The Bottom of Your Heart (38 page)

Maione and Ricciardi fell silent. Then Maione said: “So you weren't jealous.”

“On the contrary, Brigadie', he was a source of income! When we heard he was dead, we thought it was the end for us, damn him to hell. Why on earth would I kill the goose that laid the golden eggs?”

The brigadier eyed him with revulsion: “Believe me, Corte', you truly disgust me. You're telling me that when another man comes and takes your girl to bed, instead of going crazy what you do is take his money and consider yourself lucky?”

The young man was exasperated: “Brigadie', you're not listening to a word I've said: Sisinella isn't my girl!”

Ricciardi said, in a low voice: “But that's what she thinks. And she hopes to stay with you, now that she's about to lose everything.”

Cortese broke out laughing.

“Oh, right . . . I'm going to have a whore for a sweetheart, and support her in the bargain. Me, supporting her! Seriously—and now they're going to kick her out of her apartment; what do you think, should I bring her home to live with my mother? The idea of bringing a whore into a respectable household. In fact, I haven't been to see her in three days, not since I heard about what happened to the professor. No question about it, she's pretty and . . . well, let's just say that she's experienced. But I need to get to work. Maybe some girl like the one over there with the buckteeth, you saw her: they have plenty of money, these Englishwomen . . . a girl like that, if she falls head over heels, might even take you back home with her by steamship.”

Maione grabbed him by the lapels and hoisted him off the ground. Cortese squeaked in fear, kicking his feet in the empty air.

“Let me look a miserable good-for-nothing like you right in the eye,” said the brigadier. “Who knows when I'll find another specimen like this one.” He suddenly released his grip, and the frightened young man fell to the ground. And Maione continued: “Let me tell you something, Corte': I've got my eye on you. I've got my eye on you. If you stray over the line by so much as an inch, even a hair, first I'll kick your ass black and blue till you can't sit down, and then I'll throw you in prison. I can just imagine how happy they'll be to see you, the lifers, with your pretty smile and your beautiful operatic tenor voice.”

Cortese got back to his feet briskly, brushing off his hindquarters: “Don't give it a second thought, Brigadie', I never do anything wrong. Anything you need, just send for me and I'm entirely at your disposal. Thanks, Brigadie'; thanks, Commissa'; at your service. Can I go now?”

 

As they were riding the funicular back down to the center of town, Ricciardi commented bitterly: “Poor girl. In just a couple of days she's lost both the man who was supporting her and her sweetheart. Life can be cruel.”

Maione sat in the wooden seat with his arms crossed.

“Yes, Commissa'. And I'm sorry now that I treated her so roughly. She's more honest, with the work she's done and where she's done it, than this human sewer Cortese, who was exploiting her while she actually cared for him. It certainly is true that there are a thousand ways to betray. And a thousand reasons to do so.”

T
his time, it was cold. There was a wind slicing the harbor in two, a wind that wouldn't stop blowing. He could have taken shelter behind a warehouse wall, or a boat in dry dock, but he didn't want to.

Plenty of steamships had set sail since she'd left, and he had come back every time, rain or shine, and he'd sat in their old spot even though he knew she wasn't coming. Not for now.

What must it be like, to set sail in stormy weather? Maybe the sea was scarier, chilly and black, tossing and noisy, but then again, maybe without the scent of flowers in the air, without melodious strains of music, without the sun shining to catch all the colors out of the houses along the waterfront, vanishing slowly into the distance, maybe then the departure weighed less on you.

The emigrants hugged each other close to keep warm. He scrutinized their faces, but he saw no trace of the fear that had once been there. Things had changed. They'd changed for everyone: for him too.

The departure of the steamship: that had always been their place and their time. For the two of them. Ever since, all those many years ago, they were little more than children. She'd followed him here, without asking a thing: she'd understood intuitively. Because they understood each other.

Both of them silent, both of them determined, both of them poor, both of them convinced that they wouldn't always be.

But he wondered now, as the sailor lowered the gangway with the passenger list in one hand, what did they want from the future? Did they really want the same things?

He pulled his collar tight, lowered his cap over his ears. America. What he wanted was America.

So many people had told him that, with his skills, he could make plenty of money. In America, there was no tradition, nor was there imagination. His ambition would know no bounds.

Because yes, he was ambitious. No one had ever understood just how ambitious he really was. He was good at what he did, and he was going to get even better. But what good is it to have a skill, what good are success, money, reputation, except to make the person you love happy? What good is all that, if it doesn't bring a smile to anyone's lips?

He would have liked America, but with her. Without her, America was empty. It meant nothing.

For so long now, one steamship after another, he'd hoped that she would fall in love with the idea: him and her together, across the sea, far away from those who didn't understand, far away from those who let life roll over them. Him and her together in a new world, part of a people who were capable of looking the future in the eye and changing it.

He'd been told that across the ocean, there were no aristocrats. That what you were was what you were, and that you could build something without anyone asking your name or who your parents had been. He'd been told that you could even become president, which was something like being king, even if you came from the manure of the stables.

Here, on the other hand, if you were you, you remained you, even if you were a genius capable of working miracles with your hands.

But she didn't want to leave. She was captivated, he could sense it, and she cared for him; maybe not as much he cared for her, but enough to accept as a given that they were going to spend their lives together. That's the way things were, where they lived. Two people would meet, and they'd stay together for the rest of their lives. They wouldn't part ways, they wouldn't take different paths. Together for the rest of their lives. The two of them had met and they were never to part, just like their parents before them, and their grandparents before them, and so on, back into the dark night of time.

This is what he couldn't seem to figure out, as he watched the weary line of emigrants wend its way up the gangway, lashed by the gusts of chilly wind. If he wanted to leave, why hadn't she just accepted that? Why hadn't she said yes, like women were supposed to, and then set about helping him scrape together the money for the tickets?

