The Bottom of Your Heart (3 page)

A knot of despair swelled in her throat. The green-gilled woman, who'd been struggling against an overwhelming urge to vomit, found the strength to ask her if she felt well. Enrica nodded with a tight smile, then turned back toward sea to conceal the ocean of tears that had filled her eyes.

I'm going to be happy, she said over and over again to herself. I'm going to be happy.

And she silently wept.

O
nce a year, in this city, the heat comes. The real heat.

Of course, one might say that there are plenty of times when the temperature is too high, that, generally speaking, it's never really cold here. But that's not entirely true. One might also say that, even in other seasons, there are days when the south wind—the sirocco—brings hot air out of Africa, driving people mad, making them do things, say things, think things they would never have otherwise even imagined. And true, that does sometimes happen. But heat, the genuine article, only comes once a year.

It's never a surprise. People begin bracing for it in springtime, when the sweet scent of flowers spreads through the city and men loosen their ties in the sunshine, when it becomes more pleasant to stop and chat on the street or out an open window, conversing across the narrow streets and the
vicoli
of the center of town. The heat'll come any day now, say the housewives, cheerfully pinning sheets onto clotheslines that might stretch between the balconies of two different buildings; the woman say this with a smile, but in their voices there's a faint note of concern. Because they all know that the heat, the genuine authentic heat, is a serious, terrible thing.

When the real heat comes, it doesn't arrive unexpectedly. It has its fixed dates, and it moves like a naval flotilla, crossing the sea in procession. It sends a few clouds on ahead to give word of its arrival, and perhaps a sudden cloudburst, just to create an illusion, a diversion on the eve of the final onslaught. Dogs sniff at the air, occasionally emitting an uneasy yelp. The old men sigh.

Finally there's a night that offers no cool respite from the heat of the day, as it usually would, and that's the first signal. The men wander through their homes searching in vain for some combination of open windows that will provide a semblance of a crosscurrent. The young mothers watch over their sleeping children, unable to forget the stories they've heard of newborns found dead, in their cribs, at dawn.

The dreaded sun rises, bringing the first day of heat. It rises into the sky like a warship sailing into port, menacing and aflame. And it shows no mercy. The strolling vendors are caught unawares, already out in the streets, and they immediately find themselves dripping with sweat under the burden of their wares; if the goods they're selling are perishable, they'll desperately try to protect them and keep them appetizing, but they will inevitably be unsuccessful: everything begins to look withered, poor, and ugly. Much like the vendors themselves, as they strain to attract the attention of the women they sell to with their hoarse cries, women who are careful not to step out onto their balconies, if there is any way they can avoid it. Things are even worse for the shopkeepers, waiting anxiously, motionless at the thresholds of their stores, while the interiors grow so hot that they're uninhabitable unless equipped with slow-turning ceiling fans.

The churches are still safe, and their cool naves and aisles are soon invaded by regular churchgoers as well as by those who, in cooler seasons, are busier sinning than seeking redemption. The women bathe the smallest children with damp rags and keep them in the shade, while for the older ones they ready a basin of cool water which, though it will soon turn hot, at least gives them a chance to have some fun, splashing and screaming.

From the earliest morning hours the beaches are swarming with people, but they seem almost motionless. Because the heat, the real heat, is another dimension altogether in which time swells, like legs in stockings. Words and sounds change, and trains of thoughts run along different tracks when the real heat descends. The boys no longer play tug-of-war, the girls no longer stroll in pairs or quartets along the shore, showing off their cunning little hats or their striped swimsuits which have fake belts at the waist and leave half their thighs uncovered; no one does daredevil flips off the diving boards on the wharfs. It's too hot to move much in a sea that doesn't even cool you off for long. All prefer to loll in the water like walruses, carrying on slow conversations interrupted now and then by a brief dunk of the head. The big-bellied captains of industry half-sprawled on the wet sand look like so many beached whales, as they chat about business and politics and sleepily read the morning papers.

