Brother Leonardo leaned over the table, pointing at the fried potatoes on Pisanelli’s plate.
“You aren’t going to eat those? All right then, give them here.”
The deputy captain was always amazed at the wolfish voraciousness of his diminutive friend’s appetite: he was the only human being he knew who was capable of chewing with both sides of the mouth to eat faster. From time to time, from the other tables in the Trattoria del Gobbo, someone would look over to watch the funny figure of that monk who had to put a cushion on his chair to reach the tabletop, while his feet, sockless in his sandals, dangled inches off the floor.
“So, do they feed you at the parish church?” Pisanelli ribbed him. “Or is it that the bigger monks don’t leave you anything to eat?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leonardo said, as he swallowed, “I’m the parish priest. In fact, one of these days I’m going to decide to be the only one eating, while all the other monks have to stand around me, serenading me with a Gregorian chant. You can’t even begin to imagine how monks singing stimulates my appetite. But believe me, it’s not a matter of hunger: I just don’t like seeing waste. Do you know that with all the food the rest of you leave on your plates, you could feed all of equatorial Africa for many, many years?”
“Certainly. Remind me of it this evening, that way I’ll pay to send dinner to a village in Kenya. You know that I don’t eat as much as I used to.”
Leonardo furrowed his brow. He looked like one of those ceramic figurines they set out in yards and gardens.
“Are you all right, Giorgio? Are you feeling well? When are you going to realize that you need to see a doctor? I really don’t understand why you’re so stubborn about it—”
Pisanelli raised his hand.
“Hold on there. Remember your promise: We aren’t going to talk about that. My health remains parked outside like a car on the street. Otherwise, no more lunches. And seeing that it’s my treat, I’d like you at least to keep your end of the bargain.”
Leonardo wouldn’t let go of it: “You don’t seem to realize the crime you’re committing against God by displaying such flagrant disregard for your own life and health.”
Pisanelli cut a piece of meatball and popped it in his mouth.
“Mmm . . . meatballs in ragú almost make me think you might have a point: maybe there really is a providential God. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as meatballs, or they would have been separated from the ragú in the primordial chaos. And that truly would have been a shame.”
Leonardo broke out laughing, in spite of himself.
“You’re the most likable blasphemous miscreant that it’s been my pleasure to know, Giorgio Pisanelli of the Pizzofalcone police precinct. And to return to an earlier point, it’s only normal that it should be your treat. Vow of poverty, as you know. So tell me, what good things have you been up to lately?”
“No good things to speak of, that I can say with certainty. We’re dealing with the double homicide of those two young Calabrians, you must have heard about it.”
“How could I avoid it? It’s the talk of the town, poor creatures. Have you found out anything?”
“No, unfortunately, nothing yet. We’re groping in the dark. But we’re all working together. And the two colleagues assigned directly to the case, Lojacono and Di Nardo, are fine investigators. I’m confident we’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Leonardo shot him a sidelong glance.
“Okay, but what about you? What exactly are you working on now?”
“I’m gathering information, as usual. And I’m still on the trail of the depressives, if that’s what you’re trying to find out. We’ve talked about that lots of times before.”
“And lots of times before I’ve told you that you keep taking on things that are none of your business. It’s admirable that you should try to help those who no longer want to live, but this idea of the mysterious suicider is just absurd. Sheer folly.”
The deputy captain looked out the window, where the scattered passersby were looking for an open shop where they could escape the icy wind.
“Not bad. It would make a good title for a novel. The Mysterious Suicider. Have you ever thought of becoming a writer, Leona’? If you ask me, you could enjoy a successful career.”
“Sure, sure, you can be the funny guy, but in the meantime your colleagues take you for a madman.”
“Maybe so. It may be an obsession, but it helps me to make it through the day. It gives me a reason to get up in the morning, to go to work, and to look forward to the next day. It anchors me to the here and now and keeps me from ending it all, from trying to escape.”
Leonardo stopped chewing and stared at his friend. Yes, Giorgio, you still have the will to live, even if you refuse to get treatment for your disease. The Lord can rest easy, you still haven’t made up your mind to consign yourself to the Devil.
“And have you made any progress on your fixa . . . on your mission? You’d told me about that woman, Agnese. Do you know that she’s one of my parishioners? That is, she would be, if she ever came to church, but if you ask me she’s someone who’s given up, who no longer has any wish to live.”
