Blood Curse

XXVIII

The little bedroom where Carmela Calise had dreamed of the springtime she’d never see was cold and immersed in darkness. Maione reflected on how quickly a home could lose its life, just as soon as it became uninhabited.

Sometimes he would return, days later, to a place where no one lived anymore and he’d still encounter a vibration in the air, the feeling of whoever had lived in the place, as if they had just gone away temporarily. Other times, however, just a day after the murder, he’d walk into an apartment and find it inert, devoid of life, devoid of breath.

He didn’t like digging through dead people’s possessions. He hated sticking his nose into that little temple, a chapel that still housed a surviving thought or an old emotion. It made him feel like an intruder.

He carefully measured his gestures: a mark of respect for the departed. He’d have to rummage through the drawers and armoires, lift up carpets and tablecloths, move dishes and pans; that was his job. But no one could make him do it disrespectfully.

He thought of Doctor Modo, who would have to rummage through much worse places in search of clues, but the thought did not console him.

Not far from him, standing on the threshold, his back to the spacious room where Carmela Calise had received her diverse clientele, Ricciardi watched Maione conduct his search and listened to the old proverb uttered incessantly by the lips of the dead woman. Pay, pay. Money owed and payments due, still, even as she was making her way out of this life.

Who could say what it was that made a person look back over their shoulder from the dark bourn of death, anchoring their last thought in the things of this world: money, sex, hunger, love. It was understandable enough for a suicide, Ricciardi thought; but someone who had been murdered? He had never picked up a thought of fear, expectation, or even simple curiosity with regard to the something or the nothingness that awaited them.

“No, Commissa’. There was nothing but the notebook that Cesarano found. No other notes. And there are no dates in it.”

“Look in the bed.”

Maione walked over to the lumpy, narrow mattress supported by an old wooden bedframe. With slow, careful movements, as if he were preparing the bed for a night’s sleep, he uncovered it, pulling aside the bedspread and the clean but threadbare sheet. Underneath, the mattress was stained yellow.

“She was an old woman, poor thing,” Maione said, almost apologetically, looking at the commissario with a melancholy smile. Then he lifted the mattress. Beneath it, in the middle of the broad plank that served as the main support, the two men spotted a small bundle wrapped in a handkerchief. Maione picked it up. Ricciardi drew closer.

Inside were several banknotes: one hundred thirty lire, a tidy sum. And a scrap of paper; written on it, in the dead woman’s unsteady handwriting: Nunzia.

The sea breeze came in through the open window. The curtains flapped lazily.

Emma Serra di Arpaja suppressed the urge to vomit; the odor filling the room seemed rank with rotting fish and putrefied seaweed.

Stretched out on the sofa, she looked up at the frescoed ceiling. The days when she still loved that house were long ago; she remembered events, not emotions, much less passionate ones.

These days, she spent almost all her time out of the house, and when she was in the palazzo in Via Santa Lucia, she shut herself up in her own suite of rooms. That is, until it was time for the pantomime they staged for the benefit of the domestic help, when she’d walk into the chilly bedroom to sleep alongside the stranger she’d married. Except for those nights when she decided not to come home at all, offering no explanations to anyone, least of all him.

Sometimes she thought of her husband as an obstacle, a barrier separating her from happiness. Other times, she simply saw him as an unhappy man, aging in a state of melancholy. It was easy for Marisa Cacciottoli and the other serpents that surrounded her to say that he was a man with an enviable position in society, a figure of considerable prestige. She didn’t give a good goddamn about his prestige or his position.

If she’d never met Attilio, she thought, sooner or later she might have resigned herself to an empty life like the ones led by the matrons and wives of her milieu. Charity balls, canasta, the opera, gossip. At rare intervals, a swarthy sunburnt lover, either one of the fishermen that sang along the beach of Via Partenope or one of the starving factory workers of Bagnoli, just to have the mental strength to face a future no different from the past.

But instead, it was her fate to find love.

Every morning she woke up she counted the minutes until she’d see him at the theater, or in one of the out-of-the-way places that they chose to meet in from one night to the next, how long it would be until she felt his hands upon her, his body atop hers. For some time now, she had understood that without him, without his divine perfection, she might as well be without air to breathe. She had lost, once and for all, the ability to resign herself to her fate.

She choked back a sob at the thought. Now what could she do? Her mind flew to the old woman. Damned old buzzard. Absurdly, the faces of Attilio and the Calise woman were bound closely together in her mind.

Day by day, her belief had grown stronger that her life now depended on him: she couldn’t go on living without Attilio. But if she wanted to live with him, she would need the tarot cards.

In the rotating succession of kings, aces, and queens, the old woman read what was fated for every single day of her life. They’ll steal your scarf at the theater, and sure enough, it would vanish. You’ll trip over a beggar, and there she was, sprawled on the pavement with a sprained ankle. Someone will give you a bouquet of flowers on the street, and that’s exactly what happened. Your car will hit a pushcart, and it promptly transpired. A thousand confirmations had turned her into a slave: she no longer dared to do anything unless Carmela Calise, with her tarot cards, had ordered her to.

It was she who had told Emma that it would be in that theater crowded with coarse and vulgar people: that was where she would find her true love.

And that’s what happened.

First Attilio had smiled at her, and then he had approached her on the way out of the theater. Of course, she had noticed him onstage. And how could she have overlooked his masculine beauty? That memory brought a smile to her lips; her heart raced at the mere thought of it. And she had lost herself in those eyes, eyes that reminded her of a starry night. She had rushed to see the old woman and had told her every detail, whereupon the old woman had gazed at her, expressionless, as if she didn’t understand. Maybe she really didn’t understand; maybe she was merely an intermediary between her and some kind soul in the world beyond who had decided to reach out and save her.

Then came days spent living, living and nothing else. Heaven and then hell, locked up in her prison cell, staring at the ceiling. And never again after that day had she allowed her husband to lay a finger on her. In her soul, she was Attilio’s woman, and there was not a single aspect of her previous life that she missed. No more lying. She had taken care of everything, selling jewelry and other possessions. They had only one concern, and that was being happy.

Only one thing was missing: for the old woman to tell her yes. The damned witch. Emma thought back once more to the terrible moment a few days earlier. To the blind fury she had felt rising up inside her. To the terrible condition imposed upon her: that she should never see Attilio again, not even on the stage. And now, what could she do? Now that she could no longer go back?