Blood Curse

XXXIII

The sea had started slapping against the rocks off Via Caracciolo around seven o’clock that night. Now the waves, whipped up even higher by the buffeting wind, were splashing so high that the spray could be seen from the balconies along Via Generale Orsini in Santa Lucia.

Ruggero Serra di Arpaja stepped out onto the balcony to feel on his face the first breaths of spring wafting up from the sea. They seemed somehow threatening, and brought him none of the comfort he had hoped for.

It wouldn’t be long now; he knew that. He didn’t have a clear idea of what was going to happen, but at any rate he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. The newspaper described those details that he knew about, but seemed to have left out others.

He had no particular confidence in the abilities of the state police, nor in the skills of the corps of magistrates; he’d had daily dealings with them both for more years than he cared to remember and he had always pictured them in his mind as a large, ungainly beast, slow-moving and incapable of reaching its objective.

In recent years, moreover, the machinery of justice had been even further hindered by politics, which slowed the grinding of its gears and altered its course to suit its own goals.

But now, everything he had built was teetering on the brink. For the thousandth time he thought through the various potential outcomes with the anguish of a trapped rat. The memory surged up inside him on a wave of nausea that he managed to ward off by shutting his eyes: blood. It was one thing to talk about it dispassionately in his study with the guilty individuals whom he defended, the scum of the earth, no doubt, but wealthy, and willing to pay for their freedom. It was quite another thing to find yourself surrounded by it.

All that blood. He instinctively looked down at his bare feet; it dawned on him that since he’d come home that day and removed his blood-spattered shoes, he’d never put on another pair. He had to get rid of those shoes, and he had to take care of it himself; there was no one else he could trust.

He sighed in the sweet breeze. His greatest anguish, the anguish that clutched at his throat until he was unable to breathe, didn’t stem from the thought of what might happen to him. His anxiety came from the thought of what Emma might do. And if he wanted to know the answer, he would have to screw his courage to the sticking place, leave the apartment, and go to the theater. That very night.

A dog barked somewhere out in the countryside. Bambinella was sitting in a Chinese-style chair and had assumed the pose of a prim young lady, knees together and hands resting in her lap.

“Well now, Brigadie’, what brings you here? Have you finally decided to try something different? It goes without saying, for you, it’d be on the house.”

“Listen, Bambine’, there are still plenty of normal things I haven’t tried yet; so why would I get a yen for ‘something different’? You know I’m here for the usual reason: work.”

The femminiello let out a refined snort.

“Oh, Madonna mia, what a bore! Work, work, and more work. Go on and take a half hour off once in a while! A handsome man like you, so masculine, and with all that hair! Oh dear-but you could probably use a little more on your head, couldn’t you?”

“Hey now, don’t get cute with me or I’ll run you in, all right? My hair’s no business of yours, and besides, it’s right where it ought to be. Why don’t you worry about your own hair? Your face is turning dark blue.”

“Eh, I know, Brigadie’, I have the kind of beard that’s always showing. But I still have to make myself up for the night, and you can rest assured that when I’m done you won’t be able to see a thing. So how are things with you? I heard from some of my girlfriends in the Sanità that you’re trying to find out who murdered Donna Carmela, the one who reads the cards, am I right?”

Maione spread his arms wide.

“What a city! It makes me sick. Someone sneezes at the train station and someone out at the Vomero says bless you! Yes, we’re looking into it. Do you know anything?”

“No, Brigadie’, I really can’t help you on that one. Aside from the fact that that’s not my part of town, with all the stinking, penniless lowlifes that live there, I haven’t heard anything about it. All I know is that she was doing a little loan-sharking in her spare time. Did you know that?”

“Yes, that’s something we already knew. What else can you tell us?”

“She really was good at reading cards. A little girlfriend and colleague of mine from Via Santa Teresa went to talk to her because she was worried about her boyfriend, who’d told her he was working the night shift on a construction site in Giugliano and couldn’t see her in the evenings The old woman read her cards and told her”-and here Bambinella made her voice even deeper and squinted, as if she were peering into a crystal ball-“‘Check your facts, because that man’s not going to Giugliano. He’s going to a bordello on Viale Elena.’ And sure enough she goes to that very same bordello and she sees him, coming out arm-in-arm with a whore! It took three people to hold her back; she was going at them with a straight razor, ready to slice both their faces. That old woman was good at what she did. But who could have killed her? That’s something I really can’t tell you.”

Maione shook his head, awestruck.

“No doubt about it-people really are stupid. How could anyone be so gullible? Calise was a fraud. She’d gather information about people, the way I’m doing right now with you, and then tell people their present and their future. And she took anyone willing to listen for all the money she could squeeze out of them.”

