He can’t see her face, and he’s glad of it, as a man in a green coat and white clogs lifts a latch and pulls out the long tray with Federico lying on it, encased in a plastic bag. The man drags back a zip and Giacomo steps forward, as if to protect Helen, although his first instinct is to see the body. For a moment, it crosses his mind that maybe the dead man is not Federico at all, but someone else, some absurd mistake, and he remembers that the same thought passed through Helen’s mind in the hotel room; it feels like hours ago now. He wonders if her disappointment is as acute as his when he sees the face of Federico, drained of colour and oddly youthful, emerge from the bag. Surely more acute than his, he corrects himself, they’ve been married for over twenty-five years, they’re still together after all that must have happened, her disappointments and lies, his compromises; she must be desolated by this. He looks at Federico, the hair smoothed back, less of it than when they first met over thirty years ago but still not a trace of grey, the eyes wide open with that cold, almost repellent blue as piercing as ever. He sees, as always in these situations, the total absence of the person, the total obliterating presence of death, as though the physical body really were a sort of receptacle for some living flame, some flickering quenchable soul. Perhaps we’ll all get God one day, before we die. He frowns.
Helen slumps against him. He slips his arm round her waist and hugs her to him, as much for support as anything; she seems to be about to fall. She has been so brave, it can’t last forever. Sooner or later, she is bound to collapse, need help, and he’ll be there. When the man in the green coat starts to tug the zip further down, his gaze casts over to the wall as though ashamed or complicit in some way, and it becomes obvious that Federico is naked – but of course he’ll be naked – she utters a stifled cry and turns towards Giacomo, raising her face until her eyes, as wide and blank as Federico’s, are staring into his.
He cups his hand around the back of her head and guides it into his shoulder. He’d have done anything, he realises, to spare her this. Shaking his head at the man in the green coat, he leads her, almost falling, towards the policemen near the door. Surely there must be someone more senior than these two, he thinks, they look like kids. I used to be scared of men in uniform; now I feel like sending them off to find their mothers. “We’ve seen enough,” he says.
Ten minutes later, they are sitting with the man who seems to have been assigned to them, not much hair, a thin pusillanimous face, oddly shabby for a state official. The magistrate assigned to the case. Giacomo hasn’t caught his name; he’s surprised she doesn’t warrant something higher. He heard the Attorney General had done a PR job at the site of the shooting, but look at this character in front of them. There’s a bleached, northern look to him, confirmed, as he begins to talk, by a trace of accent. Couldn’t they have sent someone with a decent pair of shoes? Perhaps it isn’t the magistrate at all, he thinks; this one smells more like police.
The man is asking Helen questions in a low-voiced way that might be intended to express his sympathy but is having the opposite effect. She wipes her tears from her cheeks with her hand and glances round the room, an office emptied of its normal occupants, in a fretful way. She says to Giacomo, in English, “He’s treating me like an idiot. He seems to think I don’t speak Italian.” Immediately, the man shakes his head. “Not at all, Signora Di Stasi, please forgive me,” he says, also in English, his thin voice rueful, even sad. His English sounds perfect, with an accent it takes Giacomo a moment to place: South African. “You have my deepest sympathy.” To Giacomo’s surprise, Helen’s cheeks flush with embarrassment.
The man continues in English, beginning to ask Helen about her movements that morning, with cautious insistence. Giacomo lights a cigarette and waits, curious, to see if she will tell the truth. Why shouldn’t she? She hasn’t done anything wrong. Because old habits die hard? Helen has told enough lies in the past. She’s lied to Federico, she’s lied to me. And then he thinks, What in God’s name possessed me to accept this invitation? To come back to Rome like this, so publicly? I might as well have put an announcement in the paper. Sitting duck in capital. Pot shots welcome. Because of course this terrible thought has also entered his head. Is this murder directed at me in some way? Is Federico no more than a warning? How many enemies do I still have?
