Maurizio de Giovanni - Blood Curse

“Brigadier, that’s something that I already intended to do. I know my Emma, marvelous, sensitive woman that she is. I’m sure that once she sees me, she’ll get over any doubts and choose love over the arid social conventions that are presently holding her prisoner. I feel sure I’ll be able to give you proof of this in short order. We had decided to leave together after the last performance in Naples, which is going to be tomorrow night. I haven’t yet lost all hope that, now that she’s had time to think it over, Emma will show up as we had agreed, that she’ll come for me here at the theater.”

Ricciardi looked the actor in the eye, and Romor looked back, unwavering.

“Tell me one last thing, Romor: who do you think murdered Calise?”

A sad expression appeared on the man’s face.

“Who can say, Commissario? I didn’t know her. But I’d have to guess that a woman who makes a living by deceiving people and, according to what I read, loan-sharking as well, should expect to wind up that way. I remember that Emma was a slave to her obsession with the old woman; she couldn’t breathe unless Calise told her how with one of her proverbs. But I will say that when Emma’s husband came to threaten me, he really did seem willing to stop at nothing. If I had to say a name. .”

As they headed back to police headquarters, Maione thought out loud.

“That guy strikes me as a genuine idiot. He likes women, he knows that they like him, and he thinks that’s how it will be for the rest of his life. If you ask me, he would have been better off taking the professor’s money, because he won’t be getting anything else out of his relationship with Emma.”

Ricciardi was wrapped up in his thoughts.

“Don’t forget about the baby, though. The professor would be happy to acknowledge the child as his own-that is, if he even knows his wife is pregnant. But would she be willing? She seems deeply involved. In any case, none of this concerns us. What I’d like to know is who had a motive to kill Calise. And we’re running out of time. But I just had an idea.”

“What is it, Commissa’?”

“The idea that tomorrow evening Signora Serra will be unable to resist the temptation to go to the theater, to enjoy the play she loves so well, for one last time. Why don’t you take a walk over to see your friend the doorman in the afternoon and find out if anyone’s planning to take a car or a driver to go to the theater.”

Maione seemed perplexed.

“The Serras? Aren’t we supposed to check in first with that idiot Garzo?”

Ricciardi smiled.

“No. He told me that I’m in charge of the case and I can do what I want. Anyway, it’s the last day. You watch, if we don’t come up with anything, they’ll put the blame on poor Iodice and good night, nurse. Let’s see if we can flush the professor out into the open.”

Attilio, now alone, smiled into his dressing room mirror. Things were moving in the right direction; he would make Emma face her responsibilities.

He felt certain that, with her back to the wall and no proprieties left to safeguard, she would opt for love. On the other hand, why would the husband have done so much to convince him to leave her? Because the husband knew that Emma loved him. He’d never misread a woman, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t wrong now, either.

He hoped that his mamma would come to the theater too, the following night. To enjoy his last performance. His triumphant last performance.

You walk home, kept company by your work, thoughts of the current investigation, thoughts studded with faces, sensations, tones of voice. You walk, cobblestones underfoot, and you smell the fresh air wafting down from the distant woods. And you think about the words you’ve heard, words you now need to put in order.

You walk among the few living human beings who are heading home, skirting close to the walls, and the occasional dead soul watching you go by, oozing grief from its wounds. You walk and you don’t look; you pass through the world like a stranger. You climb the stairs, you open the door, you hear the tired breathing of your elderly Tata sleeping serenely. You undress, you and the night become a single thing. You tell yourself, no, not tonight, you won’t go to the window. You’ll stretch out and slip into sleep, or rather sleep will come envelop you, dragging you off for a few hours to a land of illusory peace.

Instead, you do go over to the window. Perhaps she’ll be there, embroidering, as if to greet you unconsciously, to gently ferry you off to your dreamless slumber.

Instead, your gaze runs square into a pair of darkened shutters. No one speaks to you at all.

You step forward into the night and you know that your eyes will search for peace in the darkness but in vain. You were hoping for rest. But that’s not what you got.

He climbs uphill along the vicolo , his step slow and heavy. The weight of the day bears down on his shoulders, the weight of the week, of life. He climbs the vicolo and he feels lonelier than ever, thinking of all these people looking for love and finding hatred, resentment, fury. He climbs the vicolo looking straight ahead; perhaps not even a scream would make him stop this time. Tonight it costs too much to walk. Tonight he wants nothing but peace.

Sea air accompanies him, caresses his shoulders, helps him in the uphill climb. It brings a promise of summer, a promise it may even keep. But who knows how many more deaths, in the meanwhile.

Tomorrow, there will be a guilty man, a man who tonight is still unaware, sleeping peacefully, or perhaps fast asleep deep underground. Perhaps victim and executioner are dancing together in the moonlight, in some enchanted clearing, along with the other dead souls. Perhaps victim and executioner have traded roles: that’s permissible in the world of sleep.

Anguish, loneliness. In the rooms that were once filled with her smile, now all is deserted.

Remembering her, her smile reborn, her hand, her caress, her forgotten touch. Imagining his hand, trembling, as it brushes her face, her blue eyes, the same eyes he saw at the fountain when she was sixteen.

Dinner, him trying to talk, and her upraised finger laid across his lips. And then her hand, leading him to bed. And her opening the door of her body and soul to him. Perhaps a dream, a gift of the night, of the moon, motionless, over the souls of the world. Perhaps the air will keep its promise; perhaps he is being reborn in that perfume.

He falls asleep with his life wrapped in his arms: his life, snuggled against his chest. That breathing at once unknown and familiar.

The light of dawn found Ricciardi and Maione well aware that this day would be a decisive one. For the memory of Tonino Iodice and for the honor of his children; for the peace of Carmela Calise’s soul; for the reputation of the Serra di Arpaja family; for the welfare and perhaps for the career of Attilio Romor, an actor with a bright future and a challenging present; for the surname and fate of Emma’s child.

And for the knowledge that they had solved a mystery in a world where, by official royal decree, there could be no more mysteries, nor blood, nor murder victims.

Maione, on Ricciardi’s orders, went to the Serras’ building just before lunchtime. He waited for the doorman to withdraw into his glass-fronted cubby and then went in after him, moving cautiously in the shadows to make sure no one noticed him from the balconies on the upper stories.

He learned that the signora would be going out to the theater, and without her chauffeur. She had told the doorman to get her new car ready, the odd one with a red finish, and to top off the fuel in the tank. As always, the man had gone into a litany of complaint about how he always had to take care of everything himself, and Maione nodded along patiently, inwardly detesting him. Then, however, he learned another tidbit that struck him as particularly interesting: the professor had also asked the doorman whether he knew the signora’s plans for the evening, and then he had instructed him to alert the chauffeur; he’d be going out that evening as well. To attend the theater, he had added. Wasn’t that ridiculously wasteful? Just two people, the same night, the same theater. In two different automobiles.