Taking care to avoid the corner from which the suicide was calling to his lost love, as he returned home Ricciardi paid his own silent tribute to Dr. Modo’s nose, which was certainly right: this was about a woman. But the matter was a far more complicated one.
Last Christmas Eve had certainly reshuffled the cards on the table as far as his relationship with Enrica Colombo, the girl who lived in the building across the street, was concerned. After all that time spent looking at her through the window—first of all because he was drawn by the allure of a normality he felt excluded from, then attracted by the faintly hidden delicacy of her features and by the memory of a voice that he’d once heard by chance in an interrogation—things had suddenly accelerated.
An hour before the city’s bells pealed out in celebration of the birth of Our Lord, as he was hurrying back to his usual solitude, depressed and weary, he’d found her standing in front of the door of his apartment building as if in some dream, just as a fine snow began to fall; she’d walked right up to him and, as in a dream, she’d softly kissed him.
That kiss, nothing more than a faint wisp of breath on his lips, had given flesh and blood to his thoughts, unleashing an unceasing tempest in his soul. Ricciardi was a man just over thirty, sentenced to solitude because he was aware of the curse that he bore; but that didn’t mean that his flesh and his hands didn’t yearn to touch and move to the rhythm of his beating heart.
Ever since that strange Christmas Eve, rationality had begun to slowly succumb to emotion. Day after day, the commissario found himself imagining more and more frequently what it would be like to repeat that experience, or even just to see Enrica again up close; in order to understand what she felt, and to some extent, what he felt too.
As he climbed Via Santa Teresa, walking into the smells of the forest that mixed with those of the sea from behind him, Ricciardi thought about Rosa, his tata, who as always understood sooner and much more clearly than he just what he himself desired. Who knows how, Rosa had established a strange friendship with the girl, on the basis of which Enrica would regularly visit, sometimes staying until he came back; magically, she often managed to brush by him on the stairs or at the downstairs door, greeting him with a smile and a word.
By now Ricciardi—the man who was terrified of love because he saw its fatal effects every day, the same Ricciardi who had long since decided that it was impossible for him to have a woman at his side because she’d have to share in his curse, the man who never saw a future beyond the days necessary to complete an investigation—had begun to live for the moment when, returning home, he might possibly cross paths with Enrica. He didn’t know what might happen, nor whether that emotion might have a tomorrow; he knew only that living without that glimmer of sweet tenderness at the end of the steep climb that was his daily lot was now something that seemed almost impossible.
He looked at his watch and quickened his step.
Rosa set down her cup, which she’d been holding with the hand that shook less; still, the porcelain rattled against the saucer, causing a few drops of tea to spill onto the tablecloth. Enrica bowed her head over her tea, pretending not to have noticed; the tata appreciated this show of tact. She liked this girl better every day.
She went on with what she’d been saying:
“Signori’, you have to keep this in mind: the truly important thing about a Cilento Easter dinner is the first course, the pasta. Any housewife knows how to cook a nice piece of meat or a leg of lamb, even though we really ought to be talking about a leg of kid goat, which is no simple matter, either; but the primo, the first course is, as we say, fundamental. And every detail deserves careful attention.”
Enrica listened, concentrating. She liked to cook, she did it every day for her own family and she was honestly convinced that it was be a good way to demonstrate love; but hearing Rosa describe the cooking of her hometown, the rigor with which she respected its traditions—she found it, somehow, deeply moving. She understood that it was something more than just a way of providing for one’s loved ones, ensuring they were well fed while at the same time pleasing them. She knew that it was also a way of establishing a profound link with generations of women in love who had left behind not words, but aromas and flavors.
And she understood why the elderly tata, who knew that she was ill, felt the need to ensure that her way of loving the man she thought of as her child—the man who was now the object of her own dreams—could in some way be carried on.
“. . . and so,” the tata went on, “deciding which pasta to cook with the ragú becomes crucial. You can choose cavatelli or fusilli, it’s the same dough. Of course, cavatelli are easier; but what my young master likes best are the fusilli, so I’d advise you to make those for him. First: you have to get yourself some rods from a broken umbrella; of course, you clean them thoroughly, in vinegar and boiling water. Then you put the flour on the scannaturu, which would be that plank of wood, what do you all call it? The cutting board. Form a sort of volcano, with a hole in the middle, and pour lukewarm water in a little at a time, until you’ve made a loaf of dough, smooth as can be, and soft to the touch. At that point,” and here she acted it out with her hands, “flatten and roll out the sausages of dough around the umbrella ribs.”
Enrica, satisfied, nodded her head.
“But none of this is the real secret. The proof of a good cook is making sure that the fusilli are all the same, because that ensures that they’ll cook uniformly; if there are some that are thicker and others that are finer, it’s practically impossible for them to cook right—some will be raw in the center while others will be overcooked. You need patience: the ones that don’t turn out right have to be rolled out again. But once you have the touch, there are no problems and you can do it the first time. And I think you, my girl, have plenty of patience, am I right?”
Enrica sighed.
“Yes, Signora, I have plenty of patience. My father calls it being hardheaded, to tell the truth; but when he says it he smiles and strokes my cheek.”
Rosa laughed, a fine infectious laugh.
“Well, that’s certainly true, from a certain point of view you could call patience being hardheaded. And with my young master, one needs a great deal of patience. The point is that he doesn’t know what he wants. Men never know what they want, and you know why not? Because they think that the world ends tomorrow, so they only worry about what’s happening today. But we women can see as clear as the light of day what’s going to happen next, and we have to be responsible for it. So a little at a time . . .”
Enrica continued:
“. . . a little at a time we need to lead them to do what we want them to do, letting them think that it was all their idea.”
Rosa clapped her hands, contentedly.
“That’s exactly right, well done, my girl! But now you should leave, because he’s about to get here and if you don’t you won’t manage to run into him on the stairs. By now he’s used to that, you should see his face, like a corpse’s, when he misses you by just a minute.”
The young woman stood up and gave the elderly lady a kiss on the cheek, then she ran for the door. Rosa’s words followed her down the stairs:
“And tomorrow we’ll talk about the ragú!”
She had just stepped out the front door when he appeared before her, as if they’d made a date. Buonasera, she said to him. Buonasera, he replied.
She even liked his voice: deep and full of emotion. She found him irresistible; she could understand why a woman like that Signora from up north, that rich, elegant, and shameless woman who drove around in a car with a chauffeur, would have developed a crush on him, though she could have had all the men she wanted. But she was also convinced that the way to his heart that she had chosen was the right one.
She hesitated, then stopped and said:
“You know, Signora Rosa . . . that trembling in her hand is getting worse, I think. Sorry, I know it’s none of my business, but . . .”
He interrupted her, in a sad voice:
“Don’t say that. Your visits give her great pleasure; she’s so happy, I leave her alone for far too much time. I know, she’s not well. But it’s not easy for me to think that she’s growing older. You know, I . . . I have no one but her.”
She wanted to hold him tight, crying out that it wasn’t true—that he wasn’t alone and would never again be alone, if only he could say that’s what he wanted.
Instead, she just said: buonasera.