and barked an order: “Halt! Hands up and identify yourself, it’s the police!”

  The dark mass started and the groaning was suddenly transformed into a falsetto shriek. The policeman reached his hand out to the wall and switched on the light; the hanging lamp in the middle of the ceiling emitted a soft, diffuse light, as pink as the fabric of the lampshade.

  In the bed, blankets tugged right up to her chin, lay Bambinella. The face of the femminiello, who was always careful to present a coquettish and well-groomed image, was unrecognizable. Her makeup had oozed down her cheekbones in two thick lines, which stood out against her sallow skin and seeped into what looked like two days’ growth of whiskers, black and bristly. Her eyes, puffy and reddened, had lost the languid and, at the same time, cheerful luminosity that usually characterized them. Her long hair, yanked out of the ribbon that ought by rights to have pulled it back, tumbled messily down her neck.

  Every detail in the part of Bambinella’s face that she wasn’t concealing expressed an abyss of despair.

  “For God’s sake, Brigadie’, turn off the light. I don’t want to be seen looking like this. And maybe you ought to go ahead and use it, that revolver of yours. At least you’d free me of this worry.”

  Maione’s jaw dropped in surprise, and he calmly reholstered his pistol.

  “Bambine’, do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on, Brigadie’. I just want to die.”

  “And you sent for me, in the middle of the night, just to tell me that? No, Bambine’, you’ve got it wrong: you don’t want to die, you have to die. And I’m the one who’s going to kill you; so far I’ve limited myself to threats, but now is the time that I finally make good on them.”

  The femminiello had vanished completely beneath the blanket, and now looked like a pink ghost speckled with blue flowers. A ghost that replied with a voice that sounded like a cavernous lament: “Forgive me. I just wanted to bid farewell to a dear friend before leaving this world. Because, if I can only screw up the courage, I’ve made up my mind to slit my wrists. I’ll use the same razor I’ve used all my life to battle these damned black hairs that grow all over me. That way, at least with them, I’ll be the winner in the end.”

  Maione looked out the window; wind and rain lashed furiously.

  “But I don’t understand, can’t you perform such a noble and wonderful act tomorrow morning, when maybe the sun will come out, and we could all have gotten a few hours’ sleep, and we’d be so much more relaxed for it? Did you absolutely have to kill yourself tonight, in the dark, and with this weather I wouldn’t send a dog out in?”

  Bambinella let out a groan.

  “Brigadie’, don’t you understand that, when there’s nothing left to be done, there’s no point in waiting any longer? But how could I be at peace with my conscience if I left this world without saying goodbye to you one last time? You, as you know very well, are the only friend I can call my own.”

  Maione threw both arms wide, in resignation, and pulled up a chair.

  “All right, Bambine’, I understand. Tell me why you want to kill yourself. Let’s see if the only person you can call a friend can do anything to help you, after all, I’m awake already and I’ve taken the drenching. But make sure you don’t tell anyone about this friendship of ours, or I’ll have to rip your head right off your neck.”

  Bambinella lowered the blanket a little, displaying a pair of tear-stained eyes.

  “Would you really try to help me? Because, I assure you, you’re the only person who could even try.”

  Maione smiled, ironically.

  “Who knows why, I could have sworn this is how it would go. I could sense there was a solution. Otherwise, maybe tomorrow would have just brought me news of your death, and for once my workday would have started on a cheery note. All right, let’s hear it.”

  Bambinella pulled out a handkerchief and did her best to clean and neaten up her face; then she pulled a mirror out of the drawer in the side table, shot a quick glance at her reflection, then quickly put it away with a grimace.

  “Madonna, would you take a look at my face. Swear to me, Brigadie’, that you’ll forget you ever saw my face looking the way it does tonight. That you’ll only remember my beauty, my gracefulness, my femininity, my . . . ”

  “Bambine’, I try to forget your face every day of my life. You have five minutes’ time to tell me what your problem is, after which I’ll stand up, I’ll shoot you, and I’ll leave, and all will be well and good.”

  “Okay, okay. All right, then, you know that I haven’t been a working girl for almost two months now. I’d put a little money aside and I don’t have any real problems, heaven be praised, even though my old clients keep pestering me till I see stars: it’s a continuous procession up here, they all say that the way I give . . . ”

  Maione literally burst into a roar.

  “Bambine’, get to the point, otherwise your five minutes will be up. Listen carefully to how I’m putting this: your five minutes will be up, and so will you. Don’t waste time on descriptions.”

  Bambinella nodded.

  “You’re right, forgive me. In any case, I’ve stopped hooking because I’m in love. When a girl is in love, there are certain things she just can’t do. You men are more animalistic, you’d be perfectly capable, but we women just aren’t made that way.”

