By My Hand (31 page)

The woman's eyes filled with tears of frustration. Her lower lip began to tremble, and she turned and looked away.

“You know, I don't think I deserve these continuous slaps in the face from you. I'm not asking you for anything, really: just to go to the theater with me. That's not asking so much, is it?”

Ricciardi lacked the necessary experience to stand firm against one of the most powerful forces of nature: that is, a woman's tears. Moreover, he knew how to read, and between the lines of Livia's words was clearly, if invisibly written: When you needed me, I was there. Last of all, an involuntary thought went out to the stubbornly closed shutters of the window across the way.

He heaved a sigh and said:

“Fine, I'll go with you. But after the theater I have to go straight home; I've got another horrible day awaiting me tomorrow.”

H
e knew that he should return home, where his wife and children were waiting for him. He was hungry and the chill, which was increasing from one minute to the next, was penetrating his bones.

Nonetheless, Brigadier Maione found himself, at dinnertime, just as the shops were closing their shutters, on San Gregorio Armeno, drawn like a moth to the flame of a lantern on a summer night.

He had gone to police headquarters on his way back from the
borgo
, to check in and see if there was any news; the commissario hadn't yet returned, but in the courtyard he saw Signora Vezzi's car awaiting him. He thought to himself that perhaps, just this once, the commissario might even be able to enjoy the company of a beautiful woman, seeing as he was young and single.

He'd glanced at the watch he kept in his jacket pocket: his shift was over. It was time to head home. He'd even started homeward, up the hill that runs from Via Toledo toward Concordia and the blue eyes of Lucia.

Lucia. The thought of her had summoned him, like an accusation he'd have to bear, to turn his thoughts once again to Biagio Candela, the man who had killed Luca. His feet then changed direction of their own accord: they'd headed toward Piazza del Gesù, and from there across Via Tribunali toward the street of the
figurari
.

What are you looking for? he asked himself. What do you hope to see? What do you hope to find out?

The thing he loved about his job was its simplicity: illegal acts took place, and it was up him to find the perpetrators and make sure they paid for their crimes. It was easy. But this time he felt as if he were caught in a maze, sentenced to go round and round, in circles, in search of an exit that might not even exist. He didn't know what he was doing.

He envied Franco Massa, who had no doubts: the boy had to pay, because he'd committed the most horrible crime imaginable.

But there's need for more than a policeman here, Maione mused. I'm being asked to be policeman, judge, and executioner. It's one thing to cuff a criminal, it's another thing to see him live, work, and love, and then wish him dead.

He'd reached the workshop where he'd seen Biagio do his carving before a small but admiring audience. Now there was no one on the street, even if the lights and decorations still adorned the walls—those wouldn't be removed until after Epiphany, according to tradition. He sought out the shadow of an entryway, and stood watching to see what was happening.

The shutters were half closed, but he could make out the proprietor, the man with whom he'd spoken earlier, sitting at the cash register and counting his money, visibly satisfied. Some ten feet away, the fair-haired young man was sweeping wood shavings off the floor. His heart lurched: from a distance, just for a moment, he'd taken the murderer for the victim; Biagio's hair was the same color as Luca's, which in turn had been the color of his wife Lucia's.

His well-trained eye noticed, even before they entered the light of the streetlamp hanging over the center of the street, three young men striding briskly toward the shop. At first they had been walking at a leisurely gait, like layabouts who were out late; then they'd begun to move at a more determined pace. The eyes of the one leading the trio were focused on the cash in the hands of the workshop's proprietor.

Maione realized what was about to happen, just as he saw the blond young man's wife appear, holding a little girl by the hand and their baby in her arms.

He looked up and down the street: there was no one coming. Instinct pushed him to intervene, but he knew that if he did, in those very particular circumstances, he'd have given away the fact that he was there on a stakeout, and he'd be forced to explain. He hesitated for a long minute.

The young toughs had reached the front door of the shop. Two of them positioned themselves on either side of the shutters, while the third started to step inside.

The events that followed unfolded extremely rapidly: the robber pulled out a knife and headed for the cash register; Biagio leapt in front of him and blocked his way, waving the blade he'd been using that morning to carve the old woman's head; the robber lunged at Biagio with his knife, but he dodged the blade; Biagio's wife, who'd realized what was happening, screamed loudly, so that faces began to appear at the windows; the two men at the door exchanged a glance and vanished into the shadows.

Maione realized that even though Biagio was brandishing his knife much more skillfully than his adversary, he was only dodging the blows, making no effort to wound the man in turn. Maione decided that he'd seen enough and, from the shadows where he was lurking, he pulled out the police whistle that he used to alert others to his presence, took a breath, and blew hard. At that shrill sound, the robber jumped back and fled, running off up the
vicolo
.

The proprietor was shaking like a leaf, looking around in bewilderment and wondering where the policemen who had blown their whistles could be. The young woman, in tears, had thrown herself into her husband's arms; he was deathly pale in the light of the decorative lightbulbs. He hurled the knife away from him, as if it were burning hot, and the blade rolled along the floor and out the shop door.

The whole thing had lasted no longer than two minutes.

All of a sudden, Maione felt an overwhelming yearning for home. He emerged from the shadows and headed back, his heart heavier than ever.

 

Ricciardi was surprised to see so many people, as cold as it was, lining the sidewalks in front of the Kursaal theater and movie house, on the elegant Via Filangieri. You could feel the excitement in the air: everyone was very well-dressed, smoking and stamping their feet in the cold, exchanging comments on the weather.