“Is this necessary? I’ve already explained it to your colleagues this morning. Surely someone takes notes?” Helen glances across at Giacomo and makes a gesture that seems, to his astonishment, to be an invitation to kiss her, two slim fingers brushing her mouth, but is actually a request for a cigarette. He lights it for her, alert to what Helen’s interrogator might do with this glimpse of intimacy. Will he have done his homework? This little man in his cheaply cut grey suit who imagines the right questions will turn up the right answers, because there are right answers, there are always right answers; it’s just a matter of knowing where to look. How much will he know, Giacomo wonders, handing her the lit cigarette, how much will he know about the three of them, no, the four of them, because there was always Stefania, good solid Stefania, about the old days in Turin, when politics was passion, the real and only thing. Sexy, as well, though they didn’t realise that at the time. Or maybe they did. Maybe he and Helen did. This time, though, she should know when it suits her to tell the truth. The shabby man’s not to know she hasn’t, of course. Giacomo’s safe enough so far.
She takes a drag, then looks for somewhere to put it down, already at a loss to know what to do with a cigarette she doesn’t want. She stopped before Federico, before Stefania even. Anglo-Saxon health fetishism, he’d thought at the time, yet here he is with Yvonne constantly at his throat and the sense of being hounded by clean air fascists in France of all places. Thank God they still won’t let him into the States, that’s one advantage. The interrogator pushes across the desk an ashtray the size of a dinner plate – Giacomo has never been in an Italian hospital that doesn’t have a plentiful supply of ashtrays – and coughs discreetly, as if to say, under the skin we’re the same, we’re men, we understand each other. Giacomo looks at him with unexpected admiration. It’s true in a way. We must be the same age, give or take a year or two, we probably have more in common than either of us dreams, we know the same things, the same flavours, the same fears, unlike those youngsters in the corridor outside who know nothing. He’s right. We understand each other. Isn’t that what they say? Police and thieves.
Helen stubs out the barely started cigarette, exhales a ribbon of smoke, continues: “I said goodbye to my husband at the car, where we always say goodbye. He drove off – was driven off, I mean – and I went into my local bar, the one on the corner, I don’t know what it’s called, I’ve never looked up to see, and I had a cappuccino and a, no, nothing else. A cappuccino. I spoke to the woman who owns it about something, a few words, I don’t remember what…”
She is talking in a measured, almost off-hand way that would be insulting in any other situation, as though she has been pestered beyond endurance; but here, in this hospital office that is slowly filling up with smoke, it denotes something else, an exhaustion to which she, more than anyone, is entitled. “After that, I went to the American Library, it’s just down the road from where we live. I wanted to work on my thesis. I’m doing another degree, in American literature, to pass the time really. It was my husband’s idea.”
She pauses and looks puzzled, as if she is thinking, Why am I saying all this? What business is it of theirs? Or maybe, What am I doing here? Can any of this be real? The man turns his head, in what looks like a gesture of delicacy, and stares at the wall. Giacomo is impressed again. After a moment, with a tiny shake of her shoulders, Helen goes on: “I stayed there for some time, I didn’t really look at my watch, twenty minutes maybe, half an hour.” She sighs. “I had the start of a headache, I thought a walk might make it better, so I left the library and decided to wander around the centre a little, look at a few shops, and wait for it to go. Walking usually helps. I didn’t need to be at
work until twelve, you see…”
All at once her tone has changed, become persuasive, that odd unnecessary you see has given her away. All at once, she needs to be believed. But why, in God’s name, did she lie in the first place? He couldn’t believe it when she told him in the car on the way to the morgue. I’ve done something foolish, she said. You won’t let me down, will you? For old times’ sake? The man must have noticed as well because he leans back in his chair, as obvious in his way as she has been in hers, and caps his pen. Secret service, decides Giacomo. And now I’m implicated, damn her.
“You must be tired, Signora Di Stasi,” the man says before Giacomo can intervene. “I’ll arrange for you to be taken home.” He opens a drawer and takes out a card, which he gives to her. “I shall certainly be in touch, but if you would like to speak to me again–”
“I’ll take you home,” Giacomo says as Helen puts the card into her pocket. But the man shakes his head.
