By My Hand by Maurizio de Giovanni

Author:Maurizio de Giovanni
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2014-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know why you’re here.”

The interior of the hovel mirrored the exterior and spoke to a terrible poverty. A little girl who might have been a little more than ten years old greeted them with a curtsy, and then went back to stirring a pot that was boiling over the fire. A heavy stench of cauliflower left no doubt as to what she was cooking.

Seated on the floor next to the table was a smaller child, a boy, bundled up in a sweater several sizes too large for him. The crystallized mucus on his upper lip told a heartbreaking tale of neglect.

The man had sat down at the table, without inviting the two policemen to take a seat, and so they remained standing. Lomunno had gone back to carving a piece of wood, from which he was extracting with a certain expertise what seemed to be a horse. Behind him, on a rough-hewn table, a handmade manger scene was taking form; it included several shepherds of superior quality. The man followed the commissario’s gaze.

“The manger scene. I don’t know why the creditors haven’t laid their damned mitts on the shepherds in the manger scene. A few of them were lost, and I’m recarving them, making them myself, as you can see. This is the horse of Melchior, one of the three kings. The manger scene is what Christmas is all about, if you have children. You can have Christmas without a mother, but not without the manger scene.”

He laughed a grim laugh, and the smell of soured wine on his breath reached all the way to Maione. The brigadier noticed that the little girl turned her eyes on her father, without the slightest expression.

“If you know why we’re here, Lomunno, then tell us what we want to know,” Ricciardi said.

The man gave Ricciardi a long stare. Then he looked down at the wooden horse that was taking shape under his knife blade.

“One day, I went into the office; I was highly regarded, esteemed. A party faithful, among the first to enlist. I was doing work that I loved, everyone respected me; or rather, I should say, that’s how I thought things were. And in my office I found my boss, with two policemen and a man in civilian clothes. The man steps forward and says to me, ‘You’re a bribe-taking crook.’ Then he puts his hand in my jacket and takes my money. The money I’d saved over a lifetime, little by little, squirreling away every raise, every bonus, and hiding it all under the mattress so that someday I’d be able to give my wife what she’d always dreamed of: a home of our own.”

Outside they heard a seagull shriek, flying low, just over the shack.

“There was just one person I’d told this small, useless secret. Just one person who knew that that day I’d be going to get the money from my uncle and aunt, who I’d been giving my savings to every so often for safekeeping, and who were leaving for America.

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