Vipers (5 page)

Lily snickered and said:

“That's an easy one.”

Madame Yvonne shot her an angry look that the commissario didn't miss.

 

As soon as they were back out in the street, Ricciardi said to Maione:

“First thing tomorrow morning, go get this Ventrone, the merchant of sacred art who found the body. And do it discreetly: we don't want to stir things up for no good reason.”

As they passed it, he shot a quick look up the
vicolo
that ran alongside the palazzo and got a glimpse of the small door that served as the tradesmen's entrance, right next to where a blind accordion player was trying to coax charity out of the passersby with the heartbreaking strains of his instrument.

The night of the first day of spring had by now fallen, but its smells still filled the air.

People were dawdling, as if they were disoriented by the warm weather, hungry for hours outdoors after struggling through a harsh and pitiless winter. The strolling vendors took advantage of situation, and went on hawking their goods much later than usual.

After two days of celebrations, the Festa di San Giuseppe—the Festival of St. Joseph—was still going, and the fry cooks continued selling their
zeppole
fried in black rancid oil; the acrid smell and the plumes of smoke filled every corner of the street, causing stabbing pangs of hunger in the bellies of those hurrying home for dinner.

You could see bird vendors, their stalls piled high with cages of all sizes in which birds thrashed in a frenzy, beating their wings against the bars, in search of their lost freedom; according to tradition, grace would be granted to anyone who purchased a bird for the festival of Jesus's father, and that belief was still popular. With the arrival of spring, the city's balconies filled up with goldfinches and canaries that had been blinded with a pin to encourage their beautiful, despairing song.

But the air was also filled with the irritating noise of the
zerri zerri
, the infernal wooden rattles that children whirled around on their handles, producing a clickety-clack that sounded more or less like castanets.

The last gasps of the Festa di San Giuseppe, however, were destined to die out: the heart of the populace had already turned to Easter, which was by now less than a week away. The countless catholic religious and pagan traditions would soon reclaim their rightful space, their enchantments commanding the attention of the entire city, throughout each of the various social strata that made up Naples.

Modo made a show of placing both hands over his ears to shut out the shrill whistle of a peanut vendor.

“I wonder what on earth these starving beggars have to celebrate, penniless in their tattered rags. And yet, for whatever reason, they're still in the middle of the street, laughing and dancing. Instead of understanding that they're living under the heel of a dictator, who actually forces them to count in order to figure out what year it is: can you believe it, Ricciardi? Year ten. As if Christ had been reborn. Incredible.”

Now it was Ricciardi's turn to feign despair and cover up his ears:

“For the love of God, please! It's already been a hard day, don't you start in too.”

Modo snickered, pointing behind him at a little white dog with brown spots trotting along with one ear down and the other up.

“You see? I have followers of my own. In fact, you know what I think? From here on out I'm going to force the dog to say that this isn't 1932, but the year fifty-six.”

Maione poked him in the ribs with his elbow.

“Dotto', if you ask me that dog doesn't think about you at all, much less have any idea how old you are. He never even comes when you call him!”

The doctor heaved a sigh of annoyance.

“So what? We're friends, it's not like I own him. He can stay with me as long as he likes, and when he chooses to he'll go his own way. We all should do the same thing, in love and in politics. Let people choose.”

Maione snickered.

“Dotto', I can choose, no question. But say that I choose not to go home for dinner and instead, I don't know, go to a trattoria with some friend, my wife will choose to greet me with a shoe straight to the forehead, when I do go home. So what does that mean, that we're two free individuals?”

Modo gave up, disheartened:

“Nothing doing, I give up. You're a bunch of sheep, and you're destined to die like sheep, and I say this with a perverse pleasure now that Easter is almost here. But do you want to hear how low we've sunk? Well, the other day in the hospital a lawyer comes in for some stitches. His lip was split open, he'd taken a slap or a punch to the face. We're getting along, we get to talking, and finally he tells me that he'd been assaulted in front of the courthouse, in broad daylight, by a pair of these idiots in black shirts. And do you know why?”

