I Will Have Vengeance Read Free Page B

clutched the hot cup, a little girl came up to the window, pouting. Hanging limply at her side in her right hand was a bundle of rags, perhaps a doll. Her left arm was missing: a fragment of white bone protruded from the torn flesh, splintered like a piece of fresh wood. Her hip was staved in, her chest cavity crushed. A tram, Ricciardi thought. The girl stared at him then, all of a sudden, held out the rag doll to him: “This is my daughter. I feed her and bathe her.” Ricciardi set down the cup, paid and went out. Now he would feel cold for the rest of the day.
    At half past eight, Maione appeared at the door again.
    â€œDo you need anything, sir? I’d like to go, my brother-in-law and his wife are coming to dinner tonight. I ask you: don’t these two have a house of their own? They’re always on my back.”
    â€œNo, Maione, thank you. I’m leaving too in a little while. I’ll finish up here and close up shop. Goodnight. See you tomorrow.”
    Maione shut the door again, but not before letting in an icy draft that made Ricciardi shiver, as though it were a premonition. And it must indeed have been a premonition, because not even five minutes had gone by when the door opened again to reveal Maione’s burly, thickset figure.
    â€œForget what I just said, sir; just when I wanted to leave on time for once. Alinei called from the front door, on the intercom. There’s a young man. We have to go see, he says something terrible has happened at the San Carlo.”

V
    D on Pierino Fava had arrived at the usual side door at seven in the evening, as agreed. It was the entrance to the Palazzo Reale gardens, the Royal Palace, where Lucio Patrisso was the caretaker. An important friendship. Not that he was more lenient with Patrisso than with his other parishioners, nor did he give him any special considerations. Still, it was an honour for the man to receive a personal greeting when leaving church after Mass.
    This reasonable price bought don Pierino the greatest pleasure of his life: the opera. His simple heart would soar and accompany the voices, as his lips silently followed the librettos he knew by heart. From the time he was a child, in Santa Maria Capua Vetere, not far from Caserta, he would sit on the ground in the garden of a villa where a phonograph bestowed magic in the air. He could sit there for hours, heedless of cold, heat or rain, listening with bated breath, his eyes brimming with tears.
    Small and plump, with dark, lively eyes and a prompt, contagious smile, he had intelligence and a quick wit that greatly worried his parents, farmworkers with eight other children. What would they do with this clever, lazy boy who always came up with excellent excuses to avoid working? The answer came from the gruff parish priest, who called on him more and more often for small tasks just to have the cheerful sprite around. And so little Pietro became “Pierino from the church.” He liked the cool shadows, the heady scent of the incense, the sun’s rays filtering through the tall stained-glass windows.
    But most of all he liked the cavernous, rumbling sound of the great organ, which he had come to consider the voice of God. And when he realized that he would never want to live anywhere else, he felt called. During the years of study that followed, Pierino’s love for his fellow man, for God and for music remained intact, and he divided his time among these three passions, assisting the poor, drawing examples and lessons from the lives of the saints, and cultivating sacred music.
    By the age of forty he had been the Assistant Pastor of San Ferdinando for ten years, a parish that was not large, but densely populated. It included elegant streets and the majestic Galleria, but also the hovels of the Quartieri and the maze of alleys above Via Toledo. In the centre of the district stood another temple, which exerted a pagan attraction on don Pierino’s simple soul: the Royal