Day of the Dead (38 page)

He felt a stab of sorrow pierce his heart. Perhaps the little orphan had just been a pawn on a chessboard, where the stakes were tawdry and all too material.

He ran a hand over his forehead, which was hot with fever. Perhaps that's not how it went at all, and all the internal struggles of the Fago family aside, the boy had just died accidentally, the way everyone had said from the outset; and then a merciful hand had gathered the poor corpse from the gutter where it was lying and placed it in a more dignified position where it could be easily found. That, too, was a possibility: he couldn't blame anyone who was afraid to say that they'd found a dead child on their front doorstep.

The streets were deserted, under the once-again heavy rain. Everyone was enjoying their Sunday inside the four warm and cozy walls of their own homes. From the venerable old apartment buildings and from the
bassi
came the smells of burning firewood and the holiday banquets that were being devoured, garlic and onions, sauces that had burbled away for an entire day in heavy pots to delight the palates of those who now rested, comfortably listening to the radio and sipping ersatz coffee.

He walked past a
vicolo
where a tragedy had taken place the week before: a room below street level, where a very poor family was sleeping, had been flooded by a surge of sewer water; the heavy rain had swept down from the hillside a large branch wrapped in dead leaves and garbage. This plug had effectively stopped up the sewer, causing the water to back up. For the parents and the two children, caught unawares in their sleep, there'd been no escape. Their bodies had only finally been found two days later, due to the difficulty of draining the liquid waste from their home.

Ricciardi saw them now, standing translucent in the pelting rain, at the door of the place that had been their home. They were murmuring indistinctly the words of their dreams, through lips gaping open to reveal blackened tongues, mouths gasping in the attempt to get a final mouthful of air. The little girl was the only one who had woken up, Ricciardi saw, but no one had listened to her. She was shouting:
water, Mammà, wake up, the water's coming in
. They were all drenched with filthy water.

The street is populated with the dead more than with the living, Ricciardi mused as he strolled along with his hands deep in his trench coat pockets, as icy rivulets ran down his back, penetrating through his clothing.

Loneliness, he mused, is an infectious disease. I'm infected, and I carry it within me. Or perhaps it is loneliness that carries me within it.

He sensed movement behind him; he half turned and out of the corner of his eye he saw Tettè's dog, following him some twenty feet back. How can I rest, he wondered, and enjoy my Sunday off, if my client is so eager to see how much progress I'm making? It's just that I'm not really making much progress at all, dog, as you can see for yourself. I'm right back where I started.

Carmen, he thought: I have to ask her. She alone, since she knows him, can tell me whether Sersale threatened to harm the child; whether she thinks her brother-in-law would be capable of doing such a thing.

A powerful wave of dizziness swept over him, and he staggered. His fever was climbing and he felt as if he were walking in a dream state. He could feel his strength ebbing away. He looked around, spotted a bench, and fell down onto it. The neighborhood looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn't have said why. There was no one in sight. Even the dog seemed to have vanished: that is, unless I dreamed it up in the first place, he thought to himself.

As he sank into a stupor, he saw around him first his mother, then Rosa, Enrica, and Livia, their loneliness, and he decided that he must have infected them with his disease. He thought he saw himself playing alone, imagining the playmates and friends he'd never had. Only when he turned to look more carefully did the child have Tettè's hollow, absentminded face.

Then came darkness.

Wrapped in her warm housecoat, Livia was smoking a cigarette and allowing her thoughts to roam freely. She'd always been afraid of Sunday afternoons, just before nightfall; it was the time when loneliness reached out its fingers, just like the darkness, expanding into people's lives, placing people face-to-face with their souls, stripping away any last possibility of continuing to lie to oneself.

During the years of her marriage, she'd been so terribly alone; her husband was always traveling, gone on endless concert tours, with the clear understanding that the last thing he wanted was for her to accompany him; he liked the freedom to be with his countless lovers. Not that she was any less lonely when he was home, she thought with an ironic smile.

