By My Hand (39 page)

That was Raffaele Maione all over: the man she'd fallen in love with, the man she'd married, the man she loved. The father of her children. A man who was such a father that he even felt he was the father of other people's children.

She stroked his broad, worried face.

“You did the right thing. Exactly the right thing. In fact, let me tell you this: that empty chair at the table, from now on we'll make sure that there's always someone sitting there at the holidays, at Christmas, at Easter. The good fortune that this family of ours enjoys, we're not going to keep it all for ourselves. That wouldn't be right. And you'll see, the original proprietor of that seat will be glad.”

 

Christmas Eve comes around, and it tosses everything in the air.

 

When he realized he was the last one at the office, Ricciardi decided it was time to go home for the night.

He shot a look out the window: the piazza below was practically deserted by now. Every so often the boom of a firecracker would resound in the distance: they were test-firing the fireworks that would inundate the air at midnight, to greet the birth of a Child who they hoped would bring them peace, health, and prosperity. That's a little too much to ask, the commissario mused, from someone so young.

He headed off, walking at a fast pace along the sidewalk finally clear of stands and stalls and beggars. Everyone had found somewhere to spend those hours, many of them with someone to embrace.

He thought of Rosa and her shaky hand. For the first time in his life he'd felt a twinge of anxiety as he glimpsed the specter of a future of loneliness, deeper and darker than the loneliness he felt now. He should have demanded that she take better care of herself; it was his duty to protect her, as she had done for him from the day he was born.

Now there was no one left on the street but the dead, and their unexpected, painful last thoughts; them and the occasional hurrying straggler, racing against the clock.

At the corner of the archaeological museum, where the road started uphill toward Capodimonte, Ricciardi heard the sound of his name coming from a car.

“
Ciao
, handsome detective. Can I offer you a ride home?”

 

The interior of the car was nice and warm. Livia's scent washed over him.

“I happened to be passing by police headquarters. The sentinel told me that you'd just left. I know the route you take to go home, and here I am. Don't get ahead of yourself, eh? I went out because I chose to, I had invitations from my friends, since it would never occur to you that I'm all alone on Christmas.”

Ricciardi fumbled for an excuse of some kind.

“I assumed you'd go to Rome, or to be with your parents. I had no idea you were still here.”

Livia laughed.

“What would you have done otherwise, would you have invited me home for dinner? Come on, Ricciardi, don't make me laugh.”

“Livia, you know my situation: I live with my
tata
, she's an old woman and she's not really well. And anyway I've told you before, you shouldn't expect the same kind of behavior from me that you get from . . . from other men, the usual kind. I'm always happy to see you, but I have my own life and my own things, and they're not the sort of things you can easily share.”

The woman's tone of voice shifted, suddenly turning softer.

“I know that that's what you think. And deep down I also know you're wrong, that all you'd have to do is open the door a crack and let me in, and it would make you happy and me happy, too. There are two reasons I wanted to see you tonight.”

They'd already covered the short distance to Ricciardi's home. The driver pulled over in front of the street entrance.

“And just what would those two reasons be?”

From the slats in the shutters over a certain window, two eyes, which had been waiting, saw what they wanted to see.

“First of all,” Livia replied, “I have to tell you that for the first time in my life I've lost all confidence. I've always believed, ever since I was a young girl, that I could get anything I wanted from men. Then I met you, and it was like knocking my head against a brick wall.”

She looked to Ricciardi like another woman entirely: her lower lip was trembling, and it was obvious that she was making a tremendous effort to keep from crying. She clenched her hands in fists in her black velvet gloves, and resumed in her normal tone of voice.

“Second: yes, I could have left town. But I'm happy even just to be in the same city as you. That's enough for me. For now, it's enough.”

In the darkness, her dark, liquid eyes glittered from their veil of tears.

“Merry Christmas, Ricciardi.”

She leaned forward and kissed him.

 

The eyes that had been watching dropped from the shutters to the front door of an apartment building. From the black clouds that had continued to grow heavier and darker all day there fell, swirling slowly, a single snowflake. Then another, and another still.

The car door opened, and a man stepped out and headed toward the apartment building across the way. The car drove off.

 

As he was searching for his keys, Ricciardi sensed a movement behind him.

He turned around and froze in astonishment as he saw Enrica walking toward him.

From her stride it seemed that she had lost every trace of uncertainty; she wore neither overcoat nor hat: the flakes of snow, which were coming down faster now, were falling in her hair. Her eyes, behind lenses that were slightly fogged from the chilly air, glittered like black stars.

Ricciardi understood in a flash that she couldn't have missed the sight of Livia bidding him farewell with a kiss. He felt himself die a little bit. He shut his mouth with a loud snap and tried, desperately, to come up with some way to keep from losing her yet again.

“Signorina, I . . . I don't know what you think, but you have to believe me: that car didn't . . .”

Enrica walked right up to him and stopped just inches away. She took his face in both hands and gave him a long, passionate kiss.

Then she turned around and went home.

Ricciardi stood there in the snow, with his keys in his hand and an earthquake in his heart.

All around him, the city was an immense manger scene.

I
t's no simple matter for a man to be allowed to speak alone, unchaperoned, with an unmarried young woman from a respectable family these days. You run the risk of looking like a fool, and, even worse, of putting her in a gravely awkward position. People will talk and they want nothing so much as an opportunity, an excuse to stick a label of flighty flirtatiousness on some young woman; for the neighborhood gossips, an irreprehensible reputation is no fun at all.

I was therefore compelled to get in touch with her in the only way I knew how that would shield her from nosy neighbors, while also allowing me to explain the reason I wanted to meet her: I wrote a letter.

