On the short walk back to the parish church, Ricciardi and Cristiano had remained in silence. The boy had said only, after they had left the warehouse:
“Did you really have to tell him how we get in? If I’d known you were going to do that, I wouldn’t have shown you.”
Ricciardi had shaken his head.
“And do you all really have to steal? Haven’t you seen what it can lead to? What happened to Matteo should have taught you a lesson, if you ask me. And that man was bound to kill another one of you kids sooner or later, the way he was standing guard over his merchandise.”
Cristiano had shrugged in response: his favorite gesture, it would seem.
“The cacaglio was a fool, I already told you that. If he hadn’t died from eating rat poison, he would have died from being run over by a car or a carriage. And that guy from the warehouse, even if he waited around all day with a gun in his hand, couldn’t have killed us. We never go there at this time of day because we know he’s there: we go late at night.”
Late at night. Which corresponded to Tettè’s presumed time of death. Cristiano concluded:
“In any case, we certainly don’t eat his food. It’s not worth it. Besides, what would we eat? Dried beans? We sell the food we steal.”
Ricciardi spent the rest of the walk thinking to himself that it would be worth talking to the priest again, and this time the kid gloves would come off. It seemed to him that these kids were left to their own devices a little more than they should be. He’d have to do it without exposing Cristiano to the priest’s reprisals, though. He’d need to move carefully.
Don Antonio had finished saying mass and was reading in the sacristy. Ricciardi walked in without knocking.
“Commissario, you’re back, I see. Did you search the place thoroughly? Are you satisfied, now?”
Ricciardi stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at the priest. No emotion was apparent in his still eyes.
“Yes, I’m done for now, Padre. But no, I’m not satisfied, not even a little bit.”
“Really? And why not?”
The commissario dropped the ironic tone.
“The conditions here—this is no way for children to live. And leaving them free to wander the streets, exposing them to all sorts of dangers, including life-threatening ones, hardly strikes me as a model of childcare.”
Don Antonio leapt to his feet. Now he really was infuriated.
“Ah, so that’s what you think? Then why don’t you devote yourself to taking care of children? Why don’t you spend your days with these poor little beasts, who’ve spent their lives fighting stray dogs and rats for scraps of food? Do you realize that if I were to shut down this house, most of these boys would probably die of typhus or some other disease before the year is out? Do you realize that if it weren’t for parish priests like me, the ones who managed to survive would become criminals, and they’d wind up either with a knife in their gut or in one of your prisons?”
Ricciardi was unimpressed by the priest’s outburst of anger.
“No, I don’t know that. What I do know is that you keep them in a room that’s filthy and cold. That two days after his disappearance, you had barely even noticed that Matteo was missing. And above all, I know that, from what I’ve heard around the neighborhood, your boys spend their days pilfering where they can and selling the things that they manage to steal. That’s a fairly serious state of affairs, you know, Padre. A state of affairs that, I believe, would make quite a splash even in the curia.”
The two men stood glaring at each other, eyes leveled, the priest’s dark and flashing with rage, the commissario’s green and unblinking. In the end, the priest was the one to yield.
“I see. Now, we have extortion, along with the rest. All right, Commissario. Go ahead: what do you want to know?”
“Tell me about the other boys, and relations among them. And if you please, the facts, Padre.”
“They don’t behave the same way when I’m not around. That seems natural enough, no? The bigger ones take advantage of the smaller ones, they command and the others obey. For instance, there are two cots, as you’ve seen: they were donated by the hospital. In theory, the two twins ought to sleep on them, because they both suffer from curvature of the spine, but Amedeo and Saverio, the two boys who’ve been here longest, have requisitioned them for themselves. Some things that happen I’m aware of, and I do my best to put a stop to them. Other times I’m not around to see, so I can’t intervene. It isn’t easy, you know, running this whole parish. And as for the sexton Nanni, he’s incompetent; he can’t be trusted to do anything.”
Ricciardi considered what the priest had just told him.
“Where do you get the money to keep things going, Padre? I can’t imagine that the offerings you get at Mass are sufficient, no?”
Don Antonio spread his arms wide in resignation.
