The adventure that marks the return of Commissioner Ricciardi is released on Tuesday 29 November by Einaudi. Here the preview of the new novel
There was a café on the other side of the world. You got there by tram, one of the green ones of the Lnea Lacroze, and indeed the rattling carriage could have left the woman a few meters from the entrance; yet she liked walking the last stretch, listening to the click of her heels on the granite, the rhythm of her own step accompanying her many conflicting thoughts.
He preferred to walk, even when the air was cold and damp with rain as in that strange, absurd April on the other side of the world, which was all but spring, which was all but hope. An April that was October’s twin on his side of the world, and didn’t even resemble that of the city she’d lived in until five years ago.
Five years, he said to himself. Five years. And I still feel the smells, I still perceive the sounds and the music, I still remember the words of those songs.
You chase away memories, choking them in the bud. By now he knew how to prevent the spiral into emotions. Too many nights she’d spent thinking she was drowning in tears at first immediately after disembarking from the immense liner followed by the dreamy looks of officers and passengers. She had brought too much pain in trunks and suitcases, along with clothes she would never wear again and memories to erase.
It had been weeks, and then it had been months. Gone to wonder if she was right to give in to the urge to leave, to turn his back on what he had hoped to conquer. To declare his defeat.
He looked up, holding the hat in one gloved hand so as not to see it blown away in the wind. The facades of the buildings that lined the main road mimicked the Europe from which the architects came, a bit of Rome, a bit of Madrid, a bit of Paris; but there was always something false, fresh, reconstructed. He wondered what the cities of the interior looked like, built or about to be built on the villages of the natives.
Think back to how it had been. To the maids, to the chauffeur. To the beautiful dark limousine that in the other existence drove her according to her whims. She could have continued that existence of hers, using her late husband’s money, selling her properties to finance a glittering entrance into the high society of the place. He could have resorted to glamor and beauty, to the class and elegance to ensnare one of those industrialists or landowners who got rich by exploiting resources and immigrants. He could have aimed at a golden marriage, easy well-being, maintaining a lifestyle similar to the previous one.
But that would again involve a bed partner she didn’t want; again wear a fake smile every morning; again become the object of backbiting and envy; again having to depend on a man.
Above all, he would have run the risk of his name, his real name, reaching the wrong ears. He couldn’t know – and he didn’t even want to – if suspicions persisted in certain circles, the malice he had warned in the last days of his stay in Italy. He was aware of what these individuals were capable of. She had seen it.
I shivered. He glanced over his shoulder, instinctively. Five years hadn’t been enough to take away the fear of being brutally killed, of being made to disappear, of being kidnapped and perhaps tortured. That was the main reason she left, why she had chosen to live alone; what she had taken away without a trace, changing acquaintances as well as identity.
The sordid man who had forged her papers had asked her what she would like to be called. She remembered the afternoon she had met him, as windy as it is now on the other side of the world. Laura, she replied considering the initials embroidered on the handkerchiefs. Laura Lobianco. A name that had seemed pleasant to her then, but which now sounded like an ironic evocation of her own damnation.
Was she beautiful. Of an animal, feline beauty that stubbornly survived nostalgia, the search for anonymity, pain; and with advancing age.
Beauty was the baggage of the past, but it wasn’t the only one. The other had been much more useful, and had become the way to get by and gain the coveted independence. What she had loved since she was a child, which she would never have done without.
He had quickly discovered that in the city on the other side of the world there were many who maintained a bond of heart and love with the land of origin, which was his own land. That they hardly heard the notes of songs or opera arias that recalled that physically distant but never really abandoned reality, the eyes filled with tears and nostalgia, like when you receive a postcard from a dear and unforgettable place.
November 27, 2022 (change November 27, 2022 | 11:52 am)
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