I remember what my mamma told me. And I do it, word for word. When I can’t talk to her, that’s when I get mixed up. And I get things wrong.
With Emma, I did everything that my mamma told me to do. She’d been looking for her for such a long time: a suitable lady. Then one day she told me that she had found her, that a cousin of mine I’d never met had brought the lady to her, a cousin who doesn’t even know I exist. And Mamma prepared everything, down to the last detail, the way she always did. And she told me where I was supposed to wait and what I was supposed to say. And that I should be even more careful than usual, because Emma could never knew who I was-that I was my mamma’s son, in other words. Because, as you know, we only have one mamma; if you need help, she’s the one you turn to. Otherwise, what are mammas for?
So then I become Emma’s lover. That’s something I know how to do; it’s something that comes natural to me. Every night I go to Mamma’s place. She leaves the door open for me, I climb the stairs after the porter woman has doused the lamp, which I can see from the street. And she tells me what to do next. Emma falls in love with me. She can’t live without me anymore. I make love to her; that’s something I like. Mamma makes the other arrangements, making sure Emma takes care of the money and her stupid old husband, too: we’ll take everything but his underpants, Mamma tells me. We’ll be the winners of this card game. And we’ll take all their money and run, Mamma says.
Emma is a man-woman, Mamma says. She drives and she smokes; she could easily get into an accident in that red car she drives. For now, let’s just get the money and get out of here. We’ll see about that accident later.
Mamma laughs and caresses me. I like it when she laughs. It means everything’s okay.
Then one night Emma comes to the theater, all puffy from crying. That’s it, she says, it’s over, I can never see you again. I hardly know what to say to her; it’s the kind of thing Mamma usually explains to me. I need to go see her, but then I can’t because the porter woman doesn’t turn out the lamp. That idiot daughter of hers must have gone to sleep late. I tell myself I’ll go the next day and ask Mamma what’s happening. She’ll explain, wait and see, that mamma of mine is so smart. That’s just how we are, the two of us: perfect. I’m handsome, she’s smart.
But when I get there, who do I find? This old witch. She looks just like my mamma, true, but it can’t be her because instead of talking about me, her son, she starts talking about Emma’s baby. She says that where she was unable to succeed with me, she can make it work with the baby, make sure he lives a rich life with an important last name. And I say to Mamma, to this witch, I say: But why? Are you saying I can’t have an important last name? That I can’t become rich and famous? And she tells me no, that fate pays you back sooner or later. Those who do evil sooner or later are paid back for it, by God.
And she tells me, me of all people, that the baby is more important, that my father told her so in a dream. You understand? My father! In a dream! And now you have the nerve to try to tell me that that was my mother? The woman who gave me a different surname so that I could grow up to be famous? Never! That’s not my mother!
And I ask her what I’m going to get out of it. This time, nothing, she answers. And she’s weeping as she says it. Maybe another day. Maybe we’ll find another one like Emma. After all, Naples is full of bored wealthy women looking for a lover to keep. God Almighty, she tells me, isn’t a merchant who pays His debts on Saturday.
And I kicked her out, kicked that witch right out, out from inside my mother. I split her head open, to let the evil out. And I kicked her all around the room. The damned witch. That blood, all that blood: not the blood of my blood. My mother always thought only of me. That couldn’t be her, not if she now preferred an unborn bastard to me. Now I’m waiting. You’ll see, sooner or later my mamma will come back and make everything right. That’s right, she really is blood of my blood.
LXIII
It took a good long time to make Garzo understand what had happened. They found him out of breath in the courtyard of headquarters, accompanied by his clerk, Ponte, with an even more anguished look on his face than usual. He’d hurried downstairs to find out more about Romor’s arrest, news of which had beaten them back there. And Garzo wasn’t alone; a small crowd had gathered in the street, in front of the entrance, to get a glimpse of the actor and murderer who had brought the play at the Teatro dei Fiorentini to a halt.
The deputy chief of police displayed a level of theatrical skill that Ricciardi would never have suspected: he shifted in a few seconds from worry to relief, and then to astonishment at the sight of the Serra di Arpajas, who had followed the police patrol in the same car, and finally to anger with the look he shot at the commissario.
Maione did a brilliant job straightening things out, even as he was dusting off his trousers following the struggle with the killer.
“Everything’s fine, Dotto’. This gentleman here is the murderer in the Calise case. We owe a debt of thanks to the professor and the signora, who went to the theater tonight expressly to corner him.”
Garzo went through one last lightning-fast change of expression, now displaying a look of authoritative satisfaction. With a slight and still circumspect bow to the Serras, he turned and addressed the two policemen.
“If you please, in my office, Ricciardi and Maione. Then I’ll bid Signore and Signora Serra di Arpaja a good night, if they’d be so kind as to wait just a few minutes.”
Perfect manners, as always, thought Ricciardi with a twinge of admiration. The beginning of the conversation was stormy: Garzo wanted to know why, after he had given explicit orders that all contact with the Serra di Arpaja family was to take place only and exclusively through him, he found them in the courtyard of police headquarters so late at night. Involved in a police operation, what’s more! What if the professor or, worse, the signora had been hurt?
Ricciardi, with an Olympian show of calm, replied that every detail had been planned out in advance, and that the plan had been designed to clear the professor’s name once and for all. That he had come to an understanding with the professor that laying the blame on Iodice would have lent support to theories of the family’s involvement in Calise’s murder, which is how the press would see it as well. A suicide, after all, was not the same as a confession; and the dead woman’s most assiduous visitor had still been the Signora Serra di Arpaja, as everyone knew. And since Ricciardi had come to the conclusion, as the result of an interview, that Emma’s lover, Romor, knew more than he was admitting, they had decided that if they subjected him to a state of particular tension, he might well betray himself. Which is exactly what had happened.
Maione and Ricciardi had concocted this whole song and dance that morning, as the early morning sun illuminated the piazza beneath the office window and the factory workers headed for the buses that would take them to work in Bagnoli. They had no backup plan. Their only hope was that this first one would succeed.
And just what had this Romor said, during the interview? What exactly, Garzo asked, had made Ricciardi suspect him?
The commissario described with honesty his conversation with Attilio the night before. The fact that he knew that Calise had been murdered at night, something that the press had never reported. And Calise’s propensity for speaking in proverbs, despite the fact that Emma had never told him about it. And how had he, Ricciardi, come to know these things?
In his mind’s eye, the commissario once again saw the broken neck, the crushed cranium, the streak of blood. But it was the memory of Antonietta’s voice that made him shiver. Petrone had told him everything, he said. He felt a sharp glance from Maione on the back of his neck and hoped that the brigadier wouldn’t ask him for an explanation afterward.