Another twenty steps and he’d see him. Not even thirty yards, as soon as he turned the corner. He drew a breath and quickened his gait.
When he could, he’d take another route, unless that meant unacceptable delays; and if it was absolutely inevitable, then at least he tried to pass by as quickly as he could, to shorten the moment. The moment in which the chilly fingers of suffering would run through his skin and clutch at his heart.
Once he reached the spot he lowered his gaze; his hands in his trouser pockets, a light jacket unbuttoned over a white shirt, the narrow strip of dark fabric secured over his belly with a gold tie clip, his sole concession to an offhand sartorial elegance. If he’d been wearing a hat, he’d have looked exactly like the other young office clerks or businessmen walking the streets of central Naples, forced by work to go out into the terrible heat of that season. But Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi was no office clerk, nor was he a lawyer, though he had studied the law. He was a commissario, an officer of public safety, and he was heading for his office at police headquarters, as he did early every morning.
Along the way, though, someone was waiting for him. Someone who had, at least in his physical form, been taken away some time ago by two overheated city morgue attendants before the sorrowful eyes of a small crowd sadly accustomed to events of this sort: a little boy run over by a trolley. Unfortunately, it happened frequently; orphans arguing over a heel of stale bread, a scugnizzo chasing after a rag ball, a child escaping the grasp of a distracted mother. Or any of the countless children who traveled, dangerously and illegally, clinging to some projecting part of the streetcars themselves, until they lost their grip and fell, to be cut in half by the heavy wheels.
And that was exactly what had become of the little boy who was waiting for Ricciardi just inches from the spot where he died. Though he didn’t look up, the commissario’s doleful eyes received the horrible image of an unharmed face, a head shaved bald to ward off lice, shoulders covered by an oversized smock of a shirt, and arms lopped off clean at the elbows.
The black mouth emitted a gush of blood and the words came, mumbled but still quite clear: I’m falling, I’m falling, I can’t hold on any longer. A handhold that had failed, arms that lacked strength. The torso, cut in two, was floating in midair and telling Ricciardi that the poor creature hadn’t died instantly, that the boy hadn’t been spared any suffering.
With a knot in his stomach, Ricciardi broke into what was almost a run, lifting his handkerchief to cover his mouth. God, how unbearable this was. An old tramp, half-asleep in the shade of an apartment building, raised his bleary eyes at the sound of the commissario’s quick steps and watched him with unfriendly curiosity; something about that young man in a hurry upset him, and he recoiled against the wall. There are people who can see it in my face, they can see my curse as I go by, thought Ricciardi.
Lately, his misery had been more intense than usual. He couldn’t even count on the sweet relief of looking at Enrica through the window. She had vanished, and the only fleeting images that appeared behind the panes of glass in the apartment across the way were those of her family. He couldn’t blame her; if anything, rationally, he was happy for her. What could a man like him possibly offer her? Perhaps she’d met someone, or she’d made up her mind not to grant the pleasure of seeing her to a man who lacked the courage to take the initiative. If you only knew, my love, if you only knew the inferno I have in my heart, how much I wish I could be at your side like any ordinary man, and love you and smile at you and embrace you and make love to you the rest of my life. If only you knew how badly I want to be normal, and have the thousands of worries and petty concerns that everyone else has, and not have to listen to the severed torso of a young boy as it vomits blood onto a street corner.
The young woman’s absence left a much bigger hole in Ricciardi’s life than he ever would have expected. Even Rosa, who up until Easter had referred to Enrica as a newfound acquaintance in a way that almost seemed to hint at an invitation to the apartment, had stopped talking about her for some time now. Ricciardi had been tempted to ask her why, but now Rosa herself was a source of growing and increasingly urgent concern.
