The Bottom of Your Heart (28 page)

There was another silence. The man gasped out a breath. Ricciardi and Maione stood up; Guido walked them out.

The brigadier said to him: “Before leaving, we have to ask: where were you on the night between Thursday and Friday?”

The young man met the brigadier's eyes: “I was with my father. The way I have been every night since he's been like this. I don't like to leave him alone. He's always taken care of me, as far back as I can remember. It seems to me that the very least I can do is take care of him now.”

Ricciardi understood him well. He understood him, and how.

“Tell me one last thing: what will happen, if you don't take your degree? If your father dies before you take your degree?”

Guido shrugged his shoulders. The commissario noticed that the left shoulder hung lower than the right; a slight curvature, a minor deformation he hadn't noticed at first.

“He was the director of the clinic, so he kept our shares constant even though the chief investments came from the other two partners. In other words, everyone was happy with this split. But if I can't replace him, they'll have to hire an outside medical director, and pay him a salary. At that point . . .”

Ricciardi finished for him: “At that point it will be easy to push you aside, won't it? They need only demand a new investment and you'll be unable to do anything.”

Guido looked away and out to sea, to the blue water glittering in the noonday sun behind a line of buildings.

“Yes. I imagine that could happen. But I will succeed, Commissario. I'll pass that damned exam, I'll get my degree, and I'll take my father's place.”

Maione murmured: “I'd bet on it. Now, of course you'll pass the exam.”

O
n the way back, they chose to cut inland; the route was a little longer but less packed with people, horses, and wheeled carts. Maione was the first to speak: “Commissa', if you ask me, these two aren't telling it straight. In practical terms they'd have been ruined, if the boy hadn't had this stroke of good luck, so to speak, with the professor's death. Because the professor, if I'm understanding this correctly, would have gone on flunking him, now and forever.”

Ricciardi agreed: “Right. If he couldn't pass that exam, he'd never have gotten his degree, he'd never have been able to take the place of his dying father, and the partners would have forced him out of the clinic.”

Maione wasn't done: “Apart from the exam, it seems to me that the dying doctor had other motives for wanting his old colleague dead. The man had ruined his life by writing that anonymous letter.”

The commissario wasn't entirely convinced.

“All quite true. And what's more the sheer bulk of the son lines up with the size of the man that the goldsmith told us about. Still, I have to wonder: what sense does it make to send a threatening letter and then proceed to do something like that? It amounts to a confession before the fact. What's more, why take revenge after more than twenty years? It doesn't add up. It's one thing to die and leave your son unemployed, it's another to send him to prison for the rest of his life.”

The brigadier wasn't willing to dismiss his theory: “Maybe it just wasn't premeditated, Commissa'. Maybe the son just went to have a talk with the professor, and since he showed no signs of changing his mind, he picked him up and threw him out the window. And the father, lying on his sickbed, found himself with a murder to cover up.”

“That could be. Anything could be. Did you notice that one of the son's shoulders is lower than the other? The jeweler might have noticed that detail. It's worth having another talk with him. In any case, first I want to meet Peppino the Wolf, and go see the professor's widow again; I'd like to figure out whether she knew about little Sisinella.”

Maione mulled over the idea. Then he said: “That's a possible lead, too, Commissa'. If a guy finds out that his wife . . . No, sorry, if a wife finds out that her husband is cheating on her, who can say what she might be capable of doing. But the lady was over at her cousins' place in the same apartment building, with her son, and I doubt she has the strength to throw anyone out a window.”

“No, I wasn't thinking about it that way. It wasn't the wife, that's for sure; I was thinking about Sisinella and her new boyfriend. I want to understand whether she might have taken any initiative on her own, such as going to call on the professor. As for Signora Iovine, I wonder if she might have noticed some change in her husband's mood.”

Maione murmured grimly: “Sure, of course. When a husband's being cheated on, or a wife for that matter, he's always the last to know.”

They reached the corner of Via Toledo and parted ways: Ricciardi continued toward the hospital, and Maione headed home. The brigadier said that he'd swing by later to see how Rosa was doing, but the commissario replied: “No, Raffaele; stay with your family today. I'll see you tomorrow in the office, we have a lot to get done.”

And he headed off, with a dagger in his heart.

 

Nelide stared at her aunt's placid face. The doctor had told her it wasn't possible, but she sensed that something was happening inside that head: she could spot almost imperceptible movements of the facial muscles, as if the old woman were dreaming.

The young woman's practical mind kept chugging away. What was she supposed to do now? Of course, she could go back to her village. It would be more appropriate for one of Rosa's sisters to be at her deathbed. That, however, would mean that for a period of at least two days, there would be no one tending to the sick woman but the young master.

Ah, yes, the young master. Another problem. Rosa had explained to her how incapable the man was when it came to running a house and taking care of himself. And she'd assigned to Nelide the task of looking after him: the young woman would inherit Rosa's responsibility to care for him.

Her first duty was to obey the instructions that her aunt had left her. Yes, she was sure of that. This is what she was born for. Once the thing that she felt was inevitable had happened, all obligations concerning Ricciardi would rest on her shoulders, and she would assume those tasks without doubts or hesitations.

No other woman in the family, Nelide decided, had a greater right than she did to run the household of Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi. Her own aunt had conferred that enormous charge upon her, and she would rise to the responsibility unless Ricciardi himself sent her away.

She turned her attention back to Rosa. Her aunt had taught her everything she could, and her example had formed the basis of Nelide's entire education. She loved her Aunt Rosa, and she felt ready to inherit her position. She only wished, though, that Rosa had been able to stay on a little longer with her and the young master, even bedridden; so that she could talk with her, confide in her, ask her advice.