  The policeman heaved a sigh, pulled out his gun again, and started toying with it.

  “Animalistic. We men. You women. I’m sorely tempted to cut the five minutes down to three.”

  Bambinella spoke hastily now.

  “Oh, lord, present company excepted. I know that you’re a faithful husband, but I’m just saying that men in general are like that. Anyway, I fell in love, and lucky for me, so did he. He fell in love with me. He’s a wonderful man, Brigadie’. You can’t imagine how sweet, how delicate his feelings are, what a good heart he has.”

  Now Maione was really starting to lose his patience.

  “And now he’s dumped you. Is that what you want to tell me? Help me understand: I came all the way up here because you need comforting over some heartbreak? Give me just one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you here and now.”

  Bambinella put on a proud expression, rendered even more grot
esque by the smeared and oozing makeup.

  “Brigadie’, no one breaks up with Bambinella, not if she doesn’t want them too. Trust me. That’s not what this is about.”

  “Then do you mind telling me what happened?”

  “What happened is that they’re going to murder my boyfriend. There’s no two ways about it.”

  Maione went quiet and alert.

  “What do you mean, they’re going to murder him? Who’s going to murder him? And who is this boyfriend of yours?”

  Bambinella sniffed loudly and turned away.

  “Gustavo, is his name. Donadio. Gustavo Donadio.”

  “That name isn’t new to me. Tell me why it has a familiar ring to it, Bambine’, don’t waste my time.”

  The femminiello, gazing studiously elsewhere, murmured: “He has a few prior convictions. Petty thefts, unimportant robberies. He specializes, that is, he used to specialize in getting into shops by way of . . . ”

  The policeman slapped his forehead.

  “Gustavo ’a Zoccola. Gustavo the Sewer Rat. So called because he knows the sewers of this city better than the maintenance crews themselves. Gustavo ’a Zoccola, of course. We caught him in a jewelry store on the Rettifilo, a few years ago. I thought he was behind bars.”

  Bambinella replied proudly: “Three years ago you caught him. And the only reason is that a couple of chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling and stopped up the toilet in the store, otherwise he’d have gotten away again. In any case, he was released eight months ago, and I can assure you that now he’s earning an honest living. In fact, that’s exactly the problem.”

  The brigadier shook his head.

  “All right, go on.”

  “To keep from running the risk of being sent back to prison, where truth be told he didn’t like it one bit, because there are too many criminals in there, he went into business. Since he knows the jewelry business, he buys watches, necklaces, and rings of slightly murky provenance and sells them to stores.”

  Maione couldn’t believe his ears.

  “So, what you’re telling me is that he’s a fence. And you just tell me like that? To me of all people?”

  Bambinella waved her hand vaguely in his direction.

  “Don’t get so worked up, Brigadie’, now we’re talking about much more serious matters: who cares if somebody stimulates the economy a little. It’s not as if Gustavo asks them whether it’s stolen merchandise or not. Maybe someone just wants to get rid of something, and they’re having a hard time making ends meet; he helps them out and he gets a small profit for himself. The problem is that this service, in the quarter where he lives, is already being run by the Lombardi family.”

  Maione knew that family very well, a clan of criminals that ran shady operations in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. They were very dangerous people, very careful to lurk in the shadows, operating in the sectors that were most difficult to get into: prostitution, gambling, and, of course, fencing stolen goods. This was a pretty serious matter.

  “So, Gustavo ’a Zoccola has decided to go up against Pasquale Lombardi, Pascalone ’o Lione. The Lion. Bad choice of enemies, no doubt about it. And what am I supposed to do about it?”

  Bambinella started sniveling again.

  “They’ve summoned him to go the day after tomorrow to a farm at Ponti Rossi, and he wants to go. I know perfectly well, Brigadie’, no one ever comes back alive from these meetings. They’re not even going to let him speak, they’ll just slice him open like a fish right then and there and then bury him. If you only knew how many have disappeared like that.”

  Maione thought it over.

  “You want me to arrest him? Just tell me where he keeps the swag, I’ll organize a search warrant, and . . . ”

  Bambinella interrupted him.

  “No, no. If he winds up behind bars again, he’ll kill himself. And if he doesn’t kill himself, when he gets back out, he’ll just start fencing all over again. We’d just be back where we started from.”

  “So what is it you want me to do?”

  Bambinella changed her tone. Her voice grew thicker and dropped an octave or two, as if it were arriving from another world. As she spoke, her glistening dark eyes looked out into the void.

  “Gustavo is married. He has two children. Since he went to prison, his wife has turned her back on him. She doesn’t want her children to grow up with a jailbird father. I wouldn’t do that myself, but I can’t say I blame her. After he got out, he went to live on his own, but he’s been suffering over the little ones, because she won’t let him see them.”

