“Bravo, Commissario, you’re a good pupil. Continue to pay attention to my lectures and I would hope that in another ten years or so you might become an expert. You’re right, so far we haven’t discussed the fatal blow. Actually, the victim would have died in any case, by now his lungs were compromised and his spleen would have done the rest, it was just a matter of minutes, but they decided not to run any risk.”
Ricciardi looked at him.
“Are we going to have to beg you to learn how the story ends?”
The doctor read from the scrap of paper as if he were declaiming a piece of poetry, with his free forefinger fending the air as if in time to the words.
“Fracture of the cranial table corresponding to the right temporal region, beneath which we find extensive hemorrhaging due to a direct traumatic blow to the middle meningeal artery. In short: an extradural hemorrhage.”
Maione’s eyes opened wide.
“Does that mean, for instance, that he might have taken a left hook to the temple?”
Modo tilted his head to one side.
“What is all this technical boxing language, Brigadie’? In any case, yes, it could have been something of the sort that killed him.”
Ricciardi looked at the clothing laid out on the table and, as if speaking to himself, murmured: “The trademark. The Snake’s left hook.”
XXIV
If he’d killed him right away with that punch, maybe there would have been nothing more to the matter.
Seeing him flat on the canvas, not breathing, glistening with sweat, with gloves on his hands and his shorts pulled up over his abdomen, the exhaustion and desperation of the fight would have allowed him to think that it had happened to the other man, but it could just as easily have happened to him.
He wouldn’t have raised his arms to receive the applause and the compliments of the audience, if he had imagined that the seconds weren’t carrying an opponent out of the ring who had been stunned by his special punch, the snakebite, as the reporters and radio newscasters liked to call it. He wouldn’t have celebrated at all.
But that’s not the way it went. And now he was staring at that gray body, the half-closed eyes and the open mouth, inert and enormous in the hospital room: a single room he was paying for, with three nurses alternating shifts to care for him.
The skin was the thing that most appalled him. It was as if his opponent had faded, he no longer had the ebony hue that made him so scary in the ring. He looked like he was made of papier-mâché now.
The mother, an unmarried woman who only had that one son, came to the hospital every day, as soon as she left the expensive apartment by the park where she cleaned house. She would sit down and begin crying, emitting a constant and musical lament as she murmured prayers for him that he, with his rudimentary English, couldn’t understand. Even though she was wracked by grief, she displayed no hatred toward him.
Vincenzo would actually have preferred it if she had. An angry reaction would have pushed him to defend himself, even from himself, and to find justifications, but instead she had actually thanked him for the expenses he was underwriting. Both Penny and Jack, when they understood that they were not going to be able to keep him from going there on a daily basis, every single morning, had offered to accompany him, but he had refused. He wanted to go alone. He would push through the crowd of reporters camped out in front of the hospital, stop courteously to sign autographs on the covers of the illustrated magazines that doctors and nurses held out to him, then he’d stand in front of the bed and wait. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, but still, he’d wait.
They had explained to him that it was unlikely that Rose would ever wake up. The emergency surgery that he had undergone in the dramatic hours immediately following the bout hadn’t achieved the hoped-for result; the hemorrhage had been too extensive.
He didn’t like the fact that people called him by his surname. It seemed too generic. He was Solomon. A person. A mother’s son. Someone who would have been a fiancé, a husband, a father. Someone who still had too much laughing to do, too much joking, suffering, weeping—all if it hadn’t been for his own left hook.
The pointless punch, Vincenzo mused. Pointless. After the uppercut to his jaw, the man was already falling, his knees loose and his eyes vacant. He wasn’t going to get up again. But still he’d had to unleash that pointless punch, a punch thrown for the sake of fame, for the glory, a punch for a certainty that he already possessed. The pointless punch that had turned the man into what lay before him.
By now he had been restless and unrequited for almost a month. He felt ill, terribly ill, when he entered the hospital room, but he felt even worse when he stayed in his own room, lying in the darkness with his eyes staring sightless at the ceiling, seeking reasons that didn’t exist.
Cettina, Cettina, he kept saying to himself. Because Cettina was at the root of the punch that had condemned Solomon Rose to death. He’d never know—that young man, that fierce adversary—that the origin of his probable death was the face of a young woman in tears, a young woman to whom he, one October afternoon so many years earlier, had sworn to return.
Isn’t it strange, Solomon? A girl weeps on the far side of the world and you wind up in this condition, in this bed. If you could only hear me, I’d tell you all about her. Not about her tears, about her smile. I’d try to make it clear to you that the smile is the reason for it all. I’m sorry, Solomon, I’m sorry. I would have liked to know you, at least a little bit, and not through the suffering of your mother.
If you could hear me, even just for a brief moment, I’d tell you about the young man who swam through icy water in the dark night, toward a future that he hoped might resemble the past. I’d try to explain to you that all of it was necessary, except for the pointless punch.
Vincenzo couldn’t seem to recover. And at first everyone seemed so understanding: We just need to give him time, it’s only right, he has a noble heart. He’s just going to need some time. But they soon became much less tolerant. You could start training again, Jack would tell him. You could give a few interviews and come sleep with me, Penny would say.
