The Bastards of Pizzofalcone (27 page)

But I'm not crazy. You know it and I know it, my love, that I'm not crazy. And do you know how I know, that they aren't suicides? Do you know?

Of course you know, my love. You know. Because now you're where everything is known. But that's not the only reason. You know because you did it yourself. You know how it's possible to be so afraid of the mountain of pain you'll have to climb, you know how your heart can clench in your chest before a doctor's verdict.

You, my love, couldn't face it.

I saw it happen, the way your desire to go on living slowly dwindled in your eyes, little by little. I listened as your silences got longer, as your gaze lost its focus. I heard you stop talking, heard you stop listening to the vague, pointless chatter that I unleashed in your direction, in hopes of chasing off the phantom of death that was already clouding your soul.

You did want to leave this world, my love. And when you found the way and the opportunity, you didn't think about writing pointless notes as if this were a birthday party or some tearjerker. You did it and that was that. You took all the pills you could find and swallowed them one by one, methodically. I wonder how long it took you.

And you must have known from the beginning that you would suffer. That you'd wind up drowning in your own vomit, spasming in agony, my poor love, while I was who knows where, chasing some miserable crook, in search of a form of justice that doesn't exist, not on this earth.

You wanted to die, my love. You wanted me to let you go. And when, the night before it happened, you held my hand and gazed into my eyes, with all the love in the world, through your tears, I just thought you were in pain and tried to take your mind off it. Instead, with that gaze, you were simply writing your farewell note.

Signora Carmela Del Grosso, with her bag of tomatoes and cheese portions, didn't want to leave this world. You did. That's why I know, that's why I have to keep on searching, why I can't stop now, why I have to live: because, before I let this stupid cancer kill me, I have to find out who is killing these people, and why.

After all, we'll see each other afterward, my love.

And then we'll never be apart again.

W
arrant Officer Francesco Romano didn't want to go back home. He had a nasty sense of foreboding.

All that day he'd tried to reach his wife, but Giorgia's phone seemed to be turned off. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was; that he wished he was dead when he remembered how violent he'd been with her; that he'd been on edge lately because of his work, because of the way he'd been kicked out of the Posillipo precinct, where he'd always hated working, come to think of it. He hated being around that crew of spineless ass-kissers, and now, to his surprise, his first few days in that strange new place were turning out to be not bad at all; he wanted to tell her how sure he was that now everything was going to turn around, that everything would go back to normal and they'd be able to laugh together the way they used to.

He'd have told her, if her damned phone hadn't been turned off, how much he still loved her. That life without her made no sense to him. That deep inside, under the brutal gorilla mask he knew he sometimes wore, there was still the same shy boy who had once surprised her by bringing her an immense bouquet of roses for her birthday, back when they were both at the university. He'd have also told her, if that fucking bitch of a recorded voice wasn't telling him every five minutes that the subscriber he wished to reach was unavailable, that not being able to have a baby wasn't the sort of thing that could break a love as strong as theirs, not a love that had lasted for so many years. That he really did wish to reach the subscriber in question, and he wanted it more than any other damned thing in the universe.

But the phone was still turned off. And now Warrant Officer Francesco Romano continued to drive around in circles like an idiot, just so he could put off going back home; he was terrified at his own fragility, at the sure knowledge that he'd go to pieces if, when he did get home, Giorgia wasn't there.

Nature, he thought to himself, is a nasty critter. Nature always surfaces, sooner or later. It surfaces when you least expect it, and it brings you face-to-face with all your worst nightmares.

In the end, he parked a little farther away, so he could stretch his legs before fetching up at his own front door. The wind didn't seem to give a damn that night had fallen, and it went on screeching the way it had been now, with rare breaks, for the past several days. Leaves, scraps of paper, plastic bags, twigs and branches: rubbish of all sorts pinwheeled through the air, serving as a kind of backdrop for Romano's darkest thoughts.

He'd thought about it a million times, about exactly what happened in moments like that: the way a red curtain seemed to descend over his eyes, about how he'd lose control of himself, as if someone or something next to him in the car were reaching over and grabbing the steering wheel, taking him wherever it wanted. In moments like that—Romano would have said if someone had managed to persuade him to discuss those matters freely—in moments like that everything seemed perfectly logical. It was the opposite of what you'd think. It wasn't absurd; instead it made perfect sense. It was terrifyingly natural to grab a man by the neck; it was the most obvious thing on earth to land a backhanded slap across his wife's face; it was normal to shake some guy back and forth until he practically passed out. It was the opposite that seemed unthinkable, in moments like that.

Romano would have asked this hypothetical interlocutor: and do you really think you're telling it straight? Every time you tell yourself: I'd like to kill this guy, and instead you just smile? All the times you'd secretly like to take bloody bites out of the lovely face that tells you: you know, there are just times when I don't understand you, but instead you reply in a calm, gentlemanly voice, Here, let me explain. Do you think you're being honest, you fucking ass?

He found himself staring at the downstairs entrance. Then he pulled out his keys, opened it, and went in. He took the stairs, not the elevator, just to delay for a few extra minutes the likelihood of a discovery that would place him face-to-face with the consequences of being himself. He counted the steps, twenty, thirty, forty. He got his breathing under control and walked into his apartment.

Darkness. Not a sound. Outside, the wind rattled the shutters as it tried to get in. Romano, in the darkness of the front hall, listened and thought to himself that even if you stand perfectly still, in the darkness, the sound of a home changes. Now he was inside, but before there had been no one. No one at all. The apartment was empty. The subscriber he wished to reach was unavailable.

