On the way back, they chose to cut inland; the route was a little longer but less packed with people, horses, and wheeled carts. Maione was the first to speak: “Commissa’, if you ask me, these two aren’t telling it straight. In practical terms they’d have been ruined, if the boy hadn’t had this stroke of good luck, so to speak, with the professor’s death. Because the professor, if I’m understanding this correctly, would have gone on flunking him, now and forever.”
Ricciardi agreed: “Right. If he couldn’t pass that exam, he’d never have gotten his degree, he’d never have been able to take the place of his dying father, and the partners would have forced him out of the clinic.”
Maione wasn’t done: “Apart from the exam, it seems to me that the dying doctor had other motives for wanting his old colleague dead. The man had ruined his life by writing that anonymous letter.”
The commissario wasn’t entirely convinced.
“All quite true. And what’s more the sheer bulk of the son lines up with the size of the man that the goldsmith told us about. Still, I have to wonder: what sense does it make to send a threatening letter and then proceed to do something like that? It amounts to a confession before the fact. What’s more, why take revenge after more than twenty years? It doesn’t add up. It’s one thing to die and leave your son unemployed, it’s another to send him to prison for the rest of his life.”
The brigadier wasn’t willing to dismiss his theory: “Maybe it just wasn’t premeditated, Commissa’. Maybe the son just went to have a talk with the professor, and since he showed no signs of changing his mind, he picked him up and threw him out the window. And the father, lying on his sickbed, found himself with a murder to cover up.”
“That could be. Anything could be. Did you notice that one of the son’s shoulders is lower than the other? The jeweler might have noticed that detail. It’s worth having another talk with him. In any case, first I want to meet Peppino the Wolf, and go see the professor’s widow again; I’d like to figure out whether she knew about little Sisinella.”
Maione mulled over the idea. Then he said: “That’s a possible lead, too, Commissa’. If a guy finds out that his wife . . . No, sorry, if a wife finds out that her husband is cheating on her, who can say what she might be capable of doing. But the lady was over at her cousins’ place in the same apartment building, with her son, and I doubt she has the strength to throw anyone out a window.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking about it that way. It wasn’t the wife, that’s for sure; I was thinking about Sisinella and her new boyfriend. I want to understand whether she might have taken any initiative on her own, such as going to call on the professor. As for Signora Iovine, I wonder if she might have noticed some change in her husband’s mood.”
Maione murmured grimly: “Sure, of course. When a husband’s being cheated on, or a wife for that matter, he’s always the last to know.”
They reached the corner of Via Toledo and parted ways: Ricciardi continued toward the hospital, and Maione headed home. The brigadier said that he’d swing by later to see how Rosa was doing, but the commissario replied: “No, Raffaele; stay with your family today. I’ll see you tomorrow in the office, we have a lot to get done.”
And he headed off, with a dagger in his heart.
Nelide stared at her aunt’s placid face. The doctor had told her it wasn’t possible, but she sensed that something was happening inside that head: she could spot almost imperceptible movements of the facial muscles, as if the old woman were dreaming.
The young woman’s practical mind kept chugging away. What was she supposed to do now? Of course, she could go back to her village. It would be more appropriate for one of Rosa’s sisters to be at her deathbed. That, however, would mean that for a period of at least two days, there would be no one tending to the sick woman but the young master.
Ah, yes, the young master. Another problem. Rosa had explained to her how incapable the man was when it came to running a house and taking care of himself. And she’d assigned to Nelide the task of looking after him: the young woman would inherit Rosa’s responsibility to care for him.
Her first duty was to obey the instructions that her aunt had left her. Yes, she was sure of that. This is what she was born for. Once the thing that she felt was inevitable had happened, all obligations concerning Ricciardi would rest on her shoulders, and she would assume those tasks without doubts or hesitations.
No other woman in the family, Nelide decided, had a greater right than she did to run the household of Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi. Her own aunt had conferred that enormous charge upon her, and she would rise to the responsibility unless Ricciardi himself sent her away.
She turned her attention back to Rosa. Her aunt had taught her everything she could, and her example had formed the basis of Nelide’s entire education. She loved her Aunt Rosa, and she felt ready to inherit her position. She only wished, though, that Rosa had been able to stay on a little longer with her and the young master, even bedridden; so that she could talk with her, confide in her, ask her advice.
In silence, without even mouthing the words with her lips, she said a prayer to the Madonna del Carmine—Our Lady of Mount Carmel—whose feast day would soon be here. Madonnina, she asked, won’t you leave her here with me a little longer? If you don’t need her up there right away, to tidy up heaven, maybe you could let her stay on a little longer here with me. Just so she could tell me one more time how to make the teneredda, or the pizza roce; or what I should do if the sharecroppers fall behind in their payments for more than a season; of if one of the plants out on the balcony starts to wither.
She wasn’t afraid, Nelide. She didn’t consider the task overwhelmingly challenging, nor did she think of herself as a girl who was still too young. She’d battled against drought, against two floods, against the epidemic that had ravaged the livestock. You’re ready for anything once you’ve survived a winter during which hail has destroyed the harvest or the wolves have devoured eight sheep out of fourteen, if you’ve survived temperatures of 15 degrees with almost no firewood, when you’ve been forced to cut up the table and three chairs just to heat the house, and if the fever has carried off two baby brothers in a single autumn. Whatever happens, her aunt used to tell her, gives you a gift: the good things and the bad things. And the finest gifts come from the worst things, because they teach you what to do to keep from having it happen again. The good things leave you nothing but a pleasant memory, and that’s not very helpful.
One time Rosa had taken her by the hand and led her to the window. ‘Look, Ne’,” she’d told her. “You see those two young ladies shielding themselves from the sunlight with that white silk parasol? You see them? Well, that little umbrella is just stuff and nonsense. You have to carry it in your hand and it has the same weight and bulk as an ordinary umbrella, but it shelters you from neither the sun nor the rain. It’s good for nothing. You, Ne’, should only load yourself down with the things that you need. You shouldn’t carry anything useless. I will teach you the things that are necessary, and those are the only things you need to carry with you.”
Nelide had thought it over. Then she’d turned to look at Rosa and had said to her: ‘Sí, ’a zi’. I understand. Only the things that are necessary.”
’Nu sacco vaco nun se regge all’erta, she thought to herself. And it was true: a empty sack can’t stand up. An empty sack flops over onto the ground. And she, Nelide Vaglio, wasn’t an empty sack. Aunt Rosa had filled this sack to the brim.
Madonni’, just a little longer, if it’s possible, she thought, addressing the Virgin Mary. Just a little longer.
With a quick swipe, she brushed away a tear.