Rosa observed Enrica, who was sitting stiffly on the sofa, as if she’d swallowed a broomstick, holding a demitasse of espresso. She hadn’t drunk a drop.
She’d been sitting like that for five minutes now, not saying a word, eyes downcast, knees together, perched precariously on the seat, far from the backrest. Rosa wondered how to break the silence, which was starting to become awkward.
When they’d reached the landing, the young woman had stopped at the threshold holding the groceries, dripping rain onto the floor. The tata had immediately invited her in, but Enrica hesitated, as if she were afraid of something; in the end, she had made up her mind and walked through the door, eyes on the floor until she got to the kitchen. She set the groceries on the table, being careful not to look around lest she seem to be prying. At that point Rosa had invited her into the living room, while she made a pot of coffee. When Enrica protested, stammering that she didn’t want to impose, the tata brusquely pointed her to the sofa: if she wanted to offer the girl a cup of coffee, she wasn’t about to tolerate objections of any kind.
In the meantime Enrica was inwardly experiencing a bout of panic. The minute she’d found herself on that landing, outside that apartment, all the courage and determination she’d built up over the past two days, endlessly repeating to herself that the only way to get beyond that impasse was to make contact with Ricciardi’s tata, had melted away like a gelato in mid-August. She’d thought about it so much, dreamed about it so often that now she was terrified: the phantom of a possible disappointment, the thought of hearing bad news, of learning that he was engaged or something even worse, gripped her by the throat, literally suffocating her. So she sat there, at the center of her heart’s temple, silently gasping for air with a demitasse in her hand, praying to be struck dead then and there.
Rosa, unaware of these thoughts but realizing that the young woman was struggling, finally said to her:
“Signori’, if you wait any longer, we’re going to have to toss it out, that espresso. It’s very good, you know; I make a good cup of coffee.”
Enrica started when the old woman said this, coming close to spilling most of the good coffee on the carpet. She drank half of it in a single gulp, burning her tongue in the process.
“Really very good, very good, grazie. Grazie again. I only wanted to help you carry the groceries upstairs.”
Rosa blinked: the situation was worse than she’d thought at first. Enrica was truly distraught; it would be no simple matter to make her feel comfortable.
“And what do you do, most days? Do you stay at home, do you study, do you work?”
“No, I . . . that is, I have my high school diploma, I’m a teacher, but I don’t teach. No, I mean, I teach, but the fact is that I teach at home, I tutor children at our apartment, not at a school. I help them prepare, and then they take their exams at school.”
She realized she was acting like a complete idiot. She needed to get a grip on herself, or this was going to end badly.
“But I do housework, too, of course. That is, I help my mother, I give her a hand around the apartment. I especially like to cook, and my father says that I’m very good at it, too. And I embroider.”
Rosa liked that surge of pride, and smiled approvingly. A woman who knows how to keep house instinctively recognizes another like herself. A kind of informal sisterhood.
“Really? That’s nice. My signorino lives here, did you know that? I look after him, but he’s the master of the house.”
That direct reference to the object of her thoughts and dreams shattered Enrica’s mounting equilibrium with the force of a hurricane uprooting a delicate young sapling. She started stammering again.
“Ah, is that so? I had no idea . . . that is, I knew, but . . . of course, I live across the street, and I’d seen a man, but I didn’t think . . . not that I was looking through your windows intentionally, but you know, living right across the way . . . ”
Rosa was afraid the girl would burst into tears right in front of her. She decided to go all in, relying on the no-nonsense approach of her birthplace:
“Signori’, I know that you already knew it. And I also know that the signorino Luigi Alfredo, my young master, is perfectly aware of who you are and where you live. I doubt that you failed to notice that every night after dinner, for I don’t know how many months, if not years, he stands at the window in his bedroom, which is right through that door over there, and watches you do your needlepoint. And if you’re here today it’s certainly because you know it, and you don’t mind at all if he watches you. Am I right?”
Enrica felt like a little girl caught with her hands in the marmalade jar. She wished she could jump to her feet and run, and keep going until she reached the water’s edge, or even beyond. But a second later she realized that he had been just as incapable of concealing his interest in her from his tata, and she found this fact to be quite encouraging.
She smiled uncertainly and sighed. Then she looked up, squared her shoulders, pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and said:
“Yes, Signora. That’s right. And I don’t even really know why I’m here. Maybe it’s because I need help. I need your help.”
Rosa settled into her armchair, satisfied. The girl wasn’t a striking beauty: in fact at first glance, she seemed rather mousy and insignificant. But now that she was getting a closer look at her, she could detect an attractive figure, with long legs and a nice bust, and regular features; her eyes, too, shone with the light of intelligence and wit, behind her myopic glasses.