“I think it might be wiser, Dottor Mura, if you returned to your hotel.”
Giacomo, affronted, turns to face him. “I’m sorry?”
The man shrugs. “Naturally, you are free to do as you wish. I was merely offering a word of advice.”
“I’m sorry?” insists Giacomo. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“He’s right,” says Helen. “You’ve done quite enough already.” Giacomo can’t tell if he’s being thanked or dismissed. He stifles his resentment.
“I’ll call you later.”
“No, don’t do that,” she says, her voice still measured, in an oddly insistent way. “You won’t get through. I won’t be taking calls.”
“If you’re sure that’s what you want,” he says. He opens the door for her, stands back to let her pass, but she takes his hand in hers and he can feel her trembling. “If you’re sure.”
“I’ll call you,” she says. “Later. I promise.”
Then, at a volume the other man is not supposed to hear, she adds: “I have to talk to you, I just don’t know where.” And Giacomo nods and presses her hand before letting it go.
9
The flat is empty. Slowly, she lifts her hands to her face and holds it for a moment, skin against skin, her palms against her cheeks, as if to make sure she is really who she is, and not some other woman whose husband has been murdered. She has rushed at the stairs to be here, pursued by nothing but her growing horror of the world outside, the cars, the lights, the hustling intimacy of its demands. Outside the hospital, someone shouted as a man’s hand guided her lowered head into the car, one voice above the rest, Bravo Federico, and she flinched but didn’t turn. She sat straight-backed in the car with the police woman from that morning beside her, holding her arm the way a friend might although Helen didn’t see her as a friend and wished she wasn’t there. I’ve answered too many questions today, she thought. I shall be home soon. Part of her has been waiting to be alone for almost seven hours and now, with her back pressed to the front door, she closes her eyes and listens to her breathing as though there is nothing else to be done, as though – finally – she has what she needs.
She steps out of her shoes, the wooden floor warm and smooth against her feet. Her first thought is to take a shower, but she is suddenly so tired she can barely walk across the room to the sofa and collapse. Clutching a cushion to her side, she sits in the corner, her legs curled up beneath her, refusing to lie down, afraid she might fall asleep when there is still so much she has to do. She doesn’t know where to begin, her mind is a wiped slate, so blank she has a sudden sense of panic, as though she is literally being sponged away.
When the landline rings on the other side of the room, she bites the side of her tongue in shock. The taste of blood filling her mouth, she picks up the receiver. She hears a woman’s voice she doesn’t recognise repeat her name, the pitch insistent, hectoring. She drops the receiver, not on the phone where it belongs but on the pad, beside a number and a date, written in Federico’s hand, a doodle. The voice continues, the furious buzz of an insect trapped in a jar. Her name and a plea to be answered, a plea that is also, it seems to Helen, a threat. It is 7 o’clock. The news will be starting. Now everyone will know. Friends and others. Some people, it occurs to her, will be pleased. She pulls the pad free of the receiver and stares at the doodle, a flower in a vase; Federico must have made it the day before. What was she doing while he drew this? Who was he talking to? Someone she knew? She doesn’t recognise the number. The date is for next week. Next Tuesday. A week today. The doodle blurs. Eventually, her hand shaking a little, she puts it down.
And now what shall I do? she asks herself. She starts to cry again, slow effortless tears. Not even her home is safe; she has the sense of being hounded by savage beasts, as though beyond the door there is no longer the familiar hall, the worn-down stairs, the furled umbrellas waiting to be used; as though she has become detached from that. The world seems hostile and unknown. She should feel safe here, in her own sitting room, surrounded by all the objects they have chosen, yet how empty the flat is without him, how silent and indifferent; although he was never home by this time. He never gets back before nine, he works too hard. Normally, that dreadful word. She turns on the television and makes herself a snack, some olives that Massimo’s mother has sent them, a handful of cashew nuts; she pours herself a glass of wine or beer, and sits on the sofa to watch the news. She waits for Federico. Normally. But this evening, she isn’t hungry and doesn’t want to pour herself a drink. She is afraid that once she starts she won’t be able to stop, because normally it is the thought of Federico finding her drunk that stops her after the first two glasses. And she can’t believe that might not happen.
