Blood Curse

LXI

Sitting at his desk, Ruggero Serra di Arpaja looked out at the springtime through the glass doors of his balcony. The silk curtains reached toward him, then sank back into place as if the breeze were playfully beckoning him to come outside. The air smelled of salt water and fresh blossoms.

The rays from the sun sinking behind the hill of Posillipo filled the room with sparkling light, hurting the man’s tired eyes. Another sleepless night. Another day of waiting.

Unfamiliar emotions, encountered after a lifetime spent speeding along rails determined by his social status, had taken command of his every decision. Lately, he’d done things that he could never have even imagined, and he’d discovered a part of himself that he hadn’t known existed.

In that final moment, that morning, he had done his best to maintain appearances: his dark suit, his perfectly ironed shirt, his face clean-shaven, his hair combed and brushed. Only his eyes, behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, betrayed the torment of his soul. The news that Emma was pregnant, which she had told him after a long night of reciprocal insults and accusations, bore the mark of redemption and irrevocability. No matter what, after that piece of news, nothing could ever be the same again.

The morning sun had brought him a new and extraordinary awareness: he loved his wife and without her, life meant nothing to him. Let the police come arrest him, let them denigrate him, let them blacken his reputation, let them toss it to the tender mercies of his so-called friends; if Emma left him, none of this would mean anything to him anymore.

Without taking his eyes off the indifferent springtime, he pulled open his desk drawer and took out the revolver. He’d already checked to make sure it was loaded. Not another loveless night. Not another loveless springtime.

He put on his overcoat. Let’s go to the theater, he thought.

For the last performance.

Sitting before her mirror, Emma tried to cover the weariness of her sleepless night with face powder. She couldn’t stand the idea of Attilio seeing her looking any less beautiful than usual.

She knew that by going to the theater, she was violating Calise’s iron rules; but could a woman who hadn’t even foreseen her own death really determine the fate of others? And what if the old woman had been wrong from the very beginning? What if she’d condemned her to misery by mistake?

She tried to steer her thoughts elsewhere, anticipating the flood of emotion she usually felt when she saw Attilio: the echo of his love, the passion and the tenderness that she’d come to depend on.

She’d had the car made ready, but she hadn’t yet packed her bags; just a few hours to go until their meeting, she still hadn’t decided what she’d do. She’d never made a decision for herself in her life, and now she was being asked to make the most important one of all, all alone, without help.

A new feeling, perhaps an impulse to protect her womb, dominated her and roiled her in confusion. All the selfishness that had driven her life till now, her relationship with Attilio, her intolerance for the world she had always lived in, had dissolved. She was going to be a mother. It was as if her entire life had been leading up to this one thing; she found herself experiencing everything in a radically different way than she had imagined, and she felt so distant from and so unlike her girlfriends, who had limited themselves to bearing children only to entrust them, as mere necessary annoyances, to hordes of nannies and governesses.

She felt a vague feeling of compassion for Ruggero, in whose overwrought eyes she’d detected genuine pain; but she had convinced herself that he was Calise’s murderer and, for the good of her child, she would have to separate herself from him and his grim fate.

She’d listen to her heart, she decided. She’d make up her mind when she saw Attilio walk on stage with that kingly gait she knew so well. To the theater, then.

For the last performance.

Ricciardi and Antonietta were in the orchestra seats, a little off to the side but still up front, close to the stage. The commissario wanted to make sure the girl could clearly see the faces of both Romor and the Serras; he just hoped that Ruggero had arranged to sit near his wife who, as always, had reserved the box in the first row, the one closest to the stage.

He didn’t really know what he was expecting: a false move, an off-key reaction. He had identified the guilty party, beyond the shadow of a doubt, but the clues he had amassed were just that: clues, not proof.

He was pinning everything on a misstep by the killer, or else solid identification by the only possible eyewitness, Antonietta, even though he was well aware that her mentally impaired status meant she’d never be allowed to testify at trial. But it could be enough to unhinge the killer’s confidence. He’d seen it happen before.

Hunching his head down between his shoulders, he did his best to blend into the dim light of the orchestra seating. As he had entered the auditorium, he had spotted Camarda, Cesarano, and Ardisio, three men from Maione’s team, in plainclothes and strategically deployed. The brigadier himself had taken a second-row seat right below the stage, concealed by the upturned lapel of his overcoat and the brim of his hat. Ricciardi looked up at the box just as Emma was taking her seat, more beautiful than ever, but with eyes that betrayed uncertainty, grief, and weariness. She was alone.

After a few minutes, the commissario glimpsed an indistinct figure standing in the shadows behind her. The professor, he decided. Maione locked eyes with Camarda and darted a glance in that direction; the plainclothesman nodded and left the auditorium. Ricciardi understood that the brigadier was sending him to keep an eye on the door of the box, so he could be in place if things started moving quickly. He knew what he was doing, good old Maione. He really knew what he was doing.

The house lights went down and a round of applause rose up. All the actors were on their marks, both the ones behind the curtain and those in the auditorium. Everyone was ready.

For the last performance.

