Blood Curse

XXVI

By the time Ricciardi left headquarters and set out for the Sanità quarter, there could be no doubt that springtime had made its grand entrance. There was a note of cheerfulness in the air, a gentle wind blew in changing directions, with varying intensity, carrying off the ladies’ little hats and the men’s fedoras and bowlers, rumpling the occasional overcoat. A childlike wind, one that was capricious and playful, but had stopped biting.

The dominant scent was that of the sea; but mixed in with it were the smells of new green grass and leaves, which became stronger the closer he got to the forest and the verdure of the Villa Nazionale or the Orto Botanico, the botanical gardens. The scent of flowers hadn’t yet emerged, but it hovered in the air, like a promise.

All up and down Via Toledo that morning, acquaintances had begun lingering for a chat. It wasn’t hot out exactly, but at this point the season was clearly warming up.

In the vicoli there were snatches of song and voices calling, balconies thrown open to let in a bit of sunlight. Clotheslines strung tightly between one window and another shared sheets and shirts, moving lazily in the fresh breezes. People struck up conversations with a smile, for no special reason; here and there strolling vendors spoke in familiar, even intimate tones with the young ladies who leaned out their windows, lowering coins in baskets and hauling up fruit and vegetables, or soap, in exchange.

The street organs were churning away beautifully: Amapola, dolcissima Amapola, Amore vuol dir gelosia. From the little neighborhood marketplaces rose the tone-deaf symphony of the vendors: for once, their cacophonous rumba was a pleasure to hear. Although no one saw it, if you looked closely the springtime was dancing on tiptoes, leaping from one hat to another, from one of the trees that lined the street to the next, from balcony to balcony.

And with the newly diminished space between one person and another, coin purses vanished from pockets and handbags were whisked off café tables, here and there friendly conversations deteriorated into slapping fights, and now and then a knife blade glittered in the sunlight. But this too was part of springtime. The lines of sailors and construction workers outside the box office windows of the whorehouses grew longer: it was the new season casting its spell, stirring the blood. Young women could be seen weeping over their lost loves. And the springtime laughed mockingly at all the promises that would not be kept.

All these thoughts swirled through Ricciardi’s wary mind as he walked toward the Sanità, followed by a taciturn Maione with downcast gaze. As they passed, a dark bow wave tinged with fear washed over the street, and then closed up behind them, giving way to the trickery of the first burst of fresh spring air once again.

They could have waited for the streetcar, crowding in with busy housewives and mothers, idle youths in search of a sweet smile, but Ricciardi preferred the open air; it helped him think. He wanted to take another look at the scene of the crime, get another whiff of what had happened there.

They marched past the one hundred construction sites of the perennially rising city: all those new apartment buildings with their thick white walls, tiny square windows, and no balconies. Grandiose mottos over the flat street doors, lettered in bronze or engraved in stone, commemorating dates and slogans down through the ages. Ricciardi had no particular love for these new architectural contours, and was always moved by the sight of ancient, noble arches and the delicate friezes that lightly ornamented the massive marble blocks.

The commissario’s thoughts wandered to the countless other construction sites, from the new Vomero to the hilltop of Posillipo, from the burgeoning districts of Bagnoli that were springing up to provide housing for the steelworkers in the new mills, and out to San Giovanni. He mused that, as always, Naples was a city that got bigger without growing up. Like a little girl magically transformed into a grown woman overnight, still playful and childish, with an adolescent’s sudden outbursts of anger.

As he passed close by the scaffoldings, the commissario glimpsed the figures of men who had fallen in the construction of the imposing palatial edifices dictated by Rome’s new ambitions of grandeur. There had always been deaths on the job, even in the years when he’d first come to the city to study, when old buildings were being renovated or badly constructed walls were being reinforced. Ricciardi couldn’t say exactly why, but he found it somehow more upsetting to think that people were dying needlessly in the service of ugliness.

He knew perfectly well that he would encounter two dead men along the street that ran from headquarters to Via Santa Teresa. At night, they were especially gloomy, standing there at the foot of the buildings from which they’d fallen, murmuring their last living thoughts; by day, he almost couldn’t tell them apart from their old coworkers: one of them, however, had fallen face first, and the contorted mouth with which he continued to curse all the saints had been practically driven into his chest; the other one, a fair-haired boy wearing a sweater that was at least two sizes too large, had landed on his back; he stood hunched over in an unnatural posture. He was calling for his mamma.

Teresa could feel the atmosphere that the coming springtime brought in through the open windows, and she was aware of the contrast with the stubborn winter that refused to abandon the dark rooms of the palazzo. Her peasant upbringing had made her attuned to the rhythm of the seasons, and her whole being was reborn at that time each year. Thus she found it all the more disheartening to have to face that gloom so thick you could cut it with a knife, as she walked through the magnificent hallways.

That morning, once again, the lady of the house had come home after spending the entire night out, then shut herself up in her bedroom. The professor hadn’t emerged from his suite, and the tray with last night’s dinner had been left untouched on the lacquered wooden console table outside his study. She had knocked gently when she brought it, but she’d been unable to understand his response. She thought she heard him sobbing.

If she could have said her piece, Teresa would have said that what they needed were children. She’d raised her own brothers and sisters; she’d held them in her arms two by two when she was still just a little girl herself, and she knew the joy children could bring. The house where she worked was a house without mothers, grim and unsmiling.

The door to the study suddenly swung open.

The man she saw looked nothing like the Ruggero Serra di Arpaja whose impressive learning and prestigious place in society carried so much weight. The stiff collar was askew, the tie dangled slack; the waistcoat was buttoned off-center, the unkempt hair revealed a receding hairline that was usually carefully concealed. And his eyes were the eyes of a madman, bloodshot and swollen, bulging out of their sockets. A madman who had wept through the night.

The professor stared at her in bewilderment, as if he’d never seen her before. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He coughed; he clutched at the handkerchief in the pocket of his rumpled trousers. He reeked of cognac.

“The newspaper,” he said, “where’s my newspaper?”

Teresa nodded in the direction of the console table where the breakfast tray with the daily paper had taken the place of the tray with his dinner. Ruggero grabbed the newspaper and started leafing through the pages, one by one. He was feverish, his breathing labored. Teresa stood petrified. The man stopped at one page and read without blinking. He’d even stopped breathing. He’d found the news report he was looking for.

He staggered as though he were about to faint and leaned on the tray to steady himself, knocking it to the floor in a crescendo of shattering glass and tinkling metal. Teresa leapt backward. Ruggero glanced at her, then went back to staring at the newspaper. He was weeping. The young woman wished she were somewhere else, anywhere but there. He let the newspaper fall to the ground, turned around, and went into his study, closing the door softly behind him. Teresa noticed that he was barefoot.

She was illiterate, so she ignored the newspaper. If she had been able to read, she would have seen the headline that had so upset the professor: Dead Woman in the Sanità: Was a Wooden Club the Murder Weapon?