In the car, Livia had explained to him that the two brothers and sister were an up-and-coming troupe, who were beginning to make a name for themselves even outside the city. They were three very different individuals, she had told him, but they were perfectly compatible onstage: the sister was homely but magnificent, capable of making her audience laugh or cry as she chose; the younger brother, who had an instinctive, scathing comic gift, was just at the start of his career but could send the audience into overpowering gales of laughter; the elder brother, head of the troupe and the author of that night's play, was a theatrical genius, though it was said that he had a thorny personality.

Ricciardi had asked Livia why on earth they were premiering a show on such an unusual date, just two days before Christmas. Livia told him that that was exactly the point: the play, a one-act, was in fact a portrayal of a Christmas in a bourgeois Neapolitan family.

Livia was excited, but it had nothing to do with the play they were about to see: she'd managed to drag that man to the theater despite his aversion to all forms of social activity, and his acquiescence, even though she'd practically had to beg him to bring it about, touched her. He was here, with her, by her side. That was enough, as far as she was concerned: at least for tonight.

They took their seats, as usual observed with curiosity by many. Livia's exotic beauty and her circle of prominent friends had made her a focus of gossip among the city's high society; people wondered, in all the drawing rooms in Naples, why on earth a woman like her didn't have a husband or at least a couple of lovers, seeing as there were so many candidates offering their services, paying court on her with suffocating insistence. And the more she graciously declined her suitors, the greater the number of men sending her bouquets and boxes of bonbons, and the greater the number of women claiming to have seen her here and there around the city in questionable company.

For these reasons, to see her in male company constituted a show within the show; and to see her with that peculiar individual, too, whom no one in high society had ever seen before, and whose very name was unknown. Dressed in a nondescript manner, absurdly without a hat, with a dazed air about him and a diffident stance, the man triggered everyone's curiosity; it was assumed that he must be from out of town, possibly from Rome, and thus deeply involved in the Fascist regime. With those strange green eyes glowing in that angular face, he even struck a vague fear into people, as if he could see things that others could not.

The play was good fun and even Ricciardi, tired and distracted as he was by a thousand different thoughts, smiled at certain points and, at others, felt a pang of tenderness. Certain elements, moreover, called him back to the investigation he'd been working on, such as the constant references to the nativity scene: just one more indication of how important the artisanal portrayal of the birth of Jesus was for the people of that city.

He thought about what Don Pierino had told him, amid the heavy odor of incense in the church of San Ferdinando: Every figure, every construction is a symbol. Nothing is accidental, everything has a meaning. And he thought that the same thing might be true about this city, which he imagined as seen from on high, atop the Piazzale di San Martino, with thousands of tiny illuminated windows, all of them seemingly identical, but each with a story, a family, and a drama all its own.

After all, he reflected, this city is nothing more than a manger scene that they keep up all year long. An immense living manger scene, teeming with love affairs, hunger, hatred, and resentments, a city that shields itself from the cold and the heat as best it can as it ponders what it can do to better its terrible condition. A manger scene where the shepherds are ruthless and capable of anything.

A manger scene of which a certain part, a significant part, was visible to him and him alone: the part made up of the cries of those who had been torn unwillingly from their lives, lives that, however hopeless they might have been, were the only good things those people had.

The play ended to a standing ovation. Ricciardi caught the two brothers glaring at each other as they stepped forward to the footlights for one more bow, but perhaps that had just been an impression of his. It saddened him to think that he had become, as a result of his occupation, someone who spotted negative emotions, such as jealousy, even when they weren't present.

Livia, radiant as she clung to his arm, tried to talk him into going out to dinner with her, following the stream of theater-goers who had no intention of ending the evening there, but he managed to resist; besides, the woman could see the signs of weariness etched into his face, and she decided not to overplay her hand. For tonight, that was quite enough.

When they were outside Ricciardi's apartment house, on Via Santa Teresa, he told her goodnight and turned to get out of the car. She put her hand on his arm and said:

“
Grazie
.
Grazie
, Ricciardi. You gave me a wonderful gift, tonight; I won't forget it.”

Before he could reply, she pressed her lips against his in a quick kiss.

Instinctively the commissario, the minute he was out on the street, turned to look up at Enrica's window, and for the first time he was glad to see that the shutters were fastened tight.

 

The old Enrica would have waited, just as the new one was doing, behind the fastened shutters for the man she loved to return home, worried at the darkened windows across the way and the lateness of the hour.

She would have glided silently, just like the new Enrica was doing, between her bedroom and the kitchen that overlooked the street, to keep from awakening her parents; and she would have held a glass of water in one hand, so as to have a convenient explanation to give any other family members she might encounter up and about so late at night.

The old Enrica, who had existed until that morning, would have watched with her heart in her mouth as the glistening automobile pulled up at that late hour, and as it stopped outside the front entrance of 107 Via Santa Teresa. Just as the new Enrica did.

Much like the new Enrica, the old one would have narrowed her eyes behind the spectacles hurriedly grabbed from her bedside table, to see what was going on in the car idling below, its engine purring in the dark, like a tiger in the jungle in an adventure novel by Emilio Salgari; and she'd have seen, in the backseat, illuminated by the streetlamp, the smaller silhouette move closer to the taller one, the better to speak to him. And then she'd have seen the smaller one dart her head forward suddenly, like a venomous snake, drawing close to the taller one in what would unequivocally look to both Enricas very much like a kiss.

And the old Enrica, much like the new one for that matter, would have seen the man she was head over heels in love with get out of the car and, as it pulled away and finally vanished from sight, she would see him turn and look up, straight at her, where she stood, invisible in the dark, behind the locked shutters. And then she would have watched as he sighed and opened the front door, his head hanging low, to go inside and upstairs, to bed.

The old Enrica would have felt a wave of despair wash over her, and perhaps she'd have locked herself in her room to cry her eyes out in silence. But the old Enrica was gone forever.