Vipers Read online

  Ricciardi shot Maione a meaningful glance, and the brigadier stepped in.

  “Signo’, please. We know perfectly well where we are and what goes on here. In other words, there’s no need to explain. Please, just do us a favor and of tell us, in short, what happened.”

  Yvonne dried her tears and assumed a vaguely resentful tone.

  “Brigadie’, you must understand what this means for me, for all of us. It’s a tragedy. Viper is dead.”

  It was the second time he’d heard that word uttered; Ricciardi decided it was time to clear things up.

  “Her real name, please. And let’s start from the beginning: who found her? When? And where is she now? Has anyone moved anything?”

  The woman turned her head toward the group at the far end of the room and gestured; then she turned back to Ricciardi.

  “Viper is the name by which, throughout Naples, the best, the most beautiful of all the working girls, as we like to say, was known. The name is Rosaria, Maria Rosaria Cennamo. But she was Viper to everyone. No one’s moved her, she’s in the bedroom, the bedroom where . . . well, where she worked.”

  The other question went unanswered, until finally Ricciardi made up his mind to ask it again.

  “I asked: who found her?”

  Madame hesitated, then she turned to the girls and called out:

  “Lily, come over here. Don’t pretend you don’t understand me.”

  A young woman broke away from the group, reluctantly, and came toward them. Her halting gait was quite different from Yvonne’s majestic stride, and the older woman introduced her:

  “This is Lily. Bianca Palumbo, to be exact: our clients, you know, like names with an exotic flavor. She’s the one who found Viper.”

  The girl was fair-haired. Her features were soft and rounded, her face marked by horror and fright. She was clutching the edges of a flowered nightgown to her chest, which was quite prominent, disproportionately so, given her height. Cesarano let a faint whistle escape him, which earned him a furious glare from Maione.

  “Now then, Signorina: you’re the one who found the corpse?”

  Lily looked at Madame, almost as if she were asking permission to answer; the woman nodded her head slightly, and the girl turned to Ricciardi.

  “Yes. I went past her door, I’d . . . I had finished, and I was going to the balcony. And Viper’s door was open, just a little, it was, what’s the word . . . ajar. And she was on the bed, and I noticed her leg, dangling over the side . . .”

  She reached a trembling hand up to her face, as if to chase the image away. Her voice, deep and mature, clashed with her evident youth and her delicate features.

  Ricciardi asked:

  “And you, what did you do?”

  The young woman hesitated, glanced again in her madam’s direction, then decided to answer.

  “I stuck my head out the door and called Madame.”

  Maione broke in:

  “And how did you know that Cennamo—I mean, Viper—was dead?”

  Lily shrugged.

  “There was a pillow on her face. And she wasn’t moving.”

  What Ricciardi sensed in the girl’s voice, and even more in her reactions, wasn’t grief, only fright. He decided to get confirmation of that impression.

  “Were the two of you friends? Did you get along with Viper?”

  This time it was Madame Yvonne who replied:

  “Of course! We’re like a big happy family here, Commissa’. The girls are all like sisters, they spend all their time together, and they love one another, both the girls who come here to work for a couple of weeks and then go away and the ones who’re here permanently. And Lily, just like Viper, is here to stay, she’s not one of the girls on rotation, and so they’re . . . they were even closer. Isn’t that true? Answer me!”

  Suddenly called upon, Lily stared at her employer and slowly nodded. Ricciardi’s first impression remained unshaken: the relationship between Lily and the late Viper would need closer examination.

  “And then you, Madame, sent Marietta to get us. All right. And who was here, besides you and the girls I see over there?”

  Yvonne spread her arms wide.

  “Commissa’, of course, there were the clients. Amedeo over there, our piano player, was entertaining them while they waited, and the waiter was serving drinks. The usual afternoon activity.”

  “So these customers, what happened to them?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “I’m sure you can imagine it for yourself: the minute they heard Lily crying and screaming, they vanished. I certainly don’t have the authority to stop them and tell them to wait for you all, do I?”

