Blood Curse

LV

He’d found himself a spot in the shadows. Over time, and with experience, Maione had learned how to blend in. Not like Teresa Scognamiglio, who had a natural gift for escaping notice. He didn’t have the build to pull it off, being big, tall, and hairy. Throw the uniform into the mix, and who would be capable of vanishing from sight entirely? Still, over the years, what with the stakeouts, the tailing and pursuit of suspects, he’d learned a thing or two in the way of technique.

The important thing was never to lose sight of the person, so you could stay out of their sight. Filomena walked with her eyes on the ground and never glanced at her reflection. He knew where she worked; she’d told him herself. Now he needed to determine whether Don Matteo De Rosa-the well-known fabric merchant who had inherited the shop from his father-in-law after marrying a woman widely considered to be the richest and ugliest in all of Naples-had really lost his head over Filomena like Bambinella had told him.

Taking refuge in the large entrance hall of an austere palazzo in Via Toledo, he waited for her to finish her shift and to be alone with that man; he wanted to see how he behaved. To get an idea. Just to get an idea. He wasn’t obsessed with her, of course. But he didn’t like gray areas.

He’d ruled out the guappo, Costanzo, immediately. In that city, policemen and camorristi-the Mafiosi of Naples-had learned each other’s languages by dint of doing battle with one another. Maione knew that the face-slash carried a specific meaning; it was a mark of betrayal, adultery. No camorrista would hesitate to slash the face of his beloved if he learned that she had been unfaithful to him, but that certainly didn’t apply to Don Luigi, who was happily married, and married, moreover, to the daughter of the local capo of the Spanish Quarter. If he’d done anything of the sort, it would have been tantamount to slitting his own throat.

Not him, then. So, who?

The shopkeeper, perhaps. From the limbo of the entrance hall, Maione watched him in the brightly lit store; he was diminutive, pudgy, and effeminate, leaping from one bolt of cloth to another, smiling at the women he served like a halfwit. That man didn’t have the strength of body and mind to shave himself, much less slash a woman’s face.

Maione waited patiently for the shop to close for lunchtime. Filomena said good-bye to De Rosa, who didn’t even bother to look up from the cash register. The brigadier had the distinct impression, even from that distance, that her disfigurement made him uneasy.

Not the shopkeeper.

Then who?

Emma looked out the plate glass window, as if enchanted by the stream of pedestrians, automobiles, and horse-drawn carriages. Once again, the dead child informed Ricciardi that his puppy had run away. In the café, a buzz filled the air around them, while from the next room came the sound of a piano, evoking a May gone by, red roses and cherries.

The news of her pregnancy had opened new vistas to the commissario’s eye. It was an irrevocable fact, the kind of thing that could drive men and women to commit unspeakable acts.

“Who else have you told?”

Emma smiled a melancholy smile.

“Just him. And Calise, of course, the second to last time I went to see her. For a change, I told her what fate had in store.”

“Why did you tell her?”

“Because I needed her to tell me what to do. I. . couldn’t make any decisions, unless she gave me permission. It was a curse, pure madness. You’re welcome to laugh all you like, Commissario, but she had become an obsession for me. I tried to resist the impulse; I told myself that I could do without her. Then an invisible hand would push me out of the house and I’d find myself there, in that foul-smelling waterfront, begging for her to tell me what to do, invoking her command over me. I no longer knew how to live for myself. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve never lived: first my mother, then my husband, and now the fortune-teller.”

Ricciardi listened to her every word, his attention riveted.

“And what did she say, when you told her you were pregnant?”

Emma ran her fingers nervously through her hair.

“She asked me who the father was. I was baffled: how could she not know? She, who knew everything about everyone? She knew that I haven’t let my husband lay a finger on me for a long time. That there’s only one man on earth I love. The man that she denied me.”

The commissario leaned forward.

“Denied you?”

Emma began crying as she spoke.

“I met this man at the same time I met Calise. And even though she’d never even laid eyes on him, she urged me day after day to get to know him, to appreciate him, to fall in love with him. And our love grew until it had filled up my whole life. Have you ever been in love, Commissario?”

In his mind, Ricciardi glimpsed a pair of closed shutters, and he felt a fist clutch at his heart with a stab of pain. He blinked, just once.

“Go on.”

“I was going to run away with him. Everything was ready: money, a life together, everything. I’m a wealthy woman, Commissario. Independently of my husband. I’d made the arrangements, and then I got the news that I was pregnant. What joy! A child! And I’d stopped hoping for anything like that. A love child, bound to be as beautiful as the father. I rushed to see Calise, I wanted her to be the first to know. But instead. .”

“But instead?”

“But instead the cards were unequivocal: I’d never see him again. As always, in keeping with her fundamental rule, I couldn’t breathe a word of what she told me to another soul, ever, as long as I lived. If I did, terrible misfortunes would rain down on me, him, and the baby. I had her read my cards twice, a third time, ten times. I begged her, I cursed her, I threatened her. It was no good. She said that the cards couldn’t be controlled; it was fate, a decision that came from the souls of the dead.”

Instinctively, Ricciardi looked out the window for the child who was stubbornly searching for his runaway puppy. He would have liked to tell her that the souls of the dead don’t decide a blessed thing. All they do is suffer through every minute they outlive their bodies.

“What about you?”

“I’m not afraid for myself, Commissario. I’d rather die than go back to live that empty life. And a single instant with him would have been worth all the suffering. He could have made his own decision. And after all, he had always told me that he doesn’t believe in fate. But the child didn’t ask me to be born. I’d never thought about having a child; I thought I just wasn’t born to be a mother. But now that I have it inside me,” and she held her belly tight with one hand, briefly, as if to make contact, “it becomes more important every day. It’s mine, Commissario. Nothing has ever been mine in quite this way.”

Ricciardi nodded.

“So then, what did you do?”

“I did what I had to, Commissario. I did what Calise told me to do.”