The Bottom of Your Heart (51 page)

Once Ricciardi was done speaking, there was an extended silence. Maione shot quick glances at the two backlit profiles, carved and motionless, both oddly sharp, the nose jutting forward, almost as if they were the same person: the commissario with a lock of hair dangling over his forehead, his green eyes chasing after his thoughts in the empty air; the woman in black, straight-backed, skinny and still, her gloved hands clutching the handle of her handbag. Time hung over the edge of an abyss that could have been the inferno, full of the dead screaming in the atrocious heat of eternal flames.

Then Signora Iovine moved her hands.

She raised them to the veil that she lifted over her hat, resting it on the brim and uncovering her face.

Maione had noticed how hard her features were the first time he'd met her; a hardness that had crumbled slightly only when she spoke of her son. This time, the face of Maria Carmela Iovine del Castello was completely devoid of any expression; the wrinkles around her mouth and the corners of her eyes seemed to have been carved in marble. Like Ricciardi, she too was staring into the middle distance, almost as if they were both watching the same performance.

The brigadier felt his heartbeat slowing, but now his stomach was tied in knots; he had an expectant feeling, like when you see lightning and are waiting to hear the thunder.

The woman opened her mouth and then shut it again, twice, in search of the right words.

Then she spoke.

W
e used to go watch the steamships depart. We were little more than children, you know? And we'd go watch people leave for America.

In our neighborhood that was how we spent time together, as if it were an obvious, ordinary thing. A matter of age, proximity, friendships uniting families: a little boy and a little girl, first playing on the ground among the hens pecking up and down the
vicolo
, then walking together in the street, and finally sharing a life together. Nicola and I were destined for each other. That's what everyone thought, and he thought so too. Not me, though. I wanted more.

He would have left for America. Not me, I'd never have left. I thought that to leave meant to accept defeat, and I think the same thing now. Still, I'd go down with him to watch the steamships departing. Until the day that I myself departed.

I never believed that he'd wait for me. I went to live in a town in the provinces, pretty far away, with an aunt who couldn't have children, married to a rich businessman. A man with lots of money. That was where I met Rosario, a few years later.

My aunt had sent me to school. She treated me like a doll, she played at being my mother, she dressed me, fed me, and sent me off to study; but I wasn't playing. Everything, every exam, every new acquaintance only helped me to improve. I wanted to be rich, respected, a fine lady. I wanted to be happy.

Rosario wasn't an aristocrat, he wasn't a prince, but he was ambitious and he came from a good family. And then he was so intelligent, the smartest person I'd ever met. He had a spectacular memory, he only needed to read a sentence once and he'd remember it forever. He could have done anything he set his mind to, and he would have been successful without even trying. But there was only one thing he wanted: he wanted to become a doctor.

He was a good man. I believe that he was a good man precisely because he was so intelligent. He said that wrongdoing makes no sense, it's incomprehensible because it's counterproductive. Because it hurts people, for no good reason.

I trusted him. Things were going well, he was climbing the ladder step by step; I was working to help him, I established a network of relationships. You know, Commissario, to start a great career, it's not enough to be excellent, you also have to make friends, establish relationships. Sniff the wind, and then move in the right direction. I'm good at that. Very good.

So Rosario worked as a scientist and a physician: the things he knew how to do. And he did them very well indeed, he became a sort of guiding light for the entire discipline. And I became the favorite girlfriend of the wives of the powerful, politicians, business tycoons. Gynecology necessarily works through a network of women: and you'd never guess the extent to which women control their men.

When Rosario became director of the chair of gynecology, here in the city, I chose to move someplace other than the old quarter. My parents were dead by then, and I was a different person myself. I couldn't hope to be happy where I had once been so unhappy and so poor.

We began spending time with those in high society. We were young, famous, and rich. There was no limit to how high we could have reached. I dreamed of Rome, and I would have won it one day. There was just one problem: Rosario's heart.

