The Bottom of Your Heart (10 page)

Why am I writing you all this? You know why.

I'm a sick man, Tullio. Nature has its way even with us physicians. I'm treating myself, but little by little my strength is ebbing away. My son, my Guido, needs to take my place as soon as possible, otherwise my two partners will succeed in ejecting me from my position at the clinic, nullifying the work of an entire lifetime.

You know very well that my son is a good-hearted young man, though I recognize that he is hardly brilliant. But he studies hard, and he's passed nearly all of the required examinations. He should by rights have earned his medical degree a year ago, which would have given me time to instruct him in those rudiments necessary for him to replace me as director of the clinic, so I could wait to die in peace. But fate has placed you in my path once again: you have flunked him, directly or through a subordinate, three times now. You did it in a way that was ostensibly irreproachable, by tripping him up with complicated questions and clinical hypotheticals that no one has ever seen in reality. I know that, you know it too. But I don't understand why: after all, I'm the one who suffered from your treachery all those years ago. It's clear that your wickedness, your thirst for blood, lives on. But this time you're playing with something that matters far more to me than my career: you're playing with the life of my son, and that's something I won't allow.

Understand that I'll stop at nothing. At nothing, I tell you.

Guido will come to see you outside of your usual office hours, far from prying eyes. You two will decide on the questions together, and you will let him pass the exam. He will take his degree and you will safeguard your reputation, because he will bring you, in the same meeting, the documentation concerning your bungled operations which I had to remedy surgically, in some cases leaving the patients sterile.

I'm sure that only fear can persuade you to give in. I know you.

I'll wait for your response, and then I'll let you know when my son will come to see you. I imagine that late at night might be best, at your office. And if you fail to ensure that you are alone when he comes, then I'll take it that you're not interested in this trade, and I'll take action accordingly. As the saying goes, let Samson die with all the Philistines.

With my very worst regards,

Francesco Ruspo di Roccasole

 

Ricciardi handed the sheet of paper to Maione so he could read it, and turned to look into Maria Carmela's pale face. Extortion, no doubt about it. And a tacit threat: I'll take action accordingly.

So there was more than one person who had it in for Iovine. The image of the professor that was emerging was quite different from that which had at first appeared.

“Signora, do you know the man who sent this letter?”

“Yes, Commissario. I know him, but I haven't seen him for more than twenty years. He's the director and part owner of the Villa Santa Maria Francesca nursing home, the one in Mergellina.”

“And do you know what he is referring to when he speaks of your husband's alleged unethical behavior toward him?”

“I do remember that he was competition with Tullio for a position as university assistant, and that my husband was selected, and he was not. But I couldn't tell you why, nor could I say why Ruspo was denied a career at the university.”

Maione, who was done reading, turned to the woman: “Excuse me, Signo', but did you receive this letter? Did you read it first and then talk about it with your husband?”

The woman stared at Maione. Such direct questions irritated her, but she had to answer them.

“Yes, Brigadier. I received it. I thought it must have been . . . I thought I'd received it by mistake, that it had been sent to the wrong address. My husband never receives correspondence at home. Never. I read it and I waited for him to come home. I was upset. He skimmed it and told me not to worry. He started laughing.”

Maione exchanged a glance with Ricciardi.

“He started laughing?”

“Yes. He said they were the ravings of a man on his deathbed, but that out of respect for days gone by, he wouldn't report the matter to the police or to the council of the physicians' guild.”

Ricciardi pressed on: “So he didn't seem worried to you? You didn't get the impression he was afraid?”

“No, Commissario. He didn't give any weight to the matter at all. But I wasn't as calm as he seemed to be, and I urged him to be careful. And as you can see, I decided to hold on to the letter.”

Ricciardi nodded.

“I'm going to have to ask you to let us take it. I assure you that, once we've checked it out thoroughly, we'll return it to you.”