In silence, without even mouthing the words with her lips, she said a prayer to the Madonna del Carmine—Our Lady of Mount Carmel—whose feast day would soon be here.
Madonnina
, she asked, won't you leave her here with me a little longer? If you don't need her up there right away, to tidy up heaven, maybe you could let her stay on a little longer here with me. Just so she could tell me one more time how to make the
teneredda
, or the
pizza roce
; or what I should do if the sharecroppers fall behind in their payments for more than a season; of if one of the plants out on the balcony starts to wither.

She wasn't afraid, Nelide. She didn't consider the task overwhelmingly challenging, nor did she think of herself as a girl who was still too young. She'd battled against drought, against two floods, against the epidemic that had ravaged the livestock. You're ready for anything once you've survived a winter during which hail has destroyed the harvest or the wolves have devoured eight sheep out of fourteen, if you've survived temperatures of 15 degrees with almost no firewood, when you've been forced to cut up the table and three chairs just to heat the house, and if the fever has carried off two baby brothers in a single autumn. Whatever happens, her aunt used to tell her, gives you a gift: the good things and the bad things. And the finest gifts come from the worst things, because they teach you what to do to keep from having it happen again. The good things leave you nothing but a pleasant memory, and that's not very helpful.

One time Rosa had taken her by the hand and led her to the window. ‘Look, Ne',” she'd told her. “You see those two young ladies shielding themselves from the sunlight with that white silk parasol? You see them? Well, that little umbrella is just stuff and nonsense. You have to carry it in your hand and it has the same weight and bulk as an ordinary umbrella, but it shelters you from neither the sun nor the rain. It's good for nothing. You, Ne', should only load yourself down with the things that you need. You shouldn't carry anything useless. I will teach you the things that are necessary, and those are the only things you need to carry with you.”

Nelide had thought it over. Then she'd turned to look at Rosa and had said to her: ‘
Sí, 'a zi'
. I understand. Only the things that are necessary.”

'Nu sacco vaco nun se regge all'erta
, she thought to herself. And it was true: a empty sack can't stand up. An empty sack flops over onto the ground. And she, Nelide Vaglio, wasn't an empty sack. Aunt Rosa had filled this sack to the brim.

Madonni'
, just a little longer, if it's possible, she thought, addressing the Virgin Mary. Just a little longer.

With a quick swipe, she brushed away a tear.

D
r. Modo walked into Rosa's bedroom and found Ricciardi sitting beside the bed, holding his
tata
's
 
hand. Just beyond them stood Nelide, in the shadows.

“It seems to me that you're worse off than she is, you know that? Take a look at yourself: your hair isn't combed, you need a shave, your shirt wants buttoning. You're losing all your charm. Your legendary success with women is in danger, and the ladies of this city will notice that there's a magnificent physician, no longer so young, but still perfectly fit.”

“The clock has run out as far as you're concerned, Bruno. Your only hope of winning women's hearts these days is with cold hard cash.”

“Money well spent,
caro
. And after all, those women are the best: professional, kindhearted, good listeners, and they don't care about being taken to dinner. It's a choice, not a necessity, remember that.”

Ricciardi looked at Rosa.

“I came back and found her unchanged. Aren't there any signs of improvement?”

“Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, or more likely you're refusing to listen. She could remain in this condition for a long time. I can't rule out the chance of her waking up, I've seen it happen: once a soldier was hit by a shell fragment and he slept for nearly two months; we'd even thought of finishing him off ourselves so we could use the cot, and it looked like he didn't have a chance. Then he opened his eyes and asked for something to eat. But he was twenty years old. Rosa, on the other hand, I don't know . . . a day, a month. She's an old woman. Strong, but old.”

Ricciardi rubbed his eyes.

“Then what can we do? I . . . I can't just stand here and do nothing.”

The doctor leaned back against the wall and hugged his arms to his chest.

“No, in fact. And if you did, it wouldn't do a bit of good. You need to go home, wash up, put on some clean clothes. Get something to eat, go to your office. If anything does happens, and I don't expect it to be anytime soon, I'll call for you. The staff has been alerted: they'll let me know the instant there are any new developments. For that matter, it's thanks to you, you and people like you, that I sleep here in the hospital as often as I do, and that poor dog has gotten used to sitting around waiting in the courtyard; the nurses feed him scraps every day.”

“Please, Bruno, do whatever you can. If there are special treatments, however expensive, I'd . . .”

“Sure, as if it was a matter of money. I know that you're rich, you think I don't? I'd have told you. And after all,” he added, lowering his voice, “if there had been anything we could do, I'd have already done it, in part because the young lady over there scares me silly, and has no intention of leaving this room. A couple of hours ago, when you weren't here, I told her that she could go home, because Rosa was being given excellent care.”

“What did she say?”

“She glared at me and said something in that Cilento language of yours whose meaning remains obscure to me: three dentals, four gutturals, a couple of aspirates, and vowels as tight as any dipthong. Then she swiveled her eyes back to Rosa's face, and that's where they stayed. I don't know if the girl has had a chance to pee since yesterday, I certainly haven't seen her budge. Can you ask here whether she'd be willing, anytime in the next hundred years, to donate her body to science? I'd love to study her.”

In spite of himself, an amused expression appeared on Ricciardi's face.

“The women of Cilento are indestructible, Doctor. By the time Nelide will be available for scientific study, you'll be a plaster bust on a plinth in the atrium of this hospital.”

The doctor gave him a worried look.

“Seriously, though, Ricciardi: go home. Get some sleep. You're no help to Rosa in this state.”

The commissario turned his eyes back to his
tata
: “I'll just hold her hand until this evening. Then I'll go home. But right now, just let me stay with her a little longer. Maybe she can feel my hand, who knows?”

 

Rosa felt a caress on her hand and opened her eyes. She felt fine, well rested. She tried to get up but couldn't.