Vipers (6 page)

Enrica listened, concentrating. She liked to cook, she did it every day for her own family and she was honestly convinced that it was be a good way to demonstrate love; but hearing Rosa describe the cooking of her hometown, the rigor with which she respected its traditions—she found it, somehow, deeply moving. She understood that it was something more than just a way of providing for one's loved ones, ensuring they were well fed while at the same time pleasing them. She knew that it was also a way of establishing a profound link with generations of women in love who had left behind not words, but aromas and flavors.

And she understood why the elderly
tata
, who knew that she was ill, felt the need to ensure that her way of loving the man she thought of as her child—the man who was now the object of her own dreams—could in some way be carried on.

“. . . and so,” the
tata
went on, “deciding which pasta to cook with the ragú becomes crucial. You can choose cavatelli or fusilli, it's the same dough. Of course, cavatelli are easier; but what my young master likes best are the fusilli, so I'd advise you to make those for him. First: you have to get yourself some rods from a broken umbrella; of course, you clean them thoroughly, in vinegar and boiling water. Then you put the flour on the
scannaturu
, which would be that plank of wood, what do you all call it? The cutting board. Form a sort of volcano, with a hole in the middle, and pour lukewarm water in a little at a time, until you've made a loaf of dough, smooth as can be, and soft to the touch. At that point,” and here she acted it out with her hands, “flatten and roll out the sausages of dough around the umbrella ribs.”

Enrica, satisfied, nodded her head.

“But none of this is the real secret. The proof of a good cook is making sure that the fusilli are all the same, because that ensures that they'll cook uniformly; if there are some that are thicker and others that are finer, it's practically impossible for them to cook right—some will be raw in the center while others will be overcooked. You need patience: the ones that don't turn out right have to be rolled out again. But once you have the touch, there are no problems and you can do it the first time. And I think you, my girl, have plenty of patience, am I right?”

Enrica sighed.

“Yes, Signora, I have plenty of patience. My father calls it being hardheaded, to tell the truth; but when he says it he smiles and strokes my cheek.”

Rosa laughed, a fine infectious laugh.

“Well, that's certainly true, from a certain point of view you could call patience being hardheaded. And with my young master, one needs a great deal of patience. The point is that he doesn't know what he wants. Men never know what they want, and you know why not? Because they think that the world ends tomorrow, so they only worry about what's happening today. But we women can see as clear as the light of day what's going to happen next, and we have to be responsible for it. So a little at a time . . .”

Enrica continued:

“. . . a little at a time we need to lead them to do what we want them to do, letting them think that it was all their idea.”

Rosa clapped her hands, contentedly.

“That's exactly right, well done, my girl! But now you should leave, because he's about to get here and if you don't you won't manage to run into him on the stairs. By now he's used to that, you should see his face, like a corpse's, when he misses you by just a minute.”

The young woman stood up and gave the elderly lady a kiss on the cheek, then she ran for the door. Rosa's words followed her down the stairs:

“And tomorrow we'll talk about the ragú!”

 

She had just stepped out the front door when he appeared before her, as if they'd made a date.
Buonasera
, she said to him.
Buonasera
, he replied.

She even liked his voice: deep and full of emotion. She found him irresistible; she could understand why a woman like that Signora from up north, that rich, elegant, and shameless woman who drove around in a car with a chauffeur, would have developed a crush on him, though she could have had all the men she wanted. But she was also convinced that the way to his heart that she had chosen was the right one.

She hesitated, then stopped and said:

“You know, Signora Rosa . . . that trembling in her hand is getting worse, I think. Sorry, I know it's none of my business, but . . .”

He interrupted her, in a sad voice:

“Don't say that. Your visits give her great pleasure; she's so happy, I leave her alone for far too much time. I know, she's not well. But it's not easy for me to think that she's growing older. You know, I . . . I have no one but her.”

She wanted to hold him tight, crying out that it wasn't true—that he wasn't alone and would never again be alone, if only he could say that's what he wanted.

Instead, she just said:
buonasera
.

O
n the morning of March 22nd, the springtime decided on a sudden and precocious change of attitude. The sky turned gray and the wind sprang up, a hot wind that stirred the sweet smells together with the rank odors that rose from the
vicoli
down in the harbor and in the Spanish Quarter, disorienting dogs, horses, and people who had believed that the season had changed once and for all.

Ricciardi, as usual, got to police headquarters very early. He'd had a restless night; the thought of Rosa's worsening health gripped his heart in a clenched fist of anguish. Enrica's few words at the front door had made him think about how often the mind forces us to ignore what we fear; how unprepared we are when those we hold dear grow old and fall ill.

And as always, the murder he'd encountered contributed to his troubled dreams. In his dreams he'd found himself face to face with the corpse of what had once been a wonderful young woman, full of life and perhaps hopes for the future, and from her dead mouth the references to who knows what perversion continued. The commissario wondered, as he covered the last few yards of Via Toledo before turning down the narrow street that led to his office, what corrupt passion could have brought someone to suffocate that life and those hopes under a pillow.

There were two men waiting for him at the entrance. The sentinel saluted and said:

“Commissa',
buongiorno
. These two men here have been waiting for you for some time now, they showed up in the middle of the night. Should I tell them to go on waiting or would you like to speak with them?”

Ricciardi walked closer. One was blond, with two deep circles under a pair of light blue eyes and a face creased with unmistakable suffering. The other one was little more than a boy, with similar features and the same light blue eyes, but with black hair.

The blond man stepped forward.

“Are you Commissario Ricciardi? The one who's . . . who's in charge of the murder at Il Paradiso?”

Ricciardi confirmed that he was, without taking his hands out of his overcoat pockets. The man's voice was deep and hoarse.

