By My Hand (35 page)

Maione went on talking, staring straight ahead of him, following the flow of his own emotions. He felt as if he'd been crushed, but was slowly climbing out of the rubble.

He told her about the hand that still gripped a knife, but now only to give shape to a piece of wood, not to pull it out of their son's back. About the shop owner's pride, the smiling young wife on the balcony of the building across the way, the joy of the little girl throwing her arms around her father's neck.

He told her about the robbery, the young man's instinctive reaction, the bandits who ran off as fast as their legs could carry them, but he didn't realize that almost within arm's reach his Lucia had witnessed the same scene, and had wondered why her husband had failed to intervene, hoping that the reason was just an instinctive aversion to risk.

Then he stopped. But he started talking again, in the same tone of voice, whispering into the cold, still air of that December twenty-third, as the city held its breath in anticipation of Christmas; and he told her about the tempest that was raging in his miserable soul, the soul of a policeman who wanted to be a father but whom circumstances and Franco Massa seemed determined to transform into a judge and executioner.

He told Lucia about Lucia, about how her sorrow, her days sunk in the abyss, lying in her bed staring at the sliver of sky, were the chief responsibility he felt in his heart, driving him to carry out that death sentence. About the burden he felt pressing down on his shoulders, the weight of the suffering that they all carried, day after day, without ever speaking of it.

Finally, he fell silent. And in that silence they both realized that they were staring at the back of the neck of the man who'd murdered their son, who in turn was looking out at the sporadic shafts of sunlight on the dark sea. The two seagulls called out and responded to each other.

Lucia spoke. Her voice was harsh and spare and it came from the depths of a soul that had never stopped dying. Listening to her, Maione realized just how false his impression that she had emerged from the abyss really was, and he understood that his wife had merely learned how to live with her sorrow, had simply stopped struggling against it.

“You know, there are times I think I can still feel him suckling at my breast. That's absurd, no? I saw him all grown-up, strapping and tall; I used to iron those immense shirts he wore. He'd pick me up in his arms and whirl me around until I was breathless, you remember the way he'd spin me through the air? And I've had five other children, and I love them all dearly, you know how much I love them all. But I can still feel him suckling, sucking the life out of me. My firstborn, Rafe', there's no replacement. He's the one who tells you who you are, and who you'll be for the rest of your life. A mother. A mother, and nothing else.”

Maione fought back his tears. He nodded his head, but his wife wasn't looking at him.

“I married the only man I've ever loved in my life. I married him because he made me laugh and because I cared about him. I married him because he's hard-headed and honest, because he's a policeman. Because he fights against evil, and especially because he knows how to recognize evil, and he teaches my children how to recognize it, so they'll know what good is. And what the difference is between the two.”

Maione heaved a deep sigh. It all felt like a dream. Candela's little boy scampered over to his father and sat down beside him, running his tiny hand up and down the man's back. The man didn't stir. Lucia's voice went on.

“My love for my son. My love for my husband. That's all I am, Rafe': nothing more, nothing less than my love for my son and my love for my husband.”

She turned to look at Maione, and her eyes looked like a window over the summer sea.

“It's Christmas, Rafe'. At Christmas Luca used to write us a letter, you remember? He'd put it under your napkin, and you always pretended to be so surprised when you found it, the same way you do now with the letters from the other children. Do you remember the things he used to write to us, in those little letters? I still have them all; I kept every last one. He told us that he wanted to be a good boy, good just like you.”

Maione felt as if he were on the verge of dying, then and there on an ice-cold bench in the Villa Nazionale, just a stone's throw from the sea. About to die of heartbreak and regret.

“It's Christmastime, Rafe'. Luca's not coming home for Christmas. I'll set a place for him, the way I always do, with a plate and silverware. But he's not coming home. He'll never come home again. And after a whole lifetime, you want to tell him now, now that he's in the world of almighty truth, that you're willing to commit this horrible crime, to take a father away from his wife and his two innocent children? Whether they're our children or someone else's, they're still children.”