“Don’t be ridiculous, those aren’t even enough to keep the church clean. We get some funds from the curia, though not much; and then there are the donations from the Ladies of Charity, who also come twice a week to tutor the boys. The gifts that come in, sweets or clothing, don’t even pass through my hands. They just divvy them up directly among themselves.”
Ricciardi wanted to get a clearer picture of things.
“And these Ladies of Charity, do they take turns, or are the teachers always the same? And just how many of them are there?”
“If only there were enough of them to be able to take turns. There are two of them, just two. If you’d like to meet them, you can come tomorrow morning: it’s Thursday and they’ll be teaching. They’ve been informed of Matteo’s death; one in particular was especially close to the child. Let’s hope she keeps coming: to lose her would be a tragedy.”
What am I looking for? What the devil am I looking for?
Ricciardi kept asking himself this question on his way home. It was raining, surprise, surprise; and the temperature went on plunging from one hour to the next, as a persistent northern wind buffeted the city.
He didn’t know what he was looking for; or rather, he knew but he couldn’t accept it.
The Deed: the damned Deed, his curse, his cross to bear, for the first time was persecuting him even without showing itself. In fact, precisely because it had not shown itself. Poor Matteo–or perhaps he should say Tettè, the name they had given him to make fun of his stutter–was dead; that much was certain. And Modo had found traces of strychnine. And today he had even figured out where Tettè might have found it, just a few hundred feet from the step on the staircase where the milkmaid with the nanny goat had found him with his dog.
The dog. All he had to do was think of it and turn to look at the other side of the street and there it was, trotting along, indifferent to the rain. Ricciardi shivered as he realized that the animal materialized whenever he was alone. If only he could interview the dog, maybe that would give him all the information he needed.
His thoughts turned to the little boy. He could almost see him walking through the streets at night, in the rain, in the cold; he imagined the boy talking to the dog with his heart’s voice, without stammering, easily and calmly. Tettè, you did have one friend. A friend who knew how to listen to you without needing to hear the actual words.
Cristiano, too, had melted Ricciardi’s heart: the loneliness that he’d glimpsed behind the swaggering arrogance, the feigned confidence. The terror in the boy’s eyes when the warehouse owner’s grip had choked the air out of him. Children, refusing to grow up and face life.
He too had been a lonely little boy, he thought to himself, feeling the rivulets of rain streaking down his face. But he’d had someone to look after him, and he still did. He smiled in the dark, the sound of his own footsteps accompanying him down the empty street. Dear old Rosa, you’ve always been there, with your indigestible cooking, with your scent of lavender. Dear old Rosa, you’re a warm room, you’re fresh bread, you’re woolen blankets. Dear old Rosa, I know you’ll grumble for an hour when you see me drenched with rain, and you’ll run to fetch towels of all sizes, and you’ll complain about your aching bones, and predict the same aches and pains for me when I get old. Who knows if I ever will get old?
The Deed and its rules, he thought. And what if that rule simply didn’t apply this time? What if Tettè died of fright, before the strychnine had a chance to kill him? Then I wouldn’t see him, and I’d be looking for something that doesn’t exist. The ghost of a ghost. Searching without finding.
Perhaps what I’m looking for is a reason. Something for myself, not for poor Tettè. He was thinking about this, when he finally glimpsed through the rain the corner of his apartment building, his home. Perhaps I’m looking for the reason that there are children who are dry and warm tonight, and then there are others with chattering teeth who don’t even know if they’ll find a dry place to spend the night.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a white coat with brown spots moving in the rain. What do you have to say about it, dog? There are also children in caskets, waiting to be buried. But their memory will endure as long as you’re around, dog, as long as you’re following me and commanding me to find out why.
In a gesture that had become customary with him, before entering the front door of the building he turned his eyes up to the window of the kitchen of the Colombo apartment, and saw that it was lit up. Have you read my letter, amore mio? he thought. What future awaits you and what future awaits me, can you tell me that? Who were we as children, and what children will we become? And will there be children to whom we can promise love and safety? What would our children be like? What would their eyes see?
He brushed aside the wet hair that hung over his forehead, and he started climbing the stairs.