Day of the Dead (42 page)

Even without looking back, as the car hurtled at reckless speed up a steep dirt road leading to Posillipo, the wheels sliding in the mud, he still could sense the contractions of Tettè's body, the convulsions induced by the strychnine. And at the same time, he could sense his words of love.
I love you, Mamma, you know that: you're my angel
.

It dawned on him that the woman was referring to him as the devil. He almost laughed at the irony of the thing, until he realized that she might well be right. His otherworldly perceptions, the Deed: it was possible they came directly from the chief demon, might be a sign of his own damnation. Absurdly, he thought of Don Pierino, and his simple faith made up of a blend of truth and lies. Here you are, then, Padre: one angel and one devil, sitting side by side in the same car hurtling through the rain at breakneck speed. But you tell me which is which.

As the woman wept and muttered her delirious rantings, Ricciardi understood that their fate was sealed: Carmen was no longer looking at the road ahead of them, and she seemed to be jerking the steering wheel at random as she pressed the accelerator to the floorboards. Sluggishly, as if through a headful of drifting vapors, the commissario found himself thinking that at least they were now out of the populated districts. There was no one in sight, the road running straight uphill high above the coast was deserted; if nothing else, at least there were no other innocent lives involved.

Behind him, his voice gentle and unhampered, Tettè was once again thanking his angel.

The last thought, Ricciardi reflected. My last thought, so that if someone like me were to happen past, he'd hear it. My last thought, a legacy, a memory. A dead man's last thought, his farewell to a life he never really lived. That's my sin.

The car hurtled into a tight curve. The rain poured down furiously; visibility would have been limited even if Carmen's eyes hadn't been blurred with tears, her eyelids half shut. She said: child, my sweet child; forgive me, forgive your mother.

Around the curve, in the middle of the road, motionless, sat a dog on its haunches, still as a statue. Its eyes were leveled straight at the car that came swerving, tires spinning uselessly in the rain-slick mud, around the curve like a snarling beast. The dog didn't move. Carmen shouted Tettè's name and yanked the wheel hard in the direction of the railing, toward the sea far below, toward the sheer cliff.

As the car was hurtling toward the void, next to the woman who was sobbing out the name of the son she'd murdered, with the ghost of the little boy calling his mother his angel from behind him, Ricciardi squeezed his eyes tight shut and thought of Enrica, with every fiber of his being, trying to ensure that his thoughts would be there if someone could hear them, so someone could convey them to her:
love, oh my love; what a pity, what a shame
.

Rain accompanied the silence of the evening of the Day of the Dead, falling heavy in the courtyard of the Pellegrini hospital.

The air, which was normally full of the cries of the vendors at the neighboring market, was now still, as if expectant. Maione shivered under the entrance awning. He wanted to know, but he was afraid.

For the hundredth time, he pulled out his pocket watch, looked at it, and put it away: it had been almost six hours. Commissario Ricciardi had been fighting for his life for six hours now, in Dr. Modo's operating room.

It's all my fault, he thought. I knew that he'd go on investigating, that he wouldn't stop; that he'd already made up his mind not to stop. I knew it, but I left him alone. If I'd been there with him, none of this would have happened: he wouldn't have gotten into that woman's car; he wouldn't have been with her on that absurd, desperate chase to Posillipo; he wouldn't have been in the car when it flew into the empty air.

For what seemed like the hundredth time, he saw himself in the taxi, pulling up too late; he saw the car wheels still spinning in the furious downpour, the overturned vehicle teetering on the brink, held back from that nightmarish final plunge only by a few stubborn shrubs; he saw himself extracting Ricciardi's body from the wreckage with the help of the taxi driver and a passing coachman; he saw the dead woman, her body half ejected through the shattered windshield of her automobile, blood and brains oozing out of her broken skull under the driving rain. He ran a hand over his face. The rush to the hospital, the doctor's surprised and grief-stricken expression. And that had just been the beginning of this nightmare, this endless wait.

