Blood Curse Read online

  He knew perfectly well that he would encounter two dead men along the street that ran from headquarters to Via Santa Teresa. At night, they were especially gloomy, standing there at the foot of the buildings from which they’d fallen, murmuring their last living thoughts; by day, he almost couldn’t tell them apart from their old coworkers: one of them, however, had fallen face first, and the contorted mouth with which he continued to curse all the saints had been practically driven into his chest; the other one, a fair-haired boy wearing a sweater that was at least two sizes too large, had landed on his back; he stood hunched over in an unnatural posture. He was calling for his mamma.

  Teresa could feel the atmosphere that the coming springtime brought in through the open windows, and she was aware of the contrast with the stubborn winter that refused to abandon the dark rooms of the palazzo. Her peasant upbringing had made her attuned to the rhythm of the seasons, and her whole being was reborn at that time each year. Thus she found it all the more disheartening to have to face that gloom so thick you could cut it with a knife, as she walked through the magnificent hallways.

  That morning, once again, the lady of the house had come home after spending the entire night out, then shut herself up in her bedroom. The professor hadn’t emerged from his suite, and the tray with last night’s dinner had been left untouched on the lacquered wooden console table outside his study. She had knocked gently when she brought it, but she’d been unable to understand his response. She thought she heard him sobbing.

  If she could have said her piece, Teresa would have said that what they needed were children. She’d raised her own brothers and sisters; she’d held them in her arms two by two when she was still just a little girl herself, and she knew the joy children could bring. The house where she worked was a house without mothers, grim and unsmiling.

  The door to the study suddenly swung open.

  The man she saw looked nothing like the Ruggero Serra di Arpaja whose impressive learning and prestigious place in society carried so much weight. The stiff collar was askew, the tie dangled slack; the waistcoat was buttoned off-center, the unkempt hair revealed a receding hairline that was usually carefully concealed. And his eyes were the eyes of a madman, bloodshot and swollen, bulging out of their sockets. A madman who had wept through the night.

  The professor stared at her in bewilderment, as if he’d never seen her before. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He coughed; he clutched at the handkerchief in the pocket of his rumpled trousers. He reeked of cognac.

  “The newspaper,” he said, “where’s my newspaper?”

  Teresa nodded in the direction of the console table where the breakfast tray with the daily paper had taken the place of the tray with his dinner. Ruggero grabbed the newspaper and started leafing through the pages, one by one. He was feverish, his breathing labored. Teresa stood petrified. The man stopped at one page and read without blinking. He’d even stopped breathing. He’d found the news report he was looking for.

  He staggered as though he were about to faint and leaned on the tray to steady himself, knocking it to the floor in a crescendo of shattering glass and tinkling metal. Teresa leapt backward. Ruggero glanced at her, then went back to staring at the newspaper. He was weeping. The young woman wished she were somewhere else, anywhere but there. He let the newspaper fall to the ground, turned around, and went into his study, closing the door softly behind him. Teresa noticed that he was barefoot.

  She was illiterate, so she ignored the newspaper. If she had been able to read, she would have seen the headline that had so upset the professor: Dead Woman in the Sanità: Was a Wooden Club the Murder Weapon?

  XXVII

  A few months earlier, Ricciardi’s boss, Deputy Chief of Police Angelo Garzo, in a rather pathetic attempt to establish some sort of personal bond with his taciturn coworker, had lent him a slender volume with the garish yellow cover that in Italy was synonymous with detective novels. Garzo had told him that he’d enjoy it, that he’d take special pleasure in discovering that their line of work had even been accorded a certain literary dignity.

  The commissario hadn’t had the heart to dampen his superior officer’s enthusiasm with a dose of his customary irony at the time; he also suspected that the thick-headed bureaucrat would miss the point, ignorant as Garzo was of any aspect of the policeman’s profession that couldn’t be performed from the comfort of a desk. No question about it: he’d only taken the book with the firm intention of keeping it at his desk for a few days and then returning it without comment.

