Blood Curse

XXIV

Walking downhill from his home, Maione stopped at Vico del Fico. How could he help himself?

The thought of Filomena had found fertile soil in which to put down roots and germinate in the brigadier’s pragmatic mind. Leaves, blossoms, and fruit, all bearing the same sad smile, those eyes with the night inside them, that bandage: like a beautiful coin caught under a carriage wheel.

Maione felt a dull ache. His innate sense of justice could not stand to see such an atrocity go unpunished. Whoever had dared to ruin that work of perfection, that creation of God, deserved to spend many years in a prison cell, meditating on what they had done.

Was he falling in love? If someone had so much as dared to ask him that, he would have flown into a rage. It was a policeman’s duty when faced with a crime, whatever its nature, to investigate, delve into it, uncover the truth, and make arrests.

Still, he preferred not to admit to himself that, faced with any one of the countless other crimes that stained the city’s streets every day, he wouldn’t have spent a sleepless night staring at the ceiling, awaiting the first light of dawn with such overwhelming desire. And he wouldn’t have left the house so early, even before the sound of a woman singing on her way to wash clothes at the fountain came wafting along on the first morning breeze.

Maione started walking down from Piazza Concordia, his pace just a little faster than usual; the difference was so slight, so slight as to be undetectable to the naked eye. But the two sad eyes that observed him from the crack between the shutters, which were just barely ajar, could see even what was invisible.

The door of the basso on Vico del Fico wasn’t bolted; the slab of wood that served to shut out the night had already been removed. Gaetano, Filomena’s son, had to be at the construction site where he worked as an apprentice by dawn. Maione stopped several feet short of the threshold, respectfully; he removed his cap, then after a moment’s hesitation, clapped it back on his head. With his cap in place, he was the on-duty Brigadier Maione, whereas without it, he really wouldn’t have known how to explain what he was doing there.

One story up, a window slammed shut decisively. He looked up but saw no one. The vicolo observed and sat in silent judgment. He took a step forward and knocked gently on the doorjamb.

Filomena had cleaned and disinfected her wound before getting dressed and preparing the bread and tomatoes that her son ate for lunch. She hadn’t slept a wink all night: out of pain, anxiety, the thought of the tests she’d been through and those that still lay ahead for her. Out of remorse. The large ungainly silhouette that appeared in the doorframe brought her equal measures of uneasiness and security.

“Buongiorno, Brigadier. Please, come in,” she whispered, serenely.

“Signora Filomena,” said Maione, touching a finger to his visor and taking a single step forward, without entering the room. “How are you feeling? Doctor Modo said that you should go see him whenever you like, in case you’d like to have him change the dressings for you.”

“Grazie, but no, Brigadie’. I can do it myself. If you only knew how many times my son hurt himself when he was little, playing in this vicolo. The mammas of the Spanish Quarter are all nurses of sorts.”

Maione took off his cap and began turning it in his hands. There was something about Filomena’s voice that always made him feel at fault. As if he were somehow partly to blame for the wound beneath her bandage.

“Signora, I know that this isn’t a pleasant subject for you. But my line of work isn’t like any other; if I see, if I learn about someone who has done something like. . like this thing that happened to you, well, I told you before, it’s my duty to investigate, to get to the bottom of it. I can understand that you’re afraid, that if you talk and you say something that. . if there’s someone who could, you know, do something to you, to your son. I. . you don’t have to worry. I’d never do anything to put you in danger. But if someone’s hurt you, they have to pay for what they’ve done.”

Filomena listened, her eyes fixed on the eyes of the brigadier. He, on the other hand, had no idea where to look. In the still chilly air of that third morning of springtime, Maione was sweating as if he were climbing a volcano, surrounded by molten lava.

“Brigadier, I thank you. I told you before and I’ll say it again: I don’t want to press charges against anyone. Sometimes certain. . situations develop that look like one thing but are really another. That’s all I can tell you and that’s all I have to say.”

“But if. . if you. . I have to ask you, if you have. . if you’re in a relationship with someone, in short, how can I put this. . Jealousy can make people lose their minds.”

A silence fell that was as thick as the earth covering a grave. Far away, out in the world, a woman’s voice was singing:

She sang the verse a second time:

Tell her that she’s a rose of May

That I can’t sleep or think

That I think of her always, that she’s my life. .

“No. No one, Brigadie’. There hasn’t been another man since the day my husband died. It’s been two years.”

That voice. Confident, stern. And distant, too, as if she were speaking from the bottom of the sea. Maione shivered and felt as if he had just uttered a loud oath in the middle of the city’s cathedral, just as the bishop was raising the consecrated host.

“Forgive me, Signora. It was never, never my intention to cast doubt on your good name. In that case, is there someone who wants you, who’s threatening you? Tell me; point me in the right direction.”

“Brigadier, you’re going to be late for work, and so will I. I’m certain that you have much more important matters than mine to attend to. Don’t worry; I’m not afraid. Nothing is going to happen to me. Nothing else.”

Maione studied her in the dim light. There was an absurd amount of certainty in Filomena’s scornful gaze, as if she had no doubts about what she was saying. He sighed and put his cap back on his head. He took a step back.

“That’s fine, for now. If that’s how you want it. . but I’ll have to keep coming back, until I’m sure that neither you nor your son are in any danger. If anything occurs to you, send for me. It only takes five minutes to get here from headquarters.”

He turned to go and almost bumped into the woman whose scream had first caught his attention two days earlier, the same woman who had so effectively expressed her contempt for Filomena. This time she was holding a bowl and glaring at the brigadier.

“Donna Filome’, it’s Vincenza. May I come in? I brought you a cup of hot broth. Is there anything you need?”

Maione decided that sometimes bloodshed helps to change people. He waved a farewell and left.

The man who had just stepped out of the front door of the adjoining basso felt like his head was about to explode. He’d tied one on the night before. And the night before that. Cheap wine, smoke, bawdy songs, all to help him find the strength to sleep without la schifezza-the filthy mess-which always made him feel the next day the way he did this morning.

But a poor man who’d lost his wife, he thought to himself as he hurried toward the construction site where he worked, what’s he supposed to do, stop living? Or should he go out and find another wife? And who would take him anyway, a man like him, with a small daughter, and penniless to boot?

Salvatore Finizio, first-class bricklayer, widower. A man who had nothing to smile about and very little to eat, who had to take care of his daughter, Rituccia, feed her and clothe her. And so if wine and weariness made him forget about poor dead Rachele every once in a while, was that such a sin? If God Almighty is truly God Almighty, He’ll understand. And He’ll forgive. Madonna, what a headache.