Everything has to be normal. Everything has to be the way that it is every day.
You’ve cleaned and tidied the apartment, let it never be said that the children have been neglected or that there’s a spot of dust on the credenza. Let no one say that the curtains are stained, or that the linen is less than spotless.
Now you’ve gone to do the shopping for the day’s meals. You bring home a wrapped package of macaroni, the bread, the tomatoes. You have a fine lunch to make, and then a nice dinner. And tomorrow another lunch, and another dinner. And on and on it goes, because he’ll be coming home, and he’ll sit down across the table, and he’ll smile at you. It’ll all be just the way it used to be, once again. Just the way it was.
It’s hot, and you walk along under the ferocious sun, loaded down with groceries. Your head starts to spin slightly, and no one offers to help.
You go on smiling just the same.
“Why Brigadie’, what an enormous pleasure. Come right in, make yourself comfortable, sit on the pouf, here, next to me. Do you mind if I go on eating? Today of all days I’m dying of hunger, even with this heat. Care for some?”
Maione felt the room spinning around him, and let himself flop down onto the large damasked cushion.
“Oh my goodness, Brigadie’, don’t you feel well? You’re white as a sheet! Come over here, and I’ll give you a little sugar water!”
Maione weakly waved his hand in front of his face.
“No, no, don’t worry, it’s just the heat. But what are you eating, if I may ask?”
“Oh, I just made a bowl of pasta, I know I ought to think about my figure but, I told you before, today for some reason I’m just starving. Maybe it’s because I had a hunch you’d be coming by, a big handsome man like you, and I thought I’d better get something to eat to keep my strength up.”
“Oh, I’ve told you a thousand times, there’s a line I forbid you from crossing, can’t you get that through your head? You know that I don’t even fool around with . . . with women like you, much less with you! Now look what you’re making me say . . . so come to the point, why is it that you were expecting me? Who told you that I might be coming by?”
Bambinella coquettishly tightened the silk kimono against his breast and put one hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
“No one told me. But everyone in the city knows that yesterday the duchess of Camparino was murdered, and a girlfriend of mine who works as a maid in the building across the street told me that you and your commissario were there; why on earth were the two of you working on a Sunday?”
Maione, partially reclining on the large cushion, was fanning himself with his cap.
“What, do I have to explain my schedule to you? Not on your life: in this city not a leaf turns without everybody knowing the details. How can you do a job like mine if you’re working in the middle of a bazaar? In any case, yes, I’m here to ask you if you can give me any information about this duchess. In the quarter where she lived, nobody seems to know a thing, though of course everybody actually knows everything.”
Bambinella was toying with the pasta left over in the bowl, while Maione looked on hungrily.
“Eh, Brigadie’, the duchess . . . That duchess has a story that for lots of us was like a fairy tale, the fairy tales they tell little children. Only, as you’ve seen, it’s not a fairy tale with a happy ending.”
“What do you mean? A fairy tale, how?”
“The duchess wasn’t born into money. She was a soldier’s daughter, and her father was killed in the war. But she was beautiful, very beautiful indeed. I knew a guy who lost his head over her, a silk merchant, if I remember right. But she had other things in mind, she wanted to be independent, she didn’t want to have to say thank you to anyone. And so she decided to become a nurse.”
Maione was doing his best to control Bambinella’s tendency to wander off topic.
“Yes, but when did she get married to the duke?”
“That’s what I’m telling you about, if you’ll only have the patience to listen . . . So, the first duchess was quite the matron, a respectable member of the best society. Very religious, she spent all her time in church, helping the poor, in other words, the classic high society matron. Then she got sick, a nasty disease, you know that, no? The kind that starts with a bout of dizziness, a fainting spell . . . Are you all right, Brigadie’? I don’t know if I like your looks today . . .”
Maione feigned a kick from the pouf where he was sitting.
“Hey, don’t be a clown, I told you! I’m not sick, I’m healthy as a horse! Go on.”
“Eh, and such a lovely personality you have! So, to care for the duchess they hired Nurse Adriana, as lovely as sunshine and bursting with health. The sickness went on and on, and finally, to make that long story short, the duchess passed away. And the nurse hopped into the bed, in place of the sick woman.”
“When did this happen?”
Bambinella raised enameled nails to the tip of his nose.
“Let’s see, now . . . ten years ago or so.”
“And how did the marriage turn out?”
Bambinella shrugged.
“And how do marriages usually turn out, Brigadie’? Fine at first, then worse and worse, and then, at the end, a disaster. Though I have to admit that when people marry for money, things usually go a little better, because at least both parties tend to mind their own business. Still, the poor duchess, God rest her soul, didn’t really know how to calculate her own best interests. And when the duke, who’s a very old man, fell sick himself, she didn’t shut herself up in the palazzo pretending to grieve.”
Maione listened attentively.
“What do you mean, she didn’t shut herself up in the palazzo?”
Bambinella snickered again.
“Brigadie’, there are times when you make me feel sorry for you. You live in a city like this one, you do the job you do, and still you don’t know the basic things that everyone else knows. That’s why I was put here, so that I can explain things to you. Between you and your handsome mute commissario who never laughs, you’re both a little cut off from the real world.”
Maione snorted in annoyance.
“What are you talking about, cut off from the real world? Someone has to keep their eyes on the serious matters, and not spend their lives gossiping about who’s climbing into whose bed. Now, go on, tell me.”
