“Silvano, hurry to the hospital. Clara had an accident.”
In the corridor there were too many police for a simple accident. A doctor told me to step on it; Clara didn’t have much time left.
“What happened?”
Excited, overlapping voices referred to a tragic fatality.
“Where’s my son? He’s O.K., isn’t he?”
An inspector’s pitiful lie sent me into the intensive care unit, worried only about Clara. I came out asking myself how I was going to get the news to Enrico. Only then did I learn the truth. A robbery, two dead, one criminal in custody, the other on the run.
I retain only confused memories of those events. There were so many people at the funeral. An endless succession of hugs, handshakes, comforting words.
My photo ended up in all the newspapers, along with Clara’s, Enrico’s, and their murderer’s. Everybody in town knew me. I couldn’t go anywhere without getting stopped by someone. They all pitied me. Right away I realized I’d have to find another job. I couldn’t show up at an enoteca or a restaurant to ply my pricey wines. To sell them you had to smile, crack jokes, make small talk, act like you were sharp and on top of things. But I was the guy whose wife and son had been killed. And my clients would’ve always remembered it, judging my every word. Anyway, work wasn’t a problem. I’d put aside enough cash to start a new business.
My mind was filled with a single thought: the capture of Beggiato’s sidekick. The police had no idea who he was, and the murderer hadn’t confessed. The idea that he was wandering around foot-loose and fancy free literally drove me crazy. Every day I turned up at the police station. Valiani, the superintendent in charge of investigations, would shake his head, spread his arms, and grumble some stock phrases.
I decided to carry out my own investigation. Through the lawyer who represented me in the proceedings against Beggiato, I got in touch with a private detective, an ex-marshal in the carabinieri. He squeezed me for a lot of dough, and the only thing he discovered was that the murderer had been linked to some whore who worked night clubs, Giorgia Valente.
I pretended to be a john, but she made me right away. Without beating around the bush she told me to stop breaking her balls. That’s just how she put it. I threatened to give her name to the papers, and she changed her tune. She told me she knew nothing about the robbery; Raffaello kept her in the dark about his business. She explained whores were considered unreliable in the underworld. Raffaello used to hang out with a lot of people. The girl gave me a list of names I later handed over to Valiani. But none of them turned out to be involved.
The search for the robber stopped me from going to pieces completely. I feared the time when I’d have to face up to the real world. Friends and relatives smothered me with all their attentions. I started avoiding them. Particularly my father and mother. With the excuse of bringing me something to eat, they’d drop by my place almost every day. The house was still thick with the presence of Enrico and Clara. My parents couldn’t keep back the tears for more than a few minutes, and I couldn’t take on the added burden of their hopelessness.
Around a year later the trial was held in the Court of Assizes. My lawyer tried to strike a deal with Beggiato’s new defense attorney: the accomplice’s name in exchange for the plaintiff’s support of the request for a lesser sentence than life. Nothing doing. The defendant decided to stick to the code of honor among thieves and risk life in prison. Beggiato showed up in a dark blue suit and a flashy tie. He never looked in my direction. But I didn’t take my eyes off him. He was a typical thirtysomething; he didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the criminals in TV movies. Didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d go out one day, slip a balaclava over his head, and shoot an eight-year-old boy and his mamma. When he was questioned, he gave one-word answers. The presiding judge asked him three times to confess the name of his accomplice. But he kept on repeating he couldn’t.
The public prosecutor was relentless and efficient. He asked for the maximum sentence, and I noticed a couple jurors clearly nodding in approval. The defense attorney limited himself to an appeal for clemency; his only argument was the pointlessness of a life sentence when the convict might eventually be reintegrated in society. What a load of bullshit. Everybody in town wanted an exemplary sentence. During breaks in the trial, journalists came up and tactfully interviewed me. Beggiato’s mother, a grubby, hopeless woman, chased them away, bombarding them with insults.
The defendant gave a statement before the court retired to chambers. He repeated for the zillionth time that he wasn’t the shooter. A judge on the panel shrugged. Idle chatter.
When the presiding judge uttered the phrase “life imprisonment,” the people who had followed the trial exploded into unrestrained applause. Beggiato, pale as a corpse, didn’t move a muscle.
