Blood Curse

V

She hated that place, and yet she couldn’t live without it. As she was waiting, Emma reflected on this fact: she had tried more than once, but she couldn’t live without it. She hated the horde of clamoring children. She hated the steep, narrow stairs that led up to the top floor, the tattered humanity that she met there: the poverty-stricken tenants of the building and the customers she encountered, who stood aside to let her pass.

She understood: she was as ashamed as they were. This is how she imagined a bordello, not that she’d ever been in one. Still, this is how she imagined them: places where being recognized could mean forever tarnishing a sterling reputation built up at the cost of great effort over the years.

And then there was the smell. Garlic, rancid food. And urine, as an aftertaste. Urine in the street, in the entryway, in the apartment. Sometimes she brought flowers, but they were viewed with suspicion, as if they concealed an implicit request for a discount. She only brought them so she could breathe in there, to ward off the smells. Of course, the woman was elderly, and the elderly can’t control themselves. She was happy to be young and she had every intention of remaining young as long as she could. And pretty. And rich. And desired. Now that she had finally found true love, life was more beautiful than ever, and the future was radiantly bright. Everyone’d been saying it in recent years: the Italian nation’s future was going to be an exceedingly bright one. So why shouldn’t her own be? How long would she have to go on paying for a mistake made by others, though the penalty was visited upon her?

She needed one last blessing, one final authorization from fate. She was certain of her feelings, but she couldn’t afford to make another mistake. Not anymore.

It was hot in the apartment. She had left her house wearing her heavy overcoat, a thick fur stole around her neck, and her charming aviator’s cap with earflaps, declining the proffered car and chauffeur. She remembered the look in the man’s eyes last time, a mixture of commiseration and distaste for the long wait surrounded by the dozens of street urchins who tried to scale the massive vehicle, as if it were a mountain made of steel. She unbuttoned her coat. She wished she could smoke, but the old woman didn’t like it. Where was the old woman? How long would she have to wait, before she could finally begin her life?

Standing at his office window, Ricciardi was looking out onto Piazza Municipio. The street was still wet from last night’s downpour, but now the sky was blue and cloudless. A faint breeze brought with it the smell of the sea.

The trees in the garden of the piazza down below were perfectly shaped to provide shade for the wrought-iron benches. The four green refreshment stands were beginning to collect customers, newspapers, and soft drinks.

A few carriages, four automobiles, a truck. In the distance, beyond the piazza, loomed the three smokestacks of the English cruise ship that had docked a few days ago. Overshadowing everything, the immense Maschio Angioino, the old Angevin fortress.

Few living beings. No dead people at all. Ricciardi permitted himself to take a deep breath, and he held it in. Slowly, he exhaled. He turned around to face his office, with the city behind him. Before him lay “Ricciardi’s cell”-that’s what the headquarters staff called his office.

Once again, the woman witnessed the ritual, her heart in her throat, the usual pounding in her ears. A million times she’d told herself it was a bunch of nonsense, and a million and one times she had found herself once again in the grip of those lovely and terrible sensations. Fate. She watched as fate took shape before her.

The old woman had been unlike any other. She used to laugh whenever her idle and bored girlfriends told her how they spent their loveless afternoons, chasing after the dream of a better tomorrow. She’d even gone with them once or twice, only to witness ridiculous playacting, theatrical witches with assistants who pretended to be ghosts and produced sepulchral voices from the Beyond. The problem was that the Beyond was a crawlspace behind a fake wall, not even all that well concealed behind a half-open curtain.

Then one day she’d met Attilio, after a play. She’d gone to the theater alone as usual, and that same, magical night, she’d had that chance encounter with the old woman. The old woman had approached her with her shuffling gait, and she had mistaken her for a panhandler. She’d ignored her, and was about to pass her by. But then the old woman seized her by the arm, staring at her in the darkness; she stopped, speechless. Then, with the same scratchy voice that she’d later listen to so eagerly, the old woman told her in no uncertain terms that she was unhappy because her heart was empty.

That phrase: an empty heart. How could she have known that that was exactly how she saw herself-a woman with an empty heart? Attilio had intervened, impetuous, so muscular and handsome, without warning, first under the portico of the theater and then out in the rain. He’d chased the old woman away coldly, with exaggerated indignation. But before leaving her, the old woman had whispered an address in her ear. And the young woman had gone there the next day. Since then, she’d returned at least a hundred times, returning unfailingly, to follow the paths that the old woman indicated, for help overcoming her doubts, to decide which direction to turn at the crossroads that had always made her hesitate. She couldn’t so much as breathe without the old woman’s help. She paid her the pittance she asked for, but she would have given twice, three times, a hundred times more. She was buying the strength to live.

This time, once again, it was her life that was at issue. She was expecting a definitive response, and she already knew the answer in her heart: this time she’d be able to feel she was alive, perhaps for the first time; this time she’d be able to choose love. She instinctively clamped her legs together at the thought of his hands. Her stockings rustled faintly and she felt ashamed, convinced as she was that the old woman could easily read her thoughts. But the old woman was laboriously sitting down at the card table, with great pain: her bones, of course. The smell of garlic and urine wafted over her, and she blinked slowly. The misshapen fingers reached out for the deck of greasy cards. She held her breath.