The cookpot bubbles away. It’s hot, so very hot. On your forehead, on your lip, beads of sweat form that you mop away with your handkerchief, before they can drip down to ruin your hair or your makeup.
You’ve dressed the way you usually do, you want him to find you neat and clean, if he happens to return. If by some chance they let him go. And if they decide not to, then he brought it on himself, then he asked for it. It was only natural that this is how it ended, you always knew it.
And that’s why you’re sitting and waiting now. Not that this is the first time; so many other nights you’ve pretended to sleep, your ears uselessly alert for the sound of a key turning in the lock, the sound of a door opening. So many times you’ve prayed for hours on end, hoping for him to come home. But this time it’s different.
Because, whether or not he comes back, today is a new day.
Ricciardi broke the silence that had followed the last statement.
“What were you fighting about?”
Capece smiled.
“I told you. It was a lovers’ skirmish. Jealousy. Do you know what jealousy is, Commissario? No, I imagine that you don’t. You’re a famous loner, aren’t you? No wife, no girlfriend. No friends, I believe. Yes, yes, you told me before: we aren’t here to talk about you. Jealousy, I was saying. The green-eyed monster that mocks the meat it feeds on, as the English poet put it. That poet we soon won’t be allowed to read anymore. It’s true, Commissario: jealousy is a monster. But it isn’t true that those who suffer from it create it, no, that’s not true. Adriana was beautiful, incredibly beautiful. The photographs that you might have seen of her don’t do her justice, and neither do the unfortunate remains that you recovered. I don’t want to know what you’ve done with her, don’t tell me what it was like. I’ve heard about a gunshot, that much I know. And I’d just as soon know nothing more.”
The commissario had no intention of dropping the matter amidst the journalist’s literary lucubrations.
“And what exactly was the reason for this, I believe you called it, skirmish?”
Capece hesitated, then he said:
“There was a guy, a young man, who was squiring some old hag to the theater. He was a gigolo, a kept man. Or for all I know he was her grandson, I can’t say and I don’t care. He kept staring and staring at Adriana while I pretended to watch the show. But I never really looked away for a second; I was watching him, and I was watching her. When she noticed him she started returning his glances. Once, twice, a third time. And smiling: you can’t imagine how lovely she was when she smiled, Commissario. She knew it, that she was beautiful; and she enjoyed playing with men, the way a cat toys with a mouse, using her beauty like a claw.”
His tone of voice changed, as he thought back to the situation that night in the theater. A muscle in his jaw twitched uncontrollably, his right hand kept clenching into a fist. A man like this, thought Maione, would be capable of anything. Ricciardi said:
“Then what did you do?”
“What did I do? I put up with it for as long as I was able. And then I exploded, then I couldn’t take it anymore. Jealousy is a vicious beast, Commissario. It stabs you right behind your stomach, clamps you like a vise. It’s a physical sensation, and it won’t let up.”
It looked to Maione as if Ricciardi had suddenly turned pale; the commissario brushed his hand over his jacket, right on a line with his solar plexus. Perhaps he’d eaten something that disagreed with him. Capece went on:
“But I could never have done anything to hurt her. It’s absurd to say it, I know that: I could have throttled her with my bare hands, and yet I would never have hurt her. I don’t see how you can believe me, but that’s the way it is.”
The commissario wanted something more. He wanted to know about the ring; he could hear the voice of the dead duchess as if she were sitting inside his head:
“The ring, the ring, you’ve taken the ring, the ring is missing.”
So he asked:
“And then what happened?”
“And then we started quarreling. I asked her to explain her behavior, and she laughed in my face. She ridiculed me, in front of that callow young man, in front of the whole room. The more she laughed, the more I saw red. And then I hit her, I slapped her in the face. Like this,” and he imitated the way he’d hit the woman. “She stopped laughing, she looked at me with hatred. And I grabbed the ring, and I turned and left.”
“What ring?”
Capece put his hands in his pockets, in a moment of confusion. Then he pulled a golden ring with a small diamond out of a fob pocket in his vest and set it on the table.
“It’s a small thing, of no real monetary value. But it was a token of our love, a miserable trinket I gave her when. . when we first met, on a certain occasion. I told her that she didn’t deserve to have it, and I yanked it away from her. I think I hurt her when I did.”
Ricciardi hadn’t once stopped staring Capece in the face the whole time. More than his words, he was trying to understand his emotions, which veered sharply between hatred and love.
“What do you know about how she was killed? You talked about her being shot in the head, and this is public knowledge. You must know other details, from the line of work you’re in. Who do you think could have done it?”
Capece fell silent, staring into the empty air. Then he started to talk again, in little more than a murmur.
“When I first started, this was a different profession. Very different, more than the two of you would ever be willing to believe. You could tell stories, you could provide commentary. A journalist would pursue an investigation and he was allowed to talk about it, sometimes we even cooperated with you policemen. Then the decision was made that the world was clean, that there were no more murders. It was decided at a drawing table, while completely ignoring reality. A telegraphic circular letter came in, one of the ones we call veline, at the beginning of 1926, and no one paid it any mind. I remember how we laughed in the newsroom, we laughed until the tears came; the orders had come down to ‘demobilize the crime reporters.’ As if it were possible to sit down at a telegraph machine and, by tapping away with your forefinger, eliminate darkness from the human soul. Then, three years ago, on September 26, 1928, the prefect called us into his office. All of us, editors-in-chief, bureau chiefs: and he said that from that day forward the velina of 1926 would have to be followed to the letter. I remember his exact words: with special reference to the reporting of suicides, crimes of passion, rapes and abductions, and so on, because they can have an unhealthy effect on the spirits of the mentally weak or weakend. Can you imagine? Everything that happens all around us, the things you see from dawn till dusk, must no longer exist as far as the press is concerned.”
Ricciardi didn’t understand what this had to do with Adriana’s murder.
“And so?”
Capece stared at him with reddened eyes, as if he were a particularly stupid student.
“And so? And so this was no longer the job I’d set out to do. If all I can write about is the party of the Baroness Thus and Such or the visit of the royal prince and princess, if I have to talk about this ship being launched or a formation of seaplanes crossing the Atlantic, then that’s not my profession anymore. But I don’t know how to do anything else, so I kept it up, though my heart wasn’t in it. Then I met Adriana and life regained its color. This is to explain why we can no longer explore and investigate, discover how it is that John Doe killed Richard Roe. And this time, believe me, I thank God that’s how it is. Already, I’m struggling with the guilt of letting her go home alone, and slapping her in the face before she left.”
He looked at his open hand, as if he were seeing it for the first time.