A journalist stopped me at the courthouse door. “What will you do now?” he asked.
I didn’t have the desire, let alone the energy, to start living again. The parish priest urged me to find strength in God. I’d been deeply shaken by his homily at the funeral because of the corny simplemindedness of his remedy: faith will help us overcome the pain of mourning and one day we’ll all find ourselves before God who in the meantime loves us and watches over us from heaven above. Amen. I’d abandoned the church many years ago, as soon as I’d finished secondary school. Not for ideological motives or after some episode of internal strife. It was just that religion was foreign to me. I felt ridiculous when I thought of turning to a superior being. That was about it. A cousin who was a psychologist advised me to seek the help of a specialist in order to work out my grief. Everyone, without exception, wanted me to rebuild my life. I didn’t even try it. To me their words were empty and false because I didn’t possess the tools to confront death rationally. I couldn’t seek consolation in faith, and psychoanalysis seemed just as foreign as religion. I was Silvano Contin, the husband and father of two crime victims. The town would’ve never forgiven me if I picked up the pieces and went back to a normal life. Of course I could’ve always relocated and tried to start over from scratch. But what nobody understood was that my being had been plunged into the dark immensity of death. How could I love another woman or raise another son with the constant memory of Clara’s voice? “Everything’s gone dark, Silvano. I can’t see anymore. I’m scared, scared, it’s so dark.”
Those words now beat out the rhythm of my life, dulling colors and tastes. I could only live with my pain in the hope that the other criminal would be caught and punished. His capture wasn’t going to improve my existence, but at least the score would’ve been evened up, and the sense of loss that sometimes kept me from thinking rationally—maybe that’d disappear.
I sold the house and moved to a new, anonymous condominium in the suburbs. Every object that recalled the past I packed away and buried in a garage. Every month I paid the rent on it, but never did I open the door.
With my savings I set up a business in a new shopping center about ten kilometers from the city. The work was easy. It netted a decent income and allowed me to have superficial relationships with customers.
I found it harder to cut myself off from loved ones and friends. Fortunately, my wife’s family decided on their own to sever relations. But it was really painful to see my parents, even if I visited them only on Sundays and obligatory holidays. I was their only child; Enrico had been their only grandchild. Banalities alternated with long silences and sudden outbursts of weeping, interrupted by hate-filled rants against Beggiato and his mysterious accomplice. Within three years my parents both died. My father suffered a heart attack at the supermarket, my mother a stroke in her sleep.
As the years passed, my look also changed. I lost hair, put on a few kilos, and started to wear clothes from department stores. I used to shop in the most exclusive boutiques. I’d always go with Clara, she’d make the choices, she had taste. In any case, if someone recognized me on the street, they’d pretend they hadn’t seen me. I in turn did no
thing to encourage a greeting. I lowered my eyes and shot straight ahead. Embarrassment makes people say the stupidest things.
In the meantime, the murderer’s lawyer tried to save his client from life in prison. I didn’t show up for the appeal process, not even for the final decision in the Court of Cassation. Beggiato clearly wasn’t going to talk, and my lawyer was more than sufficient to represent me. The life sentence was upheld, and the murderer also served three years of solitary confinement during the day, as the court had stipulated.
I kept going to the police station for ages. First once a week, then once a month, until Superintendent Valiani lost patience and told me to stop bothering him. The case was closed. Beggiato was in prison, and his sidekick got away with it. The cops were human beings who did what they could. “All” they could.
For a time I’d also visit the jeweler who was the victim of the robbery. He and his wife gave me a list of the jewelry and helped me put together profiles of their dishonest colleagues, the ones who could’ve acted as fences. It turned out to be another dead end. The loot had vanished into thin air, like the other robber.
The only person who remained somehow linked to the case was Giorgia Valente, the whore who was Beggiato’s girl. I went back to see her quite a few times. Beggiato was writing to her, and I paid her to read the letters. They contained nothing that had any bearing on my investigation. Beggiato seemed resigned, and like every jailbird, he gabbled about sex, talked about jerking off while fantasizing about her ass, things like that. I too hadn’t gotten laid in a while. Some nights I happened to dream of making love to Clara. When I awoke, I’d run my hand across the empty bed. I never cheated on her because, apart from the fact that I loved her, she had always been a passionate, imaginative lover. She liked to make love. And she was beautiful. Very beautiful. The whore, however, had a coarse, unattractive face and a body that tended to get fat. Once, when I was reading about the murderer’s erotic dream for the umpteenth time, my cock got hard. I paid the whore to fuck her in the ass and then gave her a little extra so she’d write to Beggiato about it.