  Ricciardi nodded.

  “Certainly not. But you must remember at least your regular customers, and you can tell us their names, I believe. Just so we can check them out.”

  Yvonne exchanged a look with Lily that didn’t escape the commissario’s notice.

  “Of course. Though I might have overlooked a few, in all the chaos. This kind of terrible accident, it doesn’t happen every day.”

  “No, luckily, this sort of thing doesn’t happen every day. Signorina, earlier you said: I had finished, and I was going to the balcony. What did you mean?”

  Lily answered:

  “Do you see that passageway up there, with the railing? We call that the balcony. When we’re done working with a customer, after we’ve washed up and straightened up the room, then we go up there, where they can see us, that way the customers here in the waiting room know that we’re free and that they can pick us. The one they like best.”

  Camarda sighed, earning himself an elbow in the ribs from Cesarano. Ricciardi decided to overlook it.

  “All right, I understand. I may need to ask you a few more things later. Now, if you don’t mind, take us to Viper’s room.”

  III

  What is this breeze on my face?

  What are these scents, the flowers and the sea?

  What does springtime want from me, why doesn’t it go back where it came from?

  I’m a dead man, don’t you understand that, springtime? I’m a dead man.

  I’ve been dead for years and years, even though I breathed, worked, ate, and slept. I talked to the people I met, and maybe to be polite I even laughed, pretended to be interested: but I was dead.

  If your heart doesn’t beat in your chest, then you’re dead. And my heart wasn’t beating. Not anymore.

  It’s better to be born blind. You can’t remember colors if you’ve never seen them before. If you’re born blind, then the sun is nothing more than warmth on your skin and the sea is just water on your feet; you can’t imagine how the light shimmers against the blue, while clouds scud across the sky, creating and erasing shadows. It’s better, if you’re born blind.

  But if you’ve seen the light and then they take it away from you, all you can do is remember. You just remember, you don’t live anymore: you’re dead.

  Curse you, God, why did you force me to be reborn? Why did you give back the sight that you took away from me, and the hope that I’d long since forgotten? God, you coward, why did you make me breathe again, and laugh again, and make my heart beat again, wasn’t the suffering you’d already inflicted on me enough? Did you know that you would kill me a second time? You know everything, so why? Damn you to hell: you sent me to the inferno, you pulled me back out, and in the end you locked me in there forever.

  Leaving my soul trapped in a bedroom at Il Paradiso. Motionless, breathless, awaiting a word that will never come from her mouth.

  From her dead mouth.

  IV

  At the far end of the shadowy drawing room there was a podium, and on it stood a sort of lectern made of dark wood, behind which sat a very high-backed chair, giving the impression of a throne.

  Madame Yvonne,
sailing toward the podium, said with undisguised pride:

  “That’s where I sit. That’s where I greet our customers.”

  Ricciardi glimpsed money on the counter, a pad of printed forms, and an open fan. Behind the desk, stuck to the wall, was a sign displaying the prices.

  SINGLE 2.50 LIRE

  DOUBLE 3.50 LIRE

  ½ HOUR 6 LIRE

  1 HOUR 10 LIRE

  EXTRA FOR SOAP AND TOWEL 1 LIRA

  BAR OF SOAP 10 CENTS

  COLOGNE 25 CENTS

  Next to the cashier’s desk was a flight of stairs with a red handrail, at the base of which stood two wooden statues of black slaves: one was holding a lantern that illuminated the desk, the other a tray in which the customers deposited their cigarette butts before going upstairs. Madame started up the stairs, but Ricciardi, before following her, turned and murmured something to Maione. The brigadier said:

  “Cama’, you stay there by the front door and make sure no one comes in and no one leaves. Cesara’, you phone police headquarters and tell them to call over to the hospital, this is important, tell them to ask personally for Dr. Bruno Modo, and to send the photographer. Then station yourself here and don’t let anyone come upstairs.”

  At the top of the stairs was a hallway, lit by wall lamps. The doors of the ten or so rooms were almost all shut, except for one which stood half-open at the end of the hall.