And even that idiot of the Italian ambassador had come to pay a call on him, the kind of guy who always spoke in the first-person plural. With him, everything was “we.”
“We certainly hope,” he would say. “It is our fondest wish that you should understand,” he would say. “The Duce called us personally,” he would say. As if Vincenzo gave a fig what they thought in Rome. What he cared about was Cettina and Solomon. And that pointless punch. His snakebite. How ridiculous.
Vincenzo looked up and out the window of the hospital room. He’d insisted on a room with a view, though that didn’t change a thing as far as Solomon was concerned. Now the panes were being pelted with rain, but on sunny days, when the air was clear, you could glimpse a view of the city and a section of the Hudson River.
Solomon, I’ll never belong here, he thought. And neither will you. They don’t consider either of us to be one of them. The only thing we’re good for, as far as they’re concerned, is hopping into the ring and knocking each other silly for their amusement.
You and me, Solomon? We’re the same thing, one of us flat in the bed, the other standing beside it. No one understands it, but the only difference is that I’m the one who let fly with the pointless punch. It was a matter of luck. Even if it’s still not clear which of the two of us is the lucky one.
He had told Mrs. Rose that she’d never have to work again. That he had issued instructions at the bank to pay her an annuity large enough that she’d be able to stay home. To his horror, she had tried to kiss his hand, that same hand, then she had told him that she had nothing to do at home. She thanked him very much, but she preferred to continue working as a housekeeper. Vincenzo had understood, and for the first time in so many years, he had stopped to wonder what might have happened if he’d never left in the first place. If, instead of boarding that ship, he had chosen to fight against hi
s state in life with the same stubborn courage he had shown in the ring. If Cettina’s gaze—instead of being the dream of so many sleepless, tormented nights, instead of being the finish line to cross at the end of a long race, instead of being the force capable of driving him forward in that far-off land—had simply been the reason to live day by day under the sun of his home, supping on the humble bread of home.
Standing there, in Solomon’s presence, as the other man gasped for air, open-mouthed, he was reminded of the song. The despairing lament of a man who is losing his woman; the heartbreak of a soul losing every last promise of the future. Have I lost you, Cetti’? Have I lost you in the silence of all these years? Did I lose you while I was working and sweating and bleeding to win you back? Did I lose you along this path I followed to return home? But if I’ve lost you, Cetti’, then what good was the pointless punch? What good was that final punch, if now I’ve lost you?
What good were the tears shed by a mother at the bedside of a drab mannequin that was once her little boy?
If I’ve lost you, then I want to die, too, just like Solomon. Because then I too will have taken my own pointless punch.
If you only knew, Cetti’, the way that you’ve guided me. How far I’ve navigated, following you like the north star, from the instant that icy water cut my breath off in my throat until the day I raised both arms in triumph over this poor young man.
I did it for you, Cetti’.
Do you understand why I can’t give you up? Because if I did, then it would all become pointless. All the effort, all the pain: as pointless as that last punch. I’ll sweep aside any obstacle that arises between you and me. I have to do it, in part for Solomon.
While the rain pelted down against the window, while the song of loss echoed in the mind of the man who had never stopped being himself, even as he had become Vinnie the Snake, and as Solomon Rose stopped breathing, erasing memories and hopes.
Vincenzo started weeping.
And never stopped.
XXV
While waiting to go pick up Ricciardi so that the two of them could go to the party being held by the Marchesa Bartoli di Castronuovo, Bianca had decided to pay a call on Duke Carlo Maria Marangolo.
She hadn’t seen him in several days now and, standing in the little drawing room where a butler had led her, she felt as she always did the concern that she might find his condition had worsened. When instead she saw him arrive, with a broad smile, in a dressing gown, she immediately felt reassured.
“Bianca!” Marangolo exclaimed. “Thanks so much for coming to see me, you’re a ray of sunshine after a grim night. Nasty weather, isn’t it? Have you been suffering from the cold?”
The woman turned her cheek to receive a kiss. She was very fond of the duke, whom she’d known since she was a girl because he’d been a classmate of her elder brother—the brother who had been killed in the war. They were both fully aware of the desperate, discreet love that he felt for her, and how that love, over the passing years, had been transformed into a profound devotion. Bianca would never forget how close Carlo Maria had remained to her, and how he had helped her get through her unhappy marriage.
“Ciao, caro,” she replied. “I told your driver I wanted to come say hello. As you know I’m going to La Bartoli’s reception with our friend the commissario. Listen, are you really certain that it’s advisable to go out together practically every evening? Don’t you think that the storm has subsided sufficiently, and that we can now stop play-acting?”
It was Marangolo who had first suggested, a little more than a month earlier, that she help Ricciardi when the Fascist police were investigating him. The contessa suspected that actually, his true intent had been to draw her back out into the light of day. Force her to resume a life that she had long since resigned herself to giving up for good. And, finally, to accept the gifts that he had always wanted to shower her with, but which Bianca, in her state as a faithful wife of a ruined husband, had always rejected.