The brigadier looked uncertainly at his wife.

“What should I do, Luci'? What should I do now?”

From the sleeve of her overcoat emerged a hand, slender and pale. It rose toward her husband's face and caressed it, drying a tear that Maione hadn't even realized he'd shed.

“I'll tell you what we ought to do. It's Christmas. We ought to stand up and go away from here. I still have to cook the second dish for tonight, and you have to finish your shift. And then we'll celebrate, because it's Christmas and we have five children who want a smiling mamma, and an honest papà to write their little Christmas letter to.”

In front of them the little girl had fallen asleep, and the father had picked up the little boy and was holding him as his gaze, lost in the distance, continued to follow the phantoms of his conscience.

Lucia stood up and took her husband by the hand, turning to leave the Villa Nazionale, while behind them the orchestra went on playing and the sea lay calm beneath a few shafts of sunlight and a great mass of black clouds.

The city above them, climbing up the hillside, slowly turned on its lights. And it looked exactly like a nativity scene.

C
hristmas accosted Ricciardi and Maione, shouting at the top of its lungs, the second they turned the corner of Via Toledo. By longstanding tradition, December twenty-third transformed one of the city's most historic thoroughfares, the street that ran from the venerable quarters of the army of Aragon all the way down to the port, into a vast open-air market selling the monarch of all the foodstuffs that grace the holiday banqueting tables of Naples: His Majesty the Fish.

Dozens of wooden crates painted light blue to give the idea of salt water and fresh fish had been arranged on the sidewalks, the way they were every Christmas, decorated with fishnets, sea urchins, seaweed, and even sea horses. Inside, lying in eight inches of water that was constantly being replenished, wriggled fish of all colors and sizes, eels, anchovies, and all other manner of freshly caught seafood.

The street, short but very broad, lent itself perfectly to the displaying of the merchandise and the passage of the much-courted shoppers. The fishmongers had set up their own stalls, with raised setbacks that slanted toward the street, offering the greatest possible surface area to the potential buyers' view; on these were arranged, in perfect symmetry, a series of low woven wicker baskets swarming with clams and tellins, mussels and lobsters with their claws tied shut with twine, their feelers in perennial motion, and gaping gray and red mullets.

The stalls were lit by acetylene lamps, which cast an almost blinding light out into the rapidly darkening afternoon. All around, the decorations that had been painstakingly put up by the hands of the women that very night: flowers, seaweed, seashells, and colorful stones, to reinforce the impression of the sea come to visit the city for Christmas.

And the scent of the sea was intense, not only because of the marine vegetation and fauna present in such considerable quantities, but also because of the salt water that was continually being sprinkled over the seafood to accentuate the impression of freshness, and especially because of the dark, leathery faces of the fishermen, sunburnt and wind-tanned, their trousers rolled up over their muscular calves and their triangular hats flopping against their shoulders, worn pulled back. All of them ready to flash welcoming, toothless smiles, with a jacket thrown over one shoulder and their scales in hand, a challenging look in their eyes, as if to say: You can try, but you won't find better seafood than what I have to sell.

The noise was almost intolerable. The steady buzz of the immense crowd of bargain hunters was offset by the calls of the vendors:

“
Mo' l'ha pigliato 'a rezza, frícceca ancora!
Freshly caught fish, still wriggling!”

“
Chesta è 'a pesca nova, 'a pesca nova!
This is fresh fish, fresh fish!”

“
Facitevíllo co' 'o limone, 'o pesce frisco!
Cook it with lemon, this fresh fish!”

And then there were the vendors who boasted about the specific locations the seafood they were selling came from:

“
È Marechiaro, chiaro chiaro!
The bright waters of Marechiaro!”

“
Vene 'a Pusilleco, frisco 'e Pusilleco, vi' che addore!
It comes from Posillipo, fresh from Posillipo, come get a whiff!”

“
L'anema 'e Mergellina, tèneno 'sti cozze!
These mussels hail from Mergellina!”

