Day of the Dead (6 page)

Ricciardi reminded him of Caruso: the same sad half-smile, the same tense, active hands, the same gaze lost in contemplation of who knows what distant grief. The same strange ability to interpret reality according to his own subterranean streams, currents invisible to everyone else. There are people who go through life taking the burden of everything onto their own shoulders, even though they lack the necessary strength.

He focused on the little boy. He'd completed the external examination. He'd gone over the clothing: a shirt made of coarse linen, several sizes too big, threadbare and filthy, and a pair of oversized short britches, fastened at the waist with a length of twine on the verge of breaking. No underwear, no cuts, no recent rips or tears. No violence, at least not enacted on the clothing.

Then he'd examined the epidermis, every square inch of skin. As he'd announced after his initial survey, there were no signs of recent wounds. Marks aplenty, no doubt about that: on the neck, belly, and legs. Contusions, bruises, hematomas. Life wasn't easy for
scugnizzi
like this one. But there was nothing that could have caused his death, nothing very recent.

War, thought Modo. War and death. There was something absurdly exciting about war, he had to admit: the uniforms, the rifles, the bullets, and the bombs. Sure, there were hunger, filth, and infections: but there was also the knowledge that you were fighting for your country, for your homeland. Ridiculous concepts, he saw that now: a distant border, people who had never stopped speaking other languages no matter what flag was flying over city hall; but when you fight, you think of your own home far away, your traditions, the things that belong to you.

But the war that you fought, he mused, looking down at the body on the table, was one of neither glory nor grandeur. It was a war for survival, a war to live long enough to see the sun come up the next day, or to wake up to the feeling of rain on your skin. A war for bread, a war against the cold, a war for a dry place to sleep. A war that has no borders to defend, no bridges to destroy: the war of life.

He took his scalpel and made a Y-shaped incision, starting from the collarbone and running down to below the sternum, and continuing to the pubic bone with a detour around the navel. Beneath the skin, the layer of fatty tissue was virtually nonexistent, and Modo was not a bit surprised.

He decided first of all to perform a thorough examination of the abdomen, convinced as he was that the child's death had been caused by a straightforward cardiac arrest, possibly triggered by a congenital malformation combined with the generally poor state of health: the little boy was light as a baby bird. If he discovered the cause of death, he hoped to spare the victim the next step: the opening of the cranium for an examination of the encephalon.

Now, once again, the talk was of war: in the speeches of the head of state, in the newspapers, in idle conversations in the bars and cafés. Nothing explicit, of course; no one ever spoke about war openly. But if you observe carefully, thought the doctor as he applied the retractor, you realize that war is in the air, and how. All this talk about greatness, empire, history, ineluctable destiny. About mastery, dominion, and colonies. If that's not war, then I've never seen one before.

But I have seen war, you know that, child? I've seen war. And trust me, that's not easy either.

Now the Man of Destiny himself is actually coming here, to Naples. He's coming, and all the people like you will crowd the piazzas and clap and cheer on command. They might even put on their best clothes, as if it were a holiday, as if it were a special occasion. There might be a few petty thieves who'll take advantage of the excitement to slip their hands into a few pockets, I don't deny it, but there won't be many. For the most part, everyone will feel better for it, stronger, less hungry. The destiny of greatness. The empire: sky, sea, and land. And this time, just like before, no one will have the courage to say that the fault lies with this man and the others like him, arms akimbo, hands on hips, eyes flashing and jaws jutting, that it is they who spread hunger and death in the name of nonexistent ideals.

I've seen plenty of dead people, child. And I still see them, every day. Today it's you on this table, with the skin of your chest held up over your face by a couple of forceps, and these few little white bones splayed out. Tomorrow it could be anyone else. It could be your mother, who doesn't even know you're dead, or one of the brothers or sisters you've never even met.

