Read Online The Bottom of Your Heart by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar - Free Book Online Page A

the city upside down, and this worthless man was nowhere to be found. You were white as a sheet. You said to me: Peppi’, my baby girl. Because you knew it was a girl. And you fell asleep.
    They found the car up in Vomero, no less. Near the new apartment houses. It had been five hours since I took you there, to the general hospital. Five hours, and the doctor on duty, just a kid, didn’t know what to do; he was sobbing with fear, because he could see my face, and he ran back and forth with armfuls of bandages.
    He showed up in the end, his collar buttoned all askew, his double chin trembling. He was with his whore while you were falling asleep, you understand that, Rosine’? With his whore. If not for his new car, we’d never have found him at all.
    After two hours he came out of the operating room, dripping with your blood. He looked down at the floor. He said nothing.
    And behind him came the nurse, and she had the baby in her arms.
    You know when you’re losing your mind, Rosine’. You know it because the future vanishes from your head. You look ahead, and where there were once days and nights and months and years, now you see nothing. All it takes is an instant, and suddenly there’s nothing. They say it’s like dying, and maybe that’s right. After all, what’s death, if not when they take away your future?
    For me it was like waking up in hell. And again I heard my heart in my ears,
thump thump thump
. Then it stopped. And it hasn’t beaten since.
    I don’t remember what I did. Or what I said either, for that matter. They had to take her out of my arms, that much they told me, and it took two male nurses, an assistant, the custodian, and three of my own men to do it. I remember the little baby wailing. God, how I hated that baby. The baby and he, the professor, had taken my future away. They were in on it together, the devil himself had sent them both to carry me down to hell.
    I went into the operating room.
    The place looked like a slaughterhouse, there was blood everywhere. On the operating table were your flesh, your bones, but not you. If the moon had been out, maybe you would have stood up and smiled at me. But there was no moon that night, and there never will be again.
    I swore an oath, Rosine’. I swore an oath. Foaming at the mouth, my eyes bulging out of their sockets, the veins standing out on my neck. I swore an oath, with all my body and all my soul, but without the heart that you’d taken away with you. You broke your oath, Rosine’. You swore that you would stay with me for the rest of our lives, that we’d grow old together. And you broke that promise.
    I spent two days locked indoors. Not sleeping, not eating, not even thinking. Two days, because the Wolf doesn’t sleep or eat when he’s thirsty for blood. And after two days I came out.
    My mother was there. With the little girl. Outside the door, for two days, they’d never once stopped crying, grandmother and granddaughter. I came out. My mother knows me, and she took a step backward. She read the death in my face.
    I went over to her. I don’t know what I wanted to do, Rosine’; I reached out my hand. I touched her, and the little baby stopped crying.
    She felt my hand on her swaddling cloth and she stopped crying.
    The air outside stood still, not even a fly buzzed; you could hear Crazy Antonietta, you remember her, Rosine’? The one who sings all the time, even at night, who lives at the end of the
vicolo
. Hers was the only voice that could be heard. ‘
Dimme, dimme a chi pienze, assettàta
. . .’
    I looked at her, Rosine’. Just once, I looked at her. She has a nose, a tiny little button of a nose, exactly like yours. Do you remember, Rosine’, when I used to pretend I was hunting for your nose, that was so small I couldn’t find it? The baby has a nose like yours. Just like yours.
    You swore that oath, Rosine’. You made a