Ricciardi snorted.
“I don’t believe I’m going to let you make this comparison, Pivani. How should I address you, by the way? Do you have a rank, do you hold some office?”
The man smiled, affably.
“My rank and my office would be incomprehensible to you. Pivani is enough. In any case, it’s my job to know everything about everyone: I was sent here for that purpose. I’m a sort of. . let’s say, a kind of inspector, that’s good enough. Fascism in Naples hasn’t been in good hands; you may remember the accident in which Padovani died, a comrade from the earliest times, a man who marched on Rome at the Duce’s side in 1922. Certain values, certain aspects of the Party have changed. I’m here precisely to see whether this. . change has been incorporated.”
Ricciardi remembered all too well the tragedy in the Via Generale Orsini; it had been five years ago. He’d been one of the first to arrive on the scene of the catastrophe; the balcony from which the high-ranking member of the Fascist party was greeting the crowd celebrating his birthday had collapsed, killing nine and seriously injuring thirty or so. Many aspects of what Pivani called an “accident” had never been cleared up. The scene that greeted the commissario’s eyes when he arrived was hellish: his ears picked up both the screams of the injured and the lamentations of the dead who had suddenly been snatched from the world of the living. He shuddered, remembering that rumors flew around the city that Padovani’s cult of personality had begun to become an annoyance to the Duce. Very strange, that accident. And providential for the Party, as well. Pivani was still talking:
“It’s always been a problem, the excess of zeal. And also the cult of personality, the Duce aside, obviously; you understand clearly that the party base is made up of the masses, mediocre and incapable of thinking for themselves. It’s in cases like this one, where four useless idiots decide they want to do something to please their bosses, that violence erupts. They need to be guided, supervised every hour of the day. But those who conspire in the shadows are a problem too, and must be stopped. And that’s where we come in.”
We, meaning OVRA, thought Ricciardi, the legendary Fascist secret police, whose existence the regime stubbornly refused to acknowledge. All the terror and violence that this whispered name inspired, bound up in this inoffensive little man.
“I don’t care what you do. Nor do I care what you find out, rummaging around in the dark as you do. What I do care about is what Ettore Musso di Camparino was doing here, the other night. And where he goes when he goes out, and what he does. What I care about is who murdered his stepmother, the duchess, and why they killed her so pitilessly. And I want to know whether it was him.”
In the ensuing silence he heard someone knock at the door; Pivani called loudly to come in, and Mastrogiacomo stepped forward with a tray on which sat two steaming cups. He set it down on the desk, and just as he was about to turn and leave, Pivani, who hadn’t once looked away from Ricciardi’s face, as if he were hypnotized, addressed him:
“Mastrogiacomo, when the commissario leaves, later, make sure that he’s not bothered by so much as a stray breeze. Then come to see me with your three colleagues, you know very well the ones I mean. We need to talk about a trip you’re going to take. You’ll be departing immediately. A long trip: pack your bags.”
The man heaved a deep sigh, and just as he was about to say something in response, Pivani turned his head and looked in his direction. That was enough. He walked toward the door, retreating with his head held low; when he reached the threshold he straightened and clicked his heels, delivering a straight-armed salute, and then left the room, closing the door behind him.
XXXV
After waiting for what seemed to him like a sufficiently long time, Andrea Capece entered the room that the two policemen had recently vacated to leave the apartment. He found his mother sitting on the small sofa, her hands in her lap, looking out through the open French doors onto the balcony where his father was leaning over the railing and smoking a cigarette. The sight gave him an unpleasant feeling, like he was experiencing a scene out of the past, and so he was. As a child, he had spent hours listening to the spreading silence separating his parents.
This time, however, he felt a strong sense of repulsion: for his father, who had once again shown himself to be ungrateful and indifferent, but also for his mother, who was obviously not yet fed up after all the years of humiliations to which she had been subjected, directly and indirectly, by that man. He thought how everyone is born either hammer or anviclass="underline" and the anvils are happy to be pounded, because it’s in their nature.
He walked over to her and speaking in a hushed voice, for who knows what reason, told her that he’d be going out for half an hour or so, to give a notebook to a friend. The woman nodded without turning around to glance at him; she continued to stare at the mute back of that stranger smoking and staring out from their balcony. Andrea left the room with a sense of relief, as if he just been forced to witness something horrifying against his will.
He walked out the front door without haste; he took a quick look around, but in the brutal afternoon heat, there was no one in sight, except for a beggar who was probably sleeping off a drunk in the shade of a tree across the street. He walked a few yards, and then slipped through a small wooden door leading down into a cellar. The stench of damp rot washed over him, but he paid it no mind; he walked over to the wall, removed a book, and put in his hand to pull out something wrapped in newspaper. He unwrapped it.
Mamma, he thought, I don’t know why you protected him from the police. After all the things he’s done, after what he did to you. But then I don’t even know why I tried to help.
Gripping his father’s pistol in one hand and placing his forefinger on the trigger, Andrea decided for the hundredth time that love was a fatal illness, and that he for one would never fall in love. Not for all the gold in world.
After Mastrogiacomo slunk, mortified, out of the room, Pivani dipped his pen in the inkwell again, and drew a line across the note he’d made earlier, with the nitpicking care of an accountant. Ricciardi, slumped in the chair, hands in his pockets, went on staring at him, waiting for the answer to his question: what had Ettore Musso di Camparino been doing there, and where was he the night his stepmother was murdered?
Pivani looked back at him, calmly.
“Dottor Musso is a respected authority in his field; did you know that, Commissario? A political philosopher, one of the most respected in the country. Behind that shy and sensitive exterior he conceals a penetrating mind, and he has admirers at the highest level in the national government. On a confidential basis, he writes many of the speeches that the Duce himself delivers before the Italian parliament and to the most eminent cultural organizations.”
Ricciardi seemed rather unimpressed.
“Then he’s responsible for the thunderous words we hear over the radio. But that’s not the crime I’m here to investigate.”
The man smiled as he caught the irony.
“I ought to warn you to take care, Commissario; I ought to remind you where you are, and the times we live in. A phrase like the one you just uttered can be enough to have you sent into internal exile: so be on your guard. But since I know that you’re no dissident but merely another of the many citizens who care little about Italy’s destiny, I’ll pretend you didn’t say anything.”
“And just how do you know that I’m not a dissident? After all, one of your squads attacked me, yesterday. And I wasn’t alone, either.”
Pivani shrugged, and checked another of the sheets he had on his desk.
“I already told you that what happened yesterday was a foolish mistake, and you’ve seen for yourself that those responsible will pay dearly for it. Very dearly indeed. And if I may, through you I’d like to extend an apology to the Signora Livia Lucani, the widow Vezzi; by the way, my compliments for the company you keep: a lovely and intelligent woman, and also a first-rate singer, I’m told. No, you’re no dissident. I know everything about you: and therefore I also know your attitudes, even if you don’t discuss them with anyone. You’re intelligent; in a very personal way all your own, decidedly introverted and focused inward, but still, you’re intelligent; and we all need an intelligent person at police headquarters. There really aren’t all that many.”