Blood Curse

XXXII

That night, Ricciardi felt more than his usual need for some semblance of a normal life. He yearned for simple, ordinary, measured gestures. Contact with the stuff of everyday life: chairs, tables, utensils, food. Healthy glances, normal expressions.

He’d had his fill that day of weeping, feelings of hatred, death. He couldn’t wait to be at his window.

He reassured Rosa, who wasn’t used to him coming home so early. He told her that he had a grueling day ahead of him, and he just wanted to get a little extra rest.

He ate quickly, read for a while, listened to the radio: grand symphonies that as if by magic restored his peace of mind. With his eyes closed, he imagined cinematic couples in ball gowns and tuxedos twirling over a glistening marble floor, following trajectories known only to them, without ever so much as grazing each other. The ladies with their dazzled eyes lost in the faces of their preux chevaliers; one hand raised, fingers intertwined with those of their partners, the other hand holding their skirts.

As he sat in his dark-red leather easy chair, by the dim, diffuse light of the table lamp, he thought of himself and the lives of other people as a grand ball in which the dancers brush up against each other as they move, alone or as couples, each moving to their own rhythm. Every so often, as they danced, there would be a collision, and someone would fall. And it fell to someone else, someone specially assigned to the task, to help the fallen to their feet and punish whoever had caused the accident. It was an ugly job, but someone had to do it.

At the usual time, perhaps a few minutes early, he found himself standing by the window, in his bedroom illuminated by the yellow light of the old kerosene lamp that had once belonged to his mother. In the dining room of the apartment across the way, the evening meal was coming to an end. The diners were rising from their seats, to return to their own occupations after the interlude of conviviality. A few lingered behind, over coffee, a slice of cake for the little ones.

Ricciardi imagined that genuine love, the kind of love that didn’t pollute the soul, could easily become the driving force of one’s life. As he watched that family, he intuitively understood their feelings for each other. A distracted caress, a smile, an affectionate hair-tousling. Gestures that were normal and, at the same time, extraordinary. In short, a family.

He was capable of articulating in any of a number of ways the grief he felt at losing something he’d never actually possessed. He had only the vaguest of memories when it came to his ailing mother; he couldn’t remember her caresses, or the warmth of her embrace. He could only dream of her.

Across the way, the woman under whose spell he had fallen remained the mistress of the dining room and kitchen, as she was every night. She had started to wash the dishes. He watched her familiar actions the way one listens to a beloved record heard thousands of times before, predicting each move, studying her gait.

In his thoughts, he had become accustomed to calling her “amore mio.” Words that he would never actually utter in her presence; in all likelihood, he would never speak to her. All I could offer you is my grief and pain, he thought: the terrible burden of the cross I bear.

He’d never dare to stand by the front door of her building or ask Rosa to find out about her, much less discuss her with one of the neighborhood gossips. Incredible, considering that he made his living investigating the lives of others.

It didn’t bother him too much, though. He preferred to imagine, dream, and watch from afar. The one time he’d run into her on the street he’d turned and fled; and if the same thing happened again, he’d just turn and run away again.

As he admired the woman’s precise, measured gestures and her luminous normality, Ricciardi thought about Carmela Calise and Nunzia Petrone, peddlers of illusions. What an awful crime it was to trick people into thinking that they could achieve the unachievable. The porter woman had said that people were sad when they came and happy when they left. But what kind of happiness could such a deception bring them? You, with your slow, certain motions, would never let a con artist sully your dreams with her false playacting. Your dreams must be like you: moderate, delicate, and peaceful. You’d never go to a fortune-teller to have them interpreted.

Even more than kissing you and holding you in my arms, I’d like to be in your dreams. And I’d like to keep them safe for you.

It was late by the time Maione left the Calise woman’s apartment. He carried with him the list of all those she had seen on the last day of her life. Names, dreams, addresses. Their personal traits, their families, what had driven them to beg the woman for her pronouncements, paying for each word in cold hard cash.

The brigadier didn’t understand. He couldn’t see the point of paying someone such exorbitant fees for reading tarot cards. Were these people rich? Perhaps there were some on that list who earned their money by the sweat of their brow. He walked on, shaking his head: the Petrone woman had rattled off all the information, names and numbers, displaying an extraordinary talent for investigation. If it’d been up to him he would have enlisted her on the spot, with the rank of private first class at the very least. Among the names, there was even one that struck him as important, one he’d make a point of mentioning to the commissario: not the sort of person who would be happy to be summoned to police headquarters. They’d deal with that tomorrow; right now he had other business to take care of.

He walked uphill through the Spanish Quarter, huffing and puffing because he was overweight and it was a steep climb. As he went, the usual dumb show of greetings and cap-doffings, always at a respectful distance. He’d decided to pay a call to someone. He wasn’t thinking of dropping by Filomena’s to see how she was doing or ask if there was anything she needed, though perhaps he would do that the following morning. Nor was he thinking of going home; it was still early and, though he was unwilling to admit it even to himself, the idea didn’t appeal to him.

He clambered up the hill, passing under the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the Bourbon-era road that encircled the old city. Behind Vicolo di San Nicola da Tolentino, at the back of a blind alley that came to an end in the tall dry grasses and shrubs of the countryside, there was a small apartment building. A steep, narrow staircase led up to a garret apartment, its windowsills heaped high with pigeon guano. It was the home of a person who had been very helpful to Maione on more than one occasion.

Panting again, he knocked on the door, which was falling off its hinges. A deep but gracious voice asked who it was, and Maione said his name. The door swung upon.

“Brigadier, what an honor! If I’d known you were coming to pay me a visit, I’d have put on some makeup and changed my underwear!”

Bambinella almost defied description. Her black hair was gathered in a bun, with a few stray locks falling out around her ears. She wore dangly earrings and her face was heavily made up. A garish nightgown parted to reveal a lace negligee underneath. Fishnet stockings, high heels. A faint five o’clock shadow could be seen on her cheeks, under a thick layer of face powder.

“Come on, let me in. It’s taken ten years off my life just to get up here.”

“You can’t be serious. A big strong handsome man like you, all worn out from a little climb? Come right in, make yourself comfortable. Can I offer you a cup of ersatz coffee, a little rosolio cordial?”

“A glass of water. I need to talk to you, and I’m in a hurry.”

Maione had met Bambinella a couple of years ago, when he’d taken part in a raid on a underground bordello in Via San Ferdinando, one of those low-cost operations where older women and country girls peddled their services without proper license or certification. Among the array of homely, handicapped, and elderly “signorinas,” this Latin beauty with her almond-shaped eyes had seemed out of place; and in fact, when the police demanded identification, the “defect” emerged.

Maione was forced to intervene because Bambinella, whose real name could not be ascertained, managed to lure three of his men to her in rapid succession, practically scratching the third man’s eyes out with her claws.

During the night that followed, which Bambinella spent in a cell as a guest of police headquarters, she never stopped sobbing, talking, and shouting in an unbroken stream of abuse. In the end, Maione took it upon himself to order Bambinella’s release. In part because, technically speaking, Bambinella couldn’t be called a “lady” of the evening.

As he listened to Bambinella’s seemingly endless chain of delirium, the policeman came to the conclusion that the lady-boy, or femminiello, to use the Neapolitan term, possessed a great deal of useful information. And that the debt of gratitude he created by releasing her might well be more than amply repaid.

Since then, Maione had cashed in his chips with Bambinella more than once, sparingly but always to good effect. A number of case-cracking details were provided right in the garret where Bambinella continued to run her discreet little business. Maione looked the other way, and Bambinella whispered in his ear.