The Bottom of Your Heart (24 page)

“What can we do now?”

“Very little. We've given her camphorated oil and caffeine to improve her breathing and support her heart, which sounded very weak. I've given her a subcutaneous injection of digitalin. I used Knoll Digipuratum, a pharmaceutical I tend to avoid because it's German, given the political drift I'm seeing among the Krauts once again, but unfortunately it's the best preparation available. Let's wait to see if her heartbeat stabilizes, otherwise we'll have to try something stronger, but not before tomorrow morning.”

Ricciardi stared at the walls of the hospital; his gaze seemed to penetrate them.

“But I can't go visit her for even a minute?”

“Again, it's better if you don't. She's in a female ward now and if I let you go in there, I'll never hear the end of it. Also, Nelide, who's a genuine mastiff, is with her. She never says a word and just stares fiercely at her aunt. Listen, do they just cast them all from a single mold, where you come from? If so, I'll buy a dozen of them and take care of all my problems with female nurses.”

“But if she were to wake up tonight . . .”

Modo laid a hand on his shoulder: “Ricciardi, don't hold out a lot of hope of that happening. I don't think she can wake up, and if it's true that she's had a cerebral hemorrhage, that might even be preferable. There's a real danger that she'll be left a vegetable for the rest of her life. It all depends on how much damage she's suffered. She's being well cared for, believe me. I asked the nun to keep her covered up and, if her temperature remains low, to put warm cloths on her legs. The important thing is that she be kept in as close to an erect posture as possible, so that the blood will ebb. And early tomorrow morning we can decide what to do next.”

The dog walked over to Ricciardi, as if it sensed his sorrow, and yelped briefly. The commissario ran a hand over his face. He felt hopeless. He looked up at his friend.

“All right. If there's nothing else to be done, do you have any objection to my staying here in the waiting room? I don't want to be far away from her. And could she be moved into a single room tomorrow? I'll pay, of course. I'd like to stay close to her, hold her hand. You know, when I was little, sometimes . . . if I was frightened about something, I wouldn't even tell her why, and she wouldn't ask, she'd just sit down next to me and hold my hand. Just like that, without a word. And she'd wait for me to fall asleep. I want to hold her hand, Bruno. Just hold her hand.”

Modo had seen a lot of things in his time, but he never remembered feeling his heart throb in his chest the way it did as he listened to his friend, there in the hospital courtyard on that scorching hot July evening. With a lump in his throat, he nodded yes.

Ricciardi went on, staring out at nothing: “You know, Bruno, she loves me so much, in spite of how I am. I am . . . I'm a man of many silences. That's how I was when I was little, too, I had no friends, I played alone. And she followed me everywhere; I knew she was there, I didn't even need to turn and look. And even later, when I grew up and I continued being . . . I continued being a loner, there was a part of me that knew I could turn around at any time and there she'd be, my Rosa, a warm statue, motionless, following what I was doing with her eyes. You know her, you know what she's like. She's stubborn, she's a complainer, she nags. But she's all I have. She's my family, my home, my everything.”

The dog yelped again and looked up at the doctor.

Ricciardi whispered into the night: “Save her, if you can. If you can, keep her here, don't take her away from me too. Because without her I really don't know how to go on.”

In the silence of the courtyard and the heat of the falling night, Modo realized with a shiver that his friend wasn't speaking to him.

Ricciardi was praying.

H
ot night.

Night when you can't breathe. Night that tastes of dust and rot, the market rubbish slowly decomposing in the piazza.

Night when you'd like to be anywhere but where you are. And you walk, and you toss and turn in bed, and you go out onto the balcony in search of air, but there is no air, and no one can say if there ever will be.

Night of still air, air that you struggle to pull into your lungs.

Night.

 

Maione arrived about an hour later, out of breath.

He found Ricciardi sitting, alone, on the outside steps leading into the waiting room. Not far from him, seated on its haunches and still as a statue, was the doctor's dog.

“Commissa', what's happened? I went by headquarters, just to see if there was any news, and they told me that you'd rushed over here to the hospital, that it was an emergency. Are you all right?”

Ricciardi raised his head and looked at him with bland curiosity. He looked terrible. He summarized the situation for his friend, then asked him: “But you, why didn't you stay at home?”

Maione looked away, embarrassed.

“No, Commissa', it's just that . . . it was so hot, and instead of tossing and turning in bed and keeping Lucia and the kids up, I thought it best to get out and see if I could get some air. And my feet only know one route, so they took me straight to police headquarters. That's all. If you have no objections, I'll sit with you and keep you company for a while.”

 

Night without respite.

Night when sleep brings no rest, when it's wearying to lie flat on your bed, eyes wide open, in the darkness.

Night without a future.

 

Nelide didn't take her eyes off Rosa.

She looked like a cardboard silhouette, the ones they put next to stacks of merchandise, depicting a housewife in the process of making a purchase. But unlike an advertising silhouette, Nelide wasn't smiling, nor could she be described as decorative.

Her solid, stout body was immobile, her arms folded across her chest, her jaws clenched, her forehead furrowed. At the doctor's suggestion, the nurses had placed a chair next to the bed, but she hadn't sat down for so much as a second. She was there for a specific reason, and it wasn't to rest her feet.

She'd immediately realized what was happening to her aunt. She'd already been through similar experiences with her grandfather and another relative. Both of them had died soon after.

Her mind, practical and rigorous, was devoid of imagination, and therefore of any false hopes and illusions. Rosa, too, would die, in spite of the speed with which she had acted, despite the apparent skill of this doctor, whose name had wisely been given to her in advance.

And she, Nelide, what would she do?

