Day of the Dead (4 page)

Livia had been a central figure in the high society of the capital. It was truly a rare thing for such a lovely and charming woman to win over even the ladies with her amiable personality, the women in those circles being inclined to jealousy and afraid of losing their husbands' affections. But Livia, openhearted and sincere, sailed nonchalantly through the reefs of gossip and backbiting, and in the end succeeded in charming everyone, men and women alike.

There were a few people with whom she shared genuine friendship. One of these was Edda, the Duce's favorite daughter. The girl was barely twenty, a decade younger than she, and a fickle, capricious young woman; but she had taken a liking to the fascinating signora, who was a paragon of elegance and class. The two women liked each other, and when her schedule of official commitments allowed, Edda would call Livia for long, amusing phone conversations. This was one of the reasons Edda had asked her father if she could accompany him on his visit to Naples, even though she had her hands full getting ready to move to China with her new husband, a diplomat she'd married the year before.

Livia had decided to host a small, intimate party; it was a way of officially opening her home to Neapolitan society, and of showing her friend that the city was not the chaotic and dangerous slum that some people liked to portray it as.

Not that it would be a simple matter, to host the Duce's daughter. It would require extraordinary security measures and would attract the notice of both the city's aristocracy and its politicians. Still, it would be fun to open her drawing room to the elegant set and observe the behavior of certain self-important notables she'd had occasion to meet at the theater over the past few days.

She attended the theater by herself; she wasn't interested in being squired around by just anybody. Not that she wouldn't have had her pick of the town: almost every day her servants brought her enormous bouquets, some of them sent anonymously, others accompanied by ardent billets-doux with unfamiliar signatures. She stood up and, tightening the sash of her silk peignoir, she approached the mirror, admiring her shapely figure and her dark complexion, her raven hair and lustrous ebony eyes. My beauty, she thought. How much damage has my beauty done, to me and to others?

It had been her beauty that had captivated Arnaldo, a self-centered man accustomed to getting whatever he wanted. It had been her beauty that had caused two of her admirers to take leave of their senses; she'd spurned both their advances, and they'd gone so far as to challenge each other to a duel a few years earlier. It was her beauty that kept her from enjoying friendship with men, who, sooner or later, all decided that she must be theirs.

And now that, for the first time, it was she who wanted to cast her spell on a man, take him for her own and keep him at her side, he turned out to be the one man who was capable of resisting her beauty. Livia could tell that Ricciardi was hardly indifferent to her. Just the opposite: she could sense the tension, the way his body quivered silently whenever she approached, but there was something holding him back, making him keep his distance.

Once Ricciardi had told her that his heart belonged to another. That there was another woman in his thoughts. And so she had asked him whether he was married or engaged, and he had sadly shaken his head no.

That changed everything, she had thought to herself, emerging from the abyss of despair into which she had felt herself sink for a moment. No other woman could lay claim to him, he was a free man, and therefore he could still be hers. If he'd been otherwise committed she would have let him go: too many times she'd been the victim of her husband's philandering and two-timing, she'd suffered too many humiliations to want to inflict the same thing on some other woman. But if the strange, attractive commissario was unclaimed, then there was nothing wrong with implementing a strategy to conquer him.

Strategy? Conquer? Livia smiled into the mirror; those were words used in war, not in love. But deep down, she thought, isn't love a form of war? More like hunting than war, perhaps: but that did little to change the basic facts.

For the thousandth time she asked herself what it was about that man that moved her so deeply. His eyes, no question: two pieces of emerald so bright they glowed in the dark. And the tousled hair hanging over his forehead, the way he had of brushing it out of his eyes with a quick sweep of the hand. His hand, thin and nervous: that hand she'd so gladly feel on her body on one of those rainy nights.

She started brushing her hair. She wanted that man. She wanted him with every fiber in her body, in a way she'd never wanted anyone before. Throughout her life, she'd been guided, manipulated, and managed by others: her parents, her teachers, her husband. Now, for the first time, she had a home of her own, a place she'd chosen for herself, and a life all her own, full of the things she'd always desired; it was only natural that she should try to bring the man she wanted into that life and keep him close to her.

Gazing at herself in the mirror, she wondered what her unknown rival looked like, the woman whom Ricciardi said he loved. Not that it made a difference to her, against her blunt determination; she just wondered whether she was blonde or brunette, tall or petite.

Apprehensively, she feared that she might be prettier than her.

 

 

 

Somewhat disheartened, Enrica looked down at the sleeping boy with a pen in his hand, his head resting on a sheet of paper and a streamer of drool at the corner of his mouth. He was snoring. It was the third time he'd dozed off that morning.

Of all the students she tutored, Mario was the most challenging: the boy's habit of suddenly falling asleep had caused him to be expelled from every state school in the kingdom of Italy, and his father, a wealthy cured-meats merchant, had confided in Enrica's mother, a regular client, that he'd reached his wit's end. The woman had immediately recommended her daughter, a certified schoolteacher, whose patience and stubbornness seemed perfectly suited to the challenge.

And so Enrica found herself spending most of each morning trying to wake up Mario, who was otherwise an upstanding young man, when he fell asleep on his schoolwork. She was hoping to present him at the equivalency tests for a junior high school diploma with some chance of passing them, as long as he didn't start snoring during the written portion of the exams.

But today, at least for a few minutes, Enrica was going to let her scholar sleep. She had something else to do.

Taking care to be quiet, she pulled a sheet of paper out of her skirt pocket and adjusted her myopic glasses on the bridge of her nose. Enrica wasn't beautiful, but she had a natural gracefulness and a femininity that expressed itself in her gestures and her smiles, which were attractive in spite of the fact that she was maybe a little too tall, with long legs hidden by the folds of her skirts, old-fashioned in their cut, the way she preferred. Her introverted personality, gentle but stubborn, allowed her to avoid arguments—especially with her mother, who tried to impose her own beliefs on her—and to do as she liked, thanks in part to the support of her father, a highly respected hat seller with a shop on Via Toledo.