“He wrote you a letter. I don’t know if he ever gave it to you, but I do know he wrote you a letter. I’m positive of it.”
“Yes, he wrote me. I received the letter the day before yesterday. It’s not exactly . . . Well, I’d have to say he’s not a man who makes bold declarations. He simply asks whether I would object to his greeting me if he sees me, that’s all. I was happy, but now I’m not sure what I should do.”
Rosa ran a finger under her chin pensively.
“Signori’, I’ve never been married. There was someone, when I was young, not a worn-out old lady like I am now, and he made it clear that he might be interested in me, but I sent him away, and I wasn’t very nice about it, either. Because all I wanted was to care for my signorino, his mamma had entrusted him to me; she died young. And I’ve dedicated my whole life to him. I ought to tell you that he is, by nature, just a little closed off, as they say . . . a little reserved, a little shy. In other words, he’s not the type to put himself forward. If you ask me, he’s afraid of rejection. But I’ll tell you one thing: in all these years, I’ve never seen him the way he is about you. This business with the window, and the letter: it’s very significant.”
Enrica felt as if she were in a dream; here she was, in the place where he lived, pouring out her heart to a complete stranger, an old woman who spoke with an accent from a distant province, talking about something she wouldn’t have revealed to her own parents even if she were being tortured. And yet she said:
“I know, I understand him. Because I’m the same way, not the kind of brazen woman who lets a man know that she likes him. Instead, I wait, hoping that he might, I don’t know, ask my father for permission to take me out. So for the past year I’ve been sitting there doing my needlepoint, and he watches me, and nothing happens. And in the spring, I was summoned to police headquarters because of some investigation or other, and I found myself face-to-face with him. I don’t know, it seemed wrong to me. So I lost my temper, I was harsh with him, and then I didn’t want to see him at all, not even through a window.”
Rosa nodded seriously.
“Eh, I remember that period. He was in terrible shape, he thought I didn’t notice but I could see it, of course I could see it. So then what happened?”
Enrica smiled at the memory.
“A lovely blonde lady came to see me, Lucia, the wife of the brigadier who works with him. She told me that life goes by, and what passes you by never comes back. That she, for the grief of losing her son, had almost lost her other children and her husband. She told me not to be foolish, and not to turn my back on love. In short, she persuaded me, and I went back to sitting in the window. And I waited. Then my parents got it into their heads . . . They introduced me to someone, and I told them that I didn’t want anything to do with him, and that I cared for another man. My mother didn’t like it. She said that she expected me to become an old maid, and she may be right. But if I can’t have the one I want, I don’t want anyone in my life at all.”
Rosa listened to Enrica talk; she liked the quiet, soulful sound of her voice. The better she knew her, the more convinced she became that Ricciardi’s intuition about her was correct.
“If you ask me, you did the right thing, Signori’. It’s just that with someone as hardheaded as my signorino, you have to be patient. You have to let him come out a little at a time, as if it was his idea. When he was small and I wanted him to wash up, for example, because he was always out playing in the yard and he got filthy, oh so filthy, if I’d say to him, go get washed up, he absolutely refused. But if, instead, I said to him, mamma mia, how horrible it is to see a dirty man, only little boys and babies are ever dirty, not grown-ups; then you should have seen him run for the tub. I think all men are that way: they need to think that they’re making their own decisions, and it’s our job to make them decide what we want them to do.”
Enrica laughed, then she asked:
“And in your opinion, what should I do, now?”
Rosa replied:
“You need to write back to him, a nice letter. You need to tell him that you’re happy to have him send his regards, and that you send your regards to him as well. And you have to find some way of conveying the idea—I couldn’t tell you how because I only know my numbers—that you aren’t engaged to be married, that you’re not interested in anyone else, but that you’d like a family in your future. That way he’ll understand that he can’t dawdle forever, he has to get moving. Because, as you can see, I’m an old woman, and I can’t stand the idea that after I’m gone he’ll be left all alone, with no one to take care of him. You can’t imagine, Signori’: he’s like a baby, he doesn’t know how to do anything for himself.”
Enrica impulsively reached out and caressed the older woman’s hand.
“Signora, you’ll live to be a hundred. I know it, I can feel it. And we’ll become good friends, I’ll come to see you every afternoon, when we’re sure he won’t be home, and I’ll keep you company. That way, you can teach me to cook better.”
Rosa slapped a hand to her forehead:
“Ohhh, madonna santa, you’re right! I’m sitting here chatting and I haven’t even made lunch! Come with me to the kitchen, and I’ll show you how the signorino likes his chickpeas. Are you familiar with the cooking of the Cilento region?”