Blood Curse Read online

  Attilio couldn’t get to sleep. That night he’d been wonderful but, as usual, no one had noticed. He could feel the brooding frustration that was his frequent nightly companion poke at his stomach as he lay smoking a cigarette in the darkness. Unable to see, he let his gaze roam the walls; what did it matter, he thought, there was nothing to look at, nothing but poverty. Still, he knew, and he’d always known, that someday he’d be rich and famous, revered and adored. Like that conceited lout who had nothing that he didn’t have in spades. It all starts with money. When you have money, the rest follows. Mamma had always told him that, ever since he was a little boy. Money before all else. Just one more week. Then he’d be done with dreary rooms in tawdry boardinghouses.

  In the depths of her uneasy slumber, Filomena was dreaming. In her dream, she was standing outside her own front door and watching herself emerge from the house, bundled into a long black shawl, her face covered, as always, to conceal herself.

  The door was emblazoned with a word, written in red paint in huge letters: WHORE. Just that one word, simple and straightforward, as though it were a last name. She saw her head droop in shame, guilty without guilt. Whore. No men, no love affairs, no lingering looks or smiles. A whore all the same. In her dream she felt the anguish, the fear that her son would see the word when he came home. Her fingers wet with tears, she tried to rub it off, but the harder she tried the bigger it grew, staining her hands red. Red with an age-old crime: the crime of being beautiful.

  Enrica was sleeping on the first night of the new season. On the night table were her eyeglasses, a book, and a glass half-full of water. Her nightgown was folded on the armchair, under the frame with her embroidery.

  In the black shade of dreams, an unfamiliar touch, a strange scent, and two eyes staring at her. Green eyes. In her dream, the young woman felt the arrival of spring, stirring her blood.

  Just a dozen feet away, but so far he might as well have been on the surface of the moon, the man had fallen asleep. He’d eaten his dinner, then he’d listened to the radio as he watched her at her embroidery, through the window. Entering into someone else’s life, as if it were his own. Touching objects with someone else’s hands, laughing with someone else’s mouth, imagining sounds and voices that he couldn’t hear through the glass.

  Then sleep—bringing a new sense of disquiet, a different anxiety under the skin—seemed like an affliction, but in fact it was the arrival of spring: blood searching for a way out. And at last, the darkness that contained the images of his greatest fears, the last remnant of his innocence.

  In his dream, the man was a little boy again, and it was summertime; the heat scorched his skin. He was running head down through the vineyard next to the courtyard of his father’s house, playing by himself, as always. In his dream, he could smell the scents of his own sweat and of the grapes. And then the scent of blood. The blood of the dead man sitting on the dirt in the shade, his legs stretched before him, his arms resting on the ground, his head lolling over onto one shoulder. The handle of the field knife protruding from his ribcage like a stump, an abortive third limb. As the man slept, he gasped in childlike astonishment.

  Like before, the corpse lifted its head, and like before, it spoke to him; and the most horrific thing was that, like before, it seemed perfectly natural to him for the corpse to speak. In his dream, he turned and fled once again; and the man who the child had become uttered a lament through his slumbering lips. There was no chance of escape; a hundred, a thousand dead men would speak to him from unknown mouths; just as many times, they would look at him with empty eyes and reach out to him with broken fingers.

  Outside the window, spring was waiting.

  III

  He liked strolling through the city in the early morning. The streets were almost empty, practically silent aside from the distant calls of early-stirring street vendors. Not making eye contact, not having to look down at the street to avoid showing his face, his eyes.

  He knew he had a highly developed sense of smell. Not surprisingly, this wasn’t a particularly good thing, because there were far more bad smells than there were good ones. Still, on a morning like this one, he could detect the perfume of the green hills, well hidden under the miasmas that rose from the stench-ridden city quarters, and winning out over the smell of the sea. It reminded him of the aromas of Fortino, the small town in Cilento where he was born and where, without knowing it, he’d been happy for the last time. It was the smell of nature, primal and luxuriant, embracing mankind like a mother.