Rosa was not well. More than once he’d caught her leaning against something or other, suffering from a dizzy spell that she stoutly denied, or else opening and closing her right hand as if it had gone to sleep. Now and then she’d sit down and remain seated even when he walked into the room, breaking a habit she’d maintained since Ricciardi was just a child. She dropped things, even light things like a fork, and sometimes she’d just stop in the middle of a sentence, having lost the thread. He had tried to persuade her to go see Bruno Modo, the doctor at Pellegrini Hospital who also served as the medical examiner, one of the very few people the commissario trusted, but she had refused the suggestion so vehemently that Ricciardi was discouraged from pressing the matter. It’s completely out of the question, she had told him. Why don’t you worry about yourself, you’re getting skinnier and paler every day. Sit down right here and make sure you eat every last bite.
It had never occurred to him that he might someday lose Rosa. As far back as he could remember, and even before that, the woman had always been by his side. Much more than his own mother, who had often been sick and had died young. And he couldn’t imagine no longer hearing the usual string of complaints, the litany of worries, and scoldings, that his old tata unleashed concerning the way he lived and the loneliness he imposed on himself, a loneliness she found absurd. Still, if she was unwilling to see a doctor, there was no way to force her to.
The night before, Rosa had told him that she had sent for her niece Nelide to come help her, as he had so often asked her to do. At least he had gotten her to do that. Perhaps if she could just get some rest she’d get back on her feet and everything would go back to normal.
The temperature was turning red-hot, though it was still early. Out an open window came a woman’s well-modulated singing voice. His thoughts jerked him suddenly to Livia, who had once been a singer and had more than once obliged him to take her to the opera. He didn’t dislike going out with her; if nothing else, those carefree evenings helped him get his mind off his work, his worries about Rosa and, most of all, Enrica’s absence.
He knew that Livia cared for him. She herself had confessed that fact. And Ricciardi wondered why she should choose him, with all the men she could have, wealthy and attractive as she was. Perhaps, he thought to himself as he faced the last stretch of road, it was precisely because he was so uninterested in courting her that she found him intriguing; this trait must have offered a welcome change of pace.
For that matter, he had a clear understanding with Livia: their friendship entailed only evenings at the theater or the movies. No social occasions, no dinners, no aperitifs, no get-togethers. They weren’t a couple, nor would they ever be. They shared a few pleasant hours, discussed the show they’d just seen, and made a little light conversation as she accompanied him home in her car; all this, one night every couple of weeks. She asked for nothing more, and he would have been unwilling to offer any more even if she had. The ritual never varied: her chauffeur would come to police headquarters and hand-deliver an envelope containing the tickets, the time and the date of the show; if he agreed, on the scheduled day the car would come by to pick him up at his office.
He suspected that Rosa disliked Livia, so he avoided mentioning her. As for him, he was well aware of her allure and knew how difficult it was to take his eyes off her magnificent body sheathed in the very latest fashions, off her perfect face, and her eyes, which glittered gleefully; and there was also a certain satisfaction to walking into the theater with Livia on his arm and noticing how his companion attracted the adoring attention of the men and the sullen glares of the women. But if he were ever going to bestow his heart on anyone, if the curse of madness hadn’t been laid on him, he would have chosen sweet Enrica, whose beauty was unparalleled, at least in his eyes.
While, in spite of himself, he shuttled, in his mind, from one woman to the other, he fetched up at the entrance to police headquarters, where he found an imposing and familiar bulk dressed in a brigadier’s uniform waiting for him in the shade.
“Maione? What are you doing here?”
The man touched the visor of his cap in a rapid salute: “What can you do about it, Commissa’? The holidays have played havoc with the shifts, and I don’t mind a little overtime with the way things are these days. I traded shifts with Cozzolino, he’s a bachelor and he needs his vacation time to find a girlfriend, though who’s going to take him I can’t imagine, with that face of his, like a snarling guard dog’s. Anyway, it was a good thing, because something happened at the general hospital, a phone call came in just a few minutes ago. I sent Camarda and Cesarano on ahead; and I stayed here to wait for you, because I knew you’d get here early. What do you say, shall we get going?”