When it comes to seafood, as everyone knows, you can't buy too far in advance, but no table could do without it. And so the desperate game that the fishermen of Naples had to play for Christmas was decided entirely in those few hours, in that one spot. As a result, everyone was involved, wives and children, relatives who normally had other things to do, and the fishmongers hired extra workers for the day, hoping against hope that there'd be money enough at day's end to pay them their wages.

The two policemen stood there in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. The commissario, worried, kept wondering what could be responsible for the tremor in Rosa's hand. He made a mental note to talk to Dr. Modo about it, and he felt a twinge of guilt at having left her alone, in the condition she was in. He had made up his mind to make her accept a helper; at her age she couldn't keep up with all the work she demanded of herself.

Irrationally, his thoughts kept turning to Enrica, to what he thought of as her calm and unruffled way of dealing with life. He wished he could ask her advice. Then his mind took him back down the long, sad road of how impossible it was to make her a part of his life, and that thought crushed his spirit.

Livia was different. She was aware of his sudden bouts of sadness, the imprint of solitude that weighed on him heavily, and she still seemed convinced that she could take that burden on herself. Who knows, Ricciardi thought: perhaps in the end it's fair to let everyone pick for themselves the life they prefer.

Once again, Maione felt as if there were a strong wind blowing through his head. His conversation with his wife at the Villa Nazionale, just a few minutes earlier, had left him in tatters.

Forget about codes of honor, forget about handing down sentences and carrying them out, Lucia had told him; all that mattered was the life they had to live, the five children they had to raise. Every action had its consequences, and a person needed to be aware of that fact, at all times.

The brigadier should have felt a sense of relief, and to some extent he did: but deep inside a voice went on asking if he'd done the right thing, if he could live with the idea that a killer, whether of his son or someone else's, should live his life in peace, without paying any price for his actions.

But, Maione asked himself, couldn't it be that this itself is the punishment? To live with perennial remorse, as well as the regret of knowing that your brother died in prison for a crime you'd committed with your own hand?

He'd glimpsed a deep sadness in Biagio's eyes that morning at the Villa Nazionale. Holidays, as he knew all too well, are also family and childhood memories. If the man had continued with his criminal ways, the brigadier wouldn't have hesitated to arrest him and take him in; but the honesty of his present life was as good as many years served in prison, and not wanting to go back there at any price.

He knew, deep down, that he'd continue to monitor Biagio Candela's life from a distance, that no one else would suffer any harm at that young man's hands if Maione had anything to say about it. He was glad to take on that responsibility, as a father and as a policeman. He'd go talk to Franco Massa, reason with him for as long as it took, and persuade him to underwrite that decision—a decision that had been Lucia's even more than it had been his. Enough sorrow. Enough suffering.

With some effort, both Ricciardi and Maione brought their minds back to the investigation then under way: the corpses of the Garofalos and the solitude of their little girl demanded their undivided attention, also because Christmas was upon them and would soon bury everything under the trappings of the holiday, guaranteed to keep them—and everyone else—from working for many days to come.

They wandered for a while, disconsolately, in search of some familiar face. After nearly fifteen minutes spent trying to make headway through the river of people, they caught sight of Lomunno, who was unloading crates of fish from a horse-drawn cart and carrying them to a fishmonger's stall on the sidewalk. His face was red with sweat and strain, he wore an expression of sheer concentration, and he was taking extreme care not to drop anything. He moved stiffly, showing how unaccustomed he was to this kind of work.

Maione elbowed the commissario in the ribs, pointing Lomunno out. As they walked toward him, they glimpsed a squad of militiamen crossing the street; they had come to make sure that the market was operating properly, and as they came through, the crowd parted, as if to avoid any contact with them.

Among them Ricciardi recognized Criscuolo, the platoon leader with the dancing mustache who had told him the story of Garofalo's promotion. Criscuolo looked around, circumspectly, as if he were looking for someone.