He'd sent a local boy to summon his eldest boy, who'd already returned home from the cemetery without news of his father, and through him he'd gotten word to Lucia and police headquarters. Then he'd ordered a patrolman to go get Rosa and bring her to the hospital.

He went back into the waiting room where the woman sat. She'd been accompanied to the hospital by a young woman whom Maione remembered as a neighbor of the commissario's, someone they'd questioned once in another case. Colombo, Enrica Colombo. That's how she'd introduced herself.

She was waxen, overwrought; she was supporting Rosa, who looked as if she'd been carved in marble. Sitting still, glassy-eyed, her lips whispering a prayer, her rosary in her hands.

Baroness, I know that you can hear me. You remember, you always heard me, even when I was sure you were sleeping; even with your eyes closed, you smiled and you'd tell me things in response to the things I was thinking. I never knew how you did it.

If you can hear me, Baroness, then you know where I am and what I'm doing here. We're in the hospital, because they say that your son, the
signorino
, is dying. I don't know if he's really dying. Those aren't things I'd know how to judge for myself. I'm ignorant and I don't even know how to read, I only know my numbers. And I don't know if you're mad at me, Baroness, because you entrusted your son to me, and I haven't been able to keep him safe. But I will tell you that he's my life, and that if he dies, I'll surely die too.

At the start, you gave me this responsibility, and I gladly took it. He wasn't an easy child, and he isn't easy now. He's hardheaded, stubborn, and you've always got to do things the way he says; he's thirty-one years old and he's all alone, leaving aside the fact that I'm an old woman and I'm going to die one day soon and he'll be left all alone like he is now. Even now that he's come to know this poor girl who's sitting here beside me, and who's insisted on coming with me through all that rain to the hospital, who rushed out into the street when she saw the patrolmen who came to get me, and even now he won't make his mind up to come out and tell us that he's fine and that he'll live to be a hundred.

Baroness, you're in the other world, the world of truth, and you can speak with the living and the dead, so try to find him wherever he is and tell him to come back to us, that he can't die now, that it's not true that he's alone; there are people who love him, and they couldn't go on living without him.

Tell him, Baroness. Tell him that he doesn't dare play this miserable trick on me, a poor old woman. That in all the years of making me lose my temper, I've never once raised my hand to him. Tell him for me that if he dares to do this to me, I'll fix him so he'll remember it for all eternity, whether it's in this world or the next.

Tell him, Baroness; tell him to come back to me.

 

Enrica was sitting by herself, in the shadows. The hospital waiting room was cold and the rain was hammering against the plate glass of the front entrance, determined to come in and cover with a film of water all the emotions and all the suffering that sat waiting there.

When she saw the two patrolmen approaching Ricciardi's apartment building, she'd given a name and a color to the anguish that had been persecuting her since the night before. Something had happened. She knew it. She saw Rosa leave, bundled into an overcoat, with a scarf on her head; even from a distance and through the rain, she could tell from her pallor that she was distraught and terrified.

Enrica didn't think twice: this was no time to stand on ceremony and formalities. She pushed her mother aside, as she stood there asking where Enrica thought she was going, and in this foul weather, and she hurried recklessly down the stairs, putting on her overcoat as she went. Rosa welcomed her with unruffled simplicity, linking arms with her. He's in the hospital, she told her.

Enrica prayed, listening to the rain hammer at the glass and waiting to learn whether she'd have to give up her dream forever.

She wondered if she was praying for Ricciardi's life or for herself, for her own life. Then she realized that it amounted to the same thing.

The silence was broken by the roar of a car engine pulling into the courtyard, with a sharp screech of brakes. After a few seconds the front door flew open and Livia rushed in, followed by a wet and unusually disheveled Garzo.

“Maione, you're here; I came the minute I heard, though first I swung past and picked up Signora Vezzi. Can you tell me what the devil happened? What was Ricciardi doing in a car with Signora Fago di San Marcello, a Lady of Charity at Santa Maria del Soccorso? Didn't I say it was time to close that damned investigation? In fact, didn't I say never to start it in the first place?”

