Everyone in Their Place

XXVI

From the kitchen, Maria Colombo watched her daughter in the dining room, tutoring three little boys; two of them were the children of a well-to-do lumber wholesaler, and they were twins; the third, tiny and dark-skinned, with bright dancing eyes, was the concierge’s grandson.

Enrica often talked to her about how extremely intelligent this third little boy had proven to be, how he often did his work twice as fast as the twins, even though he was two years younger. While Enrica received a regular and sizable salary from the children of the lumber wholesaler, from the concierge’s family she received nothing but plentiful smiles and boundless gratitude.

Whenever Maria pointed it out to her, Enrica would reply that you don’t live on bread alone. There, that was exactly what drove Maria crazy about Enrica: her absolute lack of any common sense. On the subject of marriage, too, which they’d discussed endlessly, that was always at the root of their disagreement: practical common sense. Could it be, Maria wondered, that she was the only person in the family who recognized that time was passing, that youth makes way for old age and that it wouldn’t be long before a fresh face would no longer do Enrica any good? Or did she think that she could just wait indefinitely for her Habsburg prince to ride in on his white steed, to turn her into a queen?

Most important of all, her daughter wasn’t such a beauty that she’d capture a man at the first glance: Maria, who was her mother, had the courage to admit it herself. And so she’d finally taken charge of the situation, and she’d forced her husband to invite the Fiores to dinner.

For a whole day she’d waited for Enrica’s inevitable reaction: she knew that behind her sweet and tranquil nature there was a stubborn soul, anything but compliant, and that it certainly would be no easy matter to persuade her to accept this imposition. But it was for her own good, so she’d be able to respond, blow for blow, even at the cost of alienating the girl’s affections for a week or two; then Enrica would understand and even thank her.

That’s what a mamma’s for.

For the second time in three days, Maione knocked at Bambinella’s door.

“Brigadie’, what do you think, can I start to consider you one of my suitors? Next time you come, though, why don’t you bring, oh, I don’t know, a flower, a box of pastries, just anything. I’ll take you to meet mamma and we’ll iron out the details.”

Maione was still panting from the climb, and he was drenched with sweat.

“You’ve got one thing right, I don’t have the breath to breathe, much less to tell you to go straight to you-know-where. I’m a bad man to joke around with, you know that? Better cut it out, or one of these days I’ll come calling on you one last time, and the next thing you know you’ll be sitting in a cell and I’ll be throwing away the key!”

Bambinella flirtatiously raised one hand in front of her mouth and she giggled girlishly.

“Madonna, do you know how much I like a fiery man? All right then, Brigadie’, don’t work yourself up into a rage: it just means that I’ll wait patiently, I know that sooner or later you’ll make up your mind. The important thing is that you remember: for you it’s always free of charge.”

Maione hauled back to throw a slap that Bambinella dodged with a dainty motion. Both of them burst out laughing.

“So the truth is, Bambine’, that this story of the duchess is deep and complicated. Not so much the facts themselves; it’s that we can’t operate freely.”

Bambinella, who, as usual, was wearing her silk kimono, walked toward the table where she’d been sitting before Maione arrived.

“I understand, Brigadie’. You’ve got the press, the nobility, and the authorities to deal with. All of them are people you can’t exactly throw into a cell without thinking twice, like you can with girls like me. It’s less of a headache when they murder poor people, for you cops, eh?”

Maione raised his voice.

“No, it’s not less of a headache. How dare you say such a thing? Why, do you think that Brigadier Raffaele Maione pays less attention to what happens to poor people? Listen, for saying something like that, I won’t just throw you in jail, I’m liable to kick your ass down the stairs!”

Bambinella laughed openly. When she laughed, her womanly affectations and imitations vanished, and she sounded very much like a horse.

“Brigadie’, how little it takes to piss you off! I know, I know: you and your commissario, the handsome one who carries a hex, you treat poor people and rich people just the same. That’s why we respect you. After all, what do you think-if I really thought that, would I be helping you?”

When Bambinella sat back down, Maione noticed that she had an enormous dish of fried anchovies on the table in front of her.

“What is this, a conspiracy? Everyone seems to be eating here, at every hour of the day or night! You must have agreed on this behind my back, all of you: the minute you see me coming you start eating something? Since when do people sit down to eat at three in the afternoon, if I might ask?”

With her mouth full, Bambinella replied:

“No, Brigadie’, it’s just that at lunchtime I wasn’t hungry, so I had only a little hard biscuit and tomatoes-fresella con pomodori. Then Gigino came by, the fishmonger down below who, every so often. . okay, you get it, but truth be told, the man has a wife who is truly revolting. In other words, the man has no money, but he breaks my heart, and so this is how he settles his accounts, a few anchovies, a sea bream or two. The anchovies are nice and fresh, if I didn’t cook them right away in this heat, I’d have had to throw them out. But try some, try some, there must be five pounds here, I can’t possibly eat it all myself. Hold on, I’ll get another plate and a fork.”

Maione let himself drop heavily onto the ramshackle sofa and waggled his forefinger.

“No, no, forget about it. I made a promise and now I can’t break it. But listen here, now: I want you to tell me everything you know about Mario Capece and his family.”

Bambinella’s mascaraed eyes opened wide in a sincere display of astonishment.