“Yes, that's me. And with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“I'm Giuseppe Coppola, and this is my brother Pietro. I believe that I was the last person to see . . .”

He ran a hand over his face. His lower lip was quivering, and he bit it to make it stop; he seemed to be gripped by powerful emotions. He went on:

“I was in Rosaria's room, before . . . before what happened to her happened. The last person to see her alive. Except for the murderer.”

Ricciardi gestured toward the staircase and headed upstairs toward his office, followed by the two men. First, though, he told the officer on sentinel duty to have Maione wait for him with the merchant of sacred objects in a separate room. He had a feeling that for now it would be best to avoid any confrontations.

He pointed the Coppola brothers to the two chairs that stood facing the desk, then opened the windows on the piazza below, which lay immersed in the gray light of that morning, the branches of the holm oaks tossing their leaves uneasily in the wind. Strange weather, for this young spring; strange also not to have that moment of solitude that was the main reason he got to the office early, a time he used to reorganize his thoughts and plan out his activities for the day. But the two men he was about to talk to might well have very important information about Viper's murder.

He sized them up attentively. Giuseppe was a few years older, thirty or so at the very most, though hard work and general privation often made guesses at age spectacularly inaccurate; the man had a handsome face, even if his unmistakable grief and anxiety had deformed his features. He wasn't tall, and his taut, muscular physique spoke of days filled with hard labor, as did the gnarled hands, covered with cuts and abrasions, which he kept twisting.

The younger brother had declined the offer of a chair and remained standing, as if this were yet another way of expressing his subordinate role. He was a tall, powerful-looking young man, not especially intelligent in appearance, clearly ill at ease, like many people when they find themselves inside police headquarters.

Ricciardi sat down at his desk and said:

“Now then, from what you've told me, you were Viper's last customer. Is that correct?”

Coppola turned even paler than before.

“Commissa', I must beg you never to call her by that name. That's not her real name, her name was Maria Rosaria, and everyone who knew her called her Rosaria. If you call her Viper, you're doing her wrong.”

It had come out in a whisper, uttered in a broken voice. Pietro, standing behind his brother, dropped his head in embarrassment. Giuseppe resumed:

“And another thing: I'm not one of her customers. I paid, that's true, otherwise they wouldn't let us be together; but I'm not a client.”

Ricciardi refused to allow himself to be intimidated.

“Coppola, if we hope to attain any results from this conversation, then your hostility is useless. My objective is to identify the murderer of this poor girl as quickly as possible and to bring him to justice. If you have the same objective, that's all well and good. Otherwise, I'll have to question you in a very different manner, and in a different setting. It's up to you.”

The tension drained visibly from Coppola's body, as his shoulders hunched and he once again ran his hands over his face. After a moment, he said:

“You're right, Commissa'. Forgive me. It's just that this
thing
. . . this news, you understand, it's got me upset. No, not upset, it's killing me. Because since last night, when they told me, I'm a dead man too.”

“How and when did you learn about the girl's death?”

“From the cook. We supply fruit and vegetables to Il Paradiso, we bring them late every night so they have plenty of time in the morning to get everything ready. They have a large icebox and that's what they prefer. My brother, here, makes the last round: we're street vendors, we have a pretty big company, we have horsecarts and trucks. The cook told him and he came to me with the news. Right, Pietro?”

The younger man nodded his agreement; Giuseppe didn't even bother to turn around to look at him, and went on:

“It was late, very late. But still I hurried over. I had to see for myself . . . They wouldn't let me in. They said that at your orders the bordello was shut, and that in any case she . . . they'd already taken her away. And so I decided to come here, to see you, and to try to find out more. I've been here waiting for you all night.”

Ricciardi nodded that he understood.

“Now tell me everything.”

Coppola smiled bitterly, but on his careworn face it looked more like a grimace.

“It would take two lifetimes to tell you everything, Commissa'. Two lifetimes, both ended together yesterday. Are you ready for that?”

Ricciardi spread both arms wide.

“I'm here in order to understand. Tell me.”

Giuseppe seemed to be trying to gather his memories, lost in the void behind painful images.

Outside, a particularly powerful gust of wind rattled the windows. The weather really had decided to change its mood.

T
he man began to speak, and his voice seemed to come from somewhere far away.

“I'm from Vomero, not far from Antignano. Now they have villas there, the well-to-do come in the summer to enjoy the fresh air; and ever since they built the funicular two years ago, some have even moved there to live full-time. But when I was a boy there was nothing but countryside, a few vegetable gardens, and the occasional farmhouse. There weren't many young people, everyone left early to find work in the factories, at the Bagnoli steel mill, or even overseas, to America. Hunger, Commissa'. Hunger is a nasty beast, it comes hunting for you at night and keeps you from sleeping, and by day it saps your strength and puts you to sleep on your feet, even though you're wide awake.”

He paused.

“Among those few young people, there was us—me and my brother and sisters. My father died young: I'm the oldest, and I can just barely remember him; my brother Pietro is twenty and he practically never even saw him. My mother grew everything we ate, and we took turns standing guard at night to make sure no one stole the few crops we were able to grow in our little garden. Nearby lived our neighbors, the Cennamos. And there was Rosaria.”

As Ricciardi listened, he noticed the reverence in the man's voice whenever he uttered the girl's name: as if she were a goddess.

“She has always been beautiful, Commissa'. Even when we were starving, in our privation, when her face was covered with dirt and her fingernails were ragged, her legs scratched by nettles: she was still beautiful. It's as if there's a light inside her, when she's there you can't look at anything else. She's always been so beautiful.”

He jerked his head, as if a terrible thought had entered his mind, and he turned to his brother.