He'd understood that she didn't want to go, and he'd stopped talking about it. He'd hidden his dream from everyone. That had been their secret, the reason they sat in silence, among the hawsers and the nets: they watched the departures that would always be for others, never for them.

She was different. That was the truth. Her eyes were different, her hands were different, her mouth was different. Different. She didn't belong to their world, even though she was born there just as he had been, even though she had breathed the same air and eaten the same bread, even though when it was a feast day she put on her Sunday best and linked arms with him so that he felt like the king of the world. She was different.

When she had told him, right on that spot, as they were watching a steamship depart, that she was going to be leaving, but leaving
him
, he had died. He'd felt the blood stop in his veins, and if he hadn't spoken, if he hadn't shouted out his despair, it was only because he didn't want to sever the thread that still held them together.

Because love—he thought to himself as he watched a woman pick up her toddler, who was unable to climb up the gangway on his own—love is a germ. A disease that springs from a tiny seed and takes root in a specific spot. At the bottom of your heart.

She had promised that she'd come back. That it was just a matter of time, the time needed to gather the strength, the money, and the prosperity so they could stay together for good.

She had promised that they'd never be apart again and that, however long it took, sooner or later their paths would converge again.

She had promised.

But she was different. She belonged to another world, not to his. And he, who was of that place, of that neighborhood, would never have another woman, because she was his companion, and she had been on his arm the night of the festival, when they set fire to the bell tower and made a wish.

He had her. He had no one but her.

At the bottom of his heart.

T
hat evening, Maione's feet were not really what carried him to no. 270, Via Toledo. His encounters with Sisinella and Cortese, Vomero with its heady romantic atmosphere, the heat he'd suffered on the funicular, a vivid image of a descent into an inferno of despair: all these things had conspired to sow in his tormented soul an irresistible desire to gaze into the eyes of the man who was pitching woo with his wife.

He posted himself in the atrium as he had the day before. The doorman pretended not to see him and went straight into the inner courtyard with a chair, the evening paper, and half a cigar. The brigadier prepared for a wait that he expected would be short: this was the right time of day.

And in fact, after no more than half an hour, Lucia emerged, tucking her hair under her scarf. Just like the night before, she shot a quick glance around her and then headed for home. Maione wondered where she'd gathered such confidence, this stranger who had been at his side for so many years. How had she learned so well to master the arts of dissimulation and untruth?

No more than ten minutes, not even the time to sink into a state of bitter rancor, and out came the damned Ferdinando Pianese, the horrible Fefè that Bambinella had told him about, the debauched useless creature capable of poisoning even his troubled sleep in those nightmarish days.

He gave him a few yards' head start and then set off after him. There weren't many people out on the street; the heat discouraged strollers, and a number of shops had closed early. The two men, Maione and Fefè, couldn't have looked any more different. The brigadier's pace was that of a policeman hard at work: hands in his pockets, cap pushed back on his head, eyes darting from a shopwindow to a beggar, from a newsstand to a married couple out with their children; Fefè, on the other hand, ambled along like a dandy waiting for dinnertime and in the meanwhile calmly mulling over the various possible places to enjoy an aperitif, smiling at life and at a bright future. To all appearances, two characters among so many in the city; not a ravenous predator stalking his unsuspecting prey.

The brigadier's brain was scheming, planning out the instant in which he'd face his rival head-on. There, he thought, now he's turning the corner of Via Chiaia . . . there are still too many people out walking in the street . . . then he'll head downhill toward Piazza dei Martiri, and he'll stop at the café with all the other good-for-nothings to pester other people's women.

I have to stop him before that.

Just a few yards short of the last stretch of street before the piazza so popular with the city's high society—an ideal hunting ground for people like Fefè—Maione lengthened his stride and caught up with him at the mouth of a narrow
vicolo
, a broad, dead-end flight of steps; he grabbed the man by one arm and dragged him into the shadows.

The man seemed more surprised than frightened: an enormous policeman, grim-faced and sweaty, in uniform and with a pistol on his belt, was gripping the immaculate white sleeve of his summer jacket with huge fingers; that sleeve would most likely never be the same again. No doubt, a case of mistaken identity, Fefè reassured himself. The policeman need only take a close look at my face.

Instead the brigadier slammed him carelessly against a wall. Two young men who had been completing some transaction that required a certain degree of privacy decided that it was probably wise to take to their heels. Now Maione and Fefè were all alone.

The slim dandy opened his eyes wide: “But . . . but what do you want from me, Brigadie'? There must be some mistake, I've done nothing.”

“Nothing, Piane'? Nothing? There's been no mistake, it was you I was looking for. And if you examine your conscience, that is, if you still possess such a thing, then I think you'll have no doubt about what I want from you.”

Pianese did his best to think quick, but he was finding that easier said than done, because now Maione had released his grip on his sleeve and had grabbed him by the neck; he clutched in his enormous fist collar, bowtie, and jacket lapel, all scrunched up together and pressed so forcefully on the lawyer's throat that he couldn't take a breath. In a glimmer of lucidity, it dawned on the policeman that the man was suffocating, and he loosened his grip ever so slightly.

Fefè took a deep, sharp breath, and moaned: “Brigadie', you must have taken me for some other person, I can assure you that I've done nothing, I . . .”

Maione's hissed whisper turned bitter: “Nothing. Sure. It's nothing to wreck a family, introduce a serpent into an honest household, take a mother away from her children. It's nothing to destroy a life, shatter the heart of a man who thought that the woman beside him was a faithful loving wife. It's nothing to take someone's sunlight and fresh air away. You're a bastard, Piane'. You're a rotten bastard.”