Blood Curse

XVIII

Along the street that ran from the bowels of the Sanità back to headquarters, walking briskly behind the bowed figure of the commissario, Maione looked around distractedly. He was well aware of the hostility that the good people of the heart of Naples were capable of unleashing, how quickly the complacent benevolence made up of smiles, bows, curtseys, and cap-doffings could transmute into the violence of furtive hands hurling cobblestones retrieved from the pavement at the detested cops.

He guarded Ricciardi, walking three feet behind him: not close enough to be intrusive, but not so far back that he couldn’t get to him in time to shield him with his solid physique.

Usually, while they were walking, he would observe the bare nape of his neck, his tousled, unkempt hair; he mused on Ricciardi’s absurd habit of going hatless, showing a scornful disregard for others, an indifference to his fellow man. In this city, “man without a hat” meant a man without money, like the nameless, family-less beggars who filled the porticoes by night and emptied wallets and handbags by day.

It was not lost on him, though it came as a surprise, that Ricciardi was neither an object of ridicule nor the recipient of sympathy, even from those who saw him but didn’t know him; rather, he tended to fill people with dread, an emotion midway between disgust and outright fear that the brigadier would have had a hard time defining. Maione was a simple man, unable to discern nuances, which he could only vaguely guess at. He loved the commissario; he would have liked to see him less troubled, though he couldn’t possibly imagine him being happy.

As they walked through the fresh breeze that blew down from the Capodimonte forest, leaving a new corpse behind them, Brigadier Raffaele Maione was unable to get the thought of Filomena Russo out of his head: the woman who from that morning on would have two different profiles.

He thought of the half-open door, of the strange silence shrouding the little piazzetta on Vico del Fico; of the pitiless eyes of the people who gathered in front of the basso; of the insult spat at the poor woman’s back. Once again he saw the drop of blood fall in the darkness; the bloodstained half-footprint on the floor; the woman leaning against him on the walk to the hospital, decorously, with dignity, without fear.

And he saw the horrible cut gouged into her flesh, deep, clean, inflicted with neither hesitation nor shame, without conscience or remorse. And the faint scent of jasmine that had remained on his uniform jacket along with the bloodstain, a scent not unlike the one that was just beginning to waft through the air and which would soon burst out into the streets, triumphing once and for all over the winter.

But, more than anything else, Brigadier Raffaele Maione couldn’t rid his mind of the perfect beauty of the healthy profile that he had glimpsed in the darkness of the room, or of the serene gaze staring into the middle distance.

In Ricciardi’s office, back at headquarters, the shadows began to lengthen in the afternoon light. Maione sat down again after flipping the switch for the light hanging from the ceiling, which was missing a lampshade. It had broken a year earlier and had never been replaced.

“I told ’em a hundred times to replace that shade, Commissa’. They don’t give a damn, and that’s the truth. So help me God, I’ll go down there now and slap them silly.”

“Don’t worry about it. Let it be. I don’t need it anyway; I use my desk lamp. Let’s keep going; no point in wasting time.”

Between them, with its lid removed, was the biscuit tin they had found under the sofa. Scattered over the desk were promissory notes, IOUs, and letters promising payment. They had found them arranged by maturity date, bound together by ribbons tied in delicate bows. Each document was accompanied by a scrap of paper bearing the original sum and, where applicable, the extensions granted.

Maione, with the tip of his tongue protruding from his lips and his brow furrowed from the mental strain, was writing out columns of numbers on a sheet of paper as he diligently performed arithmetic operations.

“Some saint, eh, Commissa’? A lady who helps her fellow man in exchange for three percent monthly interest. A genuine saint. A martyr, to be exact.”

“This is no laughing matter. With all these. . clients, anyone could have killed her. Look at this, there must be about thirty of them. Still, I keep asking myself: why didn’t they take the money?”

They both turned to look at the three wads of banknotes, stacked one on top of the other on the table. A substantial sum: more than you’d expect to find in a little hovel in a poor part of town, in the possession of an old and ignorant woman. More importantly, it was more than you’d expect to find left behind by a killer at the scene of a ferocious murder. Maione shrugged.

“Maybe he didn’t realize it was there. Maybe he didn’t see it-the box, I mean. The fear, the confusion. The anger, for that matter. He killed the Calise woman, then he took to his heels.”

