Death of a Serpent (19 page)

Changing the subject, Serafina asked, “How are your boys, they must be, what, nineteen?”

“Almost grown, both in university. Franco studies business, Vito, the law. So fortunate I found you. Went to your home just now looking for you. The magnificence coming from your kitchen! I thought it must be your cuisine.”

“My daughter, Renata. Born cooking, that one,” Serafina said.

“Oh, my, if she’s available for Christmas parties, I’ll tell my friends.”

Serafina felt her cheeks burn. “Her schedule’s heavy through the holidays, a pity.”

“Such a sweet girl. She resembles you, your eyes and height, your smile, yes she does. She gave me a plate of
ossa da mordere
. I’ve eaten two already. Delicious! She thought you’d be back for the noon meal.”

“Baking early for
Li Morti
,” Serafina said. Her mind ranged over the years. They’d known each other, she and Elisabetta, since childhood. Her mother, Maddalena, had—what to call it—a special relationship with the orphanage where Elisabetta and Tigro grew up. Inseparable, those two. Even as a child, Elisabetta watched over Tigro until he left suddenly. Broke her heart.

After Serafina went away to school, she lost touch until much later when it was time to deliver Elisabetta’s twins. But she’d heard the stories, how Tigro returned one day, stole Elisabetta during the night. She remembered how the couple showed up in Oltramari a year later, stood in front of the priest to pledge their vows with the Duomo’s bells pealing and the incense smoking, the candles blazing, the choir singing; Tigro, his teeth sparkling, his pockets bulging with coins; Elisabetta, her face radiant, her belly distended.
The poor woman, she adores him.

Aloud she said, “Tell me, are you feeling well?”

“I’m with child. That’s why I called on you, and I wondered if—”

“But of course. Certainly, my dear. You don’t have a midwife that lives closer?” She could hear delivery coins rattle in her purse.

“No one I trust,” Elisabetta said.

“Perhaps I can call on you in a few days? Tomorrow I have a chore and I expect to be busy with deliveries next week. Unfortunate, but—”

“A week from Saturday I’ll be home all day. If you arrive, say, early afternoon, after dinner. Bring your girls. Stay for tea—love to see them. But now you need to be home and I’m to meet Tigro and the boys, so I won’t keep you. Gianni, help me into the coach.”

“Saturday, November 3?” Serafina asked.

“Perfect.”

The women kissed on both cheeks.

A clubfooted man with serpentine eyes jumped down from his perch, scratched himself, limped over to where the women stood. He held Elisabetta’s elbow while she stepped into the carriage. After he closed the door, he stood with crossed arms, spat tobacco, and stared at Serafina.

Her eyes met his without flinching. Then she let her eyes graze from his face down to his feet, pausing to take in the uneven height of his shoes, roaming slowly, ever so slowly up his leg, to his thigh, to his not much of anything, up to the curved knife in his belt, to the ragged scar on his left cheek, ending with the wildness in his eyes.

After the women waved
addiu
, Serafina wondered if that limping cobra could be murdering Rosa’s women for pleasure or for knife practice, with or without orders from the don.

No More Carmela

Friday, October 26, 1866

T
hey sat, the three of them on the sofa and waited. Bright sunlight filtered through a slit in the drapery. It revealed the shabbiness of the furniture, the cleanliness of the wooden floors.

In a low voice Serafina said to Giulia, “How your sister can live here and not long to return home is outside my ken.”

Giulia looked at her hands. Vicenzu straightened his cravat.

They waited.

• • •

“I thought you might like to wear some of your dresses for a change,” Serafina said.

Carmela did not look at Serafina. “I was a child when I left,” she said. She looked at Giulia and Vicenzu and smiled.

“But I’ve redesigned them,” Giulia said. “I’ve let out the waists, removed the lace. The fabric, still very good.”

“Vicenzu, open the trunk so your sister can see.”

“A bribe?” Carmela winked at Vicenzu. She gave him a peck on the cheek.

“See?” Giulia asked and held up a rose watered silk. Giulia’s work was so fine that it took a practiced eye lurking around the seams to see a change in the fabrics.

“Try it on. See what you think,” Serafina said.

Carmela felt the fabric. Her eyes began to water. She shook her head. “Not right for the orphanage.”

