If only Ricciardi didn’t give him such a sense of uneasiness. . He couldn’t make out the personality behind all those silences, the ironic half-smiles, the hands in his pockets even in Garzo’s presence. And, most of all, that impenetrable gaze.
Still, he had to admit he was talented. After the Vezzi case was solved, the one about the tenor who had been murdered at the San Carlo opera house, he’d actually received a personal telephone call from Rome. He still trembled at the thought: he had said, “Yes sir, yes Your Excellency,” three times in succession and, as switchboard operators and personal secretaries had passed the line up the ladder and he waited to be connected to Him, he had hastily combed his hair and snapped to attention, as if they could see him through the receiver. His name-Angelo Garzo-on the desk of Il Duce himself: his dream was beginning to come true.
Which was exactly why he needed to act prudently, to let Ricciardi go on working according to his instincts, but without rousing any of the sleeping lions in the wealthy neighborhoods, the ones overlooking the sea.
He glanced at his telephone, the receiver still warm. One of those lions had been awakened. And it had just finished roaring.
XLII
The first Sunday of springtime is different.
It begins with the church bells, just like any other Sunday, and just like any other, it’s silent in the early morning; but it brings different promises, and it wastes no time in fulfilling them.
It has a new smell, and it imparts its secrets to those few who awaken at dawn, looking down from the balconies on the upper stories. You will see them sniffing at the air like dogs, and smiling to themselves for no reason.
It has a new taste, as anyone can tell you who breakfasts on the fresh milk that a boy will sell you on the street. It’s the same boy who was there just yesterday, but the milk has a freshness that regenerates your throat.
And it especially has new sounds. A pagan feast, with rituals and songs; you’ll hear it in the cooing of the doves on the rain gutters, even before the sun is up. And you can hear it in the melodies of the washerwomen as they walk toward the fountains, and in the calls of the strolling vendors on their way in from the surrounding countryside. The wares they hawk bear the scent of the season: violets, wheat for ricotta-filled pastiera cakes, young rue, or herb-of-grace, and other aromatic herbs. Even the hens scratching at the ground in the vicoli cluck with renewed energy.
Nearly a month late, this is the first Sunday of genuine springtime.
That morning, Ricciardi decided to go to the beach. It was something he did from time to time, when Sunday caught him off guard and he had an investigation in full swing.
He would spend time there, though he was a man of the mountains, to regain his equilibrium and his concentration.
He hadn’t gotten much sleep, a couple of hours at the most. The thousands of thoughts running through his head were demanding that he establish a bit of order.
He liked to go sit and think on a small out-of-the-way beach at the foot of the Posillipo hill, not far from where the fishermen’s wives sat mending nets. They watched him curiously from afar as they worked; but he was safe behind the bulwark of his unfamiliar attire, and no one bothered him. Sitting on small shelves of rock, he waited, silent and calm, for the wind to kick up. No spray, nothing: just the ebb and flow, the respiration of the green water a few feet below him.
A month earlier, like a retreating army, the winter had decided to unleash one last desperate assault. A furious storm had pounded the coast for two full days, incessantly, flooding the beachfront roads. Many of the inhabitants had fled inland in search of shelter.
A fishing boat, driven by hunger and necessity, had ventured out for one last sortie, hoping to get back to harbor in time, and it didn’t make it. Once good weather returned, a number of other boats had set out to retrieve the bodies and bring them home to the wives and mothers, but they hadn’t found anything at all.
Now, at the same distance but in the opposite direction from the black-clad women stitching up the tears in the long fishing nets, Ricciardi could make out the forms of the three dead fishermen, whose souls had washed up with the incoming tide. Two of them older, one little more than a child. Their clothes in tatters, their flesh gnawed away by fish, the marks of the fractures and contusions that the angry sea had visited on their bodies as it slammed them against the wood of the fishing boat, before carrying them down to the bottom of the abyss. Ricciardi clearly perceived their thoughts, one of them cursing the saints with a deep, hoarse voice, the other one calling on the Madonna’s mercy. The boy, with his lips and tongue swollen from suffocation, was still calling his mother’s name with all his heart.
Nothing new there, thought Ricciardi. Between the grief of the dead and the work of the living, the commissario decided that he’d have to make sure his own feelings didn’t distract him from his investigation into the murder of Carmela Calise. The clear cold state of mind that he needed in order to evaluate the evidence he had in hand must not be destroyed by the thought of the closed shutters of the window across the way. He had to get his priorities straight: the image of the old woman beaten to death was asking him for justice, incessantly repeating an old proverb in the bedroom of the apartment in the Sanità.
He looked at the translucent figure of the dead boy. Mamma, where are you, Mamma, hug me, Mamma, it kept saying through cyanotic lips. I can’t do anything to help you, thought Ricciardi. But perhaps he could still do something to ensure a little justice for Carmela Calise.
For no apparent reason, the two Iodice women surfaced in his thoughts.
It wasn’t just melancholy she felt now, but concern and furious anger as well. She had waited and waited and waited. She’d fallen asleep at the table set for two, her head lolling on her arm. The sound of a closing shutter from a nearby building had startled her awake. She’d looked up at the clock on the walclass="underline" it was eleven.
In the past, a hundred years ago, Raffaele would have let her know if he was going to be late for dinner, one way or another. A police officer, a street urchin, a phone call to the accountant on the second floor who gave his enormous telephone pride of place at the center of the living room table. But now, not a word of notice. For some reason, it had never occurred to her until now: it had been more than a year since the last time he’d let her know he was running late.
She had put away the bowls and dishes and packed up the food, then she’d gotten undressed and gone to bed; it would have been humiliating to leave evidence of her long wait. A few minutes later, maybe a quarter of an hour, she had heard the key turn in the lock. Pretending to be asleep, she’d listened intently as her husband clumsily stumbled around in the dark. He hadn’t gone into the kitchen the way he usually did when work forced him to come home late and hungry; he’d undressed in silence and lain down, doing his best not to cause the mattress to move more than was necessary. A minute later, he was snoring blissfully.
Moving in closer, Lucia sniffed him alertly: she smelled odors of cooked food. Her husband had eaten dinner. But where? And there was another smell, slightly gamy. Possibly a woman.