Ricciardi shook his head no.

“No, we don't, but we're pretty confident that you're about to fill in this gap in our knowledge.”

“In fact, I'll tell you straightaway: because he'd dared to defend . . . dared, you understand? . . . an accountant accused of ‘offending the honor of the head of government.' And what do you think this offense consisted of?”

Maione spread both arms wide.

“Dotto', this is starting to sound like twenty questions. Tell us, just what had this accountant done?”

“He'd taken down from the wall of his office at the Provincial Bank the portrait of the Old Bull Head you call Il Duce, that's what he'd done. And it was only because he wanted to hang up his calendar, and he didn't have any other nails handy. So do you realize how low we've sunk? Already it's ridiculous to bring the defendant up on these charges, but then to attack his defense lawyer!”

“We hear these kind of stories all the time, Bruno. We hear them. And there's not much we can do about them, you know. If they decide to establish a new crime, however absurd it might be, complete with sentence and indictment, it's our job to enforce the law. Now, of course, there are some things you do with conviction and others you don't: in other words, we have priorities. At least, that applies to Maione and me.”

The brigadier snickered.

“That doesn't mean, Commissa', that if the order came in to arrest a certain doctor for subversive activity, we wouldn't take a special pleasure in carrying it out. Maybe by then they'll have come up with some new kind of penalties, I don't know, say flogging or flaying.”

Modo playfully waved his finger under Maione's nose.

“Ah, the worst thing they're going to do to me is this new internal exile, and they'll send me someplace with lots of sun and sand, far away, finally, from your ugly mugs. In fact, maybe one of these days I'll turn myself in after some especially serious crime, like blowing a raspberry or farting in honor of your Duce, and I'll get myself sent down intentionally. And do you know what I have to say to you, my dear brigadier? This dog, here, I'll leave him to you in my will. The day you no longer see me around, you'll have to take care of him.”

Maione, poker-faced, lifted his hand to the visor of his cap.

“All right, Dotto', at your service. And next time you see him, do me a favor, and teach the dog how to do a proper autopsy. That way we really won't need your help anymore. Now, with your permission, and the commissario's, I'm heading home for dinner, because this smell of
zeppole
is driving me crazy. Tomorrow morning I'll bring you the merchant bright and early, Commissa'. Have a good evening.”

Modo gave Maione a friendly slap on the back and turned to Ricciardi.

“Well, my funereal commissario, now that you've shut down the place where I was planning to spend my evening, I hope you'll at least buy me dinner?”

Ricciardi glanced at his watch.

“I wish I could, Bruno; but I have to get home early tonight. Maybe tomorrow, let's be in touch.”

The doctor gave him a long look.

“You're not telling me the whole story, and you haven't been for a while. You're in too much of a hurry to get home. My old but exceedingly well trained nose catches a whiff of woman. Go on, go on: I give up here. That means that the dog and I will just have to eat alone tonight, in a trattoria some friends of mine own down by the sea. He's getting used to fish, turning into a real salty dog. Good evening to you, my friend.”

 

What do you want from springtime?

What do you ask of this season, which brings you gifts of new flowers and new ideas, borrowed from the scent of the sea?

Maybe to get away from the cold and the damp of winter. Maybe only that. To take off the grey overcoats, the galoshes, to furl the umbrellas having waxed their canvases one last time. To cover your trousers with sheets of newspaper to keep them from creasing.

Or perhaps to eat fresh fruit and rediscover flavors longed for like relatives away on a trip, new and forgotten but still familiar.

What gift do you ask of springtime?

Not to have to lay eyes again for months on the heavy gloves, slightly worn at the fingers, and the woolen stockings with an impertinent hole that defies any attempts at darning. And maybe to dig out a cheerful silk scarf or a straw boater that's survived the moths.

Perhaps spring can give you the gift of a deep breath of fresh air, scented by new budded leaves in the forest of Capodimonte, if the wind blows in the right direction; or the image of a coachman dozing in the seat of his carriage, a hazy smile on his toothless lips, lost in a dream of youth, indifferent to the flies attracted by the smell of his nag.