That big, kind heart was sick. No one knew it, they'd warned him to keep his illness a secret because it was the sort of thing that could have kept him from getting certain jobs; but he had to be careful. Sometimes he forced himself to take time off, when overwork put his health in danger. He couldn't let himself rest for too long, or he'd be overtaken by his rivals and he'd lose years. He needed to husband his energies. That was why his assistants needed to be more than just talented, they needed to be able to replace him without doing harm.

Rosario wanted a baby. He really wanted one. To tell the truth, I would have been happy to wait a little longer, but he kept insisting: perhaps he knew that what happened to him might happen.

He had selected two young men to serve as his assistants. They were both brilliant. He enjoyed watching them compete, seeing them intuit things even before he said anything. Then one of them was caught in a scandal, and he was out of the running. Only one remained.

Rosario was always telling me about this Tullio Iovine del Castello, one of the finest students he'd ever had. He always followed in my husband's footsteps, he knew what my husband wanted before he did, he stayed on at work even when he wasn't on duty. Rosario would have sent him off to be the director of the chair of gynecology in some smaller university.

But he never had the time.

Rosario died on the job. His heart gave out, unexpectedly.

You see, Commissario, I never knew that I loved my husband. Not as much as I did. I thought of the day we met as an ordinary fact of life, something obvious. Instead, a heart is a great vase full of liquid: the heaviest things settle to the bottom, and you never see them until you dive down in search of them.

Or until they break.

I was pregnant when Rosario died. He was in seventh heaven, he smiled like a little boy, he'd keep his hand on my belly and explain in great detail exactly what was happening inside me: you see, now this or that organ is forming, now you're feeding it, now it's moving. It was his pregnancy, even more than it was mine. And then one day he was gone.

I had no money problems, but I was alone. My future had been stolen from me. I'd patiently and laboriously constructed an edifice that had suddenly collapsed. Like a beehive built by a swarm, cell by cell, crushed by a boy with a sledgehammer.

I met Tullio. I'd seen him once or twice before, he seemed like a wide-awake, ambitious young man. After Rosario's death, he temporarily took his place at the hospital, but he was determined to stay. He came to see me every day, sometimes more than once. He said that as Rosario's first assistant, he felt morally obliged to keep an eye on my pregnancy, he who had been unable to save his life.

But fate would have it that nothing of Rosario was destined to survive. I had a miscarriage, even though Tullio tried everything to save the baby. In particular, in the days that followed, he reassured me that in any case I could have other children; I didn't understand why he was telling me that, I wouldn't even have wanted back the baby I had lost, especially now that Rosario was gone.

Tullio continued coming often to see me at home. At first, his thoughtfulness touched me, then I realized what he had in mind. He had no doubt about my importance to Rosario's career, and my network of relationships, and now he wanted them for himself.

The idea disgusted me at first, I thought he was a slimy opportunist; then I started to give it some thought. I had spent years developing my network of contacts in the field of medicine, specifically in the gynecological field, and now I was alone, about to lose it all: Tullio would make it possible for me to maintain my prestige and my prominence. He wasn't as brilliant as Rosario, but he was more ambitious, and he seemed capable of following the paths that I myself could show him. It was the perfect solution.

I started working on it, and he was soon appointed director of the chair of gynecology on a permanent basis. Now all he needed was time to achieve his full stature.

We were married, and Federico was born. I had never felt particularly maternal, but the boy changed me profoundly. I loved him. He was a piece of me, my own life perpetuating itself. Everything that I had wanted, everything I had fought for, struck me as petty and tawdry. My son was the most important thing in the universe.

For Tullio, on the other hand, the child's presence was an obstacle to his ambitions; I was determined not to move away because I wanted to raise him in a stable environment, I wanted him to grow up here. The position Tullio had his eyes on came open when Federico was three years old, and I made sure he wasn't even in the running. He learned what I'd done, and from that moment on a gulf opened between us. Life was pushing us in different directions.

