“No, Commissa’. There was nothing but the notebook that Cesarano found. No other notes. And there are no dates in it.”
“Look in the bed.”
Maione walked over to the lumpy, narrow mattress supported by an old wooden bedframe. With slow, careful movements, as if he were preparing the bed for a night’s sleep, he uncovered it, pulling aside the bedspread and the clean but threadbare sheet. Underneath, the mattress was stained yellow.
“She was an old woman, poor thing,” Maione said, almost apologetically, looking at the commissario with a melancholy smile. Then he lifted the mattress. Beneath it, in the middle of the broad plank that served as the main support, the two men spotted a small bundle wrapped in a handkerchief. Maione picked it up. Ricciardi drew closer.
Inside were several banknotes: one hundred thirty lire, a tidy sum. And a scrap of paper; written on it, in the dead woman’s unsteady handwriting: Nunzia.
The sea breeze came in through the open window. The curtains flapped lazily.
Emma Serra di Arpaja suppressed the urge to vomit; the odor filling the room seemed rank with rotting fish and putrefied seaweed.
Stretched out on the sofa, she looked up at the frescoed ceiling. The days when she still loved that house were long ago; she remembered events, not emotions, much less passionate ones.
These days, she spent almost all her time out of the house, and when she was in the palazzo in Via Santa Lucia, she shut herself up in her own suite of rooms. That is, until it was time for the pantomime they staged for the benefit of the domestic help, when she’d walk into the chilly bedroom to sleep alongside the stranger she’d married. Except for those nights when she decided not to come home at all, offering no explanations to anyone, least of all him.
Sometimes she thought of her husband as an obstacle, a barrier separating her from happiness. Other times, she simply saw him as an unhappy man, aging in a state of melancholy. It was easy for Marisa Cacciottoli and the other serpents that surrounded her to say that he was a man with an enviable position in society, a figure of considerable prestige. She didn’t give a good goddamn about his prestige or his position.
If she’d never met Attilio, she thought, sooner or later she might have resigned herself to an empty life like the ones led by the matrons and wives of her milieu. Charity balls, canasta, the opera, gossip. At rare intervals, a swarthy sunburnt lover, either one of the fishermen that sang along the beach of Via Partenope or one of the starving factory workers of Bagnoli, just to have the mental strength to face a future no different from the past.
But instead, it was her fate to find love.
Every morning she woke up she counted the minutes until she’d see him at the theater, or in one of the out-of-the-way places that they chose to meet in from one night to the next, how long it would be until she felt his hands upon her, his body atop hers. For some time now, she had understood that without him, without his divine perfection, she might as well be without air to breathe. She had lost, once and for all, the ability to resign herself to her fate.
She choked back a sob at the thought. Now what could she do? Her mind flew to the old woman. Damned old buzzard. Absurdly, the faces of Attilio and the Calise woman were bound closely together in her mind.
Day by day, her belief had grown stronger that her life now depended on him: she couldn’t go on living without Attilio. But if she wanted to live with him, she would need the tarot cards.
In the rotating succession of kings, aces, and queens, the old woman read what was fated for every single day of her life. They’ll steal your scarf at the theater, and sure enough, it would vanish. You’ll trip over a beggar, and there she was, sprawled on the pavement with a sprained ankle. Someone will give you a bouquet of flowers on the street, and that’s exactly what happened. Your car will hit a pushcart, and it promptly transpired. A thousand confirmations had turned her into a slave: she no longer dared to do anything unless Carmela Calise, with her tarot cards, had ordered her to.
It was she who had told Emma that it would be in that theater crowded with coarse and vulgar people: that was where she would find her true love.
And that’s what happened.
First Attilio had smiled at her, and then he had approached her on the way out of the theater. Of course, she had noticed him onstage. And how could she have overlooked his masculine beauty? That memory brought a smile to her lips; her heart raced at the mere thought of it. And she had lost herself in those eyes, eyes that reminded her of a starry night. She had rushed to see the old woman and had told her every detail, whereupon the old woman had gazed at her, expressionless, as if she didn’t understand. Maybe she really didn’t understand; maybe she was merely an intermediary between her and some kind soul in the world beyond who had decided to reach out and save her.
Then came days spent living, living and nothing else. Heaven and then hell, locked up in her prison cell, staring at the ceiling. And never again after that day had she allowed her husband to lay a finger on her. In her soul, she was Attilio’s woman, and there was not a single aspect of her previous life that she missed. No more lying. She had taken care of everything, selling jewelry and other possessions. They had only one concern, and that was being happy.
Only one thing was missing: for the old woman to tell her yes. The damned witch. Emma thought back once more to the terrible moment a few days earlier. To the blind fury she had felt rising up inside her. To the terrible condition imposed upon her: that she should never see Attilio again, not even on the stage. And now, what could she do? Now that she could no longer go back?
XXIX
Nunzia came to a halt at the threshold of the front door. Her fierce gaze wavered, wandering left and right. Her hands still clutched the straw broom.
Behind her, Maione reached out and gripped her arm with a firm hand. She snapped out of it and walked forward into the apartment.
Ricciardi was sitting at the rickety table, waiting for her. He was staring straight ahead, his mind and his heart flooded with melancholy, his ears filled with the proverb repeated over and over again by the ghostly figure of Carmela, in the corner of the room. He preferred to question people in the presence of the victim’s ghost: it gave him strength and reinforced his determination in his quest for the truth.
“Sit down,” he said to the woman. She stepped forward, pulled out a chair, carefully checked to see that it was sturdy, and sat down.
Both Ricciardi and Maione registered that detail, remembering that one of the chairs had a broken leg. Not that it told them all that much, but it did prove the porter woman was used to sitting at that table.
Outside, four floors below, the boys had resumed playing: their shouts accompanied the game of soccer they were playing with a ball cobbled together out of rags and newspapers.
“You’re going to have to tell us about your relations with the Calise woman. The truth this time: not the usual claptrap.”
Nunzia blinked her eyes. The firm tone, the deep voice, and most of all, those queer, icy green eyes unsettled her. Maione took the broom and propped it in the corner.
“What do you want me to tell you, Commissa’? She was one of the tenants here. I told you before, my little girl liked spending time with her; it was convenient for me to have someone keep an eye on her while I worked. Then, in the evening. .”
“. . you’d come up to get her, yes, you told me that before. And would you pay her, for watching your girl?”
Nunzia emitted a nervous little laugh.