Even now, I'm alone, she realized; but the color of my loneliness has somehow changed. Then I was in despair, and now I'm full of hope.

She walked over to the window, which rattled from the rain, and thought back to the winter night when she had looked out from her waterfront hotel room and seen Ricciardi, on the street, in the swaying light of the streetlamps, in the foam from the storm-tossed sea. What that man did to her soul was pretty close to what the wind had been doing to the sea that night. She smiled at herself, because she'd just imagined she'd glimpsed him, sitting on a bench in the pouring rain, right outside her front door.

And then she realized she wasn't imagining a thing. It was really him.

Enrica was uneasy. She couldn't have said why; Sunday had gone its wet, gray way, a wet Sunday Mass in the pouring rain, no stroll in the Villa Nazionale, just lunch and the radio, followed by a light dinner. Nothing out of the ordinary.

But she felt wrong, somehow: a vague tightness in her chest, a fear of some kind, an anxiety. Really, she should say, a sense of anguish.

She'd finished her reply to Ricciardi's letter. To tell the truth, she'd finished it at least five different times, having rewritten it whenever she thought of another thing to say, another thing to explain, another thing to leave unstated. She sensed that this would be the last push, converting the glances out the window, the tentative waves, and the smiles from a distance into a full and actual acquaintance: a transformation into her dream of strolls hand-in-hand, movie theaters, and downtown cafés.

Then why this sense of anguish?

She put the idea of a presentiment out of her mind. She didn't believe in those things, and she didn't like to think about them. She went to the window to look out at the rain; through the wet glass, she saw the building across the way, the windows of Ricciardi's apartment.

In one of them, the one in the living room that she now knew so well, she saw Rosa, looking out.

 

Livia was drying Ricciardi off, using a large cotton towel.

The maid stood watching from the door of the bedroom, concerned and uncomfortable: she had seen her own mistress run out of her bedroom, grab an overcoat from its peg, and shoot out of the apartment, leaving the front door wide open behind her; from the window she'd seen her rush out onto the street, in the pouring rain, in her slippers and wearing her housecoat beneath the overcoat, bareheaded; then she had seen her signora approach a man sleeping on a bench, quite possibly a hobo or a panhandler; she'd seen her throw her arms around the man and help him to his feet; then she'd seen her help the man along as he stumbled woozily. And bring him into the building, and then into the apartment.

Now her mistress had removed his trench coat, his jacket, his tie, his shirt, and even his undershirt. The articles of clothing were strewn across the floor, in puddles of water; and she was drying him, rubbing his head and his hair with a dry towel. He was staring blankly, his eyes red, with dark circles underneath them. A skinny man, pale, and possibly quite sick.

Livia turned and spoke to her maid, in a state of extreme agitation.

“Adelina, hurry: go summon Arturo, the chauffeur. Tell him that I need him. And bring me another dry towel . . . no, first heat it up on the stove. And hang up these clothes to dry, right away. And make a cup of herbal tea.”

She turned her focus on him now, as Adelina left the room:

“Ricciardi, answer me . . . what's wrong, why were you out in the rain? What happened to you, tell me!”

He looked at her as if he had no idea who she was.

“The child, the child . . . that's me, don't you understand? He's dead, but I can't see him, I just can't see him. And I don't know what he'd say to me, and the dog, what does the dog want from me?”

Livia looked at him and didn't even try to understand. He was feverish and delirious. He was trembling and muttering.

“No, don't try to get up. Calm down, you have a fever, a very high fever. Here, lie down, don't worry about a thing. I'm here, I'll take care of you.”

Adelina returned with the herbal tea, accompanied by the chauffeur who was hastily buttoning his uniform.

“Arturo, go and summon the doctor . . . what's his name, the physician who lives downstairs? Mirante, that's it. I know that it's Sunday, but that doesn't matter! Tell him that I need him here immediately. Make sure he comes directly. And you, Adelina, help me, let's get him into a bed, in the guest room.”