  “And how do I fit in?”

  Bambinella turned to look at him.

  “I’m begging you, Brigadie’, talk to Gustavo, convince him not to go to that appointment. And if you can’t persuade him, find a way to convince ’o Lione not to kill him. Then, if he won’t listen to you either . . . if he won’t listen to you either, we’ll have to find another solution.”

  Maione leapt to his feet.

  “Have you lost your mind, Bambine’? How dare you even think such a thing? I’m a police brigadier, you do know that, don’t you? I can’t just go around carrying messages from one criminal to another. No, no, and no! Out of the question.”

  The femminiello fell silent. Then she got out of bed, clutching the blanket around herself like a sarong, and walked toward the policeman.

  “I’ve always helped you before, Brigadie’. Whether or not you asked me to. I kept an eye on your own private business and kept you from committing some foolish mistakes that would probably have got you into real trouble, maybe ruined your life. I did that and I’ll do it again, and you know why? Because you and I are friends. Friends help each other out. Friends don’t just take, when it’s time to give, friends give. Now if you don’t want to help me, fine, that just means that I was wrong about you. And that would be a pity.”

  Maione remained motionless, revolver in one hand, his eyes boring into the eyes of the femminiello. At last, he sighed.

  “All right, Bambine’. I’ll do it. I’ll do it to save a life; I’ll do it because these Lombardis are terrifying people and it’s time to put a stop to it. And I’ll do it because you’re right, you’ve always helped me out and you’ve never asked a thing in return. But word of this can’t get out, you hear me? No one had better find out. I have to put criminals behind bars, I can’t go around asking them for favors, hat in hand. This thing goes against all my principles, and if I do it, it’s only because . . . because . . . ”

  Bambinella’s face lit up in a smile and turned sweet again, in spite of her ravaged makup and his unkempt whiskers and hair.

  “You and I know why you’re doing it, Brigadie’. Only you and I, and nobody else.”

  IX

  One to bring you to your knees.

  Because that’s where you’re going to have to look up from, to see my face, the last thing in your life you’ll ever see: the face of the person who’s about to put an end to your existence. From the ground up, as is right for the filthy worm that you really are. From the ground up, you who have no humility, you who are so full of pointless, unjustified arrogance. From the ground up, recognizing your superior, the one who has so many more rights than you do.

  One for having looked at her.

  For having contaminated her with your tiny, slimy, cold eyes, devoid of soul or tenderness. For every time you gazed at her figure, running your eyes over the line of her body under her clothing, and you felt as though you owned her, imagining with no justification that she was yours. Yours, even though you showed up so much later. Yours, even though you never wept or suffered for her. Yours, as if she were an accessory, a piece of furniture that you’d bought with your money.

  One for having touched her.

  And it should be so many more, if I think about your dull, insensitive hands, your fingers that never tremble, and how they violated and contaminated her divine flesh, her infinite sweetness. So many more, they should have been, if I think t
hat when, at night, my mind flew through the stars to reach her and watch over her sleep, you reached out your lurid arm to fondle that which you believed you had a right to. And you had no right, because she is mine, she has always been mine.

  One for having kissed her.

  For every time your filthy mouth dared to brush her lips, ignoring her fear and overlooking her feelings; because there couldn’t have been any love in her submissiveness, in the way she came to you like a sacrificial lamb. For the way you sucked the nectar out of such a vast and lovely flower—wingless, repulsive insect that you are. For having taken all the good she had to offer, without any consideration of what she went through. Because people love each other no matter how difficult things are, not just through better but also through worse, but you don’t know that and, at this point, you never will.

  One for having slept in her bed.

  Taking what was never meant for you, what you didn’t deserve, what you never should have had in the first place. While I watch you die, I can’t stand to think of you inside of her, you who are nothing—inside of her who is everything. In a just world, in a world that repays love with more love, you could never even have dreamt of such a thing.

  One for all the time that I suffered.

  For every dream in vain, every agitated dream that made me start awake on a pillow wet with tears. For every fiery thought that left in my mind a wake of grief like some cursed comet, destined to drop into the hopeless darkness. For every racing heartbeat, for every word written and erased, for every note of every song that I would have sung. For every distant sigh, entrusted to the sea and the clouds. For every letter never sent, for every answer never received.

  One for the future I never enjoyed.

  Because it was you who took away every chance I ever had, stealing the children that would have come, sons and daughters, with her smiles and her sweetness. Because it was you, with your filthy presence, that separated our hearts. Because it was you who refused to let us become one and leave together, go far away from here, far from these days of horror, so we could become a different, a brand new man and woman.