The Bottom of Your Heart (20 page)

“I don't understand why the Fascists waste all that time and money assembling a network of confidential informants that reports to the secret police: they'd only really need to pay a little attention to you and they'd know everything they want to know and a good deal more in the bargain.”

The
femminiello
made a delicate gesture, as if shooing away a fly: “You're too kind, as always, Brigadie'. Anyway, the professor's death has been the talk of the town, you can just imagine, he was a prominent figure in this city. Some have only good things to say about him, others have only bad, but everyone has something to say. And so when they saw you and the commissario heading for the morgue, it didn't take long to put two and two together. So someone pushed him out that window, didn't they?”

“I don't even want to answer you. I'm exhausted, believe me. Exhausted. In any case, let's just say for argument's sake that someone did throw him out the window, in your opinion who could it have been?”

Bambinella lifted her enameled forefinger to her chin and rolled her mascaraed eyes to the ceiling.

“Well, now, Brigadie', the only real problem is to narrow down the field of candidates. A physician like him may bring babies into the world, but he kills a lot of people, too. For instance, a month ago there was that thing with the Wolf, you heard about that?”

Maione nodded: “Something, yes, we've heard about him. He seems to be a dangerous type, isn't that right?”

Bambinella adopted a sorrowful expression. She was impressively skilled at accompanying her stories with vivid expressions, almost as if she were performing a skit.

“He's a beautiful young man, all the girls in the quarter were mooning after him, but he, poor thing, only had eyes for his wife, Rosinella. They'd been together since they were kids. He's a tough guy, Brigadie', strong and decisive, and he may have stabbed one or two men in his time, and he may even have a few men on his consience, but he's a man of honor, and the poor of this city, when they've been done wrong, turn to men like him.”

Maione snapped in irritation: “Bambine', you shouldn't talk like that! Don't you understand that we're in this mess precisely because when people are in trouble, instead of turning to us, whose job it is to make sure the laws are obeyed, they go to the people who obey only the law of the knife and enrich themselves at the expense of others? That's the curse afflicting this city: that instead of coming to us, people in need of justice go to your men of honor.”

“Don't you ever wonder why people do that? Well, in any case, the Wolf is a talented young man. And this professor was responsible for his wife's death in childbirth: when they brought the woman to the hospital that night, because she was giving birth prematurely, he was nowhere to be found.”

“What do you mean, he was nowhere to be found?”

Bambinella put both hands together, impatiently: “Jesus, Brigadie', it means that instead of being at the hospital, he wasn't there.”

“Well, who said he always had to be at the hospital? Maybe he was at home, asleep.”

Bambinella snickered: “Oh, no, he wasn't. They combed the whole city looking for him. The Wolf has a network of men. His line of business is transport, and what with the horsecarts, the carriages, and the trucks, he has a whole army of drivers. You'd say it was the middle of the day from the noise of wheels turning on the cobblestones in
vicoli
,
vicarielli
, alleys, lanes, streets, and piazzas. Wherever you turned, there was someone looking for the professor.”

“And did they ever find him?”

“Of course they found him. But it was too late. If they'd only thought to ask me, I could have told them right away where he was. Instead, by the time he got to the operating room there was nothing he could do for poor Rosinella; she never even lived to see her baby.”

Empathizing, with a spectacular immediacy, with the suffering of the dead mother, Bambinella suddenly turned on the waterworks, sobbing and weeping like a fountain. Maione, accustomed to her emotional outbursts, waited irritably for her to stop: he knew there was no way to interrupt.

“I can't even think about that poor baby girl born without her mother . . . I'm a little orphan girl myself . . . and Rosinella, so pretty and so in love with her husband . . . who knows how badly she wanted that little girl . . . she'd even prepared a layette, she had . . .”

Bambinella went on crying for several minutes, her sobs punctuated by heartrending wails. Then the
femminiello
blew her nose into an enormous red handkerchief, producing a sound like a trombone's, and got a grip on herself.

