Don Pierino Fava had arrived at the usual side door at seven in the evening, as agreed. It was the entrance to the Palazzo Reale gardens, the Royal Palace, where Lucio Patrisso was the caretaker. An important friendship. Not that he was more lenient with Patrisso than with his other parishioners, nor did he give him any special considerations. Still, it was an honour for the man to receive a personal greeting when leaving church after Mass.
This reasonable price bought don Pierino the greatest pleasure of his life: the opera. His simple heart would soar and accompany the voices, as his lips silently followed the librettos he knew by heart. From the time he was a child, in Santa Maria Capua Vetere, not far from Caserta, he would sit on the ground in the garden of a villa where a phonograph bestowed magic in the air. He could sit there for hours, heedless of cold, heat or rain, listening with bated breath, his eyes brimming with tears.
Small and plump, with dark, lively eyes and a prompt, contagious smile, he had intelligence and a quick wit that greatly worried his parents, farmworkers with eight other children. What would they do with this clever, lazy boy who always came up with excellent excuses to avoid working? The answer came from the gruff parish priest, who called on him more and more often for small tasks just to have the cheerful sprite around. And so little Pietro became “Pierino from the church.” He liked the cool shadows, the heady scent of the incense, the sun’s rays filtering through the tall stained-glass windows.
But most of all he liked the cavernous, rumbling sound of the great organ, which he had come to consider the voice of God. And when he realized that he would never want to live anywhere else, he felt called. During the years of study that followed, Pierino’s love for his fellow man, for God and for music remained intact, and he divided his time among these three passions, assisting the poor, drawing examples and lessons from the lives of the saints, and cultivating sacred music.
By the age of forty he had been the Assistant Pastor of San Ferdinando for ten years, a parish that was not large, but densely populated. It included elegant streets and the majestic Galleria, but also the hovels of the Quartieri and the maze of alleys above Via Toledo. In the centre of the district stood another temple, which exerted a pagan attraction on don Pierino’s simple soul: the Royal Theater of San Carlo. He would never admit it, but the theater was the very reason why he had always humbly told the diocesan Curia that he did not feel capable of becoming a pastor somewhere else. He considered it a personal gift from God that he was able to witness the magnificence of the opera’s living art, feel its crystalline ringing, and see human passions performed with so much beauty and power. How present God was in the tears and laughter that he saw on the faces of the audience in the orchestra, in the tiers of boxes, in the gallery; and how much human love and divine grace there was in music that led souls by the hand to places the mind could not reach.
So don Pierino was quite content to continue being the Assistant Pastor to old don Tommaso, who imposed no limits on his immense energy. Much loved by the street urchins, whom he let tease him about his squat appearance, he was nicknamed ’o Munaciello, the little monk, after the legendary mischievous sprite. But he was also known for his frequent denunciations of epidemics fostered by shameful sanitary conditions in the Quartieri. He could be forgiven this one weakness and granted three hours of joy a couple of times a month. The good Lucio Patrisso was there to see to this. For don Pierino’s purposes he was the most important man in the parish’s jurisdiction. The priest saw to it that the eldest son of the theater’s caretaker studied a bit of mathematics and the man let him in through the entrance to the gardens on opening night. His spot was a narrow space behind the curtains from which he could watch the performance unseen. A unique perspective, which the priest would not have traded for anything in the world. And in fact he was there even on 25 March 1931, when Arnaldo Vezzi was killed.
Ricciardi did not like the opera. He didn’t like crowded places, the tangle of souls, sensations, emotions. The way they influenced one another, turning the crowd into something completely different from the individuals it was composed of. He knew from experience what an animal the crowd could become.
Then too, he didn’t like the theatrical representation of emotions. He knew them well, better than anyone else, he knew how they lived on in those who experienced them, rising in a wave that overwhelmed everything in its way. He was well aware that emotions never came in just one flavour, that a passion was never limited to the most obvious aspect; that for better or for worse there were a thousand facets to it, always unexpected and unpredictable. As a result, he was contemptuous of those colourful costumes, those modulated voices, those archaic, cultured words in the mouths of poor devils who were actually starving to death. No, he did not like the opera. And he had never been to the Royal Theater. Still, he knew how it looked from the outside: on important evenings the festive atmosphere of expectation was palpable even to those just walking by.
As he left the Galleria, heading a small team that included Maione and three policemen, Ricciardi found himself at the top of a short flight of marble stairs leading to the street. There he saw the usual panorama: the imposing Royal Palace, the elegant portico through which one entered the theater, and to the right, the lights of Piazza Trieste e Trento, its cafés teeming with life and pleasure; the suffused sound of music and laughter. To the left, past the Angevin Castle and the trees of Piazza del Municipio, the rumble of the sea at the port.
The area in front of the theater, however, was not how it usually was. And the difference was jarring.
Hundreds of people were crowded around outside the main entrance, standing in an unnatural silence. Heedless of the biting wind that whistled through the narrow portico, elegantly dressed men and women in long silk gowns huddled in their overcoats, their gloved hands holding on to their hats to prevent them from flying away. Children in tatters stood on tiptoe, their bare feet suffering from chilblains, to catch a glimpse of something. Not a whisper, not a word. Only the wailing of the wind. Even the horses, harnessed to the carriages that waited in the street, refrained from snorting or stamping. And there were no cries from the street vendors with their carts of roasted chestnuts and sweets. The gas lamps that adorned the theater’s façade shed dappled light on the crowd, revealing fur collars, fluttering scarves and wide-eyed stares eager for details.
The arrival of the men from the Questura had the effect of a stone thrown into a placid pool of water. The crowd parted to make way for them and a chorus of voices rang out asking what had happened, what the trouble was, why the police were late in arriving, as usual. A couple of kids attempted a timid applause. In the spacious theater lobby, its lavish opulence illuminated and warmed by brightly lit chandeliers, Ricciardi was surrounded by journalists, theater employees and spectators, all talking at once and therefore incomprehensible. Then again, he and Maione both knew from long experience that any really useful information would have to be pulled out with some effort, battling all kinds of reservations. So it was useless, if not detrimental, to listen to that cacophony of words shouted in the excitement of the moment.
Ricciardi identified among the others a little man in evening attire who was bouncing up and down like a coiled spring, sweating profusely. The uniformed staff were looking at him worriedly and the Commissario imagined that he might be the theater manager.
“Deputy . . . or rather, Commissario . . . such a tragedy . . . ” the man stammered incoherently. “Such a thing . . . here, at the San Carlo . . . I must tell you, that never, never! As far back as anyone can remember . . . ”
“Calm down, please. We’re here, now. Tell me, you are . . . ?”
“Why . . . I’m Duke Francesco Maria Spinelli, the director of the Royal Theater of San Carlo. Didn’t you recognize me?”
“Truthfully, no. Please, lead the way. Let’s get out of this confusion,” Ricciardi replied coldly. Meanwhile, the three policemen and Maione had their work cut out for them trying to hold back the swarm of curious onlookers who crowded around. The director took the response as a slap in the face and his expression changed from agitated to offended. Two waiters in livery looked at each other, stifling a laugh, and were frozen by a dirty look. The little man turned with haughty grace and headed for the marble staircase packed with people who stepped aside as he passed, like the Red Sea parting before a dwarfish Moses.