“We want you to come home,” Serafina said.

“Carlo still in school?” Carmela asked.

“He comes home at the end of the week for
Li Morti
.”

“You’ll have to take the trunk back. The dresses are too fine to wear here.”

Silence.

Serafina said, “Vicenzu, Giulia, take the trunk outside and wait for me in the carriage.”

After the door closed, Carmela said, “Why do you surround yourself with your other children? Are you trying to hide from what I might say to you?”

Serafina felt her pulse quicken. She had returned too soon. Should have waited until Carlo was home. The wardrobe was an excuse, she knew. She begged Giulia to redesign the dresses and her daughter worked furiously these past two days, even skipping school yesterday. All with Serafina’s blessing, of course. And the scheme hadn’t worked. Her throat swelled.

She was silent for a while, then said, “In the past, we haven’t worked well together.”

Carmela said nothing but stared at the wall, immobile.

Serafina could hear children playing outside.

“Never did anything well together,” Carmela said. “From the moment I was born there was another one to occupy your thoughts. You were only interested in Carlo. All I heard was, ‘Carlo this and Carlo that.’ Never talked to me like you talked to him. When you were tender with him, you were cross with me. You never considered me as his equal. I hated you for it, hated you.” Her voice rose. “You are haughty, heartless, and you use your children. Just use us! Look at Renata. She does all your cooking. Giulia sews all your clothes. I’ll bet she worked day and night fixing those dresses for me!” Carmela’s lips trembled.

Serafina heard laughter. It seemed so far away. Like a hideous dawn, her failure as a mother loomed before her. Her eyes ached. Her ears rang. She needed Giorgio by her side. He knew how to make everything right. Where was he now? He’d jilted her by his death, same as running away: what difference did it make? What would he say to Carmela?

“So flighty you were, enamored of boys and men, and, yes, in love with yourself, but not interested at all in finding your own specialness. Hard to handle. Not at all like Carlo, no, worse than a stubborn mule. Even though you were more mature, had more brains, more fire than he, yet you were a terrible student. You didn’t care a jot about anyone but yourself!”

“Too much like you,” Carmela said.

Serafina’s face burned. She sat next to her daughter, touched her hand, but Carmela jerked it away and would not look at her. Had she, Serafina, been an unknown, a wretched one living rough on the streets, Carmela would have shown her more regard.

No good-byes were said.

Enough. I’ve had enough. No more, Carmela.

Carlo’s Return

Wednesday, October 31, 1866

S
erafina entered the kitchen, scooped a few olives from the barrel, and popped them into her mouth. “What’s for dinner, Renata, my good sweetness?”

“Chopped eggplant with melted goat cheese on garlic bread, swordfish and broccoli with charred pig over a hot green salad,” Renata said.

Carlo rattled his paper. “Asking about dinner when we haven’t eaten breakfast yet?”

“You’re home early my disheveled doctor. Skipped out on your exams?”

He rose to greet Serafina. “Renata wrote to me about Carmela so I came a few days early. Stubborn, my sister. Perhaps I can help her to see.”

“I’ve tried, believe me. She has no time for me. Visit as much as you like, but I’m finished. No more talk of Carmela.” She felt the prickle of tears. Swiped them from her eyes.

“But you can’t just—” He stopped when Renata put a finger to her lips.

Carlo buried his face again in
Giornale di Sicilia
. “Where’ve you been so early in the morning?” he asked.

“None of your business. You think just because you’re a big shot, the world owes you an explanation.” She swatted his newspaper. Then kissed him, hugged him a little longer than usual.

“You smell like the sea, Mama.”

“And you, like the cadaver room. Your hair needs a trimming. Poor Gloria.”

“Assunta does his laundry now. At least a month’s worth he brought with him.” Renata rolled her eyes. “And since you ask, Mama takes long walks in the morning.”

“Alone?” Carlo asked.

“Perfectly safe. The ne’er-do-wells are sleeping and I walk no farther than the cove. Well, not too much farther than the edge of town.”

Silence.

“Vicenzu?”

Renata scraped crumbs from the table. “Left early for the shop. Expecting the arrival of some supplies. After breakfast, I’m going to Sabatini’s for honey. Might buy some figs if they look good.”

