Blood Curse

XXXVI

In front of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie the sidewalk was crowded with busy people rushing in all directions, the stores were still open, and the air was soft and sweet.

Sitting on the church steps, calm and composed, was Rituccia. She was waiting. If you looked at her closely, you could tell that she wasn’t begging for coins. She’d have selected a more strategic location if she were, closer to the church entrance or right by the street. Instead, the little girl sat just outside the cone of light cast by the streetlamp swaying over the middle of the street, where she was unlikely to be seen at all. She’d turned twelve, but she looked younger than she was, and she knew that was an advantage; the less she stood out, the better. That’s how it had been ever since her mother had died, when she was still just a little girl, left alone with her father.

Alone with her father.

She felt a long shiver run through her in the already warm air.

She’d given a lot of thought to what had to be done. To how to fix things. For Gaetano and for herself.

The solution would be painful and difficult. It wouldn’t be easy to do what was necessary, and the aftermath would be hard as well. Not because she’d be lonely. If anything, that part would come as a welcome change. She sighed.

She saw him hurrying through the crowd, out of breath. His floppy cap covered his swarthy face and his hands were still spattered with mortar, as were the trousers he wore, which ended mid-calf. Thirteen years old already, but Gaetano Russo also looked younger than his years, unless you looked in his eyes.

He sat down next to her, as usual without so much as a hello. Just two children sitting on the church steps, but in their eyes they were a hundred years old between them. She looked at him, and he finally spoke.

“Things have gotten better. They did what you said they would, both the guappo and that pig at the place where she works.”

She smiled briefly. Simple. Men were all the same.

Tears welled up in Gaetano’s eyes.

“She was so beautiful. And now. . damn them.”

She squeezed his hand.

“What about the rest?”

He lifted his head and looked at her. His dark eyes, glistening with rage and tears, glittered in the darkness like the eyes of a wolf.

“Everything just like we said. You’re sure? Tomorrow?”

She nodded. Her eyes still, staring straight ahead of her. Mamma, understand what I have to do. If you can see me, I’m sitting on the steps of a church. If you can hear me, you know what’s in my heart. And what’s on my body, almost every single night. Ever since you went away. I have to do this, Mamma. You understand, don’t you?

A gust of wind came up from the sea. Perhaps that was what drew out the solitary tear that rolled down her cheek.

Maione was drying his tears with his handkerchief.

“Commissa’, that guy just kills me. Children, he wants children! He’s sixty, she’s sixty-two, and he wants children! That young lady is out of luck; the mother is going to live another hundred years, plus two years for mourning. She’s out of luck, the blushing young fiancée! If you ask me, we’d better keep an eye on Passarelli. Any minute now he’s going to put a pillow over Mammà’s face and that’ll be the end of her. And then the lovebirds can elope!”

Ricciardi shook his head with the half-grimace that on his face constituted a smile.

“People are strange, all right. No one ever seems to see himself the way he really is. All right, who’s next?”

Maione tucked his handkerchief away and picked up his notebook.

“We don’t know much about this one. The young lady is named Signorina Colombo; another girl accompanied her to the appointment, an old client of Calise’s, who hadn’t discussed them with Petrone yet. The girl who accompanied her had seen her about a matter of the heart. . her fiancé was far away. . then, apparently, she got married. So Petrone assumes the other one came for the same kind of problem. Calise usually spent two or three sessions delving into the matter and then she’d tell the porter woman what she’d found out, and Petrone’d start investigating. On the day of the murder, she was just getting started on this one. Shall I show her in?”

Ricciardi felt a strange sense of uneasiness wash over him. He looked around; his office was no different than usual. He passed his hand over his eyes; maybe he was coming down with a slight fever.

“Yes, have her come in.”

And Enrica walked into his office.

When, several months earlier, Ricciardi had found himself face-to-face with this same young woman at the vegetable cart, he had stared at her for a moment. Just a fleeting moment: but in his mind, in his imagination, and in his dreams he had relived that instant countless times.

One of those moments whole lives are built around. One pair of eyes meeting another for the first time.

For normal people. But he knew he had no right to be normal.

After all the time he had spent thinking about that moment, like a man sentenced to life imprisonment or shipwrecked on a desert island, he’d been led to believe that he’d be ready if he ever happened to run into her by chance. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Enrica was just as petrified as he was. The summons to police headquarters had aroused her curiosity but it hadn’t frightened her; she had no reason to be afraid. On her way there, she had run through the events of the past few days in her mind and come to the conclusion that it must have something to do with an episode that she had recently witnessed: four young Blackshirts roughing up an elderly man in the street and calling him a defeatist. Nothing too serious, but these days you could never know what you were dealing with.

And now she was sitting across from the man whose silhouette she glimpsed every night, at the exact same time without fail, the man who haunted all her dreams, her most secret yearnings. Staring once again at those crystal-clear eyes in which her heart seemed to be reflected.

Maione looked up from his notebook and blinked. An unnatural silence had fallen over the office. Even the piazza outside the window was silent. A rare thing at that time of the day.

The springtime went mad with delight. It loved those moments when blood coursed silently through the veins.

The brigadier looked at the two of them as if he were a spectator, waiting for something to happen. Then he let out a cough.

The noise resounded like an explosion. Ricciardi leapt to his feet, his rebellious lock of hair dangling over his forehead, his ears flame red. He opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again. Finally he said, “Please, have a seat,” only the words didn’t come out. He cleared his throat, loudly, and repeated the invitation.

She said nothing; it was as if she’d fallen under some kind of spell. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She felt like running away but instead she just stood there, with her hands gripping her handbag in front of her chest as if to protect herself, her hat fastened in place by two hatpins, her mid-calf skirt, and her low-heeled shoes. Absurdly, a voice in her head began cursing her for not choosing a different dress, something more modern, and for not wearing makeup.

Ricciardi had remained standing beside his desk, uncertain whether to step forward or back. He also had the impulse to run; he eyed the window appraisingly, seeing as the door was occupied by her. He gazed beseechingly at Maione, who had never seen Ricciardi in such a state.

The brigadier came to his senses and finally intervened, bringing that surreal vignette to life.

“Signorina, prego, take a seat. We’ve just asked you here for some information. This is Commissario Ricciardi. He has some questions he needs to ask you.”