“Oh,” she says, studying the combination of surprise and horror etched in his expression, “so you have seen him.”
After a few seconds during which Ric recalls the body buried beneath the rubble in the padlocked room of the pumice warehouse, he replies quietly, “I may have, yes.”
“Then you would not have forgotten his face.”
“No,” Ric replies; an image of Claudio’s awful rictus grin leaps into his mind, “I guess I wouldn’t. You said he has a negozio di ferramenta in Canneto; a hardware store.”
“Yes, for building supplies and this kind of thing. Most of the building materials that come to the island are brought over by Marcello and his brother. Claudio only has a small shop, but it is a fairly exclusive business; what you might call a monopoly on the supply of construction materials.”
“What’s he like? I mean, I understand what you say about him being different to Marcello, but is he a popular guy like his brother?”
Valeria considers his question and decides, “In some ways. He is not married, so people assume he is gay. There is still some homophobia here, despite what others will tell you. But, they are right. When Claudio is not to be found in his shop, he is in Palermo. He goes to a club there: Exit, I think it is called. I have always found Claudio to be pleasant and polite. But then, most people are this way with me. After all, when one reaches a certain age one becomes venerated like the statue of San Bartolo, which, I am sure, is why the old people congregate there at passeggio.”
“Does he get on well with his brother?” Ric asks, careful to employ the present tense.
“As far as I know, yes. But he has a difficult – no, one would say tempestuous – relationship with his father, which is probably why he was not present at the funeral on the day you arrived. His father was not one for modern attitudes, particularly when it comes to single men, so Claudio saw him only occasionally.”
“Must have been awkward for him to stay away from the funeral,” Ric remarks.
“Yes, I gather it has caused some argument within the family. But Claudio is a very sensitive creature and I am told he went to the mountains rather than risk causing a scene at the service and after in the cemetery.” She pauses. “Of course, Marcello did not understand his brother’s behaviour.”
Only, Ric knows Claudio was never going to make it to his father’s funeral; he was too busy waiting for his own; one which may never be held. And he wonders if Marcello had anything to do with his brother’s death. His reaction could be what Commissario Talaia described as hiding in plain sight.
“Marcello’s father was Onofrio?” he asks.
“Yes. Onofrio. He could be a very unforgiving man. They say he was one of the last of the Vecchi Signori: the old men, a senior figure.”
“A godfather?”
Valeria laughs, “No, not in the sense of being the boss of a crime family. Onofrio was well respected and one who, like a magistrate, would provide judgements others would abide by. Life was Onofrio’s way or…”
“The highway?”
“Yes, although I was going to say Aliscafo.” She thinks, wondering how best to capture the spirit of the man. “There were times when Onofrio could be brutal when passing sentence. Those he judged against could be told to leave the island; those he looked upon kindly, could expect charity. Nobody ever questioned his authority.”
“Is Marcello now the same?”
“Perhaps,” Valeria replies, a shade solemnly. “We will see.” She reaches over and lights the small lantern on the table.
“Did Onofrio die of natural causes? The date on his casket plaque suggested he was quite an age.”
“I understand he fell. He lived on his own in a house up in Pirrera; the maid found him out on the terrace the next day. The house was open and nothing was missing, so the police were not suspicious. When the doctors examined him, they could not tell if he had died from a haemorrhage or from the blow to his head when he fell.”
“There were a good number of mourners in his funeral cortège,” Ric remarks, thinking out loud of the long procession in the Corso Vittorio.
“It is as I said; he was respected.”
“I didn’t see you amongst the crowd.”
“No,” she shakes her head, “I stay away from funerals; the cortège only ever leads to journey’s end and that is a journey I would rather live without making. Cemeteries remind me of how little time I have left.”
Ric is at a loss as to how to respond. The sadness in her tone and the inevitability of her assertion leave him temporarily winded. Slowly, he hauls his thoughts back on track. “Is Old Nino a Vecchio Signori, like Onofrio?”
“Yes, in a way, but he is not a man of such influence. The Vecchi Signori were men of power and influence. They controlled as much by the strength of their character as by their wisdom.”
“Antonio Sciacchitano’s headstone reads that he was integerrimo. Would that have made him one of the old gentlemen like Onofrio?”
“No,” she replies, “I hate to burst your bubble, but being one of the Vecchi Signori means being something considerably more than being a cittadino integerrimo.”
Ric is lightly crestfallen, “But Old Nino told me that if you described someone as integerrimo, you thought of them as solid.”
“And he was correct in telling you this. There must be worse ways of being remembered other than by being solid. He was solid?” she repeats, dreamily. “I wonder what made him solid. You have seen Nino since yesterday?”
“Yes, this morning, his girl Ariana passed me a note in which Nino had written that he wanted to see me. I walked over the hill and had lunch with him. He told me an extraordinary tale about how his father spirited Antonio Sciacchitano away to Baarìa, in Sicily, after he had become mixed up in the escape attempt of the three deportees. You told me the story, if you remember, about Drago, Tamboia and Farinelli, and about how they were killed trying to escape. He seems to think there is no corpse in the grave belonging to Sciacchitano; seems to think the whole thing was set up by Vincenzo Maggiore to fool the authorities into thinking Sciacchitano was dead.”
Although the sun has now set, Ric can make out her expression from the light cast by the small lantern and the glow of her cigarette when she draws on it. Valeria is looking at him very intently.
“Baarìa, Nino said?” she asks. “Are you sure he said Baarìa?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because Baarìa is what they used to call the land that runs down to the sea. And Baarìa is the old name for what is now called Bagheria. And Bagheria is where I was born.” The wavering emotion in her voice betrays the nostalgia his naming the town has provoked. Her tone is both soft and sad, and almost lilting, giving the impression it is floating in from the obsidian sea before them.
“And,” she begins slowly, “this escape I told you of? It took place in 1930, which is the same year in which I was born?” Valeria lets the question hang in the cool evening air; it is not a question she intends for him to answer.
Ric waits for her to draw open the curtain of her thoughts and says, “Valeria, when I looked around the cemetery a couple of days ago – when I found Antonio Sciacchitano’s grave – I came across the Maggiore mausoleum. I suppose I looked around it because you’d introduced me to Marcello and I just happened to be in the Corso Vittorio when his father’s cortège passed by. You’ve never seen it?”
“No,” she replies from the shadows, “I told you, I stay away from cemeteries. I am inclined to cross myself, ask for forgiveness and walk on by; nothing more. Only God will persuade me into a cemetery. Only He has that much power. Why?”
“Antonio Sciacchitano’s grave – the one Nino thinks is empty – tells us he died in July of 1930. But there is also a casket plaque in the Maggiore mausoleum which suggests that a member of their family, Katarina Maggiore, died that same month, on the 18th. I was intrigued by the coincidence.”
He takes a generous sip of wine and pictures the casket plaque below Vincenzo’s and beside Onofrio’s. And he remembers Nino saying that Vincenzo Maggiore was involved in arranging the botched escape of the deportees. Ric hesitates as the opaque images before his eyes become clearer: a frightened man and a petrified girl, standing before an old fisherman, wringing their hands, begging him to take them away from Devil’s Island. And Ric is not absolutely sure, if Valeria does provide him with the answer to his next question that he expects, whether he should prise open the casket of her past. But he cannot help himself.
“What was you mother’s name, Valeria?”
She sighs very slowly and hangs her head in her hands before mumbling softly, “Katarina.”