In her terrible concern for the fever that she could feel in every part of Ricciardi's body, even though she couldn't understand a word he said in his delirium, Livia couldn't help but think that now she was no longer alone. Not anymore.

Now she had someone to look after.

 

 

 

Dr. Mirante came in a hurry; he was a short, middle-aged man, with a large mustache, a careful comb-over on top of his cranium, and a prominent belly. Being invited into the home of the beautiful and mysterious neighbor whom everyone was talking about, so late at night, had flattered him, making him hope that the reason might be quite another. And so, when he found himself in the presence of a feverish Ricciardi, he made no attempt to conceal his disappointment.

After examining the patient and administering a generous dose of quinine, he pulled the belt of his damask dressing gown tight and said:

“It's nothing but a powerful cold. His larynx is badly inflamed. But now the fever ought to fall, and then he'll need a few days of undisturbed bed rest.”

Livia was wringing her hands with worry.

“But quinine . . . are you afraid he's contracted malaria?”

The doctor dismissed that possibility in no uncertain terms:

“No, absolutely not. I just gave it to him for its antipyretic properties. Don't worry, Signora: your . . . friend will certainly recover, if he's given adequate care. Were you planning to look after him yourself? Were you going to keep him here?”

The chance to supply that harridan of a wife of his with succulent new gossip was too tempting an opportunity to pass up by just saying goodnight and leaving. Livia realized exactly what he was up to and she didn't like it one bit. As usual, she reacted with a counterattack:

“I certainly hope to, doctor. If he'll let me, then I really hope to. But Commissario Ricciardi from the police headquarters of Naples, that's his name and rank, does as he chooses. We'll see how it goes. In any case, I thank you for your courtesy, and once again I apologize for having asked you to come up on a Sunday night. I hope you'll give my warm regards to your delightful wife.”

Mirante read between the lines and gave in.

“Why, it's no trouble at all, Signora. As you know, the doctor's life is a mission that has no holidays or time off. If you like, I'll be glad to drop by tomorrow morning and take another look at that larynx. I'll certainly convey your regards. Good evening.”

Ricciardi collapsed into a deep sleep, populated by disconnected specters and images. His fever came and went, leaving behind it scattered thoughts that blossomed into nightmares.

The dog was always there in his dreams, looking at him from a distance and every once in a while emitting a single mournful howl, just as it had when the morgue attendants first took the dead Tettè away. The little boy never appeared–at least his face didn't–but Ricciardi met with the image of his dangling neck, and the rivulets of water dripping off it onto the pavement, an image that was always accompanied by the sadness it had instilled in him from the outset.

In his dream, he looked out the window and saw Enrica doing her needlepoint. He called to her but she couldn't hear him; so he went to Rosa, but she couldn't see him either. It was as if he himself had become a ghost. Rosa would glance at the pendulum clock on the wall, sigh, and brush away a tear. Ricciardi could tell that his
tata
was worried about him, but he had no way of reassuring her.

Then he found himself back out in the rain on Via Toledo. He saw Maione go by; he called to him but he couldn't seem to make himself heard, so he chased after him, trying to catch his attention, unsuccessfully. The brigadier walked past Sersale but didn't recognize him, because he'd never seen him before. Ricciardi tried to warn him, but no voice issued from his lips. I'm a ghost, he thought. A ghost, and no one can see me.

Livia went to check his temperature every half hour; around one o'clock it seemed to her that his temperature was rising, and she decided not to leave the guest bedroom again. She took off her housecoat and stretched out next to him.

The light from the streetlamps filtered in through the open shutters, allowing her to glimpse Ricciardi's profile. His clenched expression told her of the nightmares he was still living through. She wished she could enter into his dreams and somehow heal them, give him peace: the peace that he refused himself when awake, at least to quieten his nights.

In the partial darkness Ricciardi's features struck her as even more handsome: he looked like a very young man, lost in thoughts of something much bigger than him. “The boy,” he seemed to be murmuring; “tell the dog that I can't see him.” Still in the throes of delirium.