Maione asked: “You said that if they'd bothered to ask you, you could have told them where the professor was . . .”

Bambinella dabbed at her face, twisting her mouth to protect her makeup.

“The professor had a
commarella
. That is to say, he had an understanding with a young woman. It was a serious thing, practically out in the light of day.”

The brigadier threw both arms wide: “Well, tell me all about it, this light of day. That way we'll both know what you're talking about.”

Bambinella once again put her hands together.

“Well then, Brigadie', a few years ago, maybe it was two, the professor happened to be examining a girl who was working in the Speranzella bordello. You know the place, it's on the cheap side: students, soldiers, sailors, that kind of clientele; a line stretching down the stairs, the madam at the cash register, and four or five rooms for the whores. This one was very young, not even eighteen, and she came from a neighboring town; she'd been a maid, then she'd been fired because the master of the house had lost his head for her and his wife had figured it out. In short, a girl has to eat, she wasn't welcome back home, and so she found a position at the bordello.”

Maione laughed: “Sure she did, she found a position, as if they'd hired her at city hall. Well, all right, go on.”

“As you know, in our line of work we run certain health risks, so to speak; in a luxury bordello they provide medical care, in second-rate bordellos, that's more rare. To make a long story short, she caught an unpleasant disease and went to the hospital. The professor, as I heard from a girlfriend of mine who'd been at boarding school with the girl, noticed her as she was being examined by one of his assistants, and was struck dumb. He insisted on taking over her case and they began seeing each other. Then he took her out of the bordello and set her up in a little apartment all her own in Vomero. He bought an exclusive on her, in other words.”

Maione sighed: it wasn't an uncommon thing for wealthy men to indulge in that pastime: purchasing the lives of very young girls.

“I want the girl's given name, surname, and address.”

“Don't you even want to hear how the story ends? Anyway, the
guagliona
's name is Teresa Luongo, but everyone knows her as Sisinella. She lives in Vomero, on a street that crosses Corso Scarlatti, which I happen to know because a customer of mine who sells vegetables in that neighborhood sees her come and go. But now she'll have to find another special client.”

“You said that there's more to the story?”

“For the past few months, there's been a rumor going around that Sisinella has a sweetheart. Another one, that is, aside from the professor. A musician who plays the
pianino
, you know, the ones who go around town selling sheet music.”

Maione narrowed his eyes: “Were they seen together?”

“No, no, a girl who's lucky enough to be kept by a rich man doesn't gamble that away for love, Brigadie'. No one saw them. Still, the young man buzzes around her relentlessly, and he sighs and sings. When someone looks up at a window, sighs, and sings, there's usually a good reason for it.”

“I see. And what's the singer's name?”

“Now let me think . . . his name is Tore. Salvatore Cortese. A handsome young man, from what I hear.”

Maione got to his feet: “All right, you've told me enough. But don't be surprised if I drop by again, because it strikes me that this is one of those cases where you open one door and you find two more.” As he was about to leave, he stopped for a moment and turned around: “One last thing, Bambine'. Do you know a certain Pianese, Ferdinando Pianese, Via Toledo, no. 270?”

Bambinella furrowed her brow: “Why, what does he have to with what happened to the professor? What has Fefè done?”

Maione pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead: “Nothing, he has nothing to do with it. It's a completely different matter. So, you know him?”

“Why, who doesn't know Fefè? He's a mouthpiece, a two-bit lawyer who never has work. He lets himself be kept by a couple of old biddies he flatters, and spends all his money on cards and women. Every once in a while he comes to pay a call on one of us, too, or he invites us out to one of his parties that go on all night long. A guy who likes to have a good time, in other words. But why do you ask, Brigadie'?”

“Nothing, no reason. It's just a name that came up in another investigation, money that was involved in the numbers racket.”