Gradually, as the hours go by, the sun shows less and less pity. The customary topics of conversation—the events of the day, the winning lottery numbers, the American economic crisis of a few years earlier and the resulting depression, recounted in apocalyptic letters from emigrant relatives—are swept away by the heat, the real heat. People look each other in the face, pale and miserable, from across the street, exchange a slow, wan wave, mouth an appropriate cliché (“Hot enough for you?”), and then trudge on, dragging their feet across the cement. People make dates to meet in the Galleria, as if trying to form disheveled salons under the glass ceilings, in search of a little shade, muggy and unsatisfying though it is, and they talk about how long the heat can last.

A specific body of lore flourishes: buddy, last night just to get a little cool air I slept on the floor; that's nothing, buddy, I went out and slept on my balcony in nothing but my underpants and undershirt, and the mosquitoes practically ate me alive, alive they almost ate me, look here at the bumps I have on my arms. Straw boaters are waved over the face like fans, and young men in two-tone shoes talk down the charms of the young
signorine
who walk past slowly, to spare themselves the effort of attempting to strike up conversation. The many overweight gentlemen and the many oversized matrons bemoan, in the presence of the heat, the genuine authentic heat, the bygone years when they strolled light-footed, their toes barely touching the ground as they floated along on the feathered wings of lost youth, but they console themselves with the thought that this heat has killed their appetites, even as they eat the fourth gelato of the day to soothe their parched throats.

The outdoor café tables, sheltered under broad white awnings, are the objects of rustic duels, and the winners linger, nursing their drinks with tiny sips while those waiting for a spot to open up observe them with ill-concealed hostility, wishing all manner of painful deaths upon them. The coachmen, waiting in vain for paying passengers, battle for a place in the shade of the buildings lining the piazza, nod off seated in their carriages, mouths open, hats pulled down over their eyes.

The trolleys that rattle and screech up into the hills and down toward the water are loaded with families in search of even a theoretical whiff of cool air. Sweat and stench prevail inside the trolleys, and everyone envies the freedom of the street urchins, the Neapolitan
scugnizzi
hanging off the outside of the streetcars in clusters, enjoying a free ride, as naked and dark as African natives, shouting and cheerful as clowns. The driver, snorting in annoyance, will stop the streetcar from time to time and step out to chase them off; the
scugnizzi
scamper away like a flock of swallows, laughing at his threats, calling back insults, only to assault the vehicle as soon as it gets moving again.

When the heat comes, the real heat, it lowers a blanket of silence and fear over the city, because everyone is certain it will never end. Every item of clothing, no matter how light, seems like a thick woolen blanket, intolerable, and dark haloes of sweat soak the cloth under the armpits and on the chest. Forced to wear suits and ties, office clerks walking up and down the stairs of the buildings where they work sigh as they realize they'll have to have their garments washed ahead of time, and they dread the cleaner's bill, while marriageable young women try to go out less often in order to keep the wave the beautician, who made a house call, has set in their hair—for in this heat, the wave will wilt quickly.

People look down from their balconies, scanning the street for the appearance of the iceman, calling out his wares with a shout. The ice will be more expensive than usual and there will be loud angry protests, but no one who can afford it will go without a hunk of cold, to which he will entrust his hopes that sooner or later the heat, this honest-to-goodness heat, will end. The negotiations with the iceman are different from those with any other strolling vendor. In fact, there are no negotiations at all; he knows his customers' need and desire, and he refuses even to stop unless he hears the clinking of coins, in part because he knows that to stop means to allow some of the white gold that he carries in his cart, insulated by blankets and rags, to melt. Once he has received the price demanded, he extracts the block of ice with an iron hook and, before the entranced gazes of the children, cuts off a chunk using a hooked black cleaver, while a
scugnizzo
triumphantly collects the fragments that fall to the ground. Given the weight of the ice, no one will be able to buy it from the upper floors of an apartment building and lower a basket on a rope to haul it up, the way people do with fruit and vegetables; but carrying it back home, up the dark, steep stairs, will be more enjoyable, with that cool bundle in one's arms.

