That evening, Maione’s feet were not really what carried him to no. 270, Via Toledo. His encounters with Sisinella and Cortese, Vomero with its heady romantic atmosphere, the heat he’d suffered on the funicular, a vivid image of a descent into an inferno of despair: all these things had conspired to sow in his tormented soul an irresistible desire to gaze into the eyes of the man who was pitching woo with his wife.
He posted himself in the atrium as he had the day before. The doorman pretended not to see him and went straight into the inner courtyard with a chair, the evening paper, and half a cigar. The brigadier prepared for a wait that he expected would be short: this was the right time of day.
And in fact, after no more than half an hour, Lucia emerged, tucking her hair under her scarf. Just like the night before, she shot a quick glance around her and then headed for home. Maione wondered where she’d gathered such confidence, this stranger who had been at his side for so many years. How had she learned so well to master the arts of dissimulation and untruth?
No more than ten minutes, not even the time to sink into a state of bitter rancor, and out came the damned Ferdinando Pianese, the horrible Fefè that Bambinella had told him about, the debauched useless creature capable of poisoning even his troubled sleep in those nightmarish days.
He gave him a few yards’ head start and then set off after him. There weren’t many people out on the street; the heat discouraged strollers, and a number of shops had closed early. The two men, Maione and Fefè, couldn’t have looked any more different. The brigadier’s pace was that of a policeman hard at work: hands in his pockets, cap pushed back on his head, eyes darting from a shopwindow to a beggar, from a newsstand to a married couple out with their children; Fefè, on the other hand, ambled along like a dandy waiting for dinnertime and in the meanwhile calmly mulling over the various possible places to enjoy an aperitif, smiling at life and at a bright future. To all appearances, two characters among so many in the city; not a ravenous predator stalking his unsuspecting prey.
The brigadier’s brain was scheming, planning out the instant in which he’d face his rival head-on. There, he thought, now he’s turning the corner of Via Chiaia . . . there are still too many people out walking in the street . . . then he’ll head downhill toward Piazza dei Martiri, and he’ll stop at the café with all the other good-for-nothings to pester other people’s women.
I have to stop him before that.
Just a few yards short of the last stretch of street before the piazza so popular with the city’s high society—an ideal hunting ground for people like Fefè—Maione lengthened his stride and caught up with him at the mouth of a narrow vicolo, a broad, dead-end flight of steps; he grabbed the man by one arm and dragged him into the shadows.
The man seemed more surprised than frightened: an enormous policeman, grim-faced and sweaty, in uniform and with a pistol on his belt, was gripping the immaculate white sleeve of his summer jacket with huge fingers; that sleeve would most likely never be the same again. No doubt, a case of mistaken identity, Fefè reassured himself. The policeman need only take a close look at my face.
Instead the brigadier slammed him carelessly against a wall. Two young men who had been completing some transaction that required a certain degree of privacy decided that it was probably wise to take to their heels. Now Maione and Fefè were all alone.
The slim dandy opened his eyes wide: “But . . . but what do you want from me, Brigadie’? There must be some mistake, I’ve done nothing.”
“Nothing, Piane’? Nothing? There’s been no mistake, it was you I was looking for. And if you examine your conscience, that is, if you still possess such a thing, then I think you’ll have no doubt about what I want from you.”
Pianese did his best to think quick, but he was finding that easier said than done, because now Maione had released his grip on his sleeve and had grabbed him by the neck; he clutched in his enormous fist collar, bowtie, and jacket lapel, all scrunched up together and pressed so forcefully on the lawyer’s throat that he couldn’t take a breath. In a glimmer of lucidity, it dawned on the policeman that the man was suffocating, and he loosened his grip ever so slightly.
Fefè took a deep, sharp breath, and moaned: “Brigadie’, you must have taken me for some other person, I can assure you that I’ve done nothing, I . . .”
Maione’s hissed whisper turned bitter: “Nothing. Sure. It’s nothing to wreck a family, introduce a serpent into an honest household, take a mother away from her children. It’s nothing to destroy a life, shatter the heart of a man who thought that the woman beside him was a faithful loving wife. It’s nothing to take someone’s sunlight and fresh air away. You’re a bastard, Piane’. You’re a rotten bastard.”
The other man looked wildly around him, hoping in vain that someone might come to his aid. He was afraid to shout for help, fearing that if he did, that uniformed lunatic would simply snap his neck by squeezing his hand shut.
He tried to think. If the man hadn’t already killed him, if he was talking to him, he might still have a chance. This had to be about Lucrezia.
After a courtship that had lasted months, he’d only recently managed to work his way into the good graces of the Marchesa Lucrezia Carrara di Morsano, one of the city’s most prominent matrons. The woman was hardly delightful to behold, with her big bug eyes, her long skinny legs, and the frizzy yellow hair that did its best to escape the confines of every little hat, forming a sort of cloud around her forehead; still, the money that her husband possessed—an elderly landowner with vast holdings whose only real interest was in food—more than made up for it, and she, in exchange for his sexual favors, was happy to disburse considerable sums on a regular basis.
Lucrezia, who was sailing blithely toward her sixtieth birthday, had two children, a son and a daughter, but thirty-six and thirty-four years of age respectively, both married and with children of their own: to talk about taking a mother away from her children struck Fefè as something of an exaggeration. Also, Fefè had to wonder why the elderly and gluttonous Marchese di Morsano should have requested and obtained no less than the violent intervention of the legal authorities to settle a matter that could have been handled with a gentlemen’s agreement, the dispute placed in the wise hands of some common friend, as was generally the procedure.
Hoarse from the choking, he coughed out: “Brigadie’, calm down, for the love of all that’s holy. Tell the marchese that I understand and I’ll act according to his wishes. Just reassure him that the marchesa . . .”
Maione paid no attention to the man’s stammered words, having decided in advance that he’d ignore all excuses: “Now listen to me, and listen good, you cowardly bastard: if you see her again, even once, just once, I’ll kill you, you get it? I’ll kill you. And when I’m done with you, your own mother won’t be able to identify the corpse, do you understand me? Not even your own mother. Say yes. Say it now, and say it loud.”
If it meant escaping alive from that situation, Pianese would gladly have admitted to being the star ballerina of the dance troupe at the San Carlo opera house, proving his claim with a few demonstrative demi-pliés right there on the uneven cobblestones of the vicolo.
“Yes, yes, Brigadie’, don’t worry, never fear. And tell the marchese that he can be sure that I’ll never, never see the marchesa again as long as I live.”
Maione roared. That man was intolerable, and now he was mocking him, too.
He felt disgusted with the man, with the vicolo, with Lucia, and even with himself. He dropped Fefè and the man fell to the ground, panting; then he got to his feet and broke into a shambling run.
In the shadows of the evening now falling, the brigadier covered his face with his hands and wept.