And even the
scugnizzi
dangling like bunches of raggedy grapes from the ends of trolley cars rattling up Via Medina will seem more cheerful in springtime, as they shout obscene compliments at the girls emerging from the boarding school in Piazza Dante, walking silently, their books bound together with a strap. And their fellow students, the boys who are head over heels in love with them, will shake their fists in the air and invite them to fight bloody duels, but by then the laughing
scugnizzi
will already be at the far end of Via Toledo, on their daily ride down to the sea.

What do you ask of springtime, while you melt into new hopes you never thought you'd have, as you start to think that perhaps a life of happiness may still await you?

Ask springtime, and perhaps she, in her giddy madness, will grant you your wish.

Ask her for death.

T
aking care to avoid the corner from which the suicide was calling to his lost love, as he returned home Ricciardi paid his own silent tribute to Dr. Modo's nose, which was certainly right: this was about a woman. But the matter was a far more complicated one.

Last Christmas Eve had certainly reshuffled the cards on the table as far as his relationship with Enrica Colombo, the girl who lived in the building across the street, was concerned. After all that time spent looking at her through the window—first of all because he was drawn by the allure of a normality he felt excluded from, then attracted by the faintly hidden delicacy of her features and by the memory of a voice that he'd once heard by chance in an interrogation—things had suddenly accelerated.

An hour before the city's bells pealed out in celebration of the birth of Our Lord, as he was hurrying back to his usual solitude, depressed and weary, he'd found her standing in front of the door of his apartment building as if in some dream, just as a fine snow began to fall; she'd walked right up to him and, as in a dream, she'd softly kissed him.

That kiss, nothing more than a faint wisp of breath on his lips, had given flesh and blood to his thoughts, unleashing an unceasing tempest in his soul. Ricciardi was a man just over thirty, sentenced to solitude because he was aware of the curse that he bore; but that didn't mean that his flesh and his hands didn't yearn to touch and move to the rhythm of his beating heart.

Ever since that strange Christmas Eve, rationality had begun to slowly succumb to emotion. Day after day, the commissario found himself imagining more and more frequently what it would be like to repeat that experience, or even just to see Enrica again up close; in order to understand what she felt, and to some extent, what he felt too.

As he climbed Via Santa Teresa, walking into the smells of the forest that mixed with those of the sea from behind him, Ricciardi thought about Rosa, his
tata
, who as always understood sooner and much more clearly than he just what he himself desired. Who knows how, Rosa had established a strange friendship with the girl, on the basis of which Enrica would regularly visit, sometimes staying until he came back; magically, she often managed to brush by him on the stairs or at the downstairs door, greeting him with a smile and a word.

By now Ricciardi—the man who was terrified of love because he saw its fatal effects every day, the same Ricciardi who had long since decided that it was impossible for him to have a woman at his side because she'd have to share in his curse, the man who never saw a future beyond the days necessary to complete an investigation—had begun to live for the moment when, returning home, he might possibly cross paths with Enrica. He didn't know what might happen, nor whether that emotion might have a tomorrow; he knew only that living without that glimmer of sweet tenderness at the end of the steep climb that was his daily lot was now something that seemed almost impossible.

He looked at his watch and quickened his step.

 

Rosa set down her cup, which she'd been holding with the hand that shook less; still, the porcelain rattled against the saucer, causing a few drops of tea to spill onto the tablecloth. Enrica bowed her head over her tea, pretending not to have noticed; the
tata
appreciated this show of tact. She liked this girl better every day.

She went on with what she'd been saying:

“Signori', you have to keep this in mind: the truly important thing about a Cilento Easter dinner is the first course, the pasta. Any housewife knows how to cook a nice piece of meat or a leg of lamb, even though we really ought to be talking about a leg of kid goat, which is no simple matter, either; but the
primo
, the first course is, as we say, fundamental. And every detail deserves careful attention.”