Pisanelli turned his eyes back to the monk.
“No, Leonardo. That’s not right. She has suffered a trauma, in fact, a series of traumas. She lost her child, her husband left her, her mother died. She has no job, she has no friends . . . ”
“And that tells you nothing? For a woman who’s still relatively young, not to have any social life is a sign that she has lost any interest in the world. She doesn’t even have the comfort of faith and—”
“That’s it,” Pisanelli hissed, “that’s where you wanted to wind up: she has no faith, so she wants to die. Listen, that’s not the way it is, Leona’. A person can do without.”
Leonardo replied seraphically: “All right, tell me where you see it, all this desire to live that you see in your friend Agnese. Give me a good reason not to be afraid that tomorrow, or next week, in some deeper fit of depression, she won’t decide to turn on the gas or swallow an entire bottle of pills. Talk me into it.”
Two friends at a restaurant, sharing their weekly lunch. A senior policeman, elderly, weary, and sick, kept alive by an absurd conviction, and a diminutive monk, a caricature who seemed to have walked straight out of a story that grandparents tell their grandkids, harmless to all appearances: no one could ever have imagined that these were the two parties, prosecution and defense, of an occult tribunal where a person’s life or death was decided.
Pisanelli looked down at his hands, motionless on either side of the sauce-spattered bowl. Then he looked up.
“The sparrow,” he said.
Leonardo narrowed his bright blue eyes.
“The what?”
“The sparrow, Leona’. Do you remember the first time I told you about her? I told you that I’d met her because she was feeding the birds in the park outside the National Library.”
Leonardo nodded.
“Well, ever since then, I’ve been going to the park to make sure that she’s all right. I sit down next to her, give her a smile, and she smiles back. At first, my belief that she wants to go on living was based on a mere perception. She hadn’t spoken a word to me, really. I was afraid she was an ideal target for the mysterious suicider, as you call him, his next candidate.”
Leonardo was feeling uneasy.
“Giorgio, listen—”
The policeman stopped him.
“No, you listen to me. I told her things, and I’m sure that she listened to me, but she almost never answered me. She just went on scattering crumbs for the birds. Then, yesterday, something strange happened. Already I was amazed that she was there, with the terrible chill in the air . . . ”
“Yes, but—”
“Hold on. At a certain point she starts talking. She starts talking to me! And she tells me that a sparrow, one of those sparrows, might just be Raimondo, her son, come there to see her.”
“Her son? Raimondo? But didn’t she lose him before he could be born?”
Pisanelli shot a look around the room to make sure nobody else was listening in on the conversation.
“Yes. But to her, after carrying him in her womb, he was still alive.”
“It’s absurd, you realize that, don’t you?”
“Truth be told, you’re the one who insists that a life is a life, in every sense of the word, from the instant of conception on. Or am I wrong?”
“And you think that Agnese wants to go on living because the child she never had is coming to visit her in the form of a sparrow? You realize that you’re going crazy yourself?”
Pisanelli slapped his open hand down hard on the table, making the utensils rattle. The other diners looked around.
“No, I’m not crazy, I tell you. All I’m saying is that we’ve found common ground, I’m finally able to talk with her. And however absurd you may think it is, she’s finally opened up to me.”
Leonardo sat staring at his friend in silence.
“You’re taking on an enormous responsibility, you realize that? Maybe we could have her committed to an institution, one of those places where—”
Pisanelli clenched his hand in a powerful grip.
“No, no, Leona’. It would be the death of her. She’s rediscovering herself, I’m sure of it. It’s only going to take a little while longer.”
The monk’s eyes were full of sorrow.
“I’m leaving the day after tomorrow, I have my spiritual exercises to attend to. I’ll be gone for ten days. My absence is a terrible risk, you understand that?”
Pisanelli blinked rapidly in confusion.
“Why do you say that it’s a risk? Who is it a risk for?”
Leonardo withdrew his hand from the clench and now he was patting the policeman’s hand.
“For you, my friend, and for poor Agnese. Two souls adrift in this cursed loneliness that is the world out there. What’s more, how will you get by without these lunches of ours? You’ll have to eat my share.”
“Impossible, Leonardo. Impossible.”