Pivani fell silent. Large teardrops were rolling down his cheeks, but his voice remained calm, as if he were dictating a report. When he resumed, he looked up fiercely at Ricciardi.
“To answer your question, then, I can tell you that Ettore Musso di Camparino, on the night between the 22nd and the 23rd, was here, with me. Making love with me. And then sobbing, despairing, along with me. Wondering what would become of the two of us, because in the world that the two of us were helping to create, there was no place for people like us. And there never will be.”
XXXVI
What emerged was a story of furtive encounters and letters burnt after being read, stolen kisses and hidden tears. It was strange for Ricciardi, too, accustomed as he was to receiving confessions and peering down into the desperate abyss of loneliness, to hear someone talk about love in that atmosphere choked with files looming high in the semi-darkness, with the odors of tobacco smoke and ink and dust mingling in the air, and with the relentless heat.
The love that Achille told him about was hopeless, and it had no future; a love that was above all a threat, a love that never saw the light of day. In spite of everything, however, it refused to die, obstinately outliving every rational attempt to put an end to it. A hundred times they’d left each other, promising never to meet again, and a hundred and one times they’d sought each other out again, with the feverish urgency of need and the creeping sensation of a new defeat. Pivani relived that pain, twisting his hands, staring into the dark, his voice firm, little more than a whisper.
He couldn’t rule out the possibility that someone at party headquarters might suspect something about the excessively close friendship between a member of the Fascist hierarchy and the young philosopher: but fear of the secret police was too great for anyone to voice their suspicions. The proscription lists, prison, and the chance of being forbidden all employment all lurked menacingly in the offing; it was so much easier to go along with the situation, so most of them simply did their best to comply with the demands of that dangerous little man from the north, with all his mysterious power, frequently called on the phone by the party’s most prominent figures in Rome-figures to whom he often gave terse, irrevocable orders. And so while Ettore, a few days earlier, was telling Achille about being questioned by Ricciardi and how worried he was, Mastrogiacomo had memorized the name-Ricciardi-as he was taking coffee to Pivani’s office; then, when the doorman reported to him that the commissario had been asking questions about who might be visiting the party headquarters at night, he’d taken it upon himself to intervene, determined to win merit in the eyes of his superior officer.
Ettore deeply hated his stepmother, Pivani made clear; but an act of violence like that wasn’t part of his nature. He was a man of letters, gentle, sensitive, a man who loved flowers and possessed no weapons. The picture that emerged from Achille’s description, as well as the alibi that he himself was providing, let Musso off the hook and left a great many obscure points in the duchess’s murder.
“I understand, Pivani. And I realize all the implications of your story, both public and private. Still, I have to warn you that, unless we’re able to identify a guilty party in this murder, it may be that you will be subpoenaed to testify, and you’ll be expected to repeat what you’ve told me here today; otherwise it will be easy for anyone, especially after Musso’s little scene at the funeral, to target him for the murder. You realize that, right?”
Continuing to stare into the empty air, Pivani smiled sadly.
“And what would you do in my position, Ricciardi? Would you just hang back and watch him being sent to prison, suffering the shame of seeing his venerable family name dragged through the mud, like some ordinary brute, some untutored criminal? And just to save my own hide, to boot? No; I’d gladly come testify. Perhaps it would even be a form of liberation, after all the sleepless nights staring at the ceiling, after the thousands of fears that the story might get out and ruin our miserable existences. I am-we are-in your hands, Commissario. Our only chance is that you find the murderer.”
Ricciardi got up from his chair.
“No easy matter, I assure you. The duchess was a prominent woman, as you know. I’m being strongly pressured to move quickly; otherwise they’ll take the investigation out of my hands, and it will be my duty to hand over everything I’ve found to my successor.”
Pivani had put on a pair of reading glasses and was opening a file that lay before him on his desk.
“I can’t give you any classified information; or at least, nothing that you can use openly. The organization I work for, as you know, officially doesn’t exist; what do you call an open secret, you Neapolitans? Pulcinella’s secret, is that it? All the same, I can tell you something that might prove useful. Among the people we have under surveillance is a certain Mario Capece, the journalist who was the duchess’s lover. He isn’t dangerous, but he never misses an opportunity to scatter to the four winds his opinion that the regime has silenced the press.”
Ricciardi nodded.
“Sure, he told us the same thing; but that doesn’t strike me as open dissidence. It’s more like nostalgia for the past, as far as I can tell.”
Pivani smilled, looking over his eyeglasses at Ricciardi.
“You always try to defend people, eh, Ricciardi? It seems to me that you, too, are much more kindhearted than you’d like people to believe. I know that Capece is no seditionist. But people are reluctant to mind their own business and no one ever misses an opportunity to make a favorable impression on us. So we received a number of reports and we were obliged to put him under a soft surveillance. We aren’t having him followed, so I can’t tell you whether or not he was at the Musso di Camparino home the night of the murder; but he wasn’t at the newspaper, there we have a. . we can say that with confidence, in other words. But what I can tell you, and it certainly might be a useful piece of information, is that his son, Andrea, a sixteen-year-old boy, did something peculiar. Here it is, let me read it to you: ‘The above-named Andrea Capece, sixteen years of age, late at night on Tuesday, August 25th, emerged from his home carrying a package wrapped in newspaper; he walked down the vicolo next to the residence in question, entered a ground floor storage area in the building at number 104, and came out again six minutes later, only to return to his home.’ Since the one under surveillance is the father, and we have no desire to alert him to our interest, we decided not to institute a more in-depth investigation: in other words, we didn’t go to see what was in the package. But if I were you, I’d keep an eye on him, on that boy. After all, even a child can pull a trigger.”
Ricciardi stood up. The interview was over; he said farewell with a nod of the head and walked to the door. Ricciardi already had his hand on the handle when Pivani spoke again:
“One last thing, Ricciardi. Tonight, I’ve been talking to myself, here in my office. Just musing aloud, nothing more. Maybe I saw a ghost, and I just started talking. Aside from that willingness to testify that I promised you if it should happen to come, God forbid, to a trial, none of the information that I’ve given you must ever have a source: otherwise, I won’t be able to do anything on your behalf. Nor will I want to. Is that clear?”