“Help me, Mamma,” Antonietta repeated, dreamily. Ricciardi put his hand on her back and gently pushed her along. She began walking again and didn’t look back.
Farther on, when they got to the construction sites of the new white buildings, one by one, in and among the clerks on their way home and the women returning from grocery shopping, dead construction workers who had died on the job began to appear. Ricciardi kept his head down, while Antonietta cheerfully waved her chubby hand, making no distinction between the living and the dead, although neither one nor the other paid her any attention. But maybe the two of them, invisible to one and all, were the real phantoms.
Antonietta blew a kiss to the boy and the old man who had died together; but when they came face-to-face with a more recently dead man, the one who kept calling the name of a certain Rachele, telling her that they had pushed him to join her, the girl started in fright and hid behind Ricciardi’s back. What did you sense, this time? he wondered. What other emotion? You must be able to sense even more than I do, then. In that moment, he felt a surge of infinite pity for the young girl, and he caressed her face. She smiled at him, and went on walking.
But she kept turning around to look behind her, trembling slightly.
LXI
Sitting at his desk, Ruggero Serra di Arpaja looked out at the springtime through the glass doors of his balcony. The silk curtains reached toward him, then sank back into place as if the breeze were playfully beckoning him to come outside. The air smelled of salt water and fresh blossoms.
The rays from the sun sinking behind the hill of Posillipo filled the room with sparkling light, hurting the man’s tired eyes. Another sleepless night. Another day of waiting.
Unfamiliar emotions, encountered after a lifetime spent speeding along rails determined by his social status, had taken command of his every decision. Lately, he’d done things that he could never have even imagined, and he’d discovered a part of himself that he hadn’t known existed.
In that final moment, that morning, he had done his best to maintain appearances: his dark suit, his perfectly ironed shirt, his face clean-shaven, his hair combed and brushed. Only his eyes, behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, betrayed the torment of his soul. The news that Emma was pregnant, which she had told him after a long night of reciprocal insults and accusations, bore the mark of redemption and irrevocability. No matter what, after that piece of news, nothing could ever be the same again.
The morning sun had brought him a new and extraordinary awareness: he loved his wife and without her, life meant nothing to him. Let the police come arrest him, let them denigrate him, let them blacken his reputation, let them toss it to the tender mercies of his so-called friends; if Emma left him, none of this would mean anything to him anymore.
Without taking his eyes off the indifferent springtime, he pulled open his desk drawer and took out the revolver. He’d already checked to make sure it was loaded. Not another loveless night. Not another loveless springtime.
He put on his overcoat. Let’s go to the theater, he thought.
For the last performance.
Sitting before her mirror, Emma tried to cover the weariness of her sleepless night with face powder. She couldn’t stand the idea of Attilio seeing her looking any less beautiful than usual.
She knew that by going to the theater, she was violating Calise’s iron rules; but could a woman who hadn’t even foreseen her own death really determine the fate of others? And what if the old woman had been wrong from the very beginning? What if she’d condemned her to misery by mistake?
She tried to steer her thoughts elsewhere, anticipating the flood of emotion she usually felt when she saw Attilio: the echo of his love, the passion and the tenderness that she’d come to depend on.
She’d had the car made ready, but she hadn’t yet packed her bags; just a few hours to go until their meeting, she still hadn’t decided what she’d do. She’d never made a decision for herself in her life, and now she was being asked to make the most important one of all, all alone, without help.
A new feeling, perhaps an impulse to protect her womb, dominated her and roiled her in confusion. All the selfishness that had driven her life till now, her relationship with Attilio, her intolerance for the world she had always lived in, had dissolved. She was going to be a mother. It was as if her entire life had been leading up to this one thing; she found herself experiencing everything in a radically different way than she had imagined, and she felt so distant from and so unlike her girlfriends, who had limited themselves to bearing children only to entrust them, as mere necessary annoyances, to hordes of nannies and governesses.
She felt a vague feeling of compassion for Ruggero, in whose overwrought eyes she’d detected genuine pain; but she had convinced herself that he was Calise’s murderer and, for the good of her child, she would have to separate herself from him and his grim fate.
She’d listen to her heart, she decided. She’d make up her mind when she saw Attilio walk on stage with that kingly gait she knew so well. To the theater, then.
For the last performance.
Ricciardi and Antonietta were in the orchestra seats, a little off to the side but still up front, close to the stage. The commissario wanted to make sure the girl could clearly see the faces of both Romor and the Serras; he just hoped that Ruggero had arranged to sit near his wife who, as always, had reserved the box in the first row, the one closest to the stage.
He didn’t really know what he was expecting: a false move, an off-key reaction. He had identified the guilty party, beyond the shadow of a doubt, but the clues he had amassed were just that: clues, not proof.
He was pinning everything on a misstep by the killer, or else solid identification by the only possible eyewitness, Antonietta, even though he was well aware that her mentally impaired status meant she’d never be allowed to testify at trial. But it could be enough to unhinge the killer’s confidence. He’d seen it happen before.
Hunching his head down between his shoulders, he did his best to blend into the dim light of the orchestra seating. As he had entered the auditorium, he had spotted Camarda, Cesarano, and Ardisio, three men from Maione’s team, in plainclothes and strategically deployed. The brigadier himself had taken a second-row seat right below the stage, concealed by the upturned lapel of his overcoat and the brim of his hat. Ricciardi looked up at the box just as Emma was taking her seat, more beautiful than ever, but with eyes that betrayed uncertainty, grief, and weariness. She was alone.
After a few minutes, the commissario glimpsed an indistinct figure standing in the shadows behind her. The professor, he decided. Maione locked eyes with Camarda and darted a glance in that direction; the plainclothesman nodded and left the auditorium. Ricciardi understood that the brigadier was sending him to keep an eye on the door of the box, so he could be in place if things started moving quickly. He knew what he was doing, good old Maione. He really knew what he was doing.
The house lights went down and a round of applause rose up. All the actors were on their marks, both the ones behind the curtain and those in the auditorium. Everyone was ready.
For the last performance.
The play began with an opening monologue by the lead actor. Ricciardi recognized the man who had spoken so rudely to his brother the night before. Even if his attention was focused elsewhere, the commissario perceived the sheer magnetism that the actor emanated, immediately captivating the audience. Antonietta looked straight ahead, continuing to mumble meaningless strings of words. The stage lights lit up the front rows, giving Ricciardi a clear view of both Emma and Ruggero. The woman was gripping the balustrade, her hands white, her face tensed in clear expectation of something; her husband’s face looked like a mask, with the expressionless features of a mannequin.