teenager though, petite, slim, dark-haired, eyes so green they bored into your soul. And all that sorrow.
Rosa had often wondered where that sorrow in the eyes of the young Baroness came from. She had everything she wanted, leisure, affluence, a loving husband. But when she accompanied her on long walks through Fortinoâs countryside, amid the pungent smell of goats and the peasants who stopped working to take off their hats, she felt that sorrow walking with them, one step behind. Perhaps it was memories, or regrets. Baroness Marta spoke little. But she smiled at Rosa, tenderly, and caressed her face sometimes, as if she herself were twenty years older.
Rosa remembered the morning of October 1899, the last year of the century, when they sat on a bench on the terrace, embroidering, and Marta had raised her green eyes to her and told her: âRosa, starting tomorrow we have to sew sheets for a cradle.â Just like that, simply. From that time on, she had become
tata
Rosa and would be so all her life.
Â
âYou know I donât want you to wait up for me. Itâs late for you, you should already be asleep.â
Ricciardi felt the warmth of the house seep gradually into his wind-chilled bones. The scent of wood fire in the stove, the aromas from the kitchen: garlic, beans, oil. The lamp next to his armchair was lit, the newspaper on the armrest. In the bedroom, his flannel robe, soft leather slippers and hairnet. My
tata
, he thought.
âOh sure: I go to sleep and let you go hungry. What do you think, I donât know that you would go to bed without eating? That you would always wear the same suit and the same shirt, if I didnât lay them out on the bed for you? Itâs not normal, thirty years old and no woman. Not to mention, given these times, it wonât be long before they actually start arresting bachelors. With so many attractive young women out there. And you, youâre handsome, rich, young, from a good family. What more could a woman want? That way you can put me in a rest home and begin to live for a change.â
There: sheâd said it. Sitting down at the table, he was very careful not to sigh. It would give rise to an endless tirade and he had an appointment for which he was already very late.
Rosa watched him eat, like a wolf, as usual. Bent over his plate, quick, silent mouthfuls. He denies himself even that, she thought, the pleasure of savouring. He never savoured anything, not food or anything else. In him, the sorrow that in his mother had been concealed became evident. The same green eyes. The same sorrow. She had cared for him all his life, through the feverish nights, the loneliness. All through his years at boarding school she had been there waiting for him, during vacations, holidays, Sundays, letting him find the things he liked without him asking her for them. She sensed the turmoil of his thoughts, though she didnât know what these thoughts were. She had been his family and he had become her reason for living. She would have given her eye teeth to see him laugh, at least once. She would have liked to see him at peace, not detached from others and from the quickly spinning world which he stood watching from a distance, hands in his pockets and a strand of hair over his face. Not smiling, not saying anything. And yet, what did he lack?
She was moved, a motherâs concern. He seemed like a child again, lost in thought as he ate. He had always liked beans.
Ricciardi had never liked beans, but he would never disappoint his
tata
; besides he was hungry tonight, maybe because of the chill he felt in his bones. He thought again about the crime scene. If the coat and scarf had been brought into the dressing room after Vezziâs death, who had brought them? And why? The only ones who had admitted seeing the dressing room after the crime had been Lasio, the stage manager, the wardrobe mistress Lilla and the seamstress. Mopping up the sauce with his bread,