Maione, who as always seemed to be half asleep, was focusing on the contrasting attitudes of the various groups that made up the crowd. Those who were in tears, sincerely heartbroken, young, and well-dressed must have been the companions of the duchess’s riotous nightlife, the gilded youth of Neapolitan high society. There weren’t many of them. Grim-faced and uneasy, dressed in black and with expressionless faces, on the other hand, were those there to pay their respects to the elderly duke and to his family, and they were for the most part prominent officeholders and members of the city’s highest nobility. Behind them stood the inevitable crowd of rubberneckers, drawn by the dead woman’s reputation as a libertine and by the horrible manner of her death.
The brigadier looked for Capece but couldn’t see him, neither in the front row, which was certainly understandable, nor in the crowd at large. Maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to come: that was something he could understand.
From the open half of the front door emerged Don Pierino, dressed in his funeral vestments, with two altar boys beside him. Behind him came the coffin, in ornately carved dark wood, carried on the shoulders of four pallbearers. The priest blessed the bier which was placed, with some visible effort, in the carriage. The heat that came beating down from the noonday sun was intolerable.
In a wheelchair, the duke was pushed across the threshold of his home, and he looked like another corpse. His unnatural pallor, the horrifyingly skinny neck, which lay enfolded in the collar of his shirt, the equally sticklike limbs, and his blank expression spoke of death even more than the hearse, the horses, and the coffin could. The black suit, matched by the tie and shoes last worn some time before his illness, gave some idea of what his physique must once have been and how it had been laid waste by illness.
The wheelchair was pushed by Concetta, as imposing and silent as ever, her face impassive. One step behind her came the Sciarras, she in tears with her handkerchief crushed to her mouth and he serious-faced, his eyes sorrowful over his enormous nose; his oversized hat and jacket making of him a pathetic figure in a tragic setting. A line of important personages formed immediately to shake the duke’s hand and speak a few brief words of condolence to him. The impression that Ricciardi and Maione gathered was that everyone, both because of the heat and because of the prevailing atmosphere, was eager to leave as soon as possible.
A few minutes later something happened which was destined to be the talk of the town for months to come: Ettore appeared in the doorway, dressed in a white suit, with a walking stick and a red tie. His straw hat, likewise bright white in color, shaded a perfectly clean-shaven face, with a broad smile beneath his narrow mustache. He wore absolutely no sign of mourning, neither a black band on his arm nor a black pin on his lapel, where instead he sported a splendid gardenia. After addressing a cordial greeting to the prefect, who was just then paying his respects to the duke, he strolled off whistling cheerfully.
If someone had thrown a bomb into the middle of the piazza, the effect could not have been more explosive. A loud buzz ran through the crowd. It startled Don Pierino who was raptly praying over the coffin; the priest whirled around in confusion, and when he saw Ettore strolling off jauntily, an expression of intense sadness appeared on his expressive face. There was even a brief burst of laughter from the back of the crowd, followed by an indignant call for respect from a few of the onlookers.
Ricciardi, who was watching from a vantage point not far from the front door, caught a rapid exchange of glances between Concetta and Mariuccia, as if the two women had just seen clear confirmation of something they’d already discussed.
The procession, which would accompany the duchess on her final journey on this earth, formed up. Concetta firmly interrupted the line of people greeting the duke and accompanied him back into the palazzo. The man’s expression hadn’t changed the whole time: Ricciardi decided that he must be exhausted. Behind the hearse, walking with Don Pierino and his two altar boys, were the Sciarras, man and wife, and an elderly couple, the duchess’s distant cousins; after them came the local authorities and the crowd. When the door of the hearse was closed, the coachman climbed up on the seat and snapped his whip. The orchestra began playing Chopin’s funeral march and the horses set off, matching their step to the cadence of the music.
Ricciardi and Maione split up and mingled in the crowd, a few feet behind the front row. They eavesdropped on the comments people made under their breath, comments that for the most part referred to the Camparino family, the performance that Ettore had just delivered, the poor duke and how long he still had to live. There was no shortage of moral judgments concerning the duchess, who was always viewed unfavorably in comparison with the duke’s first wife.
And Ricciardi realized that there were a great many people wondering where Mario Capece might be and what he might be doing. And whether and when he’d have the unmitigated gall to make an appearance.
XXV
I’ll walk with you, my love. I’ll go the whole distance, every step of the way. I’ll stay close to you for as long as I can, for the fleeting instants that remain to me.
I’ll stay with you because as far as I’m concerned, you never died, and you never will. Because my hands, my body can’t go on living a minute longer if you’re gone. I’ll carry you in my soul, because I gave that soul to you, and it remains your home. No one can take you away, not the horses, not the horrible music, not the fake grief on the faces of those who claim the right to follow you even closer than I can.
What do they know about your smile, the words you say, the sound of your breathing when we’re alone together? What do they know about my grief and the weight that I feel in my chest?
That’s why I’m here, hidden in the midst of the crowd so that no one will recognize me; so that no one will feel the need to come over to me and tell me that this isn’t my place.
Instead, this is my place: as close as possible to you.
And if someone tried to send me away from here, I’d kill them with my bare hands.
The funeral procession was scheduled to travel up the first half of Corso Umberto and then disband at Piazza Nicola Amore: in the local vocabulary of Neapolitan place names, the Rettifilo all the way to the Quattro Palazzi; not a short distance, especially in that baking heat. With every martial step of that team of eight horses, the crowd dwindled as it became clear that by now, with the main protagonists no longer present, the performance would offer no further titillation.
As the procession passed, the shops that were still open shut their doors, and the women crossed themselves while the men lifted their hands to their hats, in a military-style salute. Perhaps the duchess actually inspired more sincere pity in the strangers following her bier, Ricciardi mused, than in those who were there as a mere formality. Among the many people who stood lining the street to salute the procession as it passed by, the commissario noted one of his old acquaintances, a man who had been beaten to death and who invariably muttered, the words leaving his mouth along with a mist of blood and a spray of shattered teeth:
“Buffoonish clowns, you’re nothing but four buffoonish clowns. Four to one, for shame, for shame, you buffoonish clowns.”
Ricciardi, without turning to look, appreciated the lugubrious irony of the phrase applied to the funeral. So many to one, it’s true. And it’s equally true that for the most part the many are buffoonish clowns, he thought, looking thirty feet or so ahead of him at the balding back of the deputy chief of police Garzo’s head.
When they reached the piazza and Don Pierino imparted his final benediction, there were no more than fifty or so onlookers.