  But instead he had actually read the book, and he’d even enjoyed it: an action-packed story in which the good guys all had Italian names and the bad guys had American names, the women were blonde and emancipated, and the men were tough and tenderhearted. But he saw no connection to reality in it whatsoever.

  In particular he remembered how he’d almost laughed out loud, reading by the light of the kerosene lamp in his bedroom, when the author had described how a police raid caught the lowlifes off guard in their lair. For him it would have sufficed to just once arrive at the scene of a crime without being heralded as well as followed by a chorusing fanfare of street urchins, announcing at the top of their lungs “gli sbirri, gli sbirri,”—“the cops, the cops”—with Maione trying to shoo them away, like an elephant swatting at flies; and along the way encountering old men sitting out on the street, standing up halfway and respectfully doffing their caps, as well as clusters of young men who scattered quickly, though not before looking their way with a gleam of defiance in their dark eyes.

  It would suffice if just once he were able to arrest a wanted man without a crowd of people railing against him as if he were marching a saint off to his martyrdom; if just once the populace chose to ally itself with justice, instead of regarding criminals as their brothers and the police as their sworn enemy.

  Catching criminals off guard, indeed.

  That morning, too, as they arrived outside the building of the late Carmela Calise, the stench of rancor and hatred in the air was just as strong as the smell of garlic and the onset of springtime. Street urchins howling, shutters slamming shut as they went by, the bolts sliding home with an indignant click, malevolent glares from the dark vicoli. Ricciardi noticed it, as always, and as always he said nothing. Maione was also quiet that day; one of the urchins noticed and was so emboldened by the officer’s silence that he tugged his jacket from behind. Without even slowing his pace, the brigadier kicked him in the chest like a mule and the boy flew through the air. Then he picked himself up and took to his heels, without so much as a peep.

  Ricciardi watched his subordinate with a degree of concern. He sensed a strange tension in the brigadier, as if something were troubling him. He made a mental note to talk with him, taking care to be discreet.

  When they arrived at the street door they found Nunzia Petrone, the porter woman, standing outside the entryway, at attention. Aside from the straw broom in her hand instead of an army-issue rifle, she resembled a noncommissioned infantry officer down to the last detail. Mustache included.

  “Good morning. Did you forget something?”

  Ricciardi turned to face the enormous woman without changing expression or removing his hands from his overcoat pockets. He leveled his fierce green eyes straight at hers. No doubt someone, perhaps one of the street urchins, had run ahead and alerted her to their arrival.

  “Good morning to you. No, we didn’t forget anything. And if we did, we don’t need to report it to you.”

  He had addressed her in a low, firm voice that only she could hear. The woman stepped aside, looking down nervously as she did.

  “Of course not, Commissa’. Come right in and do what you need to do. You know the way.”

  Ricciardi climbed the stairs, followed by Maione. The building seemed deserted. Not a voice could be heard, not even the sound of singing echoing in the courtyard.

  They came to a halt in front of the Calise woman’s locked door. Maione pulled the key out o
f his pocket, opened the door, and stood aside to let the commissario enter the apartment.

  The room was cool and shady, and shafts of sunlight filtered in through the shutters. Dust swirled in the sunbeams. Still the same rancid odor of garlic and old urine mixed with the sickly sweet smell of the caked blood on the carpet. In the far corner, the old dead woman with her broken neck greeted Ricciardi, reiterating her proverb.

  “’O Padreterno nun è mercante ca pava ’o sabbato.” God Almighty’s not a shopkeeper who pays His debts on Saturday.

  Indeed, thought the commissario. He paid you on a Tuesday. And he wasn’t scrimping on the interest, though this time you’d probably have been willing to do without it altogether.

  Maione walked over to the window and opened it, letting in a gust of sparkling, sweet-smelling air.

  “The season is certainly on its way, Commissa’. There’ll be hot weather before long.”