Bambinella looked down at her lacquered fingernails with a sigh.

“Brigadie’, sometimes people just need something to believe in. Don’t you ever feel that need yourself?”

Maione looked out the window, where the countryside was gradually turning to greet the spring. The evening carried chirping cicadas in its arms and you could hear the tall grass rustling. Believe in something? He immediately thought of Lucia, laughing in the sunshine on the rocky beach at Mergellina, twenty-five years earlier.

“Sure, Bambine’, I see your point. A person has to believe in something, to make it through this life. But I’m here for another reason. The other night a woman in the Spanish Quarter, on Vico del Fico, was cut, badly. Her face was slashed.”

“Yes, I know. Filomena la Bella. There’s been a lot of talk about her. The virgin whore.”

Maione squinted.

“What do you mean, the virgin whore? What is that supposed to mean?”

Bambinella giggled, lifting one hand to cover her mouth in an affected manner.

“It’s just a figure of speech. That’s what I call those women who get a reputation for being a whore without ever doing anything wrong. The fact is that when people gossip, they say just the opposite of the truth. It happens all the time, Brigadie’.”

“In this case, what’s the truth of the matter?”

“Well, let me start by saying that everything I’m about to tell you I know through one of my closest girlfriends, who was her late husband’s cousin-because this woman is a widow, in case you didn’t know.”

Maione nodded his head yes.

“And she has a twelve-year-old son, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Almost thirteen, I think. A quiet boy, dark-skinned like his father. I saw him a couple of times, when I went with Irma, the cousin I mentioned, to pay a call on them. You can’t imagine they way they looked at the two of us, there in the vicolo,” Bambinella said, giggling again behind her hand. “There was this one old bag looking down at us from right above the basso, dressed in black; she looked like one of the witches of Benevento, with a face that you couldn’t even begin to imagine.”

Maione remembered Donna Vincenza, with her compressed lips and the hissed insult she spat at Filomena.

“Actually, I’m pretty sure I can imagine it, trust me. Go on.”

“Well, the Lord Almighty gave Filomena Russo the gift of beauty. If you’ve ever seen her, even now that her face has been slashed, you know what I’m talking about. She’s the most beautiful woman in Naples, and possibly on earth. That is, she used to be. Poor thing.”

“What do you mean, poor thing? Because someone slashed her face?”

“No, Brigadie’: because she was born beautiful. That was the curse of her life. You have to understand that when a woman is that beautiful, it’s best if she’s also born with a whore’s heart. If she has the heart of a whore, then she can enjoy a life of luxury, she and her children, her mother and father, the whole family. She’ll let herself be kept, she’ll show off and conceal that thing she’s got between her legs, lucky her; while the men, miserable shits that they are-no offense meant to you, Brigadie’-get a whiff of her scent and run after her like dogs in the street. But if you’re like Filomena, and you don’t have the heart of a whore, then you just have to live your life in hiding, if you want to live in peace. And no one will let you live in peace anyway.”

“And just who is it who won’t let her live in peace?”

Bambinella looked Maione right in the eye, for a moment that seemed to last for a long time.

“Lately, the guappo, Don Luigi Costanzo. And also the merchant who owns the fabric store where she works. She told us about it the last time we went to see her. One of them was threatening to hurt her son, the other one wanted to turn her out onto the street.”

Maione clenched his fists. This wasn’t lost on Bambinella, who went on with her story.

“Of course, now I sincerely doubt anyone will be bothering her anymore.”

“And in your opinion, who could it have been?”

The femminiello shook her head.

“Take it from someone who works with beauty and tortured love: when someone becomes infatuated with a beautiful person, they might kill them, but they’d never disfigure them. It was neither of those two, Brigadie’. I don’t believe it. But I really couldn’t tell you the name of the lunatic who destroyed that splendid beauty.”

“So why do they call her a whore, if she’s such a respectable woman?”

“Because women refuse to admit that another woman might be superior to them in some way. They think that if men lose their heads, it must be over a certain something else-not just what they see alone. If you only knew how many times the same thing had happened to me-and continues to happen!”

Maione stood up and moved toward the door.

“Thank you, Bambine’. If you find out anything else, please send for me. And stay out of trouble; I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fixing your problems. You’re not my son.”

Bambinella smiled fetchingly, but with a hint of sadness in her eyes.

“Sure, Brigadie’, I’ll be a good girl. But there’s something I want to say to you. Beauty can make you lose your head. A beautiful face can do it, but so can a beautiful soul. You have a wonderful family; don’t let yourself get sucked into anything. If you don’t mind my telling you so.”

Maione stood stock still in the doorway.

“Well, I do mind. This is strictly a professional matter, as far as I’m concerned. Take care of yourself.”

And he left and hurried home.