The creased face, the liver spots on his skin, his drab hair all pointed to the sufferings of the aristocrat’s body, counterbalanced by the continuing sharpness of his mind. Duke Marangolo, one of the wealthiest men in the city, had a diseased liver and, even though he was under the attentive care of the finest specialists of the continent, he had only succeeded in slowing the onset of the decline, without coming any closer to a definitive cure.
Bianca was his one great love, the bond tying him to this earthly realm, the force that drove him to try to survive.
“Are you finding the situation burdensome?” he asked her. “Perhaps the tongue-wagging, the gossip . . . ”
The contessa interrupted him.
“No, no, quite the opposite. In point of fact, I’ve never had so much fun in my life, and as you can see, I’m even regaining my old love of beautiful things. Thanks to you, of course.”
The duke ran his eyes over the little green velvet cap pinned at a rakish angle to her coppery head of hair and the dress, also made of green velvet, that snugly swathed the woman’s elegant figure behind the fur stole.
“In fact, you’re lovelier than ever. So why do you ask me whether it might not be best to stop? To me, it’s a great source of comfort to know that you’re once again at the center of the social whirl, however tawdry it still may be, in this deeply squalid city. But if you think that . . . ”
Bianca was touched.
“That’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it? It’s a way of luring me out of the house, of getting my mind off the thought of Romualdo in prison and my duties of loyalty toward him.”
The duke laboriously took a seat on a sofa.
“I know that you’d be perfectly capable of staying and waiting for a man who will never return. That you would have faced up to it all alone, without accepting my help, the way you stubbornly insisted on doing for years, in the face of the immense mountain of debts that he left you. And I would have respected your decision, if that had been what you truly wished.”
The woman sat down beside him.
“Well, what of it? What reason do you have for insisting that I continue with these meetings? Do you think that Luigi Alfredo . . . that Ricciardi is still in some danger?”
Marangolo took a deep breath.
“No, I don’t believe so. I only happened to learn of the accusations by pure chance, I don’t even know who brought the charges against him or why. But since I had already met him and had a chance to talk with him . . . Well, he struck me as an honest person. A man who conceals other sorrows, no doubt, but he does not possess a duplicitous nature. He had committed himself to helping you, he had provided you with the answers that you wanted: and that was enough to make me eternally grateful to him, infinitely grateful. You know how deeply I care about you.”
Bianca caressed his face with her long, silk-gloved fingers. The duke shut his eyes to savor that gossamer touch, then said: “You see, I’m well aware that my time on earth is drawing to a close.”
The contessa was about to voice an objection, but he stopped her with a wave of the hand.
“No. Don’t waste your breath on useless words of courtesy. You know every bit as well as I do. And trust me, I don’t really mind. I’ve lived long enough, I’ve seen the world. And thanks to you—forgive me if I make so bold—I’ve even experienced love. The suffering and the immense joy that it can bring.”
Bianca turned away, doing her best to conceal the sorrow and regret at the thought that she had been unable to give her good friend even a modicum of happiness.
Marangolo went on.
“I know you, Bianca. I’ve spent my life observing you. I know every single expression that appears on your face. The way you move your mouth and your eyebrows. How your eyes change color, your wonderful eyes, darkening when you’re angry, even though there isn’t the slightest hint to be had from your tone of voice. I know your cutting irony, the books you read, the depth of your intelligence. I know your lust for life and your capacity for stifling that brio
under the mountain of ideals and conventional attitudes that they’ve thrust upon you ever since you were a little girl. I was there, you know that, right? So I know.”
The woman continued to stare into the empty air, chewing on her lip to restrain her emotion. She wished she could stanch that stream of heartfelt words, but her friend went on.
“And since I know you so well, I can see that there’s a new light in your eyes. I’ve never seen that light before. Not even when you were a girl and you made up your mind to marry that feckless wretch Roccaspina, breaking my heart while you were at it.”
Bianca turned to look at him, blushing as she did so.
“Carlo Maria, I beg you, don’t say such things. You know you’ve always held a special place in my heart. I’ve always loved you, and I love you still, deeply, more than you could love a brother or . . . ”
The duke stopped her.
“ . . . Or a father. Yes, I know, you’ve told me plenty of times before. Love is a treacherous god. There have been moments when I might well have preferred that you hated me. Hatred is still an emotion with vivid highlights and bright colors, unlike mere affection, which is painted with watercolors. But by now my love has crystalized into a glass cathedral; I have no regrets, it’s the finest thing that I’ve ever built inside me. And now I’m certain there can be no mistake about it, you feel a strong emotion for that man, the Baron of Malomonte, something you’ve never experienced before, something you are probably unwilling to confess even to yourself. The same sentiment that I nurture toward you.”
Bianca leapt to her feet.
“That isn’t true! I owe him a debt of gratitude . . . He was able to . . . he freed me from the invisible rope that kept me bound to my husband and to a life I’d never chosen, but still . . . ”
The duke shook his head, wearily.
“No, Bianca. That’s not all. It’s not a mere matter of gratitude. Otherwise, you would never have accepted my suggestion that you go out with him, unleashing a firestorm of gossip and criticism. I might be wrong about anything else, but not about you.”
[Ricciardi 09] - Nameless Serenade Page 18