  A subtle pleasure, and a worry; he knew what awaited him. Springtime, Ricciardi mused as he walked toward Piazza Dante: it changed people’s souls like so many leaves on the trees; stern, dark, lofty trees, strong and unyielding in their centuries-long wait, suddenly went crazy in that season, showing off garish blossoms. In much the same way, even the most stable people suddenly got the strangest ideas into their heads.

  Though he had only just turned thirty, Ricciardi had seen, and saw on a daily basis, exactly what every single individual was capable of, however innocuous that person might appear at first glance. He had seen, and continued to see, far more than he wanted and more than he ever would have asked for; he saw pain; he saw grief.

  Overwhelming grief, pain that repeats itself, over and over. The anger, bitterness, and even the strutting irony that came with death. He had learned that death by natural causes settled its accounts with life, amicably and conclusively. It left no lingering footprints in the days that followed, it snipped off all the threads and sutured the wounds, before heading off down the road bearing its load, wiping its bony hands on its black tunic. But that’s not how violent death worked; it didn’t have time. It had to leave in a hurry. In those cases, death staged a show, offering up the portrayal of the final pain and grief for the eyes of Ricciardi’s very soul; it was heaped upon him, the sole spectator of the rotten theater of human evil. The Incident, he called it, or even better, the Deed. And the idea that death in its hasty departure hadn’t had time to settle its accounts washed over him like a wave, demanding vengeance. Those who leave the world in this manner do so with a backward glance. And they left messages that Ricciardi gathered, listening to that last, obsessively repeated thought.

  The first of the balconies overlooking Piazza Carità threw open their shutters, bringing it to life. As he walked toward police headquarters, it dawned on Ricciardi, the way it did every morning, that he’d never have a choice, that there was only one profession for which he was suited in life. He’d never have the strength to ignore the pain, to turn away from it, or travel the world scattering his money with a free hand. There’s no escaping who you are. He knew that his distant relations couldn’t understand why he, the only child of the late Barone di Malomonte, didn’t take his place as the new Barone di Malomonte, capitalizing on the social advantages that would come so easily with that title. He knew that his Tata Rosa, the nanny who had raised him from his infancy and was now in her seventies, ardently wished to see him at peace, living an untroubled life. No one could explain his prolonged silences, his downcast gaze, the constant gloom that absorbed him.

  But, as Ricciardi knew full well, it hadn’t been his lot to choose; he was obliged to walk against the wind, buffeted by the last shifting gusts of grief of all the dead people he met along his path. So that he could complete the work that death hadn’t had time to finish.

  Or at least try to.

  In the placid early morning air, Ricciardi walked into the building that housed police headquarters. The watchman at the front door, half-asleep in his guard booth, made an attempt to leap to his feet and salute him military-style, but he succeeded only in knocking over his chair with a sharp crack of wood that echoed across the courtyard. Irritated, he shot the spread index-and-pinkie sign of the cuckold toward the back of the commissario, who hadn’t so much as waved in his direction.

  Ricciardi wasn’t well liked by the staff at headquarters, whether uniformed or administrative; and it wasn’t be
cause he was a bully or took a hard line. If anything, he was the one most likely to conceal the oversights or failings of others from the notice of the top brass. Rather, it was that no one could figure him out. His solitary, taciturn personality and behavior, the seeming absence of any weakness, and the complete lack of information about his private life did nothing to encourage camaraderie or fellowship. And then there was his extraordinary ability to solve cases, which had something of the uncanny; and there was nothing that struck more fear into the heart of that city’s populace than the supernatural. The idea that working with Ricciardi brought bad luck became increasingly deep-rooted. It was becoming a matter of course for those assigned to one of his cases to be kept home by a convenient but debilitating head cold, or, even worse, for his presence to be blamed for mishaps that had nothing to do with him.