The play began with an opening monologue by the lead actor. Ricciardi recognized the man who had spoken so rudely to his brother the night before. Even if his attention was focused elsewhere, the commissario perceived the sheer magnetism that the actor emanated, immediately captivating the audience. Antonietta looked straight ahead, continuing to mumble meaningless strings of words. The stage lights lit up the front rows, giving Ricciardi a clear view of both Emma and Ruggero. The woman was gripping the balustrade, her hands white, her face tensed in clear expectation of something; her husband’s face looked like a mask, with the expressionless features of a mannequin.

When the monologue was over, the lead actress made her entrance, an extraordinarily ugly woman of equally remarkable talent. Ricciardi guessed that she must be the lead actor’s sister, given the resemblance between them, and he absentmindedly thought that it must be quite a savings, to have a family-run theater troupe. The audience was delighted: the duet was brilliant, the pace was good and quick, the jokes were dry and salacious; everyone was laughing except for Signor and Signora Serra, the policemen, and Antonietta, dreamily chasing after who knew what visions.

After a while, hard on the heels of the exchange of banter, Romor made his entrance. The main character greeted him with a sarcastic phrase, prompting the audience to break into a thunderous burst of laughter. Ricciardi remembered the actor mentioning how much the man disliked him, and he now saw that he wasn’t overstating the case. In the row in front of him, three young women, showing no regard for their dates, whispered something among themselves and giggled nervously; the man had a following. When silence returned, the actor took a step forward, ready to speak his line; and then something unexpected happened.

Even from backstage, as he was awaiting the moment to make his entrance, Attilio had realized that the front-row box was occupied once again. That box had been empty for many nights now, and he had grown accustomed to the resulting feelings of uncertainty, doubt, and loneliness. Like a lamb to the slaughter, night after night, he had been forced to submit to the damned lead actor’s mockery, without a chance to fight back, without any hope of revenge.

But tonight, the last night of all, Emma had returned. He’d seen her, and she was alone, no longer shielded by a girlfriend. That could only mean one thing: that she had decided to live up to her word, to meet him there so they could run away and start a new life together, in defiance of fears and social conventions. He was radiant as he strode on stage. Let that conceited mountebank take his last sadistic pleasure; he was beyond caring now.

When Attilio made his entrance, Emma practically leaned out over the balustrade of the box. She was looking at the stage, but to an even greater extent, she was looking inside herself. She searched for the echo of the passion that she thought she could feel just fifteen minutes earlier. But she felt nothing. The man she had once loved more than anyone in the world suddenly seemed like a perfect stranger. She clearly understood that he no longer meant a thing to her, and in a flash she realized that their affair was well and truly over. She wondered whether this was what Calise had seen in her tarot cards that last séance; and, just as she was thinking of Calise, she heard the old woman’s voice down in the orchestra seats. Behind her, Ruggero took a step forward, raising his hand to his overcoat pocket.

At first, Ricciardi thought he was having a vision. Not wanting to miss Emma’s reactions or even the slightest movement from Ruggero, he had turned his attention away from the stage and the orchestra seating. In complete silence, the audience was waiting for the next line, while the performers acted out a moment of discomfiture following Romor’s entrance. Suddenly, the stillness was broken by a loud voice that he instantly recognized as the voice of Calise’s ghost. He turned like a shot and a bloodcurdling image met his eyes.

Antonietta had risen to her feet. Hunched over, she’d shrunken in size: her legs were slightly bowed, her head tilted to one side at an almost unnatural angle; her left hand was dangling motionless at her side, while her right hand sketched out an uncertain, flailing gesture, almost as if she were trying to drive someone away or ward something off. Her normally obtuse expression had taken on a melancholy air, so that she seemed in thrall to some terrible memory.

A hoarse sound issued from her throat; even Ricciardi, a man accustomed to horrors of all kinds, would never forget the words that emerged, loud and clear, from the deformed mouth of that girl who had never spoken in her life.

“’O Padreterno nun è mercante ca pava ’o sabbato.”

God Almighty’s not a shopkeeper who pays His debts on Saturday.

All the spectators had turned to look in her direction. There was even a small ripple of applause from people who thought that this was some new element of the play itself. The actors on stage exchanged startled glances.

Romor took a step forward, squinting and shading his eyes with one hand against the glare of the spotlights as he peered into the orchestra seating. He said: “Mamma? Is that you?”

Ricciardi stared, petrified, at the ghost of the old woman, reproduced to perfection by Antonietta. He felt something clamp down on his lungs, expelling the air out through his mouth and leaving him breathless.

There was a violent shout, like the voice of an outraged child. Attilio lunged off the stage and into the audience, eyes bugging out of their sockets, upper lip curled back in a snarl to reveal teeth like those of a ravenous wolf.

“Damn you, you’re not my mother!”

Maione leapt up from his seat with surprising agility and seized the actor’s legs, bringing him down face-first. But in spite of the brigadier’s considerable weight, the man continued to claw his way toward the girl, with his fingers curled like talons and a roar issuing from deep in his chest and out his twisted mouth. Antonietta for her part stared at him, repeating Calise’s last words over and over. It was not until Ardisio and Cesarano had piled on as well that Attilio stopped struggling and burst into tears.