He took a deep breath and turned on the light. Nothing seemed different. Everything looked the same, the knick-knacks, the coatrack, the carpet. All the same. No smells of dinner, though. No background noise of a television left on. No clatter of pots and pans. No kiss.

He took off his overcoat and hung it up. He felt as if he were moving underwater; his movements were slow and measured. He could feel his heart pounding in his throat, in his ears; the roar was overwhelming.

The dining room. Just as he'd expected, the table wasn't set; no signs of love in the air, or anywhere else. Or actually, there
was
something: exactly what he'd imagined all day long, just below the level of his consciousness, where he'd built a detailed image frame by frame, item by item, with each unsuccessful phone call.

A sheet of paper.

Folded in half, at the center of the table. With a pen lying on top of it, a pen that had presumably been used to write something on the paper. But what? The policeman's mind started formulating theories, before the other one who lived inside him, the one who sometimes grabbed the steering wheel, started cackling madly: what the fuck are you imagining, asshole? You're imagining things because you're not brave enough to touch that sheet of paper, to pick it up and read it. And then use it to wipe your ass, maybe.

He reached out his hand and picked up the letter. A grimace, when he recognized his wife's handwriting, remembering how many times he'd made fun of her for her rounded script, like that of a teenage girl.

What if I just didn't read it? he thought. What if I crumpled it up and threw it away? Maybe everything would just go back to the way it used to be . . .

Instead, he started reading.

And he read to the very end.

 

Dear Francesco,

You knew it. You always knew it, that someday we'd come to this point. Because you wanted us to end up here, right at rock bottom. And last night, we finally touched it.

I've always loved you; I always thought that you'd be the man of my life, my husband, the father of my children. That we'd grow old together, hand in hand. We were kids, you know, and every time I thought about the word love, I thought of you. I knew it, that deep down inside you there was something terrible, that your nature wasn't just that of the man who knew how to be so gentle and sweet that he could move me to tears. That sometimes there was something in your eyes that scared me.

You know, a woman takes a man because she picks him over all the others. She sees his shortcomings, and she thinks she can change them, but men don't change; and a man picks a woman hoping that she'll never change, but women do change, they always do.

I've changed, and you've stayed the same. We've taken different paths, even though we stayed together.

Until last night.

You'd never hit me before. I know that you'd been tempted to do it, more than once; I saw your hands gripping the armrests of your chair, your muscles straining under your shirt, your jaw clenching. Your eyes staring into space and losing all expression. But you'd never hit me.

But last night you did.

The hand across the face is nothing. The swollen lip is nothing. The black eye is nothing.

But the fear I feel when I'm around you, now, that is something. I could never, I will never be able to live with a man I'm afraid of.

I don't know what happened, or when. Maybe it was not being able to have a child, for me. Or what happened with your job, for you. But I can clearly sense that something is broken, and there's no way to fix it.

I'm leaving you. Please don't try to find me. It would be too painful to have to say these things to your face, for you even more than for me. I don't believe that after last night we should ever see each other alone: I'm afraid of you. I don't want to erase all the wonderful memories we share, and replace them with fear.

Sorrowfully, tenderly,

Giorgia

 

Like a robot, Romano set the sheet of paper down on the table: slowly, gently, as if it were the dead body of a tiny bird that had, once and for all, stopped singing.

Then, still moving slowly, he went into the bedroom.

The bed was carefully made, the two pillows perfectly lined up, the bedspread immaculate. He lifted one corner: the sheets were freshly washed. She'd made sure to take even her smell with her.

Dear Francesco, she'd written. Dear Francesco. Not Fra', what she usually called him. Not
my love
, not
sweetheart
, the things she called him when they were alone together. No. Dear Francesco. Like a stranger, like a fucking acquaintance. Like a goddamned friend, a coworker. Dear Francesco.

And at the end, he thought, as his heart turned up the volume in his ears as he walked over to the armoire: sorrowfully and tenderly. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You feel tenderness for a dog, for a child; and sorrow is something you feel when someone dies, isn't it? And there are no dogs here, and no one's died. We're still alive, Giorgia: so it's still possible to fix things, don't you see? That is, we could.

If we wanted to.

A glance at the top of the armoire confirmed what he suspected: the big suitcase was gone. The note, the sheets, the suitcase: three pieces of evidence add up to proof, Warrant Officer Francesco Romano.

He opened the armoire. Empty. In a corner was a little sack full of lavender, to keep away moths. He remembered the day they'd bought it, a whole day spent at Ikea: how terrible that had been.

You see, Giorgia, he thought as he shut the door to the armoire. I even spent a whole day at Ikea, just to make you happy. Doesn't that count for something? It doesn't count for shit, does it? Nothing counts for shit. The subscriber you wish to reach is unavailable, Warrant Officer Francesco Romano. Forever.

With a swift thrust of his arm he delivered a punch to the door of the armoire, demolishing it.

And finally, he began to cry.

N
ight. Another night. The third.

The third night after the air was full of the sea, after all that water was suspended in midair, driving into your eyes, your hair, your lungs. The night of wind and blood, of pain in the heart.

The third sleepless night, spent jerking upright at the thought of you, at the memory of your voice speaking that last word to me.

No.

The night of that sound. That absurd sound, the sound of wood cracking, that little snap, a strange wet sound. Like when you step on a big bug. And then the globe rolling away, having done its work. I wonder where the globe rolled. Maybe it was just horrified at what it had done, and it hurried to conceal itself.

Your back, and the noise. You were wrong, to turn your back on me. You shouldn't have turned your back. That was it, your fatal mistake. You died because you turned your back on me.

I read somewhere that after the first seventy-two hours, the chances of catching a murderer drop by 60 percent. They don't drop to zero, of course; but they diminish sharply.