A Walk in the Dark

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  I thought of how I’d be when I was old. I wondered if I would even notice. It struck me I was really afraid of growing old. I wondered if at seventy – if I reached that age – I’d be capable of reacting if someone attacked me in the street. It’s an idiotic thought, I know. But it was what I thought at that moment, and the fear of it went right through me.

  So I got up from the sofa as the credits of the documentary were rolling, and took off my shoes, shirt and trousers, leaving just my socks and underpants on. Then I took the boxing gloves that were hanging on the wall, put them on, and set the alarm for three minutes: a regular professional round.

  I did eight rounds, with one-minute intervals between them, punching as if a title, or my life, depended on it. Without thinking about anything. Not even my old age, which would come sooner or later.

  Then I went and had a shower. My arms hurt and my eyes were a little blurred. But the rest of it was over, for that evening.

  25

  I met Martina and Claudia in a bar near the courthouse, half an hour before the start of the hearing. To go over my instructions on how Martina should conduct herself.

  A few days before, she’d brought me her medical records, and I’d compared them with those Delissanti had produced in court. They were the same. That is, Delissanti’s were a copy of ours. As I was comparing them I noticed a detail, which I made a note of in red. It was an important detail.

  Martina had memorized well everything I had told her a month earlier. She was nervous, she smoked five or six cigarettes, one after the other, but all in all she seemed to be in control.

  When we’d finished going over my instructions, she asked me again if Scianatico would be there that morning. I told her again that I didn’t know but that, if I had to make a prediction, I’d say yes. If I were Delissanti, I’d make sure he was in court.

  She noticed I’d brought the medical records and asked me what I needed them for. To ask her the questions I’d already talked about, I replied.

  I also needed them for something else. Something Delissanti and his client weren’t expecting, but I was keeping this to myself. I asked her if she had any other questions. She hadn’t, so I said we could go to court.

  Scianatico was there. He was sitting next to his attorney, looking through the file. He seemed calm. A professional surrounded by other professionals. He was elegant and tanned. Seeing him like that, he didn’t look like someone who was having to defend himself against a slanderous allegation. As they say.

  I made only a small gesture to greet him and Delissanti, the least I could get away with.

  Alessandra Mantovani, on the other hand, wasn’t in court. In her place was an honorary assistant prosecutor I’d never seen before. He had very thick eyebrows, hair coming out of his ears and his big nostrils, and rings under his half-closed, slightly bloodshot eyes. He looked like a warthog and had serious problems with even basic Italian.

  Holding my breath, I asked him if he had been asked to deputize for the whole hearing. In other words, for our case too. If he had, we could all go home without wasting any more time.

  No – Warthog replied – he wasn’t deputizing for the whole hearing. There was something Dottoressa Mantovani had to attend to personally and he was to call her when the other cases were over. Then, apparently exhausted by his own eloquence, he collapsed onto the files on the desk in front of him. I noticed he was wearing a wedding ring, and I couldn’t help wondering what his wife was like, and if he had conquered her with those beautiful long black hairs coming out of his nose and ears. Maybe she had them too.

  Maybe I was going crazy, I thought, dismissing the subject from my mind.

  Caldarola arrived, there was a bit of plea bargaining, some summonses were issued, some cases were adjourned. Then the judge retired to his chamber to write out his rulings and the assistant prosecutor/ warthog disappeared.

  A few minutes later, Alessandra Mantovani arrived. Scianatico and Delissanti stood up to shake her hand, something they hadn’t done with me. I didn’t like that. Not that I was desperate to shake their hands. But doing that sent a message. It meant: We know that you, Prosecutor, are just doing your job and we don’t hold it against you. The real bastard is him – that is, me – and we’ll settle our accounts with him when this business is over. Alessandra returned first Delissanti’s handshake, then Scianatico’s, with an icy smile. Only her lips moved, for a fraction of a second, while her eyes remained frozen, looking directly at them.

  That too was a message.

  Then the bell rang to announce that the judge was coming back into the courtroom.

  We were about to start.

  “Right, then, who is the first witness for the prosecution?”

  “Your Honour, the public prosecutor wishes to call the plaintiff, Signora Martina Fumai.”

  The bailiff left the court and his voice could be heard calling Martina’s name. A few moments later they came in together. Martina was in jeans, a highnecked sweater and a jacket.

  She sat down, gave her personal details, and then the clerk of the court passed her the plastic-coated card, dirty with the thousand hands that had touched it, containing the words witnesses had to recite before giving evidence.

  “Conscious of the moral and legal responsibility I assume with my testimony, I swear to tell the whole truth and not to conceal anything of which I have knowledge.”

  Martina’s voice was thin, but quite firm. She was looking in front of her and seemed to be concentrating hard.

  “The public prosecutor may proceed with the examination.”

  “Good morning, Dottoressa Fumai. Could you tell us when you met the defendant, Gianluca Scianatico?”