  A self-perpetuating state of affairs: the greater the void Ricciardi created around himself, the happier other people were to steer clear of him. The commissario seemed not to be aware of this, much less bothered by it.

  With his superiors, the deputy chief of police, and the police chief himself, things were no different. These weren’t years in which one could easily afford to dispense with the services of such a talented individual. Increasingly, Rome had been interfering with the independence of police headquarters, and the police were expected to provide evidence of their successful investigations by tossing a guilty party to the press. The regime demanded that the image portrayed of Fascist life in the big cities convey safety and high hopes. Ricciardi, with his rapid and unorthodox way of cracking cases, was perfect.

  But there was no denying that his presence created a sense of unease. He wasn’t welcome, and so his merits were overlooked. He was denied the promotions and the opportunities that he objectively deserved. They might not be able to do without him, but they weren’t about to reward him, either. For that matter, Ricciardi didn’t seem to care about advancement in the least. He was constantly absorbed in his work, more a priest militant of justice than a civil servant, bent over his desk or striding through the seamiest quarters of the city, in the driving rain or the blistering heat of summer, frantically seeking the source of the suffocating grief and pain that engulfed him.

  Within the barricade of mistrust that surrounded him, however, there was at least one person he could count on.

  IV

  Brigadier Raffaele Maione sipped his coffee looking out from the balcony, enjoying the panoramic vista. Truth be told, the liquid in his demitasse wasn’t proper coffee at all; he wasn’t sure he could even remember what real coffee tasted like. For that matter, the word “balcony” didn’t accurately describe the oversized windowsill with an undersized railing which the landlord of the building in Vico Concordia had installed some twenty years ago, without a permit. And last of all, the labyrinth of dark alleyways that stretched out as far as the eye could see, riddled with hunger and sordid dealings: only an absurd stretch of the imagination could justify calling it a vista.

  But Maione possessed the requisite imagination, and the optimism, too. God, did he have optimism. And God alone knew how much he had needed it, to get through certain times in his life.

  As the darkness gave way to the first light of dawn, Maione sniffed the air in the same way the dogs had sniffed it a few hours earlier. Today, there was a different smell in the air. Perhaps it had come at last; perhaps that interminable winter was finally over. Another springtime: the third without Luca.

  There were times when he could hear his laughter. A fine laugh, disjointed and loud, a laugh that announced his arrival. Perhaps it was that very laugh that had been his undoing. He would never know. Maione looked at his hand, and then at his arm; it was dark-complected and big, solid and powerful in spite of his fifty years.

  Unlike Luca: his boy had been blond like his mother and, like her, he laughed all the time. Except that Maione hadn’t heard his Lucia laugh once since that day. Of course, life went on—and how could it stop, with five more children to bring up? But laughter: never again. On winter nights, when the children were asleep and time stood still, Luca would come home cheerful as ever to cradle his mother in his arms, to hoist her in the air laughing; or to tease his father, calling him a potbellied old timer, standing proud in his new uniform, a newly minted rookie on the police force.

  On that still-chilly morning, springtime brought the brigadier the scent of his son’s blood. And the memory of how Deputy Officer Ricciardi, that strange young policeman no one wanted to work with, had shut himself up in the cellar, alone with the corpse, for five endless minutes. And how Ricciardi, gripping Maione’s arm and staring him straight in the eye, had brought him Luca’s last message of love, couched in words of tenderness that he couldn’t possibly have known. Even now, three years later, the love and horror he felt still made him shiver.

  Since then he had been the commissario’s trusty squire. He would brook no bad-mouthing of Ricciardi from anyone, not the slightest hint of mockery.