Maione had gotten to his feet, and now he was staring at Garzo with an expression that couldn't promise anything good.

“Dotto', I don't know what the commissario was doing in that car; but I can assure you that if he was with that woman he had his own excellent reasons for it, as is proven by the way in which the accident took place.”

“Exactly what do you know about the mechanics of the accident?”

Maione was clenching and unclenching his fists.

“What I know I know because I saw them go by and then I caught a taxi and followed them. The woman was driving, and she seemed very upset. Why, I couldn't say.”

Garzo waved one hand, having finally understood that it was not a good idea to push the brigadier any further on this topic.

“Very well, we'll ask Ricciardi himself. Can we speak to him?”

Maione took a step toward Garzo; he seemed to have made up his mind to pick up the man by the scruff of his neck.

“Ah, Dotto', in that case you don't understand what's happening here: the commissario, as we speak, is in the operating room. Dr. Modo is performing surgery on his head. He's in critical condition. The last thing that he cares about, the last thing that any of us here who love him care about, is determining exactly what he was doing in the car driven by Signora What's-Her-Name. Have I made myself clear? Now, if you want to say here and wait, do me a favor: take a chair and keep your mouth closed. For once, take my advice: sit down and shut up.”

He'd spoken softly, practically in a whisper, but his voice had carried throughout the waiting room like a clap of thunder. Garzo seemed to deflate, then he staggered backward and flopped down in a chair, without another word.

Livia stepped forward, her eyes filled with tears.

“Brigadier, what did the doctor say? Do you know anything, what damage . . . how is he, in other words, how is Ricciardi?”

Maione spread his arms wide in a gesture of helplessness.

“We don't know anything, Signo'. I brought him here by taxi, his eyes were closed, he seemed like he was dead, and blood was pouring out of his head. He wasn't talking. His pulse was faint, you could barely feel it. Luckily, it was the doctor's shift; the minute he saw him he put him on a gurney, had him wheeled into the operating room, and ran right after him. We're in the hands of God, and of that doctor.”

Livia wrung her hands; she seemed to be on the brink of despair. Tears began to roll down her cheeks.

“But the doctor . . . are we sure we shouldn't take him somewhere else? I can arrange for immediate transportation to Rome, perhaps by plane. I can call someone, I have highly placed friends . . . They'd all be glad to make themselves available immediately, in other words. The best doctors in the country, the Duce's personal physicians. Wouldn't that be better, Brigadier?”

Maione smiled and shook his head.

“No, Signo', trust me: you're not going to find a better doctor anywhere than our Dr. Modo. The commissario wouldn't have chosen anyone else, if it had been up to him. And now it's too late, don't you think? He's operating on him now. We just have to wait, and pray, for those who are believers.”

Livia bowed her head and put her face in her hands. Rosa and Enrica stared into the distance, expressionless.

Maione started pacing back and forth, like a caged lion. An hour went by. Then another. Garzo stood up, went over to Livia and, after saying a few words, mere formalities, which she barely heard, turned and left.

Enrica watched the panes of glass shiver with the gusts of rain. Let him live, she thought; that's all I ask. Let him live, let him breathe and walk and laugh and cry. If You do that, if You let him live, I'll give You my dream of happiness.

And now I'll never see him again.

A distant roar of thunder warned that the storm was drawing to an end. Night was falling, and the cold hospital lighting was coming on. In the courtyard, far from the eyes of one and all, a dog with a spotted coat sat on its haunches.

Suddenly, without warning, the door swung open and the weary figure of Dr. Modo appeared on the threshold. Everyone leapt to their feet, scrutinizing his exhausted expression. He smiled, looked at Maione, and said:

“Go ahead. He's asleep, but you can see him.”

Livia was the first to run in, as light as the breeze, followed by Maione, who was holding up a weeping Rosa by the arm. Enrica murmured her thanks and left, in happiness and despair.

On the pane of glass, she glimpsed the last rain of autumn.

Like a tear. Like a drop of blood.

 

And the winter started again.