Blood Curse

LXIV

Once he’d concluded an investigation, a sense of emptiness always lingered in Ricciardi’s heart. For days the thought of the murder, the grief-stricken indignation of the murdered soul, the various possible solutions to the case invaded his thoughts, his every breath. The commissario, without realizing it, never gave up, not even when he was eating or sleeping or washing or having a bowel movement. It was a noise that became the background of one’s very existence, like the wheels of a train or the rhythm of a horse’s hooves; after a while you can’t even hear them anymore.

When the enigma was solved, it left a crater behind, a crater that he circled warily, having lost the thing that allowed him to distract himself from his solitude. That was when he took refuge at the window, watching the everyday miracle of a left-handed embroidery stitch, or that same left hand preparing dinner; dreaming of a different life, fantasizing about a different self, a self that might have waved or even chatted through the open window.

Petrone had come to collect her daughter, a smile on her face, her wits once again dulled, her eyes flat and listless, the customary streamer of drool hanging from her half-open mouth, hand gripping her mother, feet dragging on the sidewalk. He had envied the girl as he watched her go, unaware as she was of the curse that afflicted her. To her eyes, the living and the dead all lived together in one single extraordinary world.

The solution. For the man who watches there is no solution.

As for the case of the fortune-teller, he knew when the solution had come to him. It was when the Petrone told him what Calise had said when she asked what she did with her money: You and I, she’d said to the porter woman who was saving for her daughter’s future, we aren’t so different after all. She too had a child. A message for Ricciardi, delivered through the mouth of her business partner.

As he looked out his office window, trying not to think about the mountain of forms he was going to have to fill out, his thoughts turned to his mother. To the dream he’d had of her, her illness, her incurable nervous condition. What was your disease, Mamma? What did you see out there, in the fields, on the streets? Why did you live locked up in your room, bedridden? What was in your blood, Mamma? What else did you leave me besides these eyes that look like glass?

Ricciardi shuddered in the cool air, a thoughtful gift from the budding spring.

Blood of my blood, he thought to himself.

Maione felt light as air. Which, when you’re a side of beef tipping the scales at 220 pounds, is pretty good. But he’d been given half a day off as a reward, the way he was every time a case was closed with positive results. He felt pretty sure that this half-day would be a very nice one.

Whenever he concluded an investigation, a weight lifted from his soul. Once again, he could face the world head on. There was no longer a crime to be avenged, a wrong to right. And his hands, his chest, and his head were still full to overflowing with the gift of that spring night that Lucia had given him, smiling without uttering a word. She was right, as usual, he decided. A time for caresses.

But now he wanted to talk to her. And when he arrived home in the light of afternoon instead of the dark of night, he embraced his wife and children and changed into civilian attire, which in his case consisted of an old shirt made of unfinished cotton, a pair of timeworn suspenders holding up a pair of canvas trousers, and the down-at-the-heel work boots he’d never be able to bring himself to get rid of. He played with the boys, who were giddily disoriented by the new air that circulated in their home. He napped for a while, then he took a seat in the kitchen to contemplate the wonderful sight of his wife, the most beautiful woman in the universe, shelling beans and breaking macaroni.

She smiled without looking up and handed him a small mountain of bean pods: Why don’t you do something useful for a change, she said. He smiled back and set to work, shelling beans into a bowl with his thumb.

Lucia stopped, looked at him, and said: Tell me about it.

So he told her.

Ricciardi finished filling out the mountain of forms that marked the end of the investigation. He set down his pen, and he closed the lid of the inkwell. The night had taken dominion. The cone of light cast by the lamp illuminated a deserted desk. The task is complete, he thought. It’s time.

He took one last look around, listened to the silence outside the door. He was the last one there. He ought to leave.

He walked out of his office, closed the door behind him. He headed for the stairs. They’re not putting me back in there, the image of the dead thief with a gun in his hand and his brains oozing out of the bullet hole informed him. Then don’t let them, he thought resentfully.

He found himself back out in the open air. The weather was perfect. The springtime was prancing around him, doing its best to catch his attention. But the man who watches and sees the dead couldn’t see or hear it.

