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Maurizio de Giovanni

Blood Curse

I

Though no one could possibly know it, the last rains of winter had fallen that afternoon. The street surface reflected the dim glow of the hanging lamps, which dangled motionless in the now-still air. The only light still shining at that hour of the night came from the barbershop. Inside, there was a man polishing a mirror’s brass surround.

Ciro Esposito possessed an iron sense of professional rectitude. He’d learned his trade as a child, sweeping up hair clippings by the ton from the floor of the barbershop that had once belonged to his grandfather, and later to his father. He was treated no better and no worse than the other employees-if anything, with an extra smack in the head or two if he was a second late in proffering the straight razor or a damp towel. But it had done him good. Now, as in the old days, his shop counted among its customers not only those from the Sanità neighborhood, but even those from the far-flung quarter of Capodimonte. He was on excellent terms with them; he understood clearly that men came to the barbershop as an escape from work and wife, and in some cases, from their political party, every bit as much as they did for the haircut and the shave. He had honed that very particular instinct that allows one to chat or to work in silence, and to always have something to say on whatever subject people liked to discuss.

He’d become quite the connoisseur on the topics of soccer, women, money and prices, honor and shame. He avoided politics, which had been such a minefield in recent years. A fruitcart peddler happened to complain about the difficulty he’d been having obtaining supplies; four guys nobody’d ever seen in the neighborhood had demolished his cart, calling him a “defeatist swine. ” Ciro steered clear of gossip, too.

No point in running risks. He was proud in his conviction that his barbershop constituted something of a social club, which is why he was especially worried that last month’s incident might cast a shadow over his honorable establishment.

A man had committed suicide, right there in his shop. The man in question was a longtime customer, already a regular back when his father still ran the place. A companionable, jolly fellow, who never tired of complaining about his wife, his children, the money that he never seemed to have enough of. A civil servant; he couldn’t remember what branch of government, if he’d ever known at all. Lately, the man had become gloomy and distracted, and he didn’t talk the way he’d used to, nor did he laugh at Ciro’s renowned jokes; his wife had left him, taking the children with her.

It had happened that, as Ciro was carefully trimming the man’s left sideburn with his straight razor, he’d reached up and gripped Ciro’s wrist and with a single, determined jerk of the arm, he’d cut his own throat, from ear to ear. It was pure luck that Ciro’s shop assistant and two other customers had been there to witness it, or he’d never have been able to persuade the police and the investigating magistrate that it had been a suicide. He’d quickly scrubbed everything clean and the next day he kept the barbershop closed, careful not to breathe a word of what had happened. The dead man was from another part of town. That, at least, was helpful. In a city as superstitious as Naples, it didn’t take much to get the wrong kind of reputation.