Blood Curse

XXXV

As he works with his hands, his mind sees it all again: the blood, the body on the floor, the biscuit tin, him rummaging through it, looking for his promissory note among all the others, the note he had signed when he still believed in his dream.

He works with his hands, kneading, rolling out, gently slapping the dough, his heart filled with anguish, the real significance of things. Of his children, his wife, his mother, my poor little old darling mother. His dishonor, the rumors, the heads turning as they walk past.

As he works with his hands, only with his hands, the heat of the oven scorches the hairs on his arms, the fire crackles and mutters promises of hell; but not his eyes, his eyes scurry from the dining room to the front door, to the tops of the hats going by in the street, to the glances of people out walking in the air of rebirth.

If only this spring had never come. If only he’d never given up his pushcart.

Madonna mia, so much blood. How could there be so much blood in such a tiny body? The carpet-the carpet had turned another color. I called out to her, she didn’t answer. Twice. Madonna mia, help me if you can.

He remembers when he was little and a man from the vicolo was sent to prison for stealing who knows what. Then he remembers how his Mamma would divide up their meal, already so small, and set part of it aside for the now fatherless family, just as everyone else in the quarter had done. Still, the children were all forbidden to play with the children of the thief. He’d never let that happen to his own children. Never.

They’d never take him alive. He wouldn’t let them take him.

He stopped mincing the salted anchovies, reached his hand down under the counter to check the long, razor-sharp blade of the filleting knife.

Today would be the day. He could feel it in his bones. But they’d never take him alive.

Maione had pulled out his notebook and was reading back over his notes.

“Mamma mia, I can’t make sense of any of it, even though I wrote it all myself. That day, Calise didn’t see anyone in the morning, so there were only five appointments. She told Petrone that she had to go out to take care of some business of her own. Apparently, that wasn’t a common occurrence. Anyway, she was back by lunchtime and she started receiving clients in the early afternoon. I sent for all of them. Perhaps you know some of them, Commissa’? There are people from your part of town. A certain Ridolfi, Pasquale; he can’t come in to headquarters, we’ll have to go see him. He fell down the stairs as he was leaving Calise’s apartment, in fact, that same morning, and now he’s at home with his leg in a cast. You remember those stairs, don’t you, Commissa’? I almost fell down them myself the last time I was there. Luckily they’re so narrow that even if I did fall, I’d’ve stuck fast between the walls. Then there are the others. The first one to come in was Passarelli, Umberto; he lives in Foria. He’s an accountant who works at the Department of Records.”

“So what did Petrone tell you about him?”

Maione laughed.

“Ah, Commissa’, this story’s a rib-tickler. Now then, Passarelli the accountant is sixty years old. He lives with his mother, who’s eighty-seven: normal so far. The accountant has been engaged to marry a certain Signorina Liliana, who lives nearby, since he was twenty. A forty-year engagement, Commissa’! And do you know why they never got married? Because Signora Passarelli-the would-be mother-in-law, in other words-was opposed to it. And since she controls every penny, and is old but never seems to die, the two of them are just waiting.”

“And why was Passarelli having his cards read by Calise?”

“That’s the funny part: to find out when his mamma’s going to die! In fact, she’s been on her deathbed for twenty years now. Petrone knows the housekeeper of the old woman’s doctor; that’s how she was able to gather the information Calise needed to read his cards. Unbelievable.”

“All right, all right, bring him in. Who’s next?”

“A young woman, a certain Colombo. It was only the second time that she’d been to see her, with regard to a matter of the heart, which I’ll tell you about later. Our real problem comes with the next woman, a prominent lady from Santa Lucia, Emma Serra di Arpaja. This one’s serious business: one of the chief patrons of their little establishment. Petrone couldn’t tell me anything about her. That one always met directly with Calise. Maybe there’s nothing worth knowing. I wanted to ask you: what should I do? Should I have her summoned along with the rest of them? Or should we approach this one with a bit more discretion? I wouldn’t want to kick up too much dust and have the top brass start kicking up a fuss.”

Ricciardi snorted in annoyance.

“How many times have I told you that I don’t want to hear that kind of talk! If there’s an investigation to be done, we do it. Have her summoned along with all the others. Then, if they try to throw a wrench in the works, we’ll find a way of kicking them in the head. And the last one?”

“Iodice, a pizzaiolo from the Sanità quarter. This one doesn’t have to do with the cards; he owed her money. But the promissory note has vanished. I checked. Maybe he paid up and left, and that’s why he’s in the notebook.”

“Or else he murdered her and took the promissory note. We’ll see. Bring in Passarelli.”

The accountant Umberto Passarelli didn’t believe in fate, which was a rather remarkable thing for a man who went to have his cards read. He believed that the course of events was largely determined by the way a man dealt with things. The rest depended on whether the day got off to a good start or a bad one.