I never learned whether she did it or not. I don’t think she did. Still, from that time on, I kept seeing her once a month—even after she ended her correspondence with Beggiato. I didn’t hang with anybody, let alone women. But every so often I needed to get my rocks off, and the ass of the murderer’s ex-girlfriend seemed like the best place. In time she got sloppy fat, but for what I wanted to do it was even better. She stopped working in clubs and turned tricks in a studio apartment in the suburbs on the other side of town. I’d phone her, set up an appointment, and amuse myself with her for twenty minutes or so.
“We’ll end up growing old together,” she once said as she slipped the condom on me, but she never refused my money. Maybe she was afraid of me, or maybe she wanted to make things right somehow. I never asked her. I fucking despised her because she’d been with Beggiato. She was just a warm hole to service my needs.
On other occasions I got spiffed up, climbed into the car, and headed for the city or towns where I’d never been. This was when I’d go to funerals for other crime victims. I’d watch the news on the TV, then find out the place and time, and take off. It was the only moment when I shared something with other people, even if anonymously, even if I really didn’t know them at all. I’d sit in the back of the church and stare at the relatives’ pain-ravaged faces. I’d listen to the desperate cries of goodbye. Then I’d make a point of standing in line to offer my condolences. I’d squeeze the hands of dazed people who still hadn’t realized they’d fallen into an abyss. Before leaving I’d mix with the curious, listen to the comments, feed my pain with platitudes.
The rest of my life was absolutely monotonous and repetitive. I got up, went to work, came back home, watched TV, went to bed. At night I never went out. Never cooked; almost always bought something at the rosticceria. From the day I lost Enrico and Clara, I never drank decent wine. Bought it in cartons. It was just something to help me throw down some food. I’d lost my sense of taste. Everything seemed the same to me, flavorless. The sickly sweet smell of the morgue where I identified my son’s body had stayed stuck in my throat. Saturday nights I’d get drunk. Wine and cheap brandy, Vecchia Romagna. When the alcohol clouded my mind, I’d slip on the stereo headphones so I wouldn’t disturb the neighbors and dance slow, listening to songs by The Pooh. Clara liked that band. Then I’d collapse on the bed. Sundays I’d get up with a headache, go to the cemetery to put fresh flowers on the graves, and come back home to do the cleaning, counting the hours till I’d be able to go back to work. From the counter of my shop, I could watch people who had real, normal, ordinary lives. I didn’t envy them. I was aware my obsession with death had forced me beyond the boundaries of normality, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I wasn’t to blame: one day murderers had arrived like an invading army, plundering and ravaging everything that stood in their path. And the survivors have to remember and live in utter unhappiness. The problem was how to fake normality and repress the howl that filled my chest more and more. “Everything’s gone dark, Silvano. I can’t see anymore. I’m scared, scared, it’s so dark.” I wanted to howl till I passed out, maybe till I died.