  Alessandra Mantovani was born to do this work. She questioned Martina for more than an hour, without making any mistakes. Her questions were brief, clear, simple. The tone was professional, but not cold. Martina told her story in detail and there wasn’t a single objection in the whole of the examination. By the time my turn came, there was, as I’d expected, very little left to ask. To all intents and purposes, just the issue of her stay in hospital and her psychiatric problems. The judge gave me the floor, and from his tone it was very clear he hadn’t forgotten what had happened at the previous hearing.

  “Dottoressa Fumai, you’ve given very detailed answers to the public prosecutor’s questions. I shan’t go back over the same points. I just need to ask you a few questions about some matters relating to your past. Is that all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the past, have you had any problems of a nervous nature?”

  “Yes. I had a nervous breakdown.”

  “Could you tell us if that was before or after you met the defendant?”

  “It was before.”

  “Could you please tell us when, and also tell us briefly the cause of this breakdown.”

  “I think two . . . maybe three years before we met. I was having problems connected with my studies.”

  “Could you briefly explain to us the nature of these problems?”

  “I was finding it impossible to graduate. I had just one exam left, I’d taken it several times without passing . . . and to cut a long story short, at a certain point I had a breakdown.”

  “I realize how painful it must be for you to recall these events, but could you tell us what happened?”

  On my right, Delissanti and Scianatico were talking excitedly. They hadn’t been expecting this. I could imagine the insinuating questions they must have prepared. Have you had any psychiatric illnesses? Were you treated with psychotropic drugs? Are you mad? And so on. They’d put all their eggs in one basket and now, I thought, smugly, I’d broken them. Fuck them.

  “After taking the exam five times, I was desperate. I’d had a very difficult time at university. With only one exam left, I thought I’d got through it. Instead of which, I couldn’t get past the final hurdle. For my sixth attempt I studied like mad, fourteen hours a day, maybe even more. I couldn’t sleep and was forced t
o take tranquillizers. The night before the exam I stayed awake, trying to revise. The next morning, when my turn came, I’d fallen asleep on the bench and didn’t hear them call me.”

  “How old were you then? And how old are you now?”

  “I was twenty-eight, twenty-nine. I’m thirty-five now.”

  “And that was when you consulted a specialist?”

  “After about ten days, I was admitted to hospital.”

  “Could you tell us what your symptoms were?”

  She paused. This was the most difficult moment. If we could get through this, the rest would be easy.

  Martina breathed in, and her breathing was laboured, halting, as if there were a valve stopping her from taking a deep breath.

  “I wasn’t interested in anything, I thought about death, I cried a lot. I’d wake up early in the morning, when it was still dark, feeling panicky. Physically I felt very weak, I had constant headaches, and pains all over my body. Most of all, I had severe eating difficulties. I couldn’t feed myself. Every time I tried to swallow something, I’d throw up straight away.”

  She paused again, as if gathering her strength.

  “They had to feed me artificially. With a drip and also a stomach tube.”

  I let the harshness of the story sink in, before continuing with my other questions.

  “Did you have any disorders of perception, hallucinations, that kind of thing?”

  For the first time, Martina looked away from the vague point in front of her, on which she had been concentrating, in accordance with my instructions, since the beginning of her testimony. She turned to look at me. In surprise. What did I mean? What did hallucinations have to do with anything?

  “Did you have hallucinations, Dottoressa Fumai? Did you see things that didn’t exist, did you hear voices?”

  “No, of course not. I wasn’t . . . I’m not mad. I had a nervous breakdown.”

  “How long did you stay in hospital?”

  “Three weeks, maybe a little more.”

  “Why did they discharge you?”

  “Because I’d started to feed myself again.”

  “And after that?”

  “I had sessions with a therapist, and I took medication.”

  “How long did the treatment last?”

  “The medication, a few months. The psychotherapy sessions . . . maybe a year and a half.”

  “And you finally graduated?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had you already graduated when you met the defendant?”

  “Yes, I was already working.”

  “Were you still in therapy when you met the defendant?”

  “No, the therapy itself had finished. But every three or four months I had a meeting with my therapist. They were like . . . I suppose you could call them check-ups.”

  “During your relationship with the defendant, did you tell him about the problems you’ve just told us about?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you have a copy of the medical records from the time you spent in hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have it during the time you lived with the defendant?”

  Another pause. Another puzzled look. Martina didn’t know where I was trying to go with this. But I knew. And so, probably, did Delissanti and Scianatico.

  “Of course.”

  “Are these the medical records? Your Honour, may I approach the witness and show her these documents?”

  Caldarola nodded and made a gesture with his hand. I could approach. Thank you, arsehole.