  Ricciardi indicated it with a nod.

  “Is that it, Viper’s room?”

  Yvonne nodded her head yes. She seemed to have lost the confidence she’d displayed downstairs; her hands were trembling. That hatless commissario, with his penetrating green eyes, had made her uneasy from the first and, now that they were close to the corpse, he inexplicably frightened her.

  Maione broke in, asking:

  “And which one is Lily’s room?”

  Madame pointed to one of the rooms closest to the stairs.

  “That one.”

  Ricciardi gestured to the brigadier, who said:

  “Stay here, Signo’. Don’t move.”

  The two policemen separated. Maione opened the door to Lily’s room, and Ricciardi headed for the door that stood half-open. When he came to the threshold, he looked inside. He saw a side table, a gleam of light on a mirror, the edge of the bed. A hand, fingertips pointing away from the bed, was the only sign of a human presence that could be glimpsed through the opening.

  He took a step forward and crossed the threshold.

  As usual, instead of looking, he let his senses become accustomed to the room. He had to establish contact with the atmosphere, with the emotions suspended in the air. He kept his eyelids shut.

  The smell, first of all. While in the rest of the bordello the smell of smoke, with an undercurrent of disinfectants, detergents, and dust, dominated, here the scent was of French perfume, elegant and penetrating; flowers, once fresh, fading; a vague aroma of lavender; and the unpleasant tang of stale sweat. No blood.

  Then he listened to his skin. The open door had brought the temperature to the same level as the hallway, but he sensed a slight breeze coming from his right, possibly a window cracked open, or else just a draft. The room lay immersed in silence, except for a slow dripping.

  The time had come.

  He opened his eyes and looked, starting intentionally from the wall farthest from the bed. In the corner he saw the sink with the faucet whose drip he had heard, and a pitcher and washbasin; a vanity and chair, on which a black silk dressing gown with a red pattern had been abandoned; a five-drawer marble-top dresser, upon which he could see a jewel box and a framed photograph of a woman, middle-aged and serious, sitting with a little boy in a sailor suit in her arms; a vase with a spray of fresh flowers; the window, covered by a red curtain imperfectly closed, through which the spring air was entering the room.

  His gaze had come around to the bed.

  The corpse lay awkwardly sprawled in the middle of the rumpled sheets. One of the legs, as Lily had said, dangled over the side, and the arms were thrown wide, like the wings of a bird that would never again take flight. The light-colored slip was pulled up over the belly, revealing the undergarments that the woman was wearing. The only piece of jewelry on the body was a silver bracelet in the shape of a snake with two green stones in place of eyes, on the left forearm.

  The face, uncovered, bore the expression of someone gasping for air, and a section of blackened tongue protruded from the open mouth.

  Suffocated. The girl had been suffocated.

  Just inches from the head lay a pillow marked with traces of makeup and a patch of damp saliva where it had been violently pressed down onto the mouth and nose, which to judge from the silhouette must have been fractured in the process. Even in the final insult of death, the commissario could tell that Viper must have been very beautiful.

  Ricciardi followed the victim’s blank gaze, the direction of her eyes in the moment of extremity. He heaved a long sigh.

  Before a mirror that didn’t reflect it, the woman’s image: standing, arms at her side, short dark hair framing her face; lips stretched in one last breath, black tongue lolling out.

  Looking at its own corpse, the image kept saying: Little whip, little whip. My little whip.

  Ricciardi ran a hand over his face. Maybe I’m just imagining it all, he thought for the thousandth time. Maybe it’s just an illusion produced by my sick mind. Maybe it’s some kind of absurd inheritance, a lurking, silent form of madness. Maybe it’s my hundreds of fears, my inability to live life. Maybe it’s just a way to escape reality, maybe there’s really nothing in front of me.

  Outside, in the street two floors below, an accordion struck up a tango. Life in the street was resuming its movement through the first day of spring.

  Ricciardi lowered his hand.

