Free Day of the Dead by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar Page B

crossing the street a pair of eyes, from behind a pair of glasses and a window, caught sight of her. The owner of those eyes then hurried to her closet where she grabbed the first hat that came to hand and an umbrella, and then galloped down the stairs.
    Rosa was just thinking that Ricciardi didn’t even wear a hat, so she couldn’t arrange for him to visit Enrica’s father’s shop, when, right in front of the grocer’s, she found herself face-to-face with Enrica, who was courteously stepping aside for her.
    Smiling brightly, she looked her in the face. It’s now or never, she told herself.

XII
    Water.
Water that doesn’t clean.
Water that flows down in a thousand rivers without a sea, washing mud up to the front doors of the
bassi
and then inside, spreading filthy fingers over the rammed-earth floors, into the blackened straw of the pallets. Water that beats against the windows and stirs the sleepers, or carries specters of ancient sorrows into dreams. Water that leaves black marks on the high tufa-stone walls, finding its way into old buildings to undermine their foundations. Water that muddies polished shoes and tears umbrellas out of hands, because it wants to eliminate all obstacles that prevent it from entering people’s souls, bringing with it the damp of depression.
    Water that separates.
    Water that becomes a cold wall between lovers, removing the smile from their eyes and hearts. That keeps people away from school, the workshop, and the office, creating a sea between them, a sea that’s impossible to navigate. Water that turns streets into slippery rivers, that sucks any chance of encounter down into its whirlpools. Water that takes toys away from children, forcing them into imprisonment on a chair or in a room.
    Water that steals.
    There will be no one to buy from the vendors’ carts, to give alms to the poor, to be defrauded. There will be no one to buy balloons or toys in the Villa Nazionale. There will be no one to listen to the
pazzariello
, the street crier,
announcing in song the opening of some new shop. There will be no one, and there will be nothing to eat.
    Water that frightens.
    Frightens with the thunder that rattles the night, with the lightning that illuminates the silence. Fear that makes your heart lurch in your chest, that makes you draw your head between your shoulders, waiting for the worst. Water that makes the walls creak, and makes you think that nothing is a sure thing, that nothing will ever end.
    Water that never ends.
    Ricciardi was walking back to police headquarters, through the rain that never seemed to stop falling. The question that filled his mind, leaving no room for any other thought, was this: Why wasn’t he there? Why didn’t I see him?
    The cause of the child’s death had been poison. Strychnine. There were no other causes, Modo had ruled them out decisively: the boy would have lived many more years, he’d said. But in that case, if he’d died from poison, why hadn’t Ricciardi seen his ghostly image?
    The terrible company of the Deed had marked his whole life, from the time he’d seen the first dead man to speak to him in his family’s vineyard, when he was five years old. God only knows how many times he’d wished he could be spared from this curse.
    In contrast with what he usually did—try his best to forget what he’d seen—Ricciardi summoned up memories of the poison victims he’d seen in the past. He thought of the first one, a classmate at boarding school who for who knows what reason had eaten an entire box of matches; perhaps it was on a dare, some stupid game with a friend. He remembered the boy, smiling and translucent in the recreation yard, immersed in an incessant retching gush of blood and a perennial diarrhea, saying over and over again:
I won, did you see? I won the bet
. And the convulsions of his two university friends who had gorged on mushrooms purchased from a