RAFFAELLO
Tomorrow’s Tuesday. Another shitty fucking day. Still too many to go till Saturday and Sunday, the best days in prison. Shower, talk, baked pasta, cutlet, potatoes, and football. Lots of football. I bet a Serb two cartons of Marlboro. If Milan loses, I smoke free the rest of the week. That dickhead doctor gets angry about me still smoking, but how the fuck do you get through a life sentence without cigarettes? The inmates that don’t smoke, you can count them on one hand. In the yard we had a good hoot at that story about how they want to divvy up the cells into smoking and nonsmoking. These guys at the ministery are real jokers, but have they ever actually seen a jail? Tomorrow’s Tuesday. 7:00 A.M., housecleaning. Same routine every other day: a quick lick with a rag and ammonia. 7:30, the breakfast cart comes by. I only have milk. The coffee’s crap; the marshal and the stoolies can drink it. My moka’s on the burner, ready to go. At 8:00, cell check, doors open, and the janitor gives us the latest news—prison radio. At 9:00, hit the yard. Got to have a one-on-one with that guy in 27; they told me he set up a new ring for weed. Seems like it can help the cancer. And then I got to tell the committee to pick TV shows that ain’t so stupid. The afternoon’s always torture. I want to see the show with the broads that try to win a date with some numbskull perched on a throne; they’re more cutthroat than if they were in court. At 11:30, the commissary clerk comes by. Got to order a shampoo that stops hair from falling out, some toothpaste, and a couple gas canisters for the burner. At noon, the lunch cart arrives. Same routine every other day: pasta, stew, vegetable. At 13:00, the corporal that does the mail comes by. I wonder if Contin got my letter. I hope he answers quick. TV news at 13:30, then catch some z’s till 15:00. Another turn in the yard and after cell check at 16:30 the doors are locked. At 17:00, the dinner cart comes by. Tomorrow’s Tuesday: minestrone, mortadella, salad. Another coffee to digest and the day’s over. The only wrinkles are the cell checks at 20:00, 23:00, 1:00, 4:00, and 6:00 in the morning. If you’re sleeping, the fucking screws wake you. And then there’s the nurse. That asshole’s always late. It’s 23:35 and he still hasn’t come by. The plastic cup is already sitting on the edge of the peephole. He only has to stretch out a hand and put in the drops. With this business about my cancer, they upped the dose. Better had. The usual dose wasn’t doing fuck to me. The shitload of Valium is the only privilege of a life sentence. They’re always scared the hopeless might lose their heads and do themselves in. With the tranquillizers they don’t have to be on their toes. Fuck, this cocksucker is taking ages. He probably stopped to jaw with his co-workers at the rotunda. What the fuck does he care if we’re feeling bad.
Chill out, don’t get yourself worked up about being sick. Tomorrow’s Tuesday. I’m a guy that knows how to do time and the secret is organizing
your day right. The more methodical you are, the more you fuck the system. Night is the real problem. It never passes; you get ugly thoughts. It happens to everybody. The air gets thick with desperation. You breathe the other guys’ too. And that fucking nurse still hasn’t come by. Another five minutes and I’ll raise hell. No, let it slide, that Neapolitan on duty is capable of reporting you, and with the petition for pardon in the works better not look for trouble. I roll another butt. Fucking hell, my throat’s dry, and the tap water’s cow piss. If somebody asked me what I miss most about being on the outside, I’d answer a refrigerator. I haven’t seen an ice cube for fifteen years. I could really go for a stiff whiskey with a lot of crushed ice in a night club filled with entraîneuses.
Just a little longer and I’ll be free to drink as much as I want. But what the fuck are you saying, dickhead? You don’t have a lot of time. You’re dying. O.K., I’m about to die, shit, I’m about to die. I’m fucking scared: I don’t want to die in prison. I want to shut my eyes as a free man, even if it’s only for one day. And I’ll do it. I got a winning plan and for once I’ll manage to fuck them. All of them. It was a stroke of genius to refuse treatment in prison. Otherwise right now I’d be at the clinic in Pisa undergoing chemotherapy with no hope of getting out. I decided to risk the disease spreading; it was the only way to play the hand. The request for pardon is just a decoy. They’ll never grant it; only my lawyer holds out any hope for it. But he’s young and naïve. Contin has no intention of forgiving me, I killed his wife and kid, he’d be crazy to do it, and then this Minister of Justice wants us safely behind bars. So what if some con dies doing life for a double homicide? He ain’t going to lose any sleep over it; in fact, he’ll gain some votes. The pardon serves only to pave the way for the next move, the petition to suspend the sentence for illness. The life sentence stands and the surveillance judge, who no way feels like having me on his conscience, covers his ass with the press and the ministry. Then as soon as I hit the street, I fetch my share of the loot and make tracks. To Brazil. The doctors say I only got a couple years left; they tell me the last three months are going to be painful, and I’ll have to stay in the hospital. I got enough cash to live high on the hog for the remaining time and make sure I get the best care. Down there you just need money and anything’s possible. And I’m rich. My partner saved my share all these years. The idea that he might’ve screwed me never even crossed my mind; he knows certain offenses don’t have a statute of limitations.
Death's Dark Abyss Page 2