Some time ago I was awakened in the middle of the night by violent pounding on my front door. Two huge men had come looking for my husband. This was hardly the first time such a thing had happened, it was normal for a gynecologist. I told them that he was at the hospital, but they replied that that was where they had just come from, that they had taken their boss's wife there, but he wasn't there.

The next morning, when he came home, I asked him to account for where he'd been, when he ought to have been on duty at the hospital. We had a furious quarrel. At first he denied everything, then he confessed that he was having an affair, that he was in love. Can you imagine? In love. A snake, an ambitious vulture, a cold-blooded reptile who had never experienced a single emotion in his life, had fallen in love.

I wasn't jealous, far from it. By now he disgusted me, I wouldn't have felt a thing if I'd known he was in another woman's arms. But I was insulted at the thought that he'd never spoken words of love, or tenderness, or even simple affection when it came to my little Federico, and that now he was telling me that he was head over heels in love with this other woman. Head over heels, you understand. Can you believe it?

I told him that I'd created him myself, that he was nothing more than a goddamned puppet dancing on my strings. That just as I'd created him I could destroy him, without pity. That he had better not even think of making my son the talk of the town, or of trying to make a spectacle of him, or he'd have to reckon with me.

I thought I'd frighten him. But he shot back a reply without flinching.

Me?
he said.
Me
, a puppet?
Me
, dancing on your strings?

You're so stupid, he said. You're so ridiculously stupid. Maybe you could manipulate your first husband. Sure. Because all he wanted was to be a physician, and he went along with your frenzy for social climbing, your thirst for power. But not me. Remember? I'm every bit as ambitious as you are.

I slapped it in his face that he was a nobody, that he could never hope to approach the heights Rosario had achieved. That Rosario had been a genius, a superior mind, and that he was just a grimy little wannabe, a small man eaten up with envy. That if Rosario hadn't died, he'd still be standing in the wings, waiting for his chance.

That was when he told me. I think he'd always wanted to tell me, certainly sooner or later he'd have boasted of how his fierce determination had successfully circumvented every obstacle in his path, including my late husband. Or perhaps he was simply swept away by the horror of that conversation, by my desire to wound him and crush him, by the feeling of omnipotence that people say comes over you when love arrives and makes all things possible.

He would have died anyway, eventually. That's what he said. His heart would have given out. Anyway? I asked. Yes, anyway, he said after a moment's hesitation. What do you mean? Tell me immediately what you mean by that, I demanded.

He smiled, that's right, he smiled and he replied: yes, it was me. Me and no one else, the little man waiting in the wings. I'm the one who eliminated your precious husband, the vehicle of your ambitions. And he told me how he did it.

It was the herbal tea, Commissario. A common, simple, apparently harmless herbal tea of valerian, lemon balm, and chamomile; the tea that Rosario drank twice a day, to ease the tension and agitation of a profession that might threaten his heart. Tullio took over that everyday task, as if currying favor with his boss, assistants do this and much more in that world, and he began adding moderate quantities of extract of digitalis, lethal for someone suffering from heart disease like my husband. Until one day his heart gave out, all at once.

He got away with it easily, Rosario's weak heart was an established fact, and it didn't occur to anyone that his cardiac arrest might have been chemically induced.

And then, he said, I took care of you. You took care of me? I asked. Certainly, he replied: do you think I would have raised and supported another man's child? That I would have tolerated the living memory, the progeny of a man whose life I had chosen to take?

The herbal tea, I said as I remembered. The herbal tea for me, too. I was having intestinal problems, and he, who had been so solicitous about my health, made me an herbal tea of powdered liquorice, to ease my discomfort. What did you put in the herbal tea? I asked him. And he replied, blissfully: Claviceps purpurea, rye ergot fungus, in powdered form. Three days, and the result is a miscarriage, an abortion.