Blood Curse

VIII

Ricciardi ate, and Tata Rosa watched him eat.

The same thing every evening. He would rather have come home to find she’d already retired for the night, since she was seventy years old and had been up since dawn. But she refused to relinquish her fundamental principle: she would not go to bed until she’d seen him eat every last bite. He would gladly have foregone the same narrow selection of dishes. She complained that she didn’t how to cook anything different. All he wanted was to give his brain a rest. She spent the whole day charging the batteries of her complaints and waited for him to walk through the door to unleash them on him. It’s idyllic, no doubt about it, mused Ricciardi as he chewed, without tasting it, a mouthful of spaghetti with basic, routine tomato sauce, the third time in six days it had been on the menu.

“It’s a sad, miserable life you lead. Just look, you had your hair cut yesterday and you’ve already got your bangs in your eyes again. And look at you, you’re pale, so pale that you look like a ghost.” At this, Ricciardi grimaced wryly. “Tell me, do you ever see daylight? Today, for example, there was a scent in the air that blew down from the forest of Capodimonte, it was just lovely, but did you even think of taking a walk in the gardens in front of police headquarters? No, eh? I knew it. What’s a poor old woman like me supposed to do? Am I supposed to close my eyes once and for all, condemned to the knowledge that I’m leaving you with no one to take care of you? Don’t you want to find yourself a pretty guagliona, so you can put me in a hospice and let me die in peace?”

Ricciardi gravely nodded in agreement, occasionally looking up from his food to show his full appreciation of the disaster that had befallen his Tata, whose dreadful fate it was to have to look after him. He hadn’t actually heard a single word she’d said. Still, he could have recited her litany word for word; he’d listened to it so many thousands of times over the years. He had other things on his mind, as usual, and he dealt with Tata Rosa the way you deal with the rain: you wait for it to end and do your best to stay dry. If he so much as dared to answer back, he’d have to spend the rest of the evening persuading his Tata that there was no life he’d rather live.

And besides, he had a date.

Enrica was washing the dishes. The whole family had moved into the living room, in that cheerful daily migration that carried noise and disorder away from her domain, giving her a chance to look around with a sense of satisfaction.

She wasn’t pretty; you wouldn’t bother to give her a second glance if you saw her walking down Via Santa Teresa on her way to Mass, or buying greens from the vegetable cart on the corner. Tall and swarthy, she wore myopic eyeglasses with tortoiseshell frames. She was twenty-four years old and she’d never had a boyfriend. She wasn’t pretty, it’s true, and she cared nothing about fashion; but there was a gracefulness about her, in the way she smiled, in her slow, careful movements, with her sure way of doing things, her left-handed precision.

She’d studied to be a schoolteacher, and she spent mornings tutoring children whose parents had given up all hope of keeping them in school; without raising her voice or resorting to punishment, she seemed to be capable of taming even the most feral little beasts. Her father and mother worried about her. They often talked anxiously about her lack of marriage prospects, but they’d given up trying to matchmake with the sons of friends. She had always declined these introductions, courteously but firmly.

Ricciardi had walked into his bedroom, hairnet on his head, hands in the pockets of his smoking jacket. The old oil lamp on the night table cast a yellow light on the few pieces of furniture: a chair, the small writing desk, the two-door armoire. He was standing next to the bed, his back to the window; his hands were clammy in the pockets, he was short of breath, his racing heartbeat pounded in his temples.

He heaved a long sigh, turned around, and took two steps forward.

Out of the corner of her eye, Enrica saw the glowing lamp behind the windowpanes on the opposite side of the narrow lane. Fifteen feet, no more; she’d done the calculation a thousand times. And about three feet higher up, at most. A seemingly infinite distance. She wouldn’t have traded it for any other sensation on earth, that minute of waiting between when he lit the wick and when his silhouette came into view. It was like opening a window and waiting to feel the breeze blowing gently against your face, or being thirsty and lifting a glass of water to your lips. That backlit figure, with his arms folded or else at his sides, or perhaps with his hands in his pockets. Motionless. No gesture, no signal, no attempt to make contact aside from the simple fact that he was there, every night, at nine thirty. She wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the world. And slowly, with her own particular slowness, she finished washing up with a series of gentle motions, then sat in the armchair near the kitchen balcony and took her embroidery frame in her lap, or else picked up the book she’d been reading. Enveloped in that gaze, she smiled and waited.

Ricciardi watched her embroider. As he watched her, he spoke to her, telling her about the things that most troubled him, and she helped help him to untangle his thoughts. It was strange, no question. Through the glass of the two windows, he watched the unhurried gestures he’d fallen in love with, more than a year ago. Her carriage, the way she read, the way she embroidered. Herself. He thought he’d never seen anything in all his life as lovely as the way that girl embroidered. And yet it was more than he could do to approach her; the man who remained impassive in the face of the most horrific crimes was terrorized by the idea. He had inadvertently found himself face-to-face with her a few months earlier at the vegetable vendor’s cart, and he’d taken to his heels in the most undignified fashion, leaving a wake of broccoli behind him. She had watched him, tilting her head to one side in that way he know so well, her eyes half-closed behind her tortoiseshell spectacles. And the man who knew no fear had run for his life.

If only you knew, my love. If only you could imagine.

Fifteen feet away, the girl who was so good at waiting embroidered, stitch by stitch; and on the frame, beyond the sheet to be added to an optimistic trousseau, she saw a pair of green eyes, unknown to her and yet so familiar. She thought that if two roads are destined to meet, they will eventually, however many miles it takes. And she also thought back, with a hint of shame, to the visit she’d made just two days earlier at a girlfriend’s insistence, to that strange place, a place she never would have imagined. She remembered the questions she’d asked and the answers she’d been given, without hesitation, as if they came from a book written sometime in a far-off future.

Embroidering and smiling with her head tilted to one side, Enrica was thinking about something Ricciardi could never have imagined.

She was thinking about the Knight of Clubs.