“Typical of Fefè, some little old lady must have died and until he finds a replacement he's trying his luck. He's not a bad-hearted boy, but he does have his weaknesses, and he's no match for temptation.”

Maione feigned nonchalance: “Weaknesses? What weaknesses?”

“Oh, he likes to drink, for one thing, and he likes to go to the racetrack. But I'm surprised to hear that he might be involved in the numbers racket, it must mean he finally figured out that you can't get rich betting on the ponies. But his biggest weakness, the one he spends most of his money on, is clothing: he's a dandy, he certainly doesn't skimp on fine fabrics. And then there's his other weakness, the reason he dresses so elegantly in the first place.”

“What reason is that?” Maione asked, immediately regretting the question.

Bambinella replied: “Blonde women. He's just crazy about blondes.”

And she burst out laughing.

M
astro Nicola Coviello finished polishing the brooch with a rag and then laid it on the workbench beneath a ray of light that angled in through the low open door.

And he sighed.

He always sighed, when he finished a project. It was a form of detachment, an instant of relaxation after the pangs of birth. He imagined that women must do just what he did, he who kept inside him, sometimes for a long time, something that was at first only an idea, an image, until he started working on it, shaping the cold, inert, soulless material. And little by little, something began to emerge, something perhaps even more beautiful than the vague idea he'd had in the beginning; finally he polished it, worked away all the sharp edges, eliminated the imperfections, until he found himself holding a piece of jewelry that was complete unto itself, with an aesthetic autonomy that transcended the heart and soul of whoever had commissioned it.

Obviously Mastro Nicola didn't think of it in these exact words: in his life, he'd only worked, he'd never had the chance to cultivate an emotional vocabulary with books and music. Still, he had a strong aesthetic sense, and he knew when the time had come for an object he'd made with his able hands to begin its own life. But he couldn't ward off a hint of sadness when that time came.

Mastro Nicola liked his profession. He'd always liked it, ever since he was a child and would spend hours playing at the foot of the bench on which a distant cousin worked; that cousin had imparted to him the rudiments of the art. His father was a fisherman, but the proximity of the goldsmiths'
borgo
to the port had created an incongruous contiguity between those two very different activities, and as a result both professions were practiced in many families.

Nicola didn't like fishing, and even though the sea appealed to him, it frightened him too; the sea had swallowed up his father. One day, after a terrible storm, the boat his father had sailed out in with three other fishermen was found drifting, empty. That was not the life for him.

Far easier and safer to craft precious metals, the profession that constituted the other pillar
 
of the
borgo
. And since the son of Gaetano the fisherman showed enormous talent and applied himself assiduously, it wasn't hard for him to wangle an apprenticeship.

Nicola himself, however, didn't especially like apprentices; they were generally careless and lazy, they failed to reserve for their work that sense of the sacred that he demanded. But they were a necessary evil: the unwritten code of the goldsmiths demanded that the profession and the skills that went with it be handed down and kept within the bounds of their guild. Every workshop passed from one generation to the next, following a line of descent not always governed by ties of blood.

An apprentice necessarily ought to be involved with what his master is doing, but Nicola liked to have his little secrets. He worked on different objects in different moods, and he transfused his hidden temperament into whatever he was shaping.

To see him from without, his body deformed by constant work, he gave the impression of a sad man, introverted, taciturn to the point almost of mutism, but from his large, skilled hands came veritable masterpieces of the goldsmith's art, jewelry that never failed to elicit marvel and admiration in the salons where it was worn.

Nothing, thought Nicola as he looked at the brooch. Almost always, those who received one of his creations as a gift understood nothing. Rich, spoiled women, illicit lovers, proud kept women who showed off his creations as if they were trophies, investitures, symbols of the role each played alongside wealthy, coarse men. Money. These jewels—fragments of the sky and the stars, the results of subtle, delicate invention and technique—were only as valuable as the money that had been paid for them. How squalid.