Climbing slowly uphill toward his home, Maione continued to ask himself whether the woman he had seen come out of the apartment house on Via Toledo had really been his Lucia.
In all those years, his wife had never ventured so close to police headquarters without stopping in to say hello. He’d dropped by the front guardroom and asked if anyone had come by looking for him, but they’d told him no. Not satisfied, he’d gone up into the offices, on the off chance that Lucia had come at a time when there was no one at the front entrance, but once again he came up empty. No one had asked for him. Certainly not his wife.
There was no way he had been wrong. Lucia—with her golden blonde hair, so unusual in that part of the country, her brisk confident gait, her handsome body clad in black, the color she’d worn since Luca’s death. And then he could sense her in the air, Lucia. He could feel her on his skin like a breath of wind, in his nostrils like a delicate perfume, in his ears like a snatch of sweet music. He didn’t need to look her in the eyes or hear her voice. Yes, the woman who had left that building was Lucia.
But why, he wondered, as he trudged up the last stretch of road, why had she gone there? Had something happened? Did she need help? A doctor for one of the children? No, impossible. She would have turned to Modo, and before doing that she would have let him know.
He walked into the apartment and was overwhelmed by the hugs of his three youngest: the two boys leaping onto him in a pretend ambush, and the little girl who began laughing the minute she laid eyes on him. He stopped to play with them, tousling their hair and pretending to be a big baboon. Then he went into the kitchen.
The first thing he ought to have said was: Ciao, my love, why were you in Via Toledo a couple of hours ago? Why didn’t you stop by to say hello? Of course that’s what he ought to have said. But, he thought, I’m a cop.
And so he played the cop.
“Mmm, what an appetizing smell,” he said. “What delicious treats are we cooking today, my fair ladies?”
At the table, Maria and Benedetta were mixing flour and water into a dough as carefully as a couple of elderly housewives. They even look alike, thought Maione, they really could be sisters.
Lucia raised her face, reddened from the steaming cookpots, and blew him a kiss.
“Don’t worry, we won’t throw a single morsel away. Go get changed and let us work in peace.”
Was he mistaken or had she been a little brusque? Wasn’t she a little behind schedule today?
He feigned disappointment: “What, dinner isn’t ready yet? I’m so hungry . . .”
“Don’t worry. Dinner will be served at eight, like always. Go get changed like I told you to, you’re dripping with sweat, worse than your children. Get going!”
Raffaele headed for his bedroom roiled by an unpleasant sensation. The dress, he thought. The dress that the person he’d seen was wearing. The black dress embroidered with roses of the same color.
He pulled open the armoire: there it was, in its place, on a hanger. But not on the usual hanger, in the middle of the curtain rod, where his wife kept her best dresses. Instead, it hung on the first hanger, the one closest to the bedroom door. As if it had been put away in a hurry.
He tried to distract himself by stopping for a chat with his oldest boy, Giovanni, who wanted to hear all about his work. The boy’s mother worried about the fact that her son wanted to be a cop like his father and his murdered brother, so certain conversations were better held far from Lucia’s ears, in undertones, like a couple of conspirators.
Maione told him about the professor who’d fallen out the window, without lingering on the more macabre details. He didn’t want to encourage the boy, but he was pleased that he wanted to carry on the family tradition. And after all, becoming a policeman was better than becoming a criminal like so many other young men from the neighborhood, who chased after rewards both easier and much more dangerous to come by.
The dinner table was cheerful and loud, and Maione joined in the confusion; he didn’t want to give his wife the impression that anything was bothering him. He waited until the kids were in bed and the dishes and pots and pans were in the drying rack, and when Lucia, exhausted, finally let herself drop into the chair next to his, he said to her in a neutral tone of voice: “Mamma mia, this heat makes everything so laborious. Just walking a few feet in the street outside is torture. Lucky you, that the only reason you have to go out is to buy groceries; and this evening it was hotter than it was in the middle of the day. But here at home there’s a bit of a breeze, don’t you think?”
“Yes, with the windows open on both sides of the apartment there’s a slight draft. Anyway, it was hot this morning at the market too, believe me.”
Raffaele nodded. He stared at a point outside on the balcony because he knew all too well his wife’s ability to read his thoughts in his eyes, and he didn’t want to give anything away.
“I really wouldn’t want to have to make that uphill climb home more than once a day. I think I’d die of a heart attack.”
Lucia was convinced that he wasn’t looking at her because he was distracted by his worries. My poor love, she thought to herself, if only you could make up your mind to set aside this absurd pride of yours and confide in me. I’d reassure you, because I know there’s always a solution to be found. But if you won’t talk to me, then how can I talk to you?
“What are you talking about! Don’t even joke about a thing like that. No one dies of a heart attack because of a little heat. Don’t worry.”
“Sure,” responded Maione laconically. Then, after a pause: “Still, it really is hot, and tomorrow Mistrangelo—he’s the one who takes the crime reports—tells me it’s going to be hotter still. Don’t ask me how he knows, but he always seems to get it right. You don’t have to go out tomorrow, do you?”
“No, this morning I did the grocery shopping for tomorrow as well. You won’t even have to leave me money. We don’t need a thing.”
Maione nodded.
“And today? You only went out this morning, right?”
Lucia stared at him, surprised: “Say, what are all these questions for? Of course I went out this morning, I told you that I went to the market. And yes, it was hot. You keep asking me the same things. But do you even listen to me, when I answer?”
Maione raised one hand in apology: “Of course I listen, why wouldn’t I? I was just worried that the heat was too much for you, the way it gets you down.”
“Truth be told, the one who suffers when it’s hot out is you, what I hate is the cold. And in fact I’m not minding the heat all that much.”
“No, it’s just that you always dress in black, don’t you?” Maione went on, as if pursuing a train of thought. “And black attracts the heat. It’s not a good idea to go out in bright sunlight if you’re wearing black. So really there’d be nothing wrong with doing your shopping in the late afternoon, or even in the evening, when the sun isn’t straight overhead, in other words.”
Lucia didn’t know whether to laugh or to ignore him and just drop the subject: “Raffae’, have you gone out of your mind? Now you’re saying that because I wear black, I should do my grocery shopping in the evening? Then when would I do the cooking, at night? And then you’ll have to go tell the people who sell groceries at the market to change their hours, have them open up in the evening. You can tell them: Excuse me, I’m Police Brigadier Raffaele Maione, would you be so kind as to put out your stalls in the evening instead of the morning, otherwise I’m afraid my wife might break a sweat?”
“No, I wasn’t saying that, just . . .”
“Or else,” Lucia went on, continuing to imitate him, “would you do me the favor of simply bringing the groceries to my home, so my wife doesn’t even have to use the stairs? Sure, that would be great, thanks, just choose the finest fruit and fish, that way she doesn’t have to tire out her little hands by squeezing them.”
Maione sighed: “So now it’s a crime if somebody worries about his wife. It doesn’t matter, tire yourself out, sweat yourself silly, you can even faint in the street, just don’t come crying to me about it. Today, for example, you went out in the morning, didn’t you? So too bad for you.”
“I went out this morning, and I’m fit as a fiddle. Now let’s go to bed. Tomorrow, you’ll see, I won’t go out at all, that way you’ll be happy.”