VI

 

 

 

Somewhat disheartened, Enrica looked down at the sleeping boy with a pen in his hand, his head resting on a sheet of paper and a streamer of drool at the corner of his mouth. He was snoring. It was the third time he’d dozed off that morning.

Of all the students she tutored, Mario was the most challenging: the boy’s habit of suddenly falling asleep had caused him to be expelled from every state school in the kingdom of Italy, and his father, a wealthy cured-meats merchant, had confided in Enrica’s mother, a regular client, that he’d reached his wit’s end. The woman had immediately recommended her daughter, a certified schoolteacher, whose patience and stubbornness seemed perfectly suited to the challenge.

And so Enrica found herself spending most of each morning trying to wake up Mario, who was otherwise an upstanding young man, when he fell asleep on his schoolwork. She was hoping to present him at the equivalency tests for a junior high school diploma with some chance of passing them, as long as he didn’t start snoring during the written portion of the exams.

But today, at least for a few minutes, Enrica was going to let her scholar sleep. She had something else to do.

Taking care to be quiet, she pulled a sheet of paper out of her skirt pocket and adjusted her myopic glasses on the bridge of her nose. Enrica wasn’t beautiful, but she had a natural gracefulness and a femininity that expressed itself in her gestures and her smiles, which were attractive in spite of the fact that she was maybe a little too tall, with long legs hidden by the folds of her skirts, old-fashioned in their cut, the way she preferred. Her introverted personality, gentle but stubborn, allowed her to avoid arguments—especially with her mother, who tried to impose her own beliefs on her—and to do as she liked, thanks in part to the support of her father, a highly respected hat seller with a shop on Via Toledo.

The man dearly loved Enrica, his eldest, so similar to him in her reserved manner and tactiturn personality, and who at the age of twenty-four had never had a boyfriend. And yet she’d had her opportunities, most recently the son of the wealthy proprietor of a shop near her father’s, but Enrica had refused to see him, sending her mother, who was terrified that her daughter would find herself an irremediable old maid, into a rage. I’m in love with someone else, Enrica had said: just like that, straightforward and unadorned, she had uttered this terrible piece of news one Sunday at lunch, before beginning her bowl of pasta with ragù.

Giulio Colombo, Enrica’s father, had had his hands full trying to calm his wife over the next few days. They had been unable to find out anything about their daughter’s phantom inamorato, except for the minor detail that he was not a married man: well, at least that’s something, her mother had said, fanning herself nervously. No other information. What do you intend to do? she’d asked the girl, knowing that she’d stick to her plan, whatever that might be. I’ll wait, she had replied, with her customary quiet determination.

When she made up her mind like that, she was best left to her own devices.

Life at home had returned to its usual routines. Enrica had resumed tutoring, cooking her father’s favorite dishes, and embroidering after dinner, sitting by the kitchen window and listening to the faint sound of the radio playing in the living room. And shooting furtive glances at the window of the building across the street, where one could make out a slim dark silhouette, watching her as she did her needlepoint.

Enrica had learned who that silhouette belonged to a few months earlier. She’d received a summons to appear at police headquarters in regard to a murder she had nothing to do with, and when she walked into the office she found herself face-to-face with the man of her dreams, the unknown man who watched from the window: Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi. Their first encounter hadn’t gone too well, truth be told. The fact that she’d been unprepared for the meeting, less carefully dressed and groomed than was customary for her, without a trace of makeup, had irritated her, and she’d reacted by displaying an aggressivity that was quite unlike her. For days she’d wallowed in the painful conviction that she’d never see him again.

Things had more or less worked themselves out in the weeks that followed. They’d gone back to gazing at each other from afar, even exchanging a hesitant wave of the hand, a nod of the head, a half smile. Enrica was patient. She knew how to wait. And her waiting had been rewarded just a few days earlier, with the arrival of the letter she now held in her hand, as little Mario snored away.

She smiled as she remembered how her father, returning from work, stood checking the mail the doorman had given him. He’d paused when he came to that one, furrowing his brow, and then he’d called her into another room, away from his wife’s prying eyes. At last, he’d given her the letter, without a word, except to say:

“It’s not postmarked.”

What he meant by this was that someone had hand-delivered the envelope, or else they’d slipped it into the building’s postbox. Then he’d left her alone, without asking her anything about it, neither then nor later. That’s the way it was between them: discretion above all else.

She’d felt her heart bursting in her chest. In her bedroom, she’d waited almost half an hour, staring at the envelope and imagining all the possibilities. She didn’t doubt for a second that it was from him, that he’d finally decided to step forward; at the same time, she was afraid of being disappointed, that it might contain a chilly formal greeting and nothing more.

Rereading it now for the hundredth time, she thought that to a certain extent, that’s all it had been. But, in the end, it was still a way of reaching out to her.

 

Gentile Signorina, he began; I am taking the liberty of writing to you, lest you think me rude for having the impudence and forwardness to make your acquaintance through a window. All the same, our meeting was so unexpected that I hardly had the presence of mind to introduce myself as I ought to have done. My name is Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi, I am a commissario at police headquarters, and, as you know, I live across the street from you, directly across from your window. This short letter is written with the sole intent of learning whether you would object to my greeting you, when I happen to see you from across the way. But I must add, in all sincerity, that I would be very glad if you did not object.

I would be very pleased to hear from you. In the meantime, my fondest wishes,

Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi

 

Objectively, it wasn’t much, but what Enrica valued greatly was what wasn’t written in that letter; namely, the fact that there was nothing about any prior commitments, for instance with that beautiful and sophisticated signora she’d seen him with once at Caffè Gambrinus–otherwise he’d never have written to her. And the fact that he was not indifferent to her. And finally, that he was courteous, reserved, and shy, just as she’d imagined.

And now? she asked herself anxiously. Now it was up to her. It was her turn to reply, without being too forward, but also without being too standoffish, otherwise he might think that there was no interest on her part, as she feared he might have assumed based on her behavior the one time they’d met. She had to think, and she had to think quickly: if she let too much time go by before answering, he might take it as a sign of annoyance.

And how should she arrange to get her answer to him? She certainly couldn’t be seen with an envelope in hand lurking around the postbox in his building, seeing as everyone in the neighborhood knew her; and mailing it would mean an enormous delay. She realized that she knew the elderly woman who lived with him by sight, a fat and good-natured woman who did her grocery shopping at the same place Enrica did; she’d have to screw up her courage and stop the woman, introduce herself, and talk to her. She’d have to be brave.

She put the sheet of paper back in her pocket and sighed, looking down at Mario, lost in his dreams. She coughed once; the boy woke up and looked at her with a bovine expression, barely recognizing her. She smiled at him and said:

“Now, where were we?”

And she shot a tender glance at the window across the way.