  He was also the guardian of Ricciardi’s very particular police procedure, which involved a preliminary solitary inspection of the scene of the crime. Maione would keep everyone else back as the commissario tuned in to whatever had happened there; Maione was also his confidant for what little Ricciardi was inclined to share, which was very little indeed. These confidences amounted to reasonings, spoken out loud, musings on the investigation underway, but through those musings Maione was able to guess at his character, simply by dint of his own experience. Each time it was as if this were Ricciardi’s own personal crusade, his own loss, his own infamous wrong to be avenged, an injustice visited upon him in need of restitution. Ricciardi wasn’t like the others, who investigated for money, advancement, or power; he’d met so many. No, Ricciardi wasn’t like the others.

  That morning it occurred to Maione that Ricciardi wasn’t actually that much older than his own Luca: just ten or so years older, maybe a little more. But he seemed to be a hundred years old, and completely alone, like a condemned man.

  As he squinted and ran a hand over his cheek, already rough just an hour after shaving, it suddenly occurred to Maione that it was precisely this very curse that had made it possible for the commissario to deliver his son’s last words to him. Shivering, he went back inside. It was time to go to work.

  V

  She hated that place, and yet she couldn’t live without it. As she was waiting, Emma reflected on this fact: she had tried more than once, but she couldn’t live without it. She hated the horde of clamoring children. She hated the steep, narrow stairs that led up to the top floor, the tattered humanity that she met there: the poverty-stricken tenants of the building and the customers she encountered, who stood aside to let her pass.

  She understood: she was as ashamed as they were. This is how she imagined a bordello, not that she’d ever been in one. Still, this is how she imagined them: places where being recognized could mean forever tarnishing a sterling reputation built up at the cost of great effort over the years.

  And then there was the smell. Garlic, rancid food. And urine, as an aftertaste. Urine in the street, in the entryway, in the apartment. Sometimes she brought flowers, but they were viewed with suspicion, as if they concealed an implicit request for a discount. She only brought them so she could breathe in there, to ward off the smells. Of course, the woman was elderly, and the elderly can’t control themselves. She was happy to be young and she had every intention of remaining young as long as she could. And pretty. And rich. And desired. Now that she had finally found true love, life was more beautiful than ever, and the future was radiantly bright. Everyone’d been saying it in recent years: the Italian nation’s future was going to be an exceedingly bright one. So why shouldn’t her own be? How long would she have to go on paying for a mistake made by others, though the penalty was visited upon her?

  She needed one last blessing, one final authorization from fate. She was certain of her feelings, but she couldn’t afford to make another mistake. Not anymo
re.

  It was hot in the apartment. She had left her house wearing her heavy overcoat, a thick fur stole around her neck, and her charming aviator’s cap with earflaps, declining the proffered car and chauffeur. She remembered the look in the man’s eyes last time, a mixture of commiseration and distaste for the long wait surrounded by the dozens of street urchins who tried to scale the massive vehicle, as if it were a mountain made of steel. She unbuttoned her coat. She wished she could smoke, but the old woman didn’t like it. Where was the old woman? How long would she have to wait, before she could finally begin her life?

  Standing at his office window, Ricciardi was looking out onto Piazza Municipio. The street was still wet from last night’s downpour, but now the sky was blue and cloudless. A faint breeze brought with it the smell of the sea.

  The trees in the garden of the piazza down below were perfectly shaped to provide shade for the wrought-iron benches. The four green refreshment stands were beginning to collect customers, newspapers, and soft drinks.

  A few carriages, four automobiles, a truck. In the distance, beyond the piazza, loomed the three smokestacks of the English cruise ship that had docked a few days ago. Overshadowing everything, the immense Maschio Angioino, the old Angevin fortress.

  Few living beings. No dead people at all. Ricciardi permitted himself to take a deep breath, and he held it in. Slowly, he exhaled. He turned around to face his office, with the city behind him. Before him lay “Ricciardi’s cell”—that’s what the headquarters staff called his office.

  Once again, the woman witnessed the ritual, her heart in her throat, the usual pounding in her ears. A million times she’d told herself it was a bunch of nonsense, and a million and one times she had found herself once again in the grip of those lovely and terrible sensations. Fate. She watched as fate took shape before her.