  Martina looked at the papers for a few moments. It didn’t take her long to recognize them, seeing as how she was the one who’d given them to me. She looked up at me. Yes, these were her medical records. Yes, the ones she’d had at home when she lived with Scianatico. No, she’d never taken any particular care of them. She hadn’t put them in a safe, or even locked them in a drawer.

  “Thank you, Dottoressa Fumai. I have no more questions for the moment, Your Honour. But I request that the documents shown to the witness and identified by her be admitted to the case file.”

  Dellisanti fell for it and objected. I should have requested this admission at the preliminary hearing, he said, without even standing up. Besides, as far as he could tell, these were the same records which the defence had already produced. The request was therefore superfluous.

  “Your Honour, I might say that if these are the same documents already produced by counsel for the defence, I don’t see why there should be any objection. Or perhaps I do see, but we shall look at that at the appropriate moment. Yes, it is true, these are the same documents produced by counsel for the defence. Theirs are a copy and so are ours, taken directly from the medical records of the nursing home. But on our copy there are a few annotations in pen, made by the doctor who treated the plaintiff after her admission to hospital. As I said, the annotations on our copy are in pen. So we could say that our documents are both a copy and an original. One only has to look at our documents and those produced by the defence to realize that theirs are a copy of ours. For reasons that we will explain further in the course of the hearing, but which you, Your Honour, have surely already realized, the admission of our copy is relevant.”

  Caldarola couldn’t find any arguments to refuse my request, and those put forward by Delissanti were really insubstantial. So he allowed the admission of the documents and then ordered a ten-minute recess before cross-examination.

  26

  When Caldarola told Delissanti that he could proceed with the cross-examination, Delissanti replied, without even lifting his head, “Thank you, Your Honour, just a moment.” He was rummaging among his papers, as if searching for a document without which he couldn’t start his questioning.

  He was faking it. It was a trick, to make Martina feel tenser, to force her to turn to him and meet his eyes. But she was good. She didn’t move a muscle, didn’t turn towards the defence bench, and in the end, when the silence was starting to be embarrassing, it was Delissanti who gave in. He closed his file, without taking anything out, and began.

  You lost the first round, fatso, I thought.

  “If I understand correctly, you have regular meetings with a psychiatrist. Is that right, Signorina?” The way he said Signorina, it was clear he meant it as an insult. In other words: a woman who’s pushing middle age and hasn’t yet found a husband.

  “We meet every three or four months. It’s a kind of counselling session. And he’s a psychotherapist.”

  “Am I correct in saying that since your nervous breakdown and your admission to a psychiatric ward, you have never stopped treatment for your mental disorder?”

  I half rose, with my hands on the desk.

  “Objection, Your Honour. Put in those terms the question is inadmissible. Its purpose is not to get an answer, not to elicit information from the witness which may help in reaching a decision, but only to obtain an offensive and intimidating effect.”

  “Don’t judge counsel’s intentions, Avvocato Guerrieri. Let us hear what the witness has to say. Answer the question, Signorina. Is it true you have never stopped therapy?”

  “No, Your Honour, it isn’t true. The therapy itself lasted, as I’ve said before, a year and a half, maybe a little more. During that time, I had two sessions a week with my therapist. Then we reduced it to once a week, then twice a month . . .”

  “Let me rephrase the question, Signorina. Is it correct to say that you have never stopped seeing the psychiatrist, but you simply see him less frequently?”

  “If you put it like that—”

  “Can you tell me if you have ever stopped seeing the psychiatrist? Yes or no?”

  Martina clenched her mouth shut and her lips became very thin. For a moment, I had the absurd feeling that she was going to get up and walk out without saying another word.

  “I’ve never stopped seeing the psychotherapist. I see him three or four times a year.”

  “When was the last time you paid a v
isit to your psychiatrist?”

  He kept repeating the word psychiatrist. It suggested a stronger, even if implicit, connection with the idea of mental illness. It was a simple trick, and a dirty one, but it made sense from his point of view.

  “They aren’t visits, we just meet and talk.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “The last time I went to my . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “. . . a week ago.”

  “Ah, how fortuitous. Since you insist on calling this person a psychotherapist, and just so that we can clear up any ambiguity: is he a doctor specializing in psychiatry or a psychologist?”

  “He’s a doctor.”

  “Specializing in psychiatry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you still see him if, as you say, you’re cured?”

  “He considers it advisable for us to meet and check how things are in general—”

  “Excuse me for interrupting, but I find this interesting. It’s the psychiatrist himself who considers these occasional meetings necessary?”

  “It’s not that he considers them necessary—”

  “Excuse me. Did your psychiatrist say to you at a certain point, when he considered that your mental condition had improved: it’s no longer necessary for us to see each other twice a week, but once a week?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did your psychiatrist say to you at a certain point, for the same reason: it’s no longer necessary for us to see each other once a week, twice a month will be enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did your psychiatrist say to you that you will have to meet for the rest of your life, even if only four times a year?”

  “For the rest of my life? What do you mean?”