  Waves of heat blasted out of the oven. Tonino Iodice had just tossed a shovelful of wood shavings and sawdust into the faint flames dancing over the logs, stirring a burst of sparks in response. Of all the things he did during his workday as a pizzaiolo, this act had always brought him a special happiness. Simple soul that he was, it reminded him of a tiny model of the festival of Piedigrotta, with the beautiful fireworks bursting into the dark sky over the water, creating blossoms of light as the children clapped their hands and jumped up and down.

  Back when he had the pushcart and fried his pizza in a large kettle full of boiling oil, there were no flames: only dangerous splashes of oil that could even blind a person. The searing waves of heat in the summer, the steep hillside streets that became slippery when it rained, having to cry his wares at the top of his voice, even when he was burning with fever in the winter chill.

  And yet he regretted—oh, how he regretted—having abandoned that hard life with its daily battles. In all those years of making do with his state of dignified poverty, he had never found himself looking over his shoulder with terror in his heart; and he’d never had to conceal anything from his family.

  That morning, once again, before opening the restaurant and starting to mix the water, yeast, and flour together to make the dough, he had rushed to buy the newspaper; and he’d hungrily pored over the article, without skipping the long, difficult words that he didn’t understand and which therefore struck him as especially menacing: brutality, cervical vertebrae, contusions from a blunt object.

  Even in the violent heat that blasted out of the oven, Tonino shivered. He felt as though he were looking at the flames of hell as the wood burned rapidly. He imagined himself in the midst of those flames, burning in torment for the rest of eternity. When he ran his hand over his face, it was damp with tears and sweat.

  He looked around him. The dining room was still empty, clean and awaiting the diners who’d be arriving shortly. His dream: how much had it cost? And how much more would it cost him and his family?

  He thought about the moment when he’d see them come in through the front door. The looks he’d get from the diners, from the passersby in the street. He would rather die than dishonor his children. He put both hands up to cover his face. From the other side of the dining room, his wife watched him with her heart in her mouth.

  XXVIII

  The little bedroom where Carmela Calise had dreamed of the springtime she’d never see was cold and immersed in darkness. Maione reflected on how quickly a home could lose its life, just as soon as it became uninhabited.

  Sometimes he would return, days later, to a place where no one lived anymore and he’d still encounter a vibration in the air, the feeling of whoever had lived in the place, as if they had just gone away temporarily. Other times, however, just a day after the murder, he’d walk into an apartment and find it inert, devoid of life, devoid of breath.

  He didn’t like digging through dead people’s possessions. He hated sticking his nose into that little temple, a chapel that still housed a surviving thought or an old emotion. It made him feel like an intruder.

  He carefully measured his gestures: a mark of respect for the departed. He’d have to rummage through the drawers and armoires, lift up carpets and tablecloths, move dishes and pans; that was his job. But no one could make him do it disrespectfully.

  He thought of Doctor Modo, who would have to rummage through much worse places in search of clues, but the thought did not console him.

  Not far from him, standing on the threshold, his back to the spacious room where Carmela Calise had received her diverse clientele, Ricciardi watched Maione conduct his search and listened to the old proverb uttered incessantly by the lips of the dead woman. Pay, pay. Money owed and payments due, still, even as she was making her way out of this life.

  Who could say what it was that made a person look back over their shoulder from the dark bourn of death, anchoring their last thought in the things of this world: money, sex, hunger, love. It was understandable enough for a suicide, Ricciardi thought; but someone who had been murdered? He had never picked up a thought of fear, expectation, or even simple curiosity with regard to the something or the nothingness that awaited them.

  “No, Commissa’. There was nothing but the notebook that Cesarano found. No other notes. And there are no dates in it.”

  “Look in the bed.”

  Maione walked over to the lumpy, narrow mattress supported by an old wooden bedframe. With slow, careful movements, as if he were preparing the bed for a night’s sleep, he uncovered it, pulling aside the bedspread and the clean but threadbare sheet. Underneath, the mattress was stained yellow.