And now home. Without so much as the right to dream of you, my love.

And Maione told her, in a way he hadn’t in years, with his heart and with his head.

Lucia found herself in the presence, first, of a poor old woman, brutally murdered, and then of a beautiful woman whose face had been slashed, and she recoiled in pity and horror. Then she saw an odd little man with a comb-over, with a sixty-year-old fiancée and an immortal mother, and she laughed until tears came to her eyes; and she imagined a woman, noble, rich, and starved for love, and felt compassion for her; and an older husband, well respected and heartbroken, and she felt pity for him as well.

Then she was introduced to a fat woman with small eyes, who had decided to become a con artist after a lifetime of honesty, and she shook her head in disapproval; but then she learned that the woman had a mentally handicapped little girl, who had witnessed who could say what horrors, and she pitied her. She followed the meanderings of a conceited actor’s deranged mind and once again she was horrified; she saw a pale little girl with the large eyes of an old woman, a child without a mamma and now without a papà, and she wept for her. She shook her head grimly at the sight of a menacing guappo and a slimy shopkeeper, both of them blood-poisoned by beauty.

And she studied her husband’s eyes carefully when he spoke to her about the woman who had decided to chew off her paw, snared in a trap, so that she could once again become mistress of her own and her son’s lives; because she had sensed the stirring of a deep old chord in him, a harmony that she believed she alone had ever heard. But he smiled at her and caressed her face. And he said to her: “Madonna, you’re so beautiful.”

She made the acquaintance of a cheerful, happy pizzaiolo; she saw the blood gushing out of his chest, along with his love for his children and his pride, and she wept for him and those three little ones. She fought alongside his wife and mother to save his name, and she triumphed at their side.

She understood once again just what children are: sons who slash their mother’s faces, who kick their mothers to death, who wait for their mothers to die so they can marry; and mothers who lie, steal, and con for them. Mothers who give up love, life, beauty, and dreams.

Last of all, she observed the man who looks out the window, and who then has his window taken from him. She heard the story of that chink in his armor, of the discovery of the forlorn love afflicting the commissario, the man who had tracked down the criminal who had murdered her Luca. She remembered him, through the mists of grief, at her son’s funeral: his green, vitreous eyes, and in those eyes, the same suffering and grief as her own.

She decided that fate moves in mysterious ways, often bringing catastrophes with it, but that it can sometimes reserve happy surprises. And that sometimes, fate can use a helping hand.

She compressed her lips. And then she smiled at the love of her life, the father of her children, both living and dead.

In the darkness of her room, Enrica did her best to regain her peace of mind. She couldn’t seem to stop crying. Humiliated, offended, angry. These were new emotions to her, and having never experienced them before, she didn’t know how to fight them. She hated herself wholeheartedly.

Her family didn’t even try to chip away at her loneliness. The girl’s wall of reserve was a barrier no one dared to knock down.

She was terrified of the kitchen window, but it was terrible being away from it: she missed those green eyes in the darkness more and more with each passing day.

She heard someone knock softly on her door. She replied by saying that she wasn’t hungry.

But her mother’s voice persisted:

“There’s someone at the door. They insist on talking with you. They say it’s important.”

She went to the door. There stood an attractive woman she didn’t know: blonde, sky-blue eyes. A black shawl, but underneath it, a nice flower-print dress. The woman smiled at her and looked at her eyes, puffy from crying. She said: “Signorina, buona sera. My name is Lucia Maione.”

Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi had eaten practically nothing. He hadn’t even responded to the worried questions of his Tata Rosa. Crushed by a sense of sadness, he had listened to the music that came over the airwaves from faraway auditoriums; but tonight there were no dancing couples, and the music was playing for no one.

It was late, but he lacked the courage to withdraw into his dark cell, where he’d be more alone than he had ever been before.

He took off his clothes and dressed for bed. Every gesture mechanical. He could have been a hundred years old, or never even have been born.

He couldn’t keep himself from looking before he turned out the lamp. And his heart leapt up, overflowing with love.

In the window across the street, a young woman, her eyes wet with tears and an embroidery frame in her hand, was looking back at him.

High above, perched on the roof, springtime twirled and laughed.