“No. You saw for yourself, the promissory notes and the bills are covered with blood. He rummaged through the tin, with blood on his hands; then he tossed it under the sofa. Was he looking for something? Did he find what he was looking for? And if he took what he was looking for, can we trace the crime back to him? He certainly didn’t leave behind anything that concerned him. I have a feeling that none of the clients we have here”-he indicated the small pile of documents with a wave of his slender hand-“is the man who did the kicking. Let’s keep checking, to be thorough. Let’s finish our little census of the saint’s faithful worshippers.”

As night fell, moved to pity by the prolonged exertion of his mathematical calculations, Ricciardi told Maione, stricken by a splitting headache, to go home; he himself would stay on and complete the list of interest-paying chumps, all beneficiaries of the undeserved good fortune of their patron saint’s untimely death.

When he was out in the open air, the brigadier heaved a deep sigh. Now the weather had definitely changed. He felt a growling in his stomach and realized he’d skipped lunch. But he also thought of Filomena Russo’s profile, and of her wound.

Dinner could wait a little longer; he headed off toward Pellegrini Hospital.

Ricciardi emerged from headquarters two hours later, by which time the creatures of the day had dispersed, and the creatures of the night had installed themselves in the wide street that was his route home. His head down, his hands in his pockets; on his cuffs, an ink stain or two, evidence of the long reports to be completed whenever there was a murder.

As he walked among the eyes that followed him from the shadows of doorways or the mouths of vicoli, he paid no attention to the petty exchanges that broke off momentarily as he went by with his easy gait; nor did he pay attention to the bare-breasted women, who withdrew into the darkness of the cross streets as he passed only to reemerge immediately, offering themselves to anyone who felt the springtime pulsing in his veins, or who simply felt loneliness in his heart.

He walked with his head lowered, his mind filled with this new mystery, the suffering, the grief that demanded peace. Step by step, he glimpsed, by the swaying light of the lanterns that hung over the middle of the street, the trail of blood on the carpet, the miserable bundle of rags, the broken neck. That waxen figure, continuing to repeat an old proverb with the half of its shattered head that was still intact.

But he could also imagine the despair that the victim’s seedy, hidden business must have been brought to dozens of families. Usury is vile, Ricciardi thought to himself: one of the most despicable crimes, because it takes trust and turns it against those who give it. And it sucks away work, hope, opportunities; it sucks away the future.

He smiled at the surface of the cobblestone street. What irony: the old woman practiced two professions; with one she offered hope, while with the other she took it away. She had lived off of one business and died because of the other. No differently than the mysterious and sordid humanity that now surrounded him in the darkness of the narrow recesses along Via Toledo, Carmela Calise had carved out a way of life, taking advantage of other people’s trust.

In the end, those two professions weren’t really all that different. The fortune-teller and the money lender both sucked trust and hope away, and made a desert of the human soul. But the question was the same one as always: did she or did she not have a right to live? Ricciardi knew the answer. And he had no doubts about it.

Maione walked into the women’s ward of the hospital, panting slightly after hurrying up the stairs. As always, the vast, high-ceilinged room was crowded with people, even at that late hour: children crying, whole families gathered, chattering on loudly around the beds without the slightest regard for those who were trying to rest. Not a doctor or a nurse in sight.

Mopping his brow, his cap pushed back high on his head, the brigadier looked around him in search of Filomena Russo. He spotted her almost immediately because she was all alone, composed, dressed in black, in the same clothing she’d worn that morning. Maione remembered how that simple dress had been drenched in blood, the first time he’d seen it. And again he heard the thundering sound of the blood dripping in the darkness.

He moved toward her, walking down the aisle between the two rows of beds, well aware that as he passed the conversations would cease and the looks would suddenly turn hostile.

“Buonasera, Signora. How are you feeling?”

Filomena turned, very slowly, as she had that morning, more toward the sound of the voice than toward the person. The right half of her face was swathed in bandages, in the middle of which could clearly be seen a red line of blood: the disfiguring slash.

Her raven hair was encrusted with blood and sweat, her dress was dirty, her features betrayed weariness and pain. And yet, even in this condition, she was by far the most beautiful woman Maione had ever seen.

“Brigadier. I want to thank you. With all my heart.”

That voice. Maione remembered how Doctor Modo had spoken admiringly of Filomena’s tone of voice. As for him, he thought this must be what angels sound like: deep, sweet, vibrant, like the sound that lingers in the air after a church bell stops tolling. In a flash, the policemen could feel himself floating, from the hospital down to the water’s edge.

After a long moment, he came to. With only one aim in mind, that of escaping the obligation to meet the gaze of that single eye, which was the color of the night, he said: “Come, Signora. Come with me. I’ll see you home.”