Sitting in the car on the way here, she planned to call Giacomo as soon as she arrived, ask him to come over. But she realises now, alone in the home she’s made with Federico that what she wants to do, more than anything in the world, is to talk not to Giacomo but to Federico, and she won’t be able to. As if for the first time that day, she understands that she’ll never be able to talk to Federico again. But this time it is worse. Before this, some part of her has told her that he’ll be back, that he’s away on business, but he’ll be back; he always comes back. And now this part has fallen silent and she feels a flush of pain and rage, so strong it takes her breath away. Who has done this to me? To us? She stares at the phone, which has started to make a curious noise, then replaces the receiver on the handset. Immediately the ringing begins. She lifts it to her ear. It is Giulia, Federico’s mother.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours, Helen,” she snaps. “Your mobile’s turned off.”
“I couldn’t stand it any longer, Giulia.” Talking again, Helen tastes the blood in her mouth. “I was being pestered by journalists.”
“You’ve only just arrived home?”
“Ten minutes ago. The police brought me back in the end. I’ve been at the hospital all afternoon. I had to identify him, Giulia.”
“How dreadful for you. You aren’t still with that Mura man, I hope?”
“Giacomo left me at the hospital. He was a great comfort.”
“They could have asked me.” Giulia pauses. “Oh, by the way, the president’s called. He has to talk to you.”
“What about?” For a moment, Helen wonders who she means. The president of what?
“Fede was such an important figure, especially at the moment.” Giulia’s voice fills with pride. And now Helen understands that this is what will happen, for Giulia at least. Federico will become a hero and then a martyr. Perhaps it is happening already. What she stops herself saying, just in time, are the words: He isn’t dead yet. Without putting down the phone, she stretches out to the remote control and turns on the television to see what is left of the news, the volume off. Giulia’s voice, with that undertow of offence, continues to talk of Federico and his achievements, but what Helen sees is herself and Giacomo as they climb into a car, and a smile on her face she doesn’t remember, followed by a glance of complicit
y between them, accusing them both. And there are more pictures of Giacomo, on a demonstration in France, standing with his arm round the shoulder of the man who bombed the McDonald’s branch, the one with the moustache, and then a photograph she hasn’t seen for years, from his first driving licence, the one all the newspapers used when he was on the run. Appalled, she tries to tell Giulia that she has a headache, she can’t talk any longer but Giulia insists that Fausto has something important to say to her first. Helen expects her father-in-law to cry and feels her own lip tremble. He hasn’t been able to speak to her until this moment. Before she can answer, or protest, Fausto is on the line. “Turn on the news,” he says, his voice breaking.
“I know. I’m watching it.”
“But what on earth were you thinking of?” She’s right: he’s close to tears. “What did you imagine people’s reaction would be? Today. On the very day…” He pauses. “Giacomo Mura, of all people. All that terrible business had been forgotten and now, now that Fede’s–”
The news moves on, Giacomo’s bleached-out bearded face is replaced by footballers training, the wedding of a couple she recognises from the gossip magazines.
“I just don’t understand.” She interrupts him, her own voice breaking. “Why is everyone so angry with me?”
“I’ll speak to you tomorrow,” Fausto says.
“Yes,” she says. “That’s the best thing. We’ll talk tomorrow.” She can hear Giulia’s voice in the background, and Fausto saying yes.
As soon as she has put down the phone, with the receiver deliberately off the hook, she raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Oh my God, Federico,” she says, out loud, her voice unexpectedly strong, as though she is calling him from the next room. “Help me get through this without you.”
The View From the Tower Page 6