And so he paid the greatest possible attention to the things that happened in the first hour after he woke up in the morning, considering them to be unequivocal indicators of the marks that day would leave on his life, and he prepared himself for the remaining twenty-three hours with the appropriate amount of brow-furrowing. Those signs, however, were not always easy to interpret.

That morning, he had awoken to the sound of a number of vigorous knocks on the street door: bad luck. However, he had been the only one to hear them, and Mamma had gone on with her melodious snoring: good luck. Two policemen in uniform: bad luck. But they were polite: good luck. They wanted him to come down to police headquarters that very same morning: bad luck. But they hadn’t placed him under arrest, nor were there any charges outstanding against him: good luck. At least, not yet, they had added: bad luck.

And so, Umberto Passarelli, who cautiously entered Ricciardi’s office with a courteous “May I come in?” had decided to adjust his usual strategy in accordance with a wait-and-see attitude.

He was a skinny little man, his perennial nervousness betrayed by any number of tics, the most irritating of which consisted of squeezing his left eye shut while simultaneously pulling his lips back on the left side of his face: it looked as if he were winking and starting in fright at the same time. Diminutive gold eyeglasses, stiff collar, shirt cuffs dotted with tiny ink stains.

A careful comb-over had been raked across his otherwise bald pate. The light breeze that came in through the window immediately began toying with it, lifting it now and again. Ricciardi was reminded of the procession on the Feast of Pentecost back home in his village, where the participants acted out the arrival of the Holy Ghost with fluttering strips of cloth on their heads.

After taking down his identifying information, the commissario asked the accountant whether he was aware that the Calise woman had been murdered.

“Yes, of course, I read about it in the newspaper. Such a shame. Quite inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient?”

“Why certainly, Commissario. You see, now I-and who knows how many others like me-will need to find someone else who can help us. And it’s no easy matter, believe you me,” he said, with a wink of his eye, “finding someone you feel you can trust to tell you what to do.”

Ricciardi furrowed his brow.

“What do you mean, ‘tell you what to do’? Did you do whatever the Calise woman told you?”

The man’s left eye quivered.

“Of course I did, Commissario. Otherwise, why would I go to see her? After all, with what I paid. .”

“And just how long had you been her. . her client?”

“For a year. I’d go to see her roughly once a week.”

“On what pretext? That is to say, what was she giving you advice on?”

The corner of the man’s mouth jerked toward his neck.

“Well now, you see, Commissario, I live with my mamma. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a wonderful woman, an extraordinary person, and she has no one but me. So I have to look after her, and it isn’t always easy, because she has serious health problems, she’s very old, and she has a bad temper. If you ever heard her yell. . it’s enough to wake up the whole neighborhood.”

“I understand. And what does the Calise woman have to do with your mother?”

“Nothing, it’s just that I’m a very methodical person. I like to be able to plan my schedule, know what’s going on, set dates.”

“And so?”

Eye, mouth.

“And so, it would help me to know, that is, more or less, you understand, when my mother will shuffle off this mortal coil. My fiancée-because I’m engaged, in case you weren’t aware-a lovely young lady who is infinitely patient, will need some advance notice to prepare her trousseau, and then there’s the ceremony-you have no idea how much is involved. I don’t want to make you think that I’d like for Mammà to die, heaven forbid. Still, a couple needs to be able to think ahead. There’s also the period of mourning to observe, at least two years for a mother. And of course the apartment is full of medicine; she doesn’t like the furniture; some changes will need to be made. We’ll have to get the nursery ready as well.”

Maione, who had done his best to hold himself back throughout the interview, broke in.

“Ah, you have children?”

Comb-over, mouth, eye once, twice.

“No, but both my fiancée and I would like to have a big family.”

“And just how old is the young lady?”

Eye, mouth, eye. An instant later, an uncertain tremor in the comb-over.

“She’s two years older than I am, sixty-two. But she looks so much younger than her age. For now, I can’t even take my pension and retire, until. . until. . things are sorted out.”

Ricciardi shot Maione a look of reproof.

“And how did the Calise woman seem when you saw her? Did you notice anything unusual about her, was there anything she said. .”

Passarelli put on a thoughtful air, enlivened by a crescendo of tics.

“No, Commissario, I don’t think so. Maybe a little quieter than usual. Not so much as a hello, just the daily update on Mamma’s health. But on that she was extraordinary! Just think, she told me the same exact things the doctor had said the day before! I couldn’t breathe a word about her to Mamma, but if I could, we could have saved the doctor’s fee entirely!”

Ricciardi looked at the heaving shoulders of Maione, who had turned to face the window. The commissario shook his head.

“All right, Passarelli, you can go. Make sure we know how to get in touch with you, though; we might need to talk to you again.”

The accountant stood up, sighed, winked, twisted his mouth into a grimace, sketched out a courtly bow, and turned to leave. As he left the office, his comb-over waved good-bye charmingly from a distance.