“Are you going to talk to Ruspo? You'll need to investigate in depth, I'd imagine . . . But if it were to turn out that my husband . . . anything that might sully my husband's memory . . . Certainly you must understand, I have a child to protect, if his father's integrity were called into question . . . I'm all alone now, I have to look after him.”

Ricciardi reassured her: “Signora, the only thing we want is to find out whether someone is responsible for the professor's death. Anything not directly related to that matter is of no interest to us and will not be divulged. Not by us, at least.”

After a moment's silence, Maione said: “Signo', forgive me, but we do have to ask you this. Where were you yesterday evening? Could your husband have tried to contact you by phone, or I don't know, might somebody else have tried to contact you on his behalf?”

“I went to dinner with my son, here in the building, at the home of my cousins. I go quite often, when my husband doesn't come home. We stayed out late, listening to a program on the radio. We didn't get back until after midnight. As of eight o'clock, when we left for dinner, no one had called; and if someone had called after that, my housekeeper would have come to inform me. So I'd rule out that possibility.”

The last few words were uttered in a whisper; the woman's gaze was wandering around the room as if this were the first time she'd seen it. Ricciardi and Maione knew that expression, they'd seen it many times before on the faces of family members of people who had met violent deaths: they didn't understand right away what had happened, then the reality began to lap against them like a series of waves, until, like a tsunami, the awareness of their loss buried everything, stripping away rational reasoning and mental equilibrium.

Signora Iovine's lips began to quiver; she put her hand on her forehead.

Ricciardi asked: “Do you need anything? Can we do something for you?”

She emitted a long racking sob and covered her face with both hands. After a moment, she recovered and, apparently calm now, stared at the commissario.

“We had plans, my husband and I. We had plans. In August we were going to the countryside, where it's nice and cool. The countryside is so good for the boy. He's delicate, extreme heat isn't good for him. We had a new car, did you know that? You can put the top down. Federico couldn't wait to go on vacation in a convertible. I don't know how to drive. Now how can I take him to the country? I'll have to learn to drive, won't I?”

Ricciardi dropped his gaze to the carpet. Maione coughed softly. At last, Maria Carmela Iovine del Castello began to cry.

N
elide was making
ciccimmaritati
. It was Rosa's belief that if a woman of Cilento had any pride in her birthplace, that dish had to form part of her repertoire, and she intended to put her niece to the test. No one could ever have guessed that there was satisfaction in the way Rosa watched her, because she resembled nothing so much as a pillar of salt. In fact, truth be told, her expression was more of a frown than anything else.

For that matter, Rosa had no particular reason to be cheerful. Alongside the usual worries provoked by her young master, who seemed unwilling to settle down and start a family of his own, now there was a new problem on the horizon.

Her own state of health.

Rosa had no fear of dying. She was a pragmatic person, a farmer's daughter, raised in a sunbaked, hostile land. She knew that death was part of life, that in fact it's as necessary as the seasons; it comes so that the new can take the place of the old. But could anyone really take Rosa's place?

Nelide hesitated as she ran her rough hand over the formica counter, so smooth in comparison with the coarse wood to which she was accustomed. Rosa appreciated that mistrust in the presence of such a highly unnatural material, and she was pleased when she saw that her niece immediately found her footing and returned to the gestures of that ancient ritual, arranging the ingredients on the table: dark durum wheat, corn, fava beans, grass peas, round white scarlet runner beans,
tabaccuogni
beans, small and brown, chickpeas and
mimiccola
beans, and finally lentils. Each heaped in a separate pile, to make sure the quantities were correct. A bowl held the
janga
chestnuts, previously dried and peeled, which would serve to give the soup its sweetness, an essential function.

Nelide worked neatly and methodically. She might perhaps have moved a little faster, but that would have been at the expense of precision; speed would come in time. After all, the girl was just seventeen, though at first glance you'd say she was anywhere between sixteen and thirty. A solid, healthy Cilento woman, from Rosa's point of view.