Heat, the real heat, lasts only a few days and, with a few rare exceptions, those few days fall between the beginning and the middle of July. Days without rain and without peace, blasted by a harsh light made milky by a shroud of mist that hovers in midair, like a curse floating over the city. Days in which the elderly become taciturn, their eyes lost in the empty air, with no stories to tell, no complaints about their aches and pains, no venomous criticisms of their neighbors or acquaintances in the
vicolo
. Labored breaths become a sort of lugubrious soundtrack; not even monosyllabic responses to the worried questions of their children about how they feel.

Heat, this real heat, sneaks in through the pores and ransacks the rooms of the soul where memories are kept, and old people have more of those than anyone else. Events from long-ago summers will appear before their eyes, smiling faces and forgotten love songs, strolls along the shore of a sea that was even bluer than it is now. Toothless old women with drool on their chins will, in this heat, turn back into tarantella dancers at long-ago parties, waiting for their beloveds to invite them into the shadows of an apartment house doorway, as cozy as any sheltered bower; and old men forced to sit idle for years will once again be sun-bronzed young fishermen, speaking of love to their fair companions in a boat rocking on the water by night, under a moon hotter than the noonday sun. Heat, the real heat, knows how to be treacherous and cowardly, and it takes it out on the weakest members of society, preying on their melancholy.

There are only a few days of heat, real heat. But in those few days the atmosphere changes, and the city becomes another place. It tastes like ice and smells like the sea, but it can also have the black color of death.

Heat, real heat, comes straight from hell.

A
nother twenty steps and he'd see him. Not even thirty yards, as soon as he turned the corner. He drew a breath and quickened his gait.

When he could, he'd take another route, unless that meant unacceptable delays; and if it was absolutely inevitable, then at least he tried to pass by as quickly as he could, to shorten the moment. The moment in which the chilly fingers of suffering would run through his skin and clutch at his heart.

Once he reached the spot he lowered his gaze; his hands in his trouser pockets, a light jacket unbuttoned over a white shirt, the narrow strip of dark fabric secured over his belly with a gold tie clip, his sole concession to an offhand sartorial elegance. If he'd been wearing a hat, he'd have looked exactly like the other young office clerks or businessmen walking the streets of central Naples, forced by work to go out into the terrible heat of that season. But Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi was no office clerk, nor was he a lawyer, though he had studied the law. He was a commissario, an officer of public safety, and he was heading for his office at police headquarters, as he did early every morning.

Along the way, though, someone was waiting for him. Someone who had, at least in his physical form, been taken away some time ago by two overheated city morgue attendants before the sorrowful eyes of a small crowd sadly accustomed to events of this sort: a little boy run over by a trolley. Unfortunately, it happened frequently; orphans arguing over a heel of stale bread, a
scugnizzo
chasing after a rag ball, a child escaping the grasp of a distracted mother. Or any of the countless children who traveled, dangerously and illegally, clinging to some projecting part of the streetcars themselves, until they lost their grip and fell, to be cut in half by the heavy wheels.

And that was exactly what had become of the little boy who was waiting for Ricciardi just inches from the spot where he died. Though he didn't look up, the commissario's doleful eyes received the horrible image of an unharmed face, a head shaved bald to ward off lice, shoulders covered by an oversized smock of a shirt, and arms lopped off clean at the elbows.

The black mouth emitted a gush of blood and the words came, mumbled but still quite clear:
I'm falling, I'm falling, I can't hold on any longer
. A handhold that had failed, arms that lacked strength. The torso, cut in two, was floating in midair and telling Ricciardi that the poor creature hadn't died instantly, that the boy hadn't been spared any suffering.

With a knot in his stomach, Ricciardi broke into what was almost a run, lifting his handkerchief to cover his mouth. God, how unbearable this was. An old tramp, half-asleep in the shade of an apartment building, raised his bleary eyes at the sound of the commissario's quick steps and watched him with unfriendly curiosity; something about that young man in a hurry upset him, and he recoiled against the wall. There are people who can see it in my face, they can see my curse as I go by, thought Ricciardi.