Tell me, child: are you happy about Mussolini's visit? Are you as eager as everyone else to kiss his shiny boots, to get a nod of approval from that massive bovine head? Do you think too that we'll conquer the world together, and that Mussolini will restore the legacy of power and wealth that others took from you?

He picked up a large pair of surgical shears and started cutting through the ribs, on either side of the sternum. The ribs were soft and yielding, like those of a lamb. It broke his heart.

No, he murmured. You don't care about the Duce's visit anymore. Nothing matters to you; not now, my little one.

And he went on cutting, not realizing that his eyes were red with tears.

 

 

Tuesday, October 27th

 

It was around nine in the morning when they finally learned who the child was, or at least who he could be.
Ricciardi had been in the office for almost two hours. He'd expected to find a note from the hospital waiting for him upon his arrival, or a woman sobbing and screaming at the foot of the stairs leading up to the sentry post, but there was no one. He started working on the report he'd have to file concerning the discovery of the body, but there was a sense of disquiet growing inside him: it wasn't possible that no one had noticed the child's disappearance.

The feeling of anguish was heightened by the fact that the dog he'd seen where the boy's body had been found was following him: he'd noticed it outside his apartment, on the other side of the street, sitting in the rain, one ear cocked. He'd set out for headquarters with the dog trailing behind him, some thirty feet back, on the opposite sidewalk. He'd stop and the dog would stop, too. He'd start walking again, and the dog would start again, too. In the end, he'd decided to simply ignore it, and he hadn't looked back again. When he got to headquarters the dog was gone, but it had left him swathed in a sense of some unfinished business.

That feeling vanished, in fact, a couple of hours later, when Maione appeared in the door and politely cleared his throat.

“Commissa', there's a priest here to see you who says that he might be able to identify the little boy from Capodimonte.
Prego
, go right in, Don . . . ?”

A priest walked into the room. He was a nervous, pudgy man, of average height, his ragged tunic buttoned up the front and a round hat in his hand. He was wiping a mixture of sweat and rain from his brow.

“Don Antonio Mansi, parish priest of Santa Maria del Soccorso at Santa Teresa.”

He spoke in a dolorous tone, as if he felt sorry for someone, probably himself. Ricciardi took an immediate dislike to the man.

“
Prego
, Padre, come in. My name is Ricciardi. Have a seat. Maione, you stay too. Tell me, what can we do for you today?”

“As I was telling your warrant officer here . . . ”

Maione corrected him. He was punctilious about his rank.

“It's brigadier, Don Antonio. Brigadier Raffaele Maione, at your service.”

“Forgive me, of course, Brigadier Maione; in any case, I have reason to believe that this child, so regrettably deceased, the one who was found at Capodimonte, is one of mine.”

“One of yours?” Ricciardi asked. “What do you mean by that?”

The priest had taken a seat with his hat on his knees, and he'd slid the handkerchief back up one of his sleeves. He spoke in a subdued voice, his hands resting on his belly.

“In my parish, among the other good works we carry on, we take in a number of the orphans from the quarter. I house them in a building behind the rectory; right now we have six. One of them, the youngest, is named Matteo, and we haven't seen him since the day before yesterday. Seeing as he's never been away this long, I thought I should come report the matter to you.”

Ricciardi was thrown by the priest's untroubled tone of voice. He sensed neither tension nor worry in the man's words, words that were uttered, moreover, in the sniveling whine that he'd immediately noticed.

“But Padre, didn't you notice the child was missing before? Why did you wait until this morning to come to us?”

“Well, you see, Commissario, I'm not running a boarding school. What I have is just a shelter for these children who have neither a home nor a family. They're free to come and go as they like, they learn a trade, or they beg in the street; I certainly can't keep track of what all six of them are doing, twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes it happens that they stay out all night. These are children accustomed to life on the streets, unfortunately: but they're perfectly capable of looking after themselves. Some­times they just leave and don't come back, they find someplace else to stay, and they don't even come to say thank you for what we've done for them. But I don't do it to receive gratitude, I do it only for the glory of God.”