Ricciardi's elderly governess had eleven brothers and sisters, and more than seventy nieces and nephews. And though every one of her siblings had baptized one of their daughters Rosa—in honor of the one sister who hadn't produced children, and who had always helped out by sending small sums of cash, gifts her young master permitted with a disinterested smile—when the time came the niece that Rosa picked was Nelide, the third-born child of the seventh-youngest sibling, her brother Andrea.

Alongside the small piles of beans and grains, the girl arrayed spices and condiments: garlic, olive oil, salt, the absolutely necessary
papaulo
—the fiery-hot dried chili pepper—as well as the tomato purée spooned out of the
buatta
, the metal can that stood, covered with a rag, on the highest shelf in the pantry. Now I want to see what you can do, thought Rosa from the chair pushed against the wall in which she sat, her fingers knit over her ample belly. Up till now, the girl had remained safely within the bounds of strict orthodoxy, but the time had come for a personal touch. Either you have it or you don't.

Nelide had been to the city other times to visit her aunt. Ever since she was a little girl she had proven to be much more similar to Rosa than were those female cousins who bore their aunt's name. Almost as wide across as she was tall, extremely strong, she was stubborn, resolute, and taciturn, with a perennially scowling face; she was neither a model of attractiveness nor particularly good company. She could barely read and wrote only with great difficulty, though she did have an extraordinary, instinctive familiarity with numbers. To make up for whatever qualities she may have lacked, she possessed others that Rosa considered absolutely essential. She was loyal and obedient: when she took on a task she gave herself no peace until she had completed it. She was tireless, indifferent to the time of day, incapable of distraction. She was honest and hard on herself, clean and a homebody. Rosa had tested her, setting small traps every time Nelide visited, visits she encouraged using as an excuse events for which she would need the girl's help. And meanwhile, she had introduced her niece in all the shops and the market stalls where she did her shopping. The young woman had proven herself alert, quick to learn, with a sharp, precise memory. Even Ricciardi had gotten used to having her around, and was happy that, thanks to Nelide, his old
tata
was having an easier time of it.

Toward the young master, Nelide felt a mixture of fear and veneration: precisely what Rosa wanted. On her niece's rugged, square face, marked by narrow lips under a faint mustache, she could see the germ of the same protective sentiment she felt toward that melancholy, unhappy man, whom she had looked after for a lifetime with a missionary zeal.

Now, therefore, yet another of the countless examinations to which Rosa subjected her unsuspecting niece was underway: the Cilento cooking test. Rosa was convinced that tradition was crucial to a healthy stability, and she stubbornly continued to cook according to the rules she'd learned from her mother and grandmother, and that she had absorbed from the very air she'd breathed as a child and as a young woman.

Nelide wiped her palms on her apron. She stared grimly at the piles on the tabletop: everything was there, but she still wasn't satisfied.

Good, thought Rosa. Her left hand, fingers knit, sensed the tremor in her right hand. It was as if, every so often, it went to sleep. She knew what this was. She knew because this was how her father had died, growing weaker day by day and then falling asleep, until he finally just stopped breathing. She hoped that it would be as gentle for her, but that's not what scared her.

Her biggest worries were for Ricciardi. What fate awaited him? Who would look after him? Nelide was certainly fine when it came to immediate necessities: seeing that he ate regularly, pressing his clothes. But relations with the sharecroppers, making sure that payments were collected as they came due, managing the family's estate? The young master had never taken any interest in such matters, and if it were left up to him, the entire estate to which he was sole heir would dwindle away.

Her thoughts went to the Baroness Marta di Malomonte, Ricciardi's mother. Ah, Baroness, she thought, you too spoke so little. Why didn't you explain to me what your son is like? Why didn't you tell me how I ought to act with him?

Nelide scratched her cheek. Perhaps, Rosa thought to herself, she ought to place her trust in this young woman. Perhaps Nelide could take over from her. After all it was a simple matter of sticking to certain deadlines and picking up the threads of what she had done month after month for many years. She had more confidence in that grim-faced seventeen-year-old than in all the men she'd met in her lifetime.