Even this wasn't easy. What I had to do was tickle her curiosity, making her understand that I wasn't entirely a stranger, that I had some insight into certain matters concerning her but that I wouldn't meddle, that I wanted to know more about her and that I'd like to meet her, perhaps to offer some advice. I was cautious, straddling a narrow boundary line, well aware that all it would take was a single word too many to frighten her off, and one too few to leave her indifferent. Last of all, since I could hardly ask her to write back, I had no choice but to suggest that we meet at a certain time and place without having any way of knowing whether she'd come.

Enrica, as I've learned from writing about her, is far more unpredictable than one could imagine. Her lack of inclination to indulge in spectacular gestures, her quiet nature, her calm manners, the measured way she has about her all give only a partial and incomplete idea of her true personality. She can be instinctive and abrupt, and without raising her voice, she can even be quite cutting. And like many women, she takes odd approaches to expressing herself, with some surprising results.

And so I'm relieved, though hardly astonished, when I see her walk into the waterfront café where I asked her to meet me. I already know that among the few customers on this chilly January afternoon there's no one who might recognize her. Outside the waves and the wind are quarreling, with the sound of a mournful symphony. The summer heat and the street urchins leaping naked from the rocks of Mergellina seem like a distant island, the product of a storyteller's imagination.

I bend briefly over her gloved hand, she pulls out the hat-pins and removes her hat. Her cheeks are bright red, perhaps from the cold outside or possibly from the emotion of the meeting. She peers at me through her spectacles, fogged from the warmth emanating from the ceramic stove, and her gaze is level, her eyes curious.

“Here I am. I came, as you can see. Tell the truth: you didn't think I would.”

I try to look at her objectively, as if I didn't know certain of her thoughts, or her recent personal history. A young woman who tries to undercut her excessive tallness by wearing flat shoes, dressed nicely, if a little somberly, in good clothing that makes her seem a bit older than her actual age. Her features are symmetrical, perhaps a little nondescript but still pleasing. Her hands are long and lie motionless in her lap, folded over her handbag. Her head is cocked slightly to one side, and her dark eyes glisten with a faint spark of curiosity. One of those women who seem more appealing every time you look at them, if you'll only give them a second look.

“I'm delighted you came, Signorina. A strange appointment, with a stranger who can't tell you much about himself, or about how he knows what he knows about you.”

A sudden dazzling smile lights up her face.

“I know, I understood that. Perhaps I sensed it. But from your letter I could tell that you know a great deal about me, more than my own parents do; and that you want to know even more. And you promised me that after this one meeting, I'll never see you again, even though we'll still be in contact in some fashion. That caught my interest and made me want to know more. All right then: what would you like to know?”

I study her. Agreeing to meet a stranger, in an out-of-the-way place. Once again, she has surprised me.

“You just mentioned your parents. Do you talk to them much? Which parent are you closer to?”

“They are two very different people, my
mamma
and my
papà
. I think I'm like my father, at least that's what everyone tells me; my mother says it quite a lot when she gets angry and accuses me of never telling her what I think, what I feel. With
papà
. . . well, we just understand each other at a glance. We don't even need to speak. That's how it's always been, ever since I was little. He doesn't pry, he minds his own business, and I know that he'll be there if I ever need him. He's a safe haven in my life, and we get along very well.”

“What about your mother?”

She shakes her head.

“My mother, she . . . What she wants is for me to find a man and settle down; she's afraid I'll wind up an old maid. She's constantly reminding me that when she was my age she had two children already, that my younger sister has been married for years and already has a son, that my aunt had her first child when she was just seventeen, that the lady who lives on the fourth floor and has three children is the same age as me . . . I've gotten very good at pretending to listen to her while thinking about the things I care about. Still, of course, I love her dearly. And she teaches me lots of useful things. She's a sorceress in the kitchen.”

The kitchen. I smile back:

“But so are you, from what I've heard. You often make dinner for the family, don't you?”

She nods, with a hint of pride.

“That's what they tell me. My father, for instance, says that my
genovese
is even better than the one my mother makes. I don't know if that's true, but I can tell you that I like to cook. It's just one more way of embracing the ones you love, don't you think?”

I most assuredly agree, just as I know that if I had the time, I'd happily eat a heaping bowl of traditional
genovese
, the kind you never find these days.

“In your family, there's a militant member of the Fascist Party, isn't there? Your brother-in-law, your sister's husband, if I'm not mistaken.”

She shrugs her shoulders.

“People are free to think what they like, is the way I see it. He's a good kid, he's very young and he really believes every word that Mussolini says. He and my father, who's a liberal, have endless arguments, they raise their voices, they pound their fists on the table, and in the end each of them sticks to his own convictions. My mother and my sister get upset every time, but I just feel like laughing. Besides, Fascists or no Fascists, nothing will ever change. Life will go on like always, right? What could ever really happen?”

Nothing will ever change. I try to conceal a shiver by asking another question.

“You say that nothing will change, but according to your mother the years are passing for you, just as they do for everyone else. How do you see the future?”

A simple, all-too-ordinary question. But Enrica blushes and looks away.

“The future,” she murmurs. “Impossible to predict the future, impossible to plan for it. Still, you can dream. If hearing my dream is enough for you, I can tell you that the future is simple and wonderful, just like the present, but with me in my mother's place. A modest apartment, nothing grand, in a new neighborhood, like Vomero or Posillipo, where they're building all the new apartment buildings. At least two children, or as many as happen to come; I like to think of them as angels flying over my head even now, eager to come into the world. A man who loves them. Who loves me. And then joys and sorrows, as many as are needed so that when it's all over I can say that I lived. And moments of melancholy, and of happiness, the joy of seeing my grandchildren grow up. I dream of living, you see. That's all, just living. And that's the most ambitious dream there is.”