Vipers (16 page)

And after all, it's such a beautiful day, he thought sadly; and for no specific reason, Livia's wounded expression appeared before him.

T
he first car to leave was the 7 Red, which went past the Archeological Museum and then made its way up Via Salvator Rosa, and uphill from there along Via dell'Infrascata, where a series of secondary country roads branched off toward trattorias and farms.

From the streetcar window, as they held tight against the jerks and jolts caused by the joints in the tracks, Maione and Ricciardi looked out on the changing landscape, as working class apartment blocks gave way to the sprawling and tangled mass of Mediterranean vegetation.

The Vomero neighborhood hadn't changed much since the Great War: in a way, in fact, it constituted a holdover from the turn of the century, in a city that was constantly in a state of chaotic transformation. The hillside surmounted by the Castel Sant'Elmo, the last sorrowful image in the eyes of the emigrants as they steamed away from the harbor of Naples, was still for the most part verdant and unspoiled. There were scattered mansions constructed in the fetching
stile floreale
, or floral style of Art Nouveau, or else in imitation of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, flanked by dirt roads running through orchards and vegetable gardens—and only a very few of those roads were open to through traffic. A nucleus of buildings similar to those in the center of the city—tall, austere, nondescript apartment buildings—had sprung up like an invasive species of vegetation around the funicular railway stations, but all around them, the countryside had remained unchanged.

During the ride up, Ricciardi caught fleeting glimpses of shepherds and peasants, the occasional bricklayer hard at work, and as so often happened, at the foot of a scaffolding he saw the image of two men, one with a vast concave depression on the side of his ribcage and the other with an unmistakable fracture to his spinal cord, both of them murmuring about the extreme terror that accompanied their falls. The foundations of these buildings are sunk in blood, he thought bitterly. One of the prices of prosperity, but not the only one.

The driver announced the Antignano stop, and the streetcar stopped with a jerk. The brigadier and the commissario got out and found themselves in an open space, enclosed on one side by a wall of tangled vegetation and on the other by an agglomeration of shacks. A number of children, half naked, their skin dark as old leather, played with a rag ball held together with twine.

Maione got the attention of a couple of these urchins and, unlike their counterparts in the center of town, they didn't take to their heels at the sight of the policemen's uniforms. He asked them where he could find the Cennamo family.

Having been given directions, the two men headed toward the center of the village. On either side of the streets, little more than dirt tracks, larger buildings, relatively well kept and nearly all recently built, alternated with tumbledown shacks. The spring air brought scents of the nearby forest and the windows of even the poorest houses were adorned with vases of multicolored geraniums. There were children and plenty of animals, dogs and chickens and, in low enclosures, hogs, nanny goats, and sheep. The atmosphere was quite different from that of the rest of the city.

They found themselves standing before a building that, even though it was in the poorer part of the village, betrayed a different economic condition: pink plaster and wooden shutters painted green, balconies with bellied wrought-iron railings, and even a further vertical addition, still under construction. Ricciardi and Maione exchanged a glance and both mulled over the thought that, by a supreme twist of fate, money from Naples's most straitlaced and devout families had flowed, through Ventrone's perverse pleasures, into the pockets of a poor family that had given birth to a prostitute.

And both of them thought, sadly, that the woman had paid for that prosperity not only with her body, but with her life.

They knocked at the front door and were answered by a very young girl wearing a white apron. They even have a servant, thought Maione.

The housekeeper ushered them into a garishly furnished living room, which reminded Ricciardi of the bordello, with the exception of the statue of San Gennaro, which stood roughly a foot and a half tall, with an episcopal tiara and staff, under a glass bell on a mantel. Neither of the two policemen had any doubts about the gift's provenance.

The girl came to the door and said:

“The Signora will be right down,” then dropped to her knees and went back to work, scrubbing the front carpet.

A few minutes later, a woman entered the room. She couldn't have been that old, and the life that she led certainly hadn't always been comfortable. Her face was wrinkled and most of her teeth were missing, but her back was strong and erect. She was dressed in black, with an ample skirt and a light shawl over her shoulders; her dyed hair was surmounted by a clasp made of horn.

She addressed them roughly, staring meaningly at Maione's uniform:

“What do you people want from us? We're honest folk, we haven't done anything.”

Maione was accustomed to that kind of reaction.

“Signo', no one here is accusing you of anything. I'm Brigadier Maione of the mobile squad, and this is Commissario Ricciardi. And you are?”

The woman didn't blink an eye.

“I'm Concetta Cennamo, the owner of this house. And you're the ones who came to call on me; what is it that you want?”

Ricciardi decided to speak up.

“Signora, are you the mother of Maria Rosaria Cennamo?”

The woman stiffened.

“I was her mother, yes.”

“So you know that . . .”

She nodded again, just once. Then she said:

“Women like her, that's what becomes of them. I hadn't seen her in years, she was dead to me the day she became a streetwalker, instead of trying to raise her son like a respectable person.”

Her voice was cutting and harsh, and she spat out the words with an icy indifference that sent chills down one's spine. That woman wasn't grieving in the slightest.

Maione said:

“Signo', can I ask you how you came to hear about what happened to your daughter?”

Concetta shifted her attention to the brigadier.

“I heard it from Peppe, Peppe 'a Frusta. His family lives nearby, right at the end of the road. I had to comfort him, he was sobbing like a little boy, he was inconsolable. He still loved her, as if she was the same girl she'd always been. As if she hadn't become what she turned into.”

From the street came a woman's laughter and the bleating of lambs. Easter was coming out here, too.

After a brief pause, Ricciardi took a look around:

“You have a beautiful house, Signora. May I ask what line of work you're in, in your family?”

Maione struggled to suppress a laugh: he was curious to hear how Viper's mother would answer that question. She sat up straight and proud in her chair.

