“One last dive. Just let me take one last dive and then we can go.”
And that’s exactly what it was, thought the commissario. The last dive: the very last dive.
Unsuspecting, the kids kept climbing up to the dock and leaping off, each time passing through the image of the little corpse. He wondered where the mother could be, in what madness she was extinguishing her grief. In the heat and the crowd, Ricciardi shuddered and walked away.
XLVI
The entrance to the church was a double staircase, covered with beggars who clutched at the clothing of all those who passed, demanding alms. On the street, musicians and strolling vendors were raising a din, a dissonant concert of shouts and out-of-tune instruments.
The sidewalk out front was busy with madonnari hard at work, sidewalk artists who specialized in drawings of the Virgin Mary, their hands aglow with colorful chalk, their faces sweaty and focused: the beautiful drawings that they created reproduced the story of the chained crate that Maione had mentioned, showing it being thrown onto the beach of Santa Lucia from a tempest-tossed sea. The crowd, suddenly seized by a new respect for the visual arts, carefully avoided trampling the figures and the landscapes that were gradually covering the sidewalks and street.
It was only with some difficulty that Ricciardi made his way into the church, and more than once he considered giving up and returning home; but he’d made it that far and he wanted Don Pierino to catch at least a glimpse of him, to exchange a wave and a nod, and then leave.
Mass had just begun and the church’s single aisle was packed with people: the air was heavy with incense, the scent of the enormous number of flowers adorning the main altar and many of the side altars, and the sweat of the people inside. Ricciardi saw Don Pierino celebrating mass with two young altar boys. The words, uttered in a language that had been dead for centuries, swelled and flowed in a call and response from the assembled faithful. The churchgoers mouthed the answers without any idea of their meaning; ritual is a comforting thing, thought Ricciardi. Perhaps understanding doesn’t matter. Maybe understanding only makes things worse.
The heat and the murmur of prayers pushed the commissario into a sort of trance, his mind wandering over and over through the same chaotic thoughts. The faces of Livia, Rosa, Lucia Maione, Enrica, and Adriana overlapped into a single blurry, suffering image, depicting all the nuances of pain and loss, apprehension for our loved ones and melancholy; and that image increasingly resembled the face of the statue atop the altar.
After Don Pierino was done with his reading of the Gospel, he scampered with considerable agility up the narrow spiral staircase to the pulpit: a marble balcony atop four columns, overlooking the assembly. He glimpsed Ricciardi in the midst of the crowd beneath him and shot him a rapid smile, to which the commissario responded with a nod of the head.
The little priest began to speak; he had a kind, gentle way of setting forth concepts, modernizing the message of the Holy Scriptures and making it accessible to one and all. Now he was talking about the festival.
“Today we are celebrating the Madonna of Catena, Our Lady of the Chain, to whom we are all deeply devoted. It is simply a painting, ancient and very dark: it is almost impossible to make out the figure. It has traveled a long way to reach us, and it deserves all our love. But today it is not about the Virgin Mary that I want speak, though She is in my heart just as She is in all yours: I want to talk to you about the chain.”
Many of the faithful exchanged glances of bafflement: where was the priest heading with this? They’d be carrying the Madonna in the procession, certainly not the chain. After a pause, Don Pierino went on:
“In fact, the chains that most of us know are bad chains: the chains of slavery, the chains of incarceration. The chains of the soul, of the senses, of wickedness and evil. But there are also good chains, like the ones that protected the Madonna of the painting in its crate, all the way to the beach of Santa Lucia nearly a century ago. But the best chain, the chain most possessed of goodness that can be imagined, is the chain that binds humanity to God, God who fashioned humanity in His image.”
Ricciardi was listening, fascinated in spite of himself. He was no believer, and it seemed to him that, given the life he led, it would be impossible to be one; but faith was a balm he envied others, a comfort to the luckier ones who possessed it.
“The chain that binds God to man is strong, and it withstands nature and the elements. It is the chain that binds a father to a son, a chain that never rusts or wears away with time. A chain that God will never break, a chain that in fact He made stronger through the sacrifice of His only begotten son.”
Ricciardi saw a father, ahead of him, caressing the head of a little girl who kissed his hand in response.
“And so we might think,” Don Pierino went on, “that this chain which can withstand even God Himself can never be broken. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There is a way to shatter this chain: a terrible pair of shears, that can inflict this irreparable damage.”
The priest sought out Ricciardi in the crowd and found him again, gazing straight into his eyes.
“This pair of shears is sin: a formidable weapon, which God himself gave to us so that we might choose not to employ it, saving our souls with free will. Sin shatters the chain: it separates us from God and lets us drop directly into hell and damnation.”
With Don Pierino’s eyes leveled directly into his own, Ricciardi noticed a new sense of discomfort spreading inside him; he began to feel his heart racing loudly in his throat, as if he were about to faint. He leaned against a nearby column while he tried to regain his equilibrium. What was happening to him? As if muffled by fog, the priest’s voice came to him, through the subdued rustling of the women’s fans-whipping back and forth incessantly:
“Sin shatters the link, the most important link in the chain. It shatters the link that cannot be replaced, and without it there is no longer any contact between us: the chain no longer exists, only two useless parts of chain exist. The most important iron ring of all those that make up the chain is the one that’s missing. By committing a sin, you’ve removed the link.”
Ricciardi’s jaw dropped: before his feverish, smarting eyes, in his blurred vision, to his mind ravaged by the thousands of instances of suffering to which he was a daily witness, the truth suddenly blazed clearly in its simplest and most unmistakable form. He understood: he understood it all.
Making his way through the crowd of the faithful, while Don Pierino climbed down from the pulpit and went back to the main altar, he emerged into the open air, the gray muggy heat, and he inhaled in long, hungry gulps: the world was spinning around him dizzyingly. He felt like an idiot, a dull-witted fool who’d failed to see what was obvious, the truth that lay right before him.
He pushed past people, making his way upstream through the crowd pushing back toward the marina to enjoy the spectacle of the ’Nzegna. He walked and no one noticed him, no one seemed to see him at all as he made his way upstream through the masses. He was reminded of Sofia Capece, who was convinced she’d become invisible by divine intervention: the angel of death.