When her aunt had arranged for Nelide to come stay in the city, she hadn't told her parents, or Nelide herself for that matter, much. But everyone had taken for granted that the plan was for her to take Rosa's place as Ricciardi's governess. Rosa's enviable economic condition, and the fact that practically every member of the Vaglio family was working in some capacity on the estate of the Baron of Malomonte, placed Rosa at the summit of society in that town and therefore, as far as Nelide was concerned, in the whole world. For years everyone had speculated as to who would take the
tata
's place; the
tata
managed Ricciardi's entire patrimony, given the young master's utter indifference to his considerable worldly wealth.

For years, Nelide knew, the
tata
had studied all the family's young women. And she knew that many of her countless female cousins would have had a greater claim, by age and by training, to that position.

But she possessed something that all the other young women lacked: a perfect affinity with Rosa. Just like her aunt, she was determined, loyal, and capable of rapidly adjusting to any and all situations. In just a few days, confirming the soundness of Rosa's choice, she'd learned all that she needed to keep the Ricciardi household humming along.

But she knew very well that she was still quite young. Would the farmers, the sharecroppers, and the peasants who rented shares of the estate's farmland recognize the authority of a little girl? Of course, she could count on help from her father and her uncles, who constituted the network that Rosa had relied on over the years, allowing her to build up the Malomonte family estate, instead of presiding over its dispersal; but would that be enough?

Her eyes monitored the slow, regular rise and fall of the sheets over Rosa's chest. The woman was breathing deeply, as if she were asleep. And yet Nelide knew that that was no normal sleep.

Beneath Nelide's grim expression was a frightened little girl. It wasn't Ricciardi who frightened her; in part because she wasn't thinking about how to understand him, was limiting herself to anticipating his needs. She would look after him because she had been instructed to do so, and she would do as she had been taught. Ricciardi was a task she'd been assigned, and she would perform that task scrupulously and with devotion, as was her nature. What worried her was something very different.

The fact was that Nelide really did love her aunt. She was bound to her by an animal love, without nuance, without selfishness. And when faced with difficulties she'd become accustomed to taking refuge in thoughts of her aunt.

How would she manage, without her? Without a chance to ask her for advice, to rely upon her?

In the darkened hospital ward, the tightly pressed lips of that homely, powerfully built young woman, standing erect in the shadows, quivered slightly.

But no one noticed.

 

Night of rage and fear.

Night without light, without hope.

Night that seems to possess all things and all thoughts. Night like a lake, that engulfs the city and its thousands of activities.

Night that fears to breathe, night without love.

Night that changes, that leaves no smiles.

Night without caresses.

 

Lucia was sitting up, eyes wide.

When Raffaele had stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him, Giovanni, the eldest son now that Luca was gone, had emerged from his bedroom and asked why his father was angry. She had explained to him that
papà
had been right, that children should be careful of their table manners, and that they should show him respect.

Then she'd added that Raffaele was tired, that it was hard work to support a big family like theirs, and now that he was a big boy, he needed to understand his father and help him.

Giovanni had replied that he was hungry, and he'd asked if he could finish his dinner now, with his brothers and sisters. But Lucia had replied that if
papà
had given an order, that order was to be obeyed, even if
papà
wasn't there right now.
Especially
if he wasn't. So no dinner for anyone, not even for her.

It hardly mattered, her stomach was tied in knots anyway, she mused as she stared at the ceiling.

Lucia was worried. She couldn't figure out what was going through her husband's mind. Could their economic situation really be so serious? What if there was a debt, an obligation that Raffaele had preferred to keep to himself so as not to worry his wife?

Lucia could do no more than she already was doing. Walking miles and miles to shop in the cheapest stores and markets. Stitching and mending with her own hands until articles of clothing were completely worn out. Turning the children's overcoats inside out a hundred times, painstakingly laundering outfits and rubbing out sweat stains with ammonia or vinegar, and then washing them again in cold water to make them last.

And now she was doing even more, to try to add a little extra to the family budget, making good use of the gifts that nature had given her. She thought he'd be happy to see the girls in their new shoes, to know that she'd buy new shirts for him. And instead that violent reaction, which had frightened her even more than it had frightened the children, because she, his wife, knew very well how unlike him it was.

Sunk in the scalding air of an infernal night, Lucia wondered where Raffaele was at that moment.

And she prayed that he was all right.

 

Night of ghosts.

Night of voices and whispers from out of the darkness.

Night of visions, of movements glimpsed out of the corner of the eye. Night of sudden tremors, night of high fever.

Night of ancient words, of lifeless sighs. Night of the world beyond.

Night of spirits of the past, night of memories long thought to be buried.

 

As she slept a sleep that was not really sleep, Rosa saw that, right near her, sitting lightly at the foot of her bed, was Marta di Malomonte, the young master's mother.

Dreamily, she wondered to herself what the baroness might be doing there. It wasn't customary for the baroness to sit on her bed; nor, for that matter, to enter her bedroom. The baroness was very respectful of the domestic help's personal space: she knocked, she asked permission before entering. Her manners, so different from her mother's imperious and intrusive ways, had come as a pleasant surprise to everyone. If you added to all that the fact that Marta di Malomonte had been dead for more than fifteen years now, it all seemed pretty strange.

Rosa tried to get up, as she had always done in her mistress's presence, but she was unable to do so. She lacked the strength; she couldn't so much as lift a finger. And so she spoke to her instead: “Barone', what are you doing here? It's been quite a while since I last saw you.”

Marta was holding her embroidery basket. She placed it on the bed, pulled out needle and thread, and started embroidering what looked to Rosa like an outfit for a newborn.

“Ciao, Rosa. You see? I came to visit you. I'll keep you company for a while.”

Rosa considered the matter, then asked: “Does that mean I'm dead, Barone'?”

“No, you're not dead. You're not well. And you'll die, like everyone. But you're not dead. How do you feel, right now?”