  Along with the pain and grief of departure, the now familiar sense of melancholy and regret, and the surprise at being dead that Ricciardi knew all too well, he could just make out the echo of Viper’s last thought: Little whip, little whip. My little whip.

  He turned around sharply and left the room, walking toward Maione.

  They’ll understand. They’ll have to understand.

  I did it for you, to protect you. So that you’d understand that it’s me, I’m the right woman for you. So that you would know that I and I alone know what you are, and what you want.

  I can see you now, that time you came into my room, gripping my arm so hard that it hurt, staring into my tear-filled eyes, whispering through clenched teeth: it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.

  But I don’t care. Whether or not it’s true, you’re my man, just like I’m your woman. The two of us together, we’ll get out of this. Because you’ll finally understand that I’m the right one, the one who cares for you: because I’ve protected you, I’ve put your safety first.

  Not like that damned whore, who stole your soul. Who blinded you.

  Because you can work as a whore, or you can be a whore. And she was a whore right down to the bottom of her soul.

  But now she’s dead.

  Which is better for everyone.

  V

  Augusto Ventrone looked the angel in the eyes.

  He admired its light-blue coloring, its intense expression, which was at once pitying and determined; ready to provide comfort and to inflict punishment, annunciating and exterminating. That’s what an angel should be like.

  He put the statue back on its shelf, next to the shop’s front door, and looked outside: afternoon sunlight filled the street, and a few flies were flitting around in the low light. Spring had come. Punctual as ever.

  Augusto allowed himself a quick smile. Not that he was in the habit of smiling: he was the most unsmiling twenty-year-old in the neighborhood, and possibly in the whole city. And really, why would he smile?

  First of all, the merchandis
e they offered in their shop had to be sold with earnest sobriety, in certain cases with something approaching grief: and he was a born salesman. Their customers came in expecting a murmured recommendation. “Award-Winning Purveyors of Sacred Art, Vincenzo Ventrone and Son,” read the sign. Sacred art. Nothing playful, nothing funny. The religious expected a sophisticated adviser; private individuals interested in decorating a home chapel, a family tomb, or even just a nightstand in their bedroom, wanted the understanding of a professional: for smiles, they were welcome to try the undergarment shop, just fifty feet down the street, on the opposite sidewalk.

  Nor had life given Augusto any particular reasons to be cheerful. A mother who’d died too young, no brothers or sisters, and a father who’d lost his head over a whore.

  At first, Augusto had actually been quite tolerant. After all, after five years as a lonely widower, one could understand why Vincenzo Ventrone, who wasn’t so old that he couldn’t hear the call of the flesh, should have gone in search of comfort. And all things considered, better a brothel—with a discreet side entrance where you’d pay no more than a few lire—than a money-grubbing young lady from a well-to-do family looking to get herself situated, or even worse, a fortune hunter with children of her own, who could replace him as the heir to the family business.

  But then matters had taken a strange turn. His father’s visits to Il Paradiso (how blasphemously ironic, that name: astonishing that the authorities should allow it!) had multiplied until he was going daily, sometimes even more frequently. It was inevitable that other customers, that even a number of high prelates from the bishopric, would see him emerge from the bordello with a stupid, ridiculous grin stamped on his face, his celluloid collar unbuttoned, his tie askew, traces of lipstick smeared on his cheeks. And the idiot, instead of hiding in the shadows, just doffed his hat and called out hello.

  With a shudder, Augusto remembered how he had learned that his father’s affair with a whore had by now become public knowledge. One day the Contessa Félaco di Castelbriano had come into the shop, an elderly crone who weighed at least 225 pounds and collected statues of St. Anthony; she’d stopped at the front counter and stood there for several minutes silently staring at him, wearing a pained, sympathetic expression. He’d waited, as was befitting a serious shopkeeper in the presence of a first-rate customer. Finally, in her cavernous voice, the contessa had told him: “Your poor mother is turning over in her grave over this indecency. For the shame that your father is heaping on her, even in the afterlife.” Then she’d turned on her heel and left the shop.