Giulia and Maria sat on the other side of the kitchen, both of them busy. Serafina smiled. She followed Giulia’s finger moving underneath a string of English words as she read her
Godey’s
. Maria studied a sheet of music. They ran to kiss her when Serafina called to them.

Chewing a piece of bread she stole from Carlo’s plate, Serafina said, “Giulia, I have an assignment for you, but later. Maria, my lamb, a new piece of music?”

“Brahms. All the rage in Europe, Donna Minerva says.”

“I know, but you’re too young for that darkness. Stick to Scarlatti.”

“But… “

“I’m teasing. But a little lightness would be good for us today. Merriment, please.” She looked at her watch pin.

“I fixed the hem of your wool dress,” Giulia said. “Hung it back in your closet.”

“That was the assignment. Done before I even asked.” She kissed Giulia’s head.

“Graziella had her baby last night, I heard,” Renata said.

“A boy with excellent lungs.” Serafina reached into her reticule, handed over the money. “From the proud father.”

She wiped the corners of her mouth with forefinger and thumb, and sighed, “I thought Maria would be the midwife, but she was born for music, Giulia for costuming, you for cuisine. No matter, we must each follow our own specialness. So that’s settled. Too bad your papa died before we could have made one more girl.”

Renata set her mother’s breakfast on the table and Serafina sat. She took a bite of
biancumanciari
and closed her eyes. “The orange sauce, delicious. Makes me crazy, such bitterness smashing into sweetness, the smell of almonds and oranges mixed in with the aroma of your caffè—divine. I feel the springtime invade November.” She twirled her spoon.

Carlo reached for part of Serafina’s bread but she slapped his hand.

“Not yet November,” he corrected.

“Make sure we have enough cream and eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast. Sabatini’s honey, you say? Get a big jar. I need to eat well. Rosa’s guards and I have business.”

Carlo folded his paper. “What sort of business? Better yet; don’t tell us, it’s too early to hear about your treacheries.”

“We search the lower part of town and shore for clues to the killing of Rosa’s women.”

Her children stared at her as if she had spoken in a different tongue. She looked from one to the other. Then the dawn: the loss of their father was raw, her efforts at comedy, another one of her failures. “Not to worry,” she said, softly. “The wild one hasn’t been invented who can rid the world of me.”

Giulia’s finger began moving again on the page of her magazine. Maria buried her head in her music. She hummed a strange melody.

The domestic entered, carrying Totò. When he saw Serafina, he reached out to her.

“See how he adores me?” she asked.

“Wait a few years,” Carlo said.

She got up and walked over to her youngest son, arms outstretched. “Renata, some
biancumanciari
for our little prince, and warm milk with bits of chocolate. He needs to eat, grow tall like his brother, don’t you, my honey bee, but without his fat mouth.” She planted his face with kisses. “And your specialness, my little man, what is it? Never mind, you’ll know it soon enough.”

Li Morti

Friday, November 2, 1866

A
fter the noon meal, Serafina snipped flowers from the old geranium. She’d visit the cemetery before joining up with her children. Blowing them a kiss, she left.

In contrast to the vermilion blossoms she clutched, the November light flattened the world on this, the
festa
of
Li Morti
. Events would begin with a procession of actors from the cemetery gates, winding through town and down the Via Serpentina to the arena near the sea. There they’d stage a play, usually a farce of recent events and public figures.

But as Serafina passed through the public gardens and the piazza, her attention was far from the festivities. She seemed not to notice the old soldiers, the roughs with vacant stares and missing limbs, a newcomer in need of a bath lurking near the rope seller’s store. Like the spokes of a carriage wheel spinning around its hub, her brain whirled round and round a half-formed picture of the murderer.

Who could he be, this killer? He was mad, of course, but clever at hiding his wild torment, someone whom all three victims knew and trusted. Eugenia? At this stage, she couldn’t rule her out, but believed, along with Loffredo, that the killer was male, his soul caught in a spell. Like the mourner at Gemma’s wake, or Falco, a customer who had helped himself to all three women. Was Rosa keeping information from her, more than what she, Serafina, hadn’t already wrenched from the madam’s mouth? Probably. Her customers tended to be wealthy with impeccable stature. Stature? Reputation? But she knew a public persona was often a chimera.