  “She was an old woman, poor thing,” Maione said, almost apologetically, looking at the commissario with a melancholy smile. Then he lifted the mattress. Beneath it, in the middle of the broad plank that served as the main support, the two men spotted a small bundle wrapped in a handkerchief. Maione picked it up. Ricciardi drew closer.

  Inside were several banknotes: one hundred thirty lire, a tidy sum. And a scrap of paper; written on it, in the dead woman’s unsteady handwriting: Nunzia.

  The sea breeze came in through the open window. The curtains flapped lazily.

  Emma Serra di Arpaja suppressed the urge to vomit; the odor filling the room seemed rank with rotting fish and putrefied seaweed.

  Stretched out on the sofa, she looked up at the frescoed ceiling. The days when she still loved that house were long ago; she remembered events, not emotions, much less passionate ones.

  These days, she spent almost all her time out of the house, and when she was in the palazzo in Via Santa Lucia, she shut herself up in her own suite of rooms. That is, until it was time for the pantomime they staged for the benefit of the domestic help, when she’d walk into the chilly bedroom to sleep alongside the stranger she’d married. Except for those nights when she decided not to come home at all, offering no explanations to anyone, least of all him.

  Sometimes she thought of her husband as an obstacle, a barrier separating her from happiness. Other times, she simply saw him as an unhappy man, aging in a state of melancholy. It was easy for Marisa Cacciottoli and the other serpents that surrounded her to say that he was a man with an enviable position in society, a figure of considerable prestige. She didn’t give a good goddamn about his prestige or his position.

  If she’d never met Attilio, she thought, sooner or later she might have resigned herself to an empty life like the ones led by the matrons and wives of her milieu. Charity balls, canasta, the opera, gossip. At rare intervals, a swarthy sunburnt lover, either one of the fishermen that sang along the beach of Via Partenope or one of the starving factory workers of Bagnoli, just to have the mental strength to face a future no different from the past.

  But instead, it was her fate to find love.

  Every morning she woke up she counted the minutes until she’d see him at the theater, or in one of the out-of-the-way places that they chose to meet in from one night to the next, how long it would be until she felt his hands upon her, his body at
op hers. For some time now, she had understood that without him, without his divine perfection, she might as well be without air to breathe. She had lost, once and for all, the ability to resign herself to her fate.

  She choked back a sob at the thought. Now what could she do? Her mind flew to the old woman. Damned old buzzard. Absurdly, the faces of Attilio and the Calise woman were bound closely together in her mind.

  Day by day, her belief had grown stronger that her life now depended on him: she couldn’t go on living without Attilio. But if she wanted to live with him, she would need the tarot cards.

  In the rotating succession of kings, aces, and queens, the old woman read what was fated for every single day of her life. They’ll steal your scarf at the theater, and sure enough, it would vanish. You’ll trip over a beggar, and there she was, sprawled on the pavement with a sprained ankle. Someone will give you a bouquet of flowers on the street, and that’s exactly what happened. Your car will hit a pushcart, and it promptly transpired. A thousand confirmations had turned her into a slave: she no longer dared to do anything unless Carmela Calise, with her tarot cards, had ordered her to.

  It was she who had told Emma that it would be in that theater crowded with coarse and vulgar people: that was where she would find her true love.

  And that’s what happened.

  First Attilio had smiled at her, and then he had approached her on the way out of the theater. Of course, she had noticed him onstage. And how could she have overlooked his masculine beauty? That memory brought a smile to her lips; her heart raced at the mere thought of it. And she had lost herself in those eyes, eyes that reminded her of a starry night. She had rushed to see the old woman and had told her every detail, whereupon the old woman had gazed at her, expressionless, as if she didn’t understand. Maybe she really didn’t understand; maybe she was merely an intermediary between her and some kind soul in the world beyond who had decided to reach out and save her.