“Oh, so now he’s the guilty party? My girlfriend who works at the Salone Margherita told me all about it. .”

Maione raised his hand:

“No, hold up just a minute: that’s not what I said. In fact, I have my doubts that it was him at all, even though he can’t give us an alibi. The thing is, we have to check him out carefully so that we can rule him out as a suspect. So, spare me your personal opinions and just tell me what you know. And swallow first, because if you talk with a mouthful of anchovies, you’ll be even more revolting than usual.”

“Grazie, Brigadie’, you’re always such an exquisite gentleman. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you, a girl feels appreciated for what she is. Now then, Capece: all I know I told you the other day. Capece wasn’t someone you saw in the usual social circles, before he struck up this affair with the duchess. He was a journalist, and he was even a good one. Then, five or six years ago, he started seeing her and he became a public figure. Still, I never heard anything about him that didn’t concern the duchess. That is, if people mentioned him, they always mentioned her in the same breath.”

“And just how long had this relationship been going on?”

Bambinella took a second to answer, busy as she was chewing her mouthful of fried anchovies.

“Five, maybe six years. Forever. In their way, among the, so to speak, non-regulation relationships, they were an old couple; you know it, Brigadie’, men switch lovers more often than they do wives. Not the two of them: they’d really been together for some time.”

The policeman wanted to know something more about the man’s life when he wasn’t with the duchess.

“For instance, his wife, his children? Had he moved out or was he still living with them? And his family, I don’t know, his parents?”

Bambinella shrugged her shoulders and joined her greasy hands together, palms flat.

“What can I tell you, Brigadie’, I don’t really know. Certainly, he slept with the duchess more nights than not, I think. The two of them, what with going to the theater, the movie house, and out to dinner in fancy restaurants, were out on the street until dawn, then he had a job after all, and I don’t think that left much time in the day.”

Maione felt downcast, a victim of the heat and the heap of fried anchovies that Bambinella was methodically shoveling down.

“Then how on earth can I find out something more?”

After a moment of silence, spent chewing while lost in thought, Bambinella’s face lit up.

“Maybe I can help you out, but it’s not recent information. A girlfriend of mine-honest, and a hard worker-used to keep house for the Capece family. Then she had a piece of blind luck, she met a guy from the Pendino quarter who ran a shipping service, a couple of horses and two or three wagons, he’d bring the goods in from Mugnano. . okay, okay, I understand, Brigadie’, but try to be a little patient: I have to tell stories my way, otherwise I lose the thread. So, as I was saying, what with one thing and another, this girlfriend of mine, Gilda’s her name, now she’s had this brilliant career and she’s in a brothel at La Torretta, she’s making money hand over fist. Now everyone calls her Juliette. I don’t remember how long ago it was that she kept house for the Capeces, but she can certainly tell you something.”

Maione shook his head in admiration.

“Certainly, Bambine’, there are times when you seem like a spider at the center of her web: even if you don’t know something, you always know someone who does. Would you take me right away to see this. . Signorina, what’s her name, Gilda Juliette; and let’s see if she can tell us something about Capece.”

Ricciardi knew very well where he needed to go in order to start understanding something more about the murder of the Duchess Musso di Camparino. He needed to head home. To be exact, he needed to reconstruct the senseless route he’d taken the night before, in search of the sleep he’d never found.

As he climbed the Via Toledo, gasping under the whiplash of the hot sun, doing his best to stay in the shade of the palazzi, he reflected on the dance of emotions around the duchess and her death. A woman who had turned her beauty into a tool, an instrument with which to climb the social ladder, to amuse herself, to charm others. And then she’d become that beauty’s slave, a prisoner of the passions that her own beauty ignited, and which she no longer knew how to extinguish.

Love is one thing, but passion is quite another, Ricciardi thought. This is the real difference. My feelings for Enrica, for example. I want her welfare and happiness, and if the young man can make her happy, then I ought to be happy too. Perhaps that is love. Then, there is passion, this stabbing pain in the belly, this vise grip that seizes your stomach. The picture of Enrica’s eyes filled with tears, the emptiness in his heart, this anxiety on his flesh. The inability to sleep, the street by night, a sense of regret, even though he had nothing to regret.

It is passion that leads to murder, he mused. Perhaps in all these years I’ve attributed faults to love that it does not deserve. I wonder how you can eliminate a passion; probably by replacing it with another passion. His mind, in defiance of his attempt at self-control, leapt to Livia; her smiling face, the dimple in her chin, the scent of spices. And the long legs, sheathed in fishnet stockings, her feline stride.

And especially, the fleeting kiss that she’d planted on his cheek as she left, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Then and there, caught as he was in the tempest of emotions prompted by the sight of Enrica, he’d felt embarrassed, practically annoyed. But now, as he walked under the arch of Port’Alba and turned into Via Costantinopoli, he thought back to the pressure of her lips and the whisper of her breath. As always, he’d been too brusque, and he regretted it.

It wouldn’t make any sense to go in search of her; but if he ever did see her again, he promised to give her the pleasure of his company, at least once. She wasn’t like Enrica: Livia was a strong, independent woman, he couldn’t hurt her. A relationship without a future, he decided, but possibly one with a present.

As he drew near to his destination, he forced himself to regain his focus and concentrate on what he’d come to do. Love or passion, he thought.

Let’s see what kind of animal we’re dealing with.