“It’s very simple: Adriana meets a young man just like her, cheerful, intelligent, and ambitious. They fall in love. It’s against his best interests, because it damages his career, and it’s against her best interests, because she’s no longer invited to the better salons and drawing rooms. Still, they fall in love and for love, they tell everyone to go to hell. This is the part of the story I like best.”
The brigadier finally felt he was getting to the heart of the matter.
“And just who is he, this Prince Charming?”
“Prince Charming would be Mario Capece, Brigadie’. The journalist who runs the Roma. The one who, apparently, in the end, killed the duchess.”
I’ll never see you again.
That’s the only thought in my mind, I can’t think of anything else.
Do you remember, the very first time? We were introduced, at the theater. They were talking but I never heard a word. I was lost in your eyes, in that smile of yours. I could feel the passion swelling inside me, the passion that’s never subsided.
I’ll never see you again. It seems impossible.
Your face in my hands. The scent of your skin. You taught me that it’s possible to get drunk without a drop of wine, as the song lyrics go. It all seemed wasted, the time I spent without you. Even my children were so much wasted time. Work was wasted time. Any price I might have to pay was a trifle, for an hour with you.
I’ll never see you again.
Your laughter, a thousand silvery corals on marble, the sound of life itself. I can’t believe it, I’ll never hear you laugh again. You drove me crazy, you made me sick with love. The purest happiness in the most completely impure embrace.
And the fury, the red fury of seeing you smile at another man, watching as you sneak a glance at him. I can’t believe that the last time my hand touched you, it was to hurt you. I can’t believe it.
And I can’t believe that I’ll never see you again.
A moment’s silence followed Bambinella’s statement; from the window, along with the baking heat of early afternoon came the sound of crickets and occasional birdsong. Maione knew his informant’s tendency to exaggerate and over-dramatize, but he was still impressed.
“What do you mean, ‘apparently killed her’? How do you know that Capece murdered the duchess?”
Bambinella shook her head, opening her heavily mascaraed eyes wide.
“No, Brigadie’, don’t try to put words in my mouth that I never said. I don’t know who murdered the duchess. In fact, I have to tell you that I hope it wasn’t Capece. I’m very fond, you know, of love stories, but I don’t like murder stories one bit, on the other hand.”
“So what? We’re not in a theater, where you have to like how the story ends. Did Capece murder his lover or not?”
“How would I know, Brigadie’? All I can tell you is that everyone’s convinced that it really was him. The fact is that Donna Adriana was one of those women who loved to drive men out of their minds, and she knew how to do it. If you ask me, she really was in love with Capece, but even so she was always a bit of a slut. And Saturday night at the Salone Margherita the thing happened, and it happened bad.”
Maione was having a hell of a time keeping the conversation on subjects that he wanted to know about.
“What thing happened Saturday night? Bambine’, I beg of you: it’s hot out, my head is spinning, and I’m dying of hunger here, I can’t eat and I can’t tell you why. Don’t you get started too, now. Tell me what you want to tell me, and don’t waste my time.”
“Oooh, Brigadie’, are you on a diet? But why, you’re so charming the way you are, a man with girth and presence?”
The brigadier’s ferocious glare was more than sufficient to rein Bambinella in.
“All right, all right. I’ll tell you what happened. But let me make it clear that the reason I know these things is that a girlfriend of mine is a housekeeper at the Salone Margherita, actually to tell the truth, I hear that they’re going to promote her to the wardrobe deparment . . . eh, Brigadie’, don’t lose your temper, what a bear you are! Well, at any rate, at intermission everyone was standing around drinking, smoking, and gossiping because that’s one of the reasons people even go to the theater. Just like that, Capece starts yelling at the duchess, saying that she had no right, that it was always the same thing with her, that he wouldn’t put up with it a second longer.”
“Why, what had the duchess done?”
Bambinella spread his arms wide.
“Who can say? No doubt, she’d said hello to someone, or she’d smiled at someone else. She often did. In any case, he was shouting and she was laughing. Just like that, my girlfriend told me that she threw her head back and was laughing loudly, ha ha ha, ha ha ha, as if he was a comedy skit. And that’s when he did the thing with the ring.”
“What do you mean, the thing with the ring?”
“He grabbed her hand and, shouting into her face that she didn’t deserve to have it, and that he never wanted to see her again, he yanked a ring off her finger.”
Maione wanted to know more.
“What ring? What ring are you talking about?”
Once again, Bambinella shrugged.
“What would I know about it? So she told him: ‘Go ahead and take it, the miserable ring. Why don’t you give it back to that ghost of a wife of yours.’”
“Why, is Capece a widower?”
“No, he’s no widower. It’s just that I’ve heard that Capece’s stopped thinking about his wife entirely and has been ignoring her for years; I hear that she’s all hearth and home and church, the complete opposite of the duchess.”
“And then?”
“And then, in front of everyone, he gave her an open-handed slap that knocked her head right around. A couple of men stepped forward, it’s a disgrace to see a man hit a woman in public. But she gestured to them to stop, dried the blood dripping out of her mouth, straightened her hair, and turned and went back into the theater.”
“And what did Capece do?”
“He left; but first he shouted something.”
Maione leaned in toward Bambinella, aware of his own hesitation.
“What did Capece shout?”
“He shouted: I’ll kill you with my own hands.”