The man dearly loved Enrica, his eldest, so similar to him in her reserved manner and tactiturn personality, and who at the age of twenty-four had never had a boyfriend. And yet she'd had her opportunities, most recently the son of the wealthy proprietor of a shop near her father's, but Enrica had refused to see him, sending her mother, who was terrified that her daughter would find herself an irremediable old maid, into a rage. I'm in love with someone else, Enrica had said: just like that, straightforward and unadorned, she had uttered this terrible piece of news one Sunday at lunch, before beginning her bowl of pasta with ragù.

Giulio Colombo, Enrica's father, had had his hands full trying to calm his wife over the next few days. They had been unable to find out anything about their daughter's phantom inamorato, except for the minor detail that he was not a married man: well, at least that's something, her mother had said, fanning herself nervously. No other information. What do you intend to do? she'd asked the girl, knowing that she'd stick to her plan, whatever that might be. I'll wait, she had replied, with her customary quiet determination.

When she made up her mind like that, she was best left to her own devices.

Life at home had returned to its usual routines. Enrica had resumed tutoring, cooking her father's favorite dishes, and embroidering after dinner, sitting by the kitchen window and listening to the faint sound of the radio playing in the living room. And shooting furtive glances at the window of the building across the street, where one could make out a slim dark silhouette, watching her as she did her needlepoint.

Enrica had learned who that silhouette belonged to a few months earlier. She'd received a summons to appear at police headquarters in regard to a murder she had nothing to do with, and when she walked into the office she found herself face-to-face with the man of her dreams, the unknown man who watched from the window: Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi. Their first encounter hadn't gone too well, truth be told. The fact that she'd been unprepared for the meeting, less carefully dressed and groomed than was customary for her, without a trace of makeup, had irritated her, and she'd reacted by displaying an aggressivity that was quite unlike her. For days she'd wallowed in the painful conviction that she'd never see him again.

Things had more or less worked themselves out in the weeks that followed. They'd gone back to gazing at each other from afar, even exchanging a hesitant wave of the hand, a nod of the head, a half smile. Enrica was patient. She knew how to wait. And her waiting had been rewarded just a few days earlier, with the arrival of the letter she now held in her hand, as little Mario snored away.

She smiled as she remembered how her father, returning from work, stood checking the mail the doorman had given him. He'd paused when he came to that one, furrowing his brow, and then he'd called her into another room, away from his wife's prying eyes. At last, he'd given her the letter, without a word, except to say:

“It's not postmarked.”

What he meant by this was that someone had hand-delivered the envelope, or else they'd slipped it into the building's postbox. Then he'd left her alone, without asking her anything about it, neither then nor later. That's the way it was between them: discretion above all else.

She'd felt her heart bursting in her chest. In her bedroom, she'd waited almost half an hour, staring at the envelope and imagining all the possibilities. She didn't doubt for a second that it was from him, that he'd finally decided to step forward; at the same time, she was afraid of being disappointed, that it might contain a chilly formal greeting and nothing more.

Rereading it now for the hundredth time, she thought that to a certain extent, that's all it had been. But, in the end, it was still a way of reaching out to her.

 

Gentile Signorina
,
he began;
I am taking the liberty of writing to you, lest you think me rude for having the impudence and forwardness to make your acquaintance through a window. All the same, our meeting was so unexpected that I hardly had the presence of mind to introduce myself as I ought to have done. My name is Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi, I am a commissario at police headquarters, and, as you know, I live across the street from you, directly across from your window. This short letter is written with the sole intent of learning whether you would object to my greeting you, when I happen to see you from across the way. But I must add, in all sincerity, that I would be very glad if you did not object.

I would be very pleased to hear from you. In the meantime, my fondest wishes,

Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi

 

Objectively, it wasn't much, but what Enrica valued greatly was what
wasn't
written in that letter; namely, the fact that there was nothing about any prior commitments, for instance with that beautiful and sophisticated
signora
she'd seen him with once at Caffè Gambrinus–otherwise he'd never have written to her. And the fact that he was not indifferent to her. And finally, that he was courteous, reserved, and shy, just as she'd imagined.

And now? she asked herself anxiously. Now it was up to her. It was her turn to reply, without being too forward, but also without being too standoffish, otherwise he might think that there was no interest on her part, as she feared he might have assumed based on her behavior the one time they'd met. She had to think, and she had to think quickly: if she let too much time go by before answering, he might take it as a sign of annoyance.

And how should she arrange to get her answer to him? She certainly couldn't be seen with an envelope in hand lurking around the postbox in his building, seeing as everyone in the neighborhood knew her; and mailing it would mean an enormous delay. She realized that she knew the elderly woman who lived with him by sight, a fat and good-natured woman who did her grocery shopping at the same place Enrica did; she'd have to screw up her courage and stop the woman, introduce herself, and talk to her. She'd have to be brave.

She put the sheet of paper back in her pocket and sighed, looking down at Mario, lost in his dreams. She coughed once; the boy woke up and looked at her with a bovine expression, barely recognizing her. She smiled at him and said:

“Now, where were we?”

And she shot a tender glance at the window across the way.

Standing by his office window, Ricciardi was doing his best to dry himself off with his handkerchief. He watched the wind and the rain hammer down on the piazza, sweeping the streets clean of everything that wasn't anchored to the ground. The holm oaks were shaking their naked branches at the sky above, and people sought shelter in doorways and tried to save their umbrellas, useless against the fury of the elements.