Ricciardi and Maione exchanged a glance: it struck both of them as a speech the man had used on more than one occasion, a speech he kept handy in case he needed it.

“Well then, how did you come to the conclusion that the boy we found is . . . what did you say his name was, the child who lives in your shelter?”

“Matteo is his name. Matteo Diotallevi, but we assign them a surname ourselves when we don't have any other, just so we can register them with the office of vital statistics. He's the youngest one, I think he must be seven or eight; I can't say for sure, because they come to us not knowing when or where they were born. I thought it might be him because until now, as I told you, he'd never been away for so long. This morning, when I didn't see him, I asked the others and then inquired a little around the neighborhood, and no one had seen him in the past few hours. That's when I decided it would be best to report him as missing, to be safe. Then, when I got to police headquarters, the brigadier told me about the body you found at the Tondo di Capodimonte. Perhaps, if I saw him, I'd be able to confirm.”

Ricciardi studied the priest's expressionless face.

“Forgive me, Padre, if I may take the liberty of saying so, you don't seem especially concerned. Resigned, perhaps, if anything. Why is that?”

A moment of silence followed. Both the priest and Maione were surprised by what the commissario had said, in such flat and direct terms. At last, the man heaved a sign and replied:

“That's not the way it is, believe me. I care deeply for the children I help, and the fact that I keep the house going, at great personal cost and sacrifice, and receive nothing in return is the proof. But these times we live in aren't easy, and who would know that better than you? The conditions the poor live in are terrible, and the ones who suffer most are the weakest, the elderly, and the young. They're vulnerable to accidents, diseases. They die on the streets, in the
vicoli
and in the
bassi
. The brigadier here was telling me that the boy you found probably died of natural causes; if it's Matteo, and I still have some hope that it isn't, he'd probably still be alive if he'd stayed home, with me. But these things happen.”

Ricciardi was unwilling to dismiss the death of a child so glibly.

“They shouldn't happen, though, should they, Padre? It's up to us, to keep them from happening.”

The priest smiled a melancholy smile. Never once during their conversation had he moved his hands, which rested on his belly, fingers knit.

“No, indeed. There are a great many things that ought not to happen but still do. What does the state do for these children? I'll tell you, Commissario: nothing. Nothing at all. It's all left to us, to the Church, or to the charity of the few wealthy people who still have a conscience. In twenty years, I must have lost at least ten or twelve of these boys. They've fallen off trolleys, drowned in the sea in the summertime, or been run over by a cart or a carriage. Or else killed by a fever or an infection, caught by eating who knows what, or cutting themselves in any of a number of ways. And the minute a place is vacated, there are a hundred more to bring in off the streets. We can only do what we're able, and that never changes. Perhaps that's why I seem resigned to you, my dear
commissario.”

Another silence ensued. Even though Ricciardi instinctively disliked that man, he had to admit that his reasoning was impeccable; he even felt irrationally at fault, as a representative of a government that was doing little or nothing for these children. For some reason, his thoughts turned to the dog that had followed him that morning, the young dead boy's last friend.

“Padre, if the child does in fact turn out to be Matteo Diotallevi, I'll have to ask you some more questions. But what we need to do first is proceed to the identification, so you'll need to come with us to take a look at the body, at the Ospedale dei Pellegrini.”

This time, it was the priest's turn to be thrown.

“The hospital? But didn't you say the boy was dead when you found him? Perhaps you meant to say the cemetery.”

“No, the corpse is at the hospital. I asked the medical examiner to examine the body, to determine exactly what caused the boy's death. I see that it's still raining out; Maione, call down and have them bring up a car.”

The brigadier shook his head regretfully.

“No, Commissa'. Both cars have been sent to the garage to get spruced up for the Duce; I told you yesterday. Seems we're going to have to go on foot this time, too.”