The Bottom of Your Heart by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar Page A

hope. It’s hard to explain to others. People think that, because we’re at a university, everything’s always going to turn out all right, but in fact . . .”
    Ricciardi waited. Rispoli went on: “I’m not telling you anything that isn’t public knowledge, nothing that didn’t happen in front of witnesses. Last month the director had to perform a particularly challenging operation, because of complications that ensued following a primiparous—a first—childbirth. I was present during the operation, and I can assure you that every step was taken to save the newborn’s life as well as the mother’s but . . . I’m sorry to say that the woman didn’t survive. We did save the life of the baby, a little girl. The husband . . . From time to time, faced with great grief and sorrow, people say things that they’d otherwise never even think. The man tried to attack the director. He told him that . . .”
    Ricciardi pressed him: “What did he tell him?”
    Rispoli finished his sentence all in a rush: “He swore that he’d kill him.”

IX
    Y ou swore to me, Rosine’. You swore an oath to me. And an oath is something you can never break. When you swear an oath, that’s a promise you have to keep.
    You swore to me, swore you’d never leave me. Do you remember the first time you said it? No? Because I do. We were in Posillipo, on that narrow little beach. It was hot, just like it is now. So, so hot. But who ever noticed the temperature, hot or cold, when the two of us were together?
    And the moon was out, that night. I come from a family of fishermen so I know it, when the moon is out. When the moon makes that highway of silver down the middle of the sea, and the city lights seem like so many stars fallen to earth, and it doesn’t matter that they’ve fallen because there are so many, many more in the sky above. That night, Rosine’, there was no one on that beach but you and me. I remember every single one of our kisses. My heart was banging away in my chest like windows swinging in a high wind, like waves slapping against the hulls of the boats,
thump thump thump
. Do you remember, Rosine’? Of course you remember. You were thirteen years old. And I was fourteen.
    I never let my hands wander down between your legs. You weren’t just some girl to have a good time with. You were the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And you knew that, you knew that what was between us would never end. Everyone in the neighborhood understood that you belonged to me and I belonged to you. Even though my power and my strength grew as I grew older; even though people came to me, little by little, more and more, in search of justice and respect, and you became more and more beautiful. Yes, everyone understood that you were my woman and I was your man, and no one even thought of laying eyes on either one of us.
    Do you remember the time, Rosine’, when some guy from another neighborhood saw you coming back from the fountain with your girlfriends, loaded down with freshly washed laundry, laughing that laugh of yours that always turned my insides upside down and inside out? Do you remember how, since he didn’t know who you were, he walked right up to you, and your girlfriends looked at him, terror on their faces, because they knew exactly what was happening? Do you remember that a
scugnizzo
who was playing nearby came running to get me, and not five minutes later I was there with ten of my friends? And how he ran, I can still see it, with his shirt untucked, and the blood from where I’d stabbed him dripping from his hand. And if he hadn’t run for his life he would have been lying dead on the ground, even though you were begging me not to hurt him, because he hadn’t done a thing to you. And before nightfall that very day his father, his uncles, and he himself with a bandaged hand had all come