“My husband, who was named Gennaro,” and she pointed to the statue of the saint of that name, as if it were a portrait of her late spouse, “died young. I raised that shameless hussy and her younger brothers and sister all on my own. Children have a duty to help their mother, especially a mother like me, who sacrificed all her life for them.”

Ricciardi didn't allow himself to be diverted from the point of his question.

“So Maria Rosaria's brothers and sister help you, monetarily?”

The woman burst into a mocking laugh.

“If only. If anything I help them, I practically have to feed them and clothe them myself, and there are three of them. My two sons are day laborers, and my daughter married a miserable wretch who's even more wretched than she is.”

“So this house, the work you're doing on it, the money to feed and clothe your children, how do you pay for it all?”

Maione was enjoying this enormously. But Concetta didn't seem embarrassed in the slightest.

“The son of that whore lives here with me. The money is to make sure he's properly cared for. I'd like to see her try to keep all that money for herself, instead of paying for his expenses.”

The brigadier broke in.

“So you say the child lives with you? And where is he?”

Without even turning around, the woman clapped her hands and, when the housekeeper came promptly, still with the scrub brush in her hands, she said:

“Bring the child.”

After a brief interval of hostile silence, a little boy, about eight, came trotting into the room, his face and hands spattered with mud, his cheeks ruddy. Beneath a shock of midnight-black hair glittered a pair of gorgeous eyes. With a stab of pity, Ricciardi recognized the woman's features, delicate and fine-drawn as they had been, even in death; paradoxically, he also discerned the grandmother's features, though on her face they were shrouded by harsh anger.

“What's your name?”

The child looked at his grandmother, who nodded. Then he spoke:

“Gennarino Cennamo, at your service, sir.”

Ricciardi signaled to the woman, who sent the boy away with a glance.

“He's a lovely little boy,” he said.

Concetta retorted:

“He's a child of sin, born to a lady of the night who didn't know how to hold on to her man, the boy's father; she didn't know how to get him to marry her and she didn't even have the wit to get some other man to marry her; all she knew was how to be a whore, and there's not money enough in this world to wash away the shame that she's brought on her son and the rest of the family. I'd rather go on living in the mud and stealing food from the dogs and the pigs than bear the shame that one has made me suffer for the rest of my life.”

She'd uttered that tirade without a shift in her tone of voice, without the slightest hint of anger. In the woman's heart there wasn't a speck of love or grief for her murdered daughter.

Ricciardi said:

“You wouldn't know who might have done this thing? You don't know about any enemies, or some jealous woman, for instance, or a man who might have hated her?”

During the silence that ensued, the woman displayed no emotion or uncertainy. Then she said:

“Someone always hates women like her. It was the same way when she was a little girl, just too pretty. Beauty, you know, is a sin. It's not like everyone can afford to be beautiful. If you're too beautiful, then you need to leave, otherwise this is how you wind up. Anyway, I have no idea who could have done it; she sent us money by mail, we hadn't seen her in years. Her son doesn't even know who she is. Who she was.”

That final correction was the only hint of uncertainy.

Ricciardi said:

“One last thing, Signora. Did you know that Giuseppe Coppola, whom you know as Peppe 'a Frusta, had asked your daughter to marry him?”

“Yes, I know that. He came to me first, to ask my permission, can you believe it?”

The commissario was surprised to hear that the woman seemed to find the idea amusing.

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him that as far as I was concerned he was crazy, that it was something that could never happen; that he'd just be throwing away his own good name and that his family would never forgive him. Peppe is a good boy, a
bravo guaglione
, he didn't deserve that curse.”

Maione was disgusted. The two men stood up.

“Signo', thanks for your cooperation. I'd like to inform you that tomorrow morning, at seven, the funeral procession for your daughter will be leaving from Via Chiaia.”

Concetta eyed him coldly.

“And since when do they give a funeral for women like her? They'll toss her in the gutter, where she belongs.”

Ricciardi couldn't restrain himself:

“Signora, do you hear what you're saying? You're talking about your daughter, flesh of your flesh. A young woman, just twenty-five, who was no more than a child when she was raped. Don't you think that she has a right to a little pity?”

Concetta shot to her feet with astonishing agility. She stared at Ricciardi and said:

“All I know is that she was a whore. And now she's even left us saddled with debt. Do you want to tell me who's going to pay for the rest of this constructon?”

S
he never expected to feel this bad. Still in bed, with the shutters fastened tight, in the darkness of her room, her pillow soaked with tears. She'd never have expected. Not now.

She had a past, a life that had been difficult more than once. The death of her son, just one year old, of diphtheria, had been the most painful moment of all, and she'd become accustomed to comparing everything terrible that had happened since to that event.

Her husband's domineering and violent personality—he might have been the most respected tenor in all Italy, a close personal friend of Il Duce, but his genius was matched only by the most staggering egotism she'd ever witnessed. She'd suffered—from his constant betrayals, from the loneliness into which he'd forced her, and from the silence in which he'd left her.

She'd held tight to the one thing she still had: herself, her beauty, a social circle of which she'd become the center through her loveliness, her charm, and her class; the same things that had brought her backstabbing, slander, insults, various other betrayals. Beauty is a crime that cannot be forgiven.

She'd stopped looking for love. It wasn't that she'd given up on it, no: she'd simply relegated that emotion to a lower rank in her soul. There had been men, men whose courtship she'd decided to accept, men who'd managed to charm her, or at least aroused her curiosity, in the hopes that they might be different from the rest. They all proved, however, to be no different from all the others.

And then there had been that meeting, that ridiculous acquaintance which had unhinged every resolution of solitude and serenity, every plan she'd had to renounce hope of a future. A meeting that took place in the most illogical circumstances imaginable: the investigation into the murder of her husband.