Ricciardi, who’d sat there breathless for a moment, got to his feet and waved her in. After he recovered, he said:
“What are you doing here, and at this hour of the morning? Aren’t you on vacation?”
Livia laughed, sat down in the chair facing the desk, and started to open the package.
“Vacation? Believe me, when you’re dealing with someone like you, and you’re trying to make friends, there’s no time for leisure. You’re a man who needs to be chased, because if I sit down and wait for you to come to me, there’s a considerable risk I’ll just get old and unsightly. I don’t have much time left to me, you know.”
Ricciardi wasn’t accustomed to this sort of gallant fencing, and he was clearly out of his element.
“It’s just that it doesn’t strike me as quite right, that you should come here to police headquarters. It’s not a very nice place, for a lady. There are criminals and policemen, and I couldn’t say which of the two is worse. And after all, it seems to me that it will be a long, long time before you become ugl. . an old woman, I meant to say.”
Livia opened her eyes wide and raised one hand to her throat, feigning scandalized surprise:
“But what do these ears of mine hear? Is it possible that Commissario Ricciardi, the least gallant man in all of Southern Italy, has practically just paid a compliment? Surely that cannot be: no doubt I haven’t yet awakened and I’m merely dreaming.”
Ricciardi shook his head and smiled in spite of himself.
“Well, all right then: anyway, you always do whatever you please. And about the other night: you can’t say that I didn’t warn you, that being around a man like me can be a dangerous thing. Anyway, they were just four hotheads who. .”
Livia stopped him, by putting one hand on his. The contact, warm and seething, was anything but disagreeable to Ricciardi. Looking him right in the eye, she said:
“You don’t have to say a thing. I’m a grown woman, and what I want or don’t want to do, I decide for myself. And don’t think for a second that it’s any different where I come from: these days, the criminals are commiting their crimes under a flag. Don’t worry about me at all. If anything, I’m worried about you. If you like, I can make a call to Rome and speak with. . let’s just say that I know people who are, ah, quite influential. I can arrange to have you left alone, now and for good. You need only say the word.”
Ricciardi replied firmly:
“Don’t even think of it. Aside from the fact that I have nothing to fear, I can take care of myself very nicely, thanks. I’ve already taken my own countermeasures; nothing else is going to happen.”
Livia sighed, reassured.
“Then I have nothing else to worry about, just keeping your stomach full; look here what I’ve brought you: four puff pastries, sfogliatelle the way you like them, piping hot. The little shop on the corner, what’s the name again? Ah, that’s right, Pintauro. It’s even open at this time of the morning, did you know that? And I wasn’t even the first customer of the day, from what the cashier told me, along with a stream of compliments. Here, have one.”
Maione stuck his head in the door just as Livia was handing a steaming hot, odorous pastry to Ricciardi, who was standing right next to her. His eyes widened as he stared at Livia, the puff pastry, Ricciardi, and again the puff pastry. Then he snorted and extended his arms.
“No, really, this is verging on harassment! In this city everyone seems to be eating from dawn to dusk, the minute I show up! When on earth have you ever eaten anything, Commissa’, in this office at this time of the morning? And you, too, Signo’, forgive me, but do you really think it’s right to send the aroma of sfogliatelle wafting down the staircase and into the courtyard? I thought I was having hallucinations, I was sure of it! Don’t take this the wrong way, but we’re here to work, you know!”
Livia looked over at Ricciardi, still holding the sfogliatella in midair, caught off guard by the brigadier’s furious outburst. The commissario shrugged his shoulders.
“Ah, Maione, at last you’re here. No, the signora here just happened to be passing by and dropped in to say hello. In fact, here’s what she’d just got through saying: ‘When will Brigadier Maione be coming in, I brought a sfogliatella for him too?’ And I’d just told her that you should already have come in by now.”
Maione looked at Livia’s hand and the sfogliatella as if he were about to lunge and tear them both off in a single ravenous bite.
“No, grazie, Signora, I couldn’t think of eating at this time of the morning. My stomach wakes up long after I do, if you want to know the truth. And forgive me for what I just said, but in this heat I don’t sleep well and I’m always on edge. Did you have any orders, Commissa’?”
Ricciardi had walked around the desk and taken a seat at his usual place.
“Stay just another moment or two, Raffae’; it might be that the Signora Livia, here, can lend a hand. Come in, and take a seat, please.”
Maione sat down next to Livia, who was looking at Ricciardi, clearly electrified at the idea of being made privy to his thoughts. The harder she found it to tune in to that mysterious man, the more irresistibly she was attracted to him.
“All right, Livia, listen carefully. Imagine that you’re head over heels in love with a man. And you think that he’s yours, all yours, for all time. Then, all of a sudden, you witness something, a glance, a word: something that makes you think you could lose him, see him leave with another woman. What would you feel, what would you do?”
Maione looked curiously at Ricciardi. He immediately guessed that he wanted to reconstruct the situation Capece had been in at the theater. It wasn’t a bad idea, he thought, to ask Livia: what they needed was a person from that milieu, that world of luxury where hunger was unknown, to understand how the journalist might have reacted in the face of the prospect of losing the woman he loved.
For her part, Livia felt her heart racing: at last, Ricciardi was speaking of love. Admittedly, this was hardly the ideal place for it: she might have hoped for a candlelit dinner, in a restaurant down by the water, for example. What’s more, they were in the presence of a witness, that hairy brigadier with his peculiarities. All the same, he was talking about love, and perhaps he’d chosen that setting because it made him feel safer, less vulnerable. She smiled at him.
“I’d be willing to fight with every weapon at my disposal, for him. I’d fight with my whole being: I’d never declare a truce-never.”
Ricciardi looked her in the eye.
“That is, if you had the time to think it over, of course. But then and there? If you realized that all that stood between you and happiness, between you and love, in other words, was another person? And if it occurred to you that, if you could only get rid of that person, you’d have your love back and no one could ever take him away again?”
There was a moment’s silence. Maione was trying to imagine Capece that night, at the Salone Margherita, in the very instant that he slapped the duchess in front of everyone and then tore the ring from her finger. That scene spoke eloquently of a loss of control and a new determination: a new desperation.
For her part, Livia decided that Ricciardi wanted to understand what she was made of: whether her aristocratic and modern appearance concealed the strength and spontaneity of a woman of the south, the kind of women he was accustomed to. She didn’t want to disappoint him, but as far as that went she knew that she had a fiery and passionate nature: and so she had no difficulty being sincere. She lowered her voice and narrowed her eyes slightly as she said:
“I imagine that I’d be capable of doing anything, for the man that I loved. Anything. Even the worst things imaginable. Even murder.”
The word fell between then and made a tremendous noise. They sat there in silence, weighing Livia’s phrase from differing points of view. After a few seconds, Ricciardi spoke to the brigadier: