The View From the Tower

by Charles Lambert

  A moment later an instantly recognisable voice says “Signora Di Stasi.”

  Impressed despite himself, he pulls a face, then covers the mouthpiece with his hand and turns back to look at Helen.

  “It’s your beloved PM,” he says, holding the receiver out to her, unable to suppress a grin. “He seems to think I’m you.”

  “Oh no,” says Helen, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

  “I’m afraid she isn’t available,” Giacomo says, adding, with a sense of his own naughtiness: “Perhaps I can take a message. Who is that?”

  The line falls dead for a moment. The first voice, a man, returns to ask when Signora Di Stasi can be found. He passes this question on to Helen, who gestures helplessly.

  “I don’t know. Never,” she says.

  “Can’t be done,” says Giacomo. “Sooner or later you’ll have to talk to him.” Helen stares at him wretchedly. Then, with a shudder, she walks across.

  “Give it to me.” She grabs the receiver from him and swings away, visibly furious. Immediately, Giacomo regrets what he’s done.

  “Pronto.”

  Giacomo moves off. Helen is silent, her body clenched. She says sì and no and grazie; she could be talking to anyone at first, her tone polite but cautious. For a moment, Giacomo wonders if he’s misheard, if the man on the other end of the line isn’t the prime minister at all but a journalist, or someone playing some dark idea of a joke. But he’d know that voice from a thousand. Then Helen begins to shake her head.

  “Mi dispiace, è fuori discussione.”

  “She says it’s out of the question,” he whispers to Yvonne, who doesn’t seem to have understood what’s going on, and is still enjoying the discomfort she created a few minutes ago. “It’s the prime minister,” he says a second time. This time she nods, but looks bemused. She’s a child, he thinks, she’s lucky to know so little. What in God’s name am I going to do with her?

  Helen is holding the receiver slightly away from her head.

  “Mi dispiace, ma lei non può decidere ciò che sarebbe piaciuto o non a mio marito,” she says, her voice overloud, slightly tremulous.

  “She’s saying he can’t decide what Federico would have wanted,” Giacomo tells Yvonne, who has shown no sign of wanting to know what Helen is saying. She’s got guts to talk to him like that, thinks Giacomo. He isn’t used to people saying “no”. I’d love to see his face.

  Helen pivots on her heels and holds the receiver out to him, making an odd sound, almost a whimper. He steps forward to take it, listening to silence, followed by a click. As soon as he has put the receiver down, the phone rings again. After a moment’s hesitation, he picks it up. This time, a woman asks for Helen in a sharp, impatient voice that expects to be obeyed. Before Giacomo can answer, the woman says, Le dica che sono Giulia.

  “It’s Giulia,” he says to Helen, who is standing beside him, beaten down by the brutality of what is happening.

  “You don’t have to speak to her,” he says, and he’s about to make some sort of excuse. But Helen takes the receiver from him with startling brusqueness and begins to speak.

  “You told him to call me, didn’t you?” she says. “You told him I was at home. You told him to call me here.” After a moment, during which she looks at Giacomo with an expression of horrified disbelief, she continues. “I don’t believe it. Federico doesn’t belong to anyone, Giulia. Hasn’t he done enough for this fucking country already?” Another silence. Helen’s knuckles are white. Then, “I don’t think you know what you’re saying, Giulia. How can you talk about his death like that?” She is shouting now. “Giulia! He didn’t want to die!” So, that’s it, thinks Giacomo, the old woman wants her son to be seen as a martyr, like one of those Roman matrons who’d give their own flesh and blood a dose of hemlock for the sake of the republic, who’d slit their own wrists in the bath. And then Helen sinks into the desk chair, grabbing the edge of the desk as the wheels skid under her weight. “He can do what he likes,” she cries. “I won’t listen to any more of this.” But she does listen, gripping the phone, tears streaming down her face. She’ll listen until the woman has said whatever it is she has to say, imagines Giacomo. He knows the type. She’s like the PM, she won’t take no for an answer. She’ll ring back and if the phone’s off the hook she’ll be round ten minutes later and banging on the door until it’s opened.

  “I need to go now,” says Yvonne behind him.

  “She’s always hated me,” says Helen, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.

  “Not now,” he snaps.

  “But I need to go now,” insists Yvonne.

  “And I’ve hated her,” announces Helen.

  Giacomo jerks his head towards the corridor. “There’s a bathroom down there.”

  “I don’t mean that,” Yvonne says. “I mean leave this apartment.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Giacomo says. “Not yet.”

  Helen puts the phone down. Giacomo can just hear the voice of her mother-in-law trapped within it.

  “No,” she says, “I do want you to go. Please. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me.”

  Giacomo shakes his head. He doesn’t try to stop Yvonne. When he hears the flat door slam behind his back, he’s relieved, and not only because he can’t leave Helen alone like this. They have been through so much together, whatever she might have said to Federico. And now here he is, in Federico’s flat, in Federico’s city, at Federico’s bidding, with Federico dead. Giacomo could so easily have refused to come to this conference; the last thing he needs is what Helen, typically insensitive to political nuance, has called an act of rehabilitation. On the contrary, it’s likely to do him more harm than good in some quarters. But he wasn’t thinking about his reputation when he agreed to come. Helen had been the main attraction, he’ll admit that. But there was also Federico, and their friendship, which was rivalry, of course, but not just that, which predated Helen and might have outlived her, if the chance had been given them. And now he finds himself here in the midst of this pointless anachronistic murder that reminds him of nothing so much as of one of those endless sequels, Rocky VII, Superman III, in which nothing is left of the original but an infinitesimal homeopathic dose.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” says Helen. She’s crying again. When she reaches out for him, he takes her in his arms and holds her the way he might hold someone injured, some car crash victim, perhaps, the extent of whose wounds are still unclear, whispering words of comfort while waiting for more certain help to arrive.

  5

  Turin, 1978

  Early in January, when the snow was still on the mountains that seemed to surround the city like a barricade, Helen was called to the office of Miriam’s lover, up on the executive floor. He offered her coffee, asked her how she was settling in; his English had taken on Miriam’s Scottish burr. She said she was happy, which was true; she’d begun to enjoy teaching, enjoy the company of her students, not only the secretaries she’d started out with, but all the others, from upper management to the shop floor. She said it had given her an insight into the real Italy. He was glad she felt that way, he said, she was much appreciated. He’d heard nothing but good of her. She blushed, she told him she was pleased to hear it. When she said this, his tone immediately changed. He became brisk, business-like, his almost flirtatious amiability shelved. He told her he had a favour he needed doing, and she was just the person. No one else would do, he said. She stared into her empty cup, too anxious to answer or look up; she didn’t trust the word “favour”. He asked if she’d be prepared to give individual lessons to a man that Fiat was moving to its South Africa branch. She’d be paid extra, naturally, at a higher rate than usual. Relieved, curious, needing the money, she said she would.

  The following day, after her classes were finished, she was taken to a room in a part of the building she didn’t know, near enough to the factory itself for the muffled sound of machinery to be heard. It was empty of furniture, apart from a small wooden
table, two chairs and a stool. The student was sitting on one of the chairs, his leg stretched out before him on the stool, the knee bandaged. Helen recognised him as someone she’d taught until a few weeks before Christmas, one of her best students, a trade union steward called Eduardo. She’d spoken to Federico about him with such enthusiasm that he’d seemed, unexpectedly, jealous, and then over-curious, as though he’d wanted to know what he might be up against. Helen was amused. He’s the kind of man you can’t help but admire, that’s all I mean, she’d protested when Federico asked her, half-teasing, how her favourite pupil was behaving. She’d tried to imply that admiration wasn’t love, although surely, it had occurred to her afterwards, it should be part of it at least. Could she have loved a man she couldn’t admire, she asked herself. Federico had let it drop in the end, when Eduardo left the group and she stopped mentioning him. She thought he’d been transferred; she hadn’t been told why – no one seemed to know. But now, with Eduardo before her, struggling to stand despite his bandaged leg, she could see what had happened; he’d been kneecapped. She was shocked, she said she was sorry. The man who had brought Helen backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. When they were alone, Eduardo raised his eyebrows and nodded, then tried to smile.

  “I know you are sorry, Helen. It must be strange to you, this violence, this armed struggle.” The last two words were said with irony. His English had improved since the attack.

  “It ought to be strange to everyone,” she said. There was an embarrassed silence. Helen wasn’t used to individual lessons, and she was too fond of Eduardo, and too unsettled by what had happened to him, to know how to start. It didn’t seem right to begin with the usual routine about what they’d both been doing since they’d last seen each other. She’d lived her normal life, while Eduardo had been shot, had been taken to hospital, had convalesced, had lived in fear of what might happen next. There were no words for this.

  Finally, because nothing else came to her, she asked him what he thought he would need to know in South Africa. He said he would need to learn to brake his tongue. In English, she told him, the expression is “hold your tongue”. He sighed, shaking his head. “How can I live in South Africa? I despise apartheid,” he said.

  “Do you have to go?” Helen said. “Why don’t you change your job? You could go to another city, surely?” He looked at her, with pity, or worse, contempt, as though she had chosen to be foolish.

  “I have a family,” he said. “A wife, two sons at university, one of them your age. Here in Italy I’m a marked man. In any case, in my business, Turin is the only city. No one else makes cars in Italy.”

  “But you represent the union. I thought you were fighting to defend the workers,” she blurted out. “I can’t understand why they should want to hurt you.”

  “They?” he said. “Who do you think they are?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You make it seem simple, Helen, when you say ‘they’. You make it seem that the lines are made clean with a knife between one person and the other, one idea and the other. It isn’t simple. I might move over these lines and be shot, or shoot. I have been shot, this time. But I don’t know who ‘they’ are. Who do you think they are?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what they’re fighting for.” She looked at him. “You would know, wouldn’t you? If you shot someone?”

  He shrugged, then winced, pressing his hand to his knee.

  “I have a family,” he said. “I would shoot for them. I would shoot to kill. And now I must live as a white man in a racist state for them. I think I would prefer to shoot, but that is not possible.” He grinned, his face lit up; he looked like a boy. He was old enough to be her father. Opening his hands, he held them out in an unexpected gesture, less of resignation than acceptance. I love you, she thought, although that wasn’t what she meant. It was just that, at that moment, she would have given her life to spend it beside this small neat man, with his large hands and bristly cropped grey-black hair. He seemed to be the only man she knew.

  “And now you must teach me the words I will need to explain to the people I will work beside, all these white people, why I am not a racist and cannot share their view.”

  That evening she listened to Giacomo argue with Federico, when they had finished dinner and both men assumed she would clear the table, as she generally did. She listened to their talk of hegemony and autonomy, workers’ control and the ethics of auto-reduction, by which they seemed to mean evading tram fares and stealing food from supermarkets. All at once they stopped arguing and began to laugh about a professor they both despised at the department, where Giacomo was also working, although not, as far as Helen could tell, being paid.

  She was the only wage-earner in the flat; Federico’s research grant was still tied up in some bureaucratic way she didn’t understand. They were living on pasta and beans, vegetables and round bread rolls with a crusty little nipple at the top that Helen always broke off and nibbled first. And local red Barbera, bought by the litre from a local vineria. Giacomo was putting on weight. He had barely trimmed his hair and beard. That was the evening she said he looked like one of the Red Brigades leaders, who’d been arrested the year before and was still in jail, awaiting trial. She found herself comparing Giacomo and Federico with Eduardo. Beside that small heroic man, his wounded leg propped on the stool, they seemed like untested boys to her; she wondered how she’d translate the word “callow” into Italian while they mopped up the last dregs of sauce with their bread.

  The following morning Giacomo’s beard was gone. That afternoon he went to the barber’s and had his hair cut short. That evening he came home for dinner in plain grey trousers and a v-necked sweater over a nylon shirt. They barely recognised him.

  “You look as though you’re in disguise,” she said, not sure whether to laugh or be disturbed. “You’ve cast off all your bourgeois intellectual trappings,” teased Federico. “You’ll have to be careful though. They might not let you into the department looking like that.” Helen thought the new Giacomo was like some character from Turgenev, a pale inconspicuous anarchist biding his time in an office until the moment came. He looked more dangerous, not less. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. She wondered what Miriam would make of him.

  She still saw Miriam once or twice a week. They’d eat a roll together for lunch in one of the bars in the centre, or meet up in one of the English pubs for a drink. Miriam had guessed that Helen had a man, but didn’t press for information. “We girls have to make do with what’s available,” she’d said. Miriam introduced her to all the other girls from her Highland village, au pairs to some of the richest families in Turin. It was odd to see them together, over-dressed, drunk and raucous, their make-up smeared by tears of laughter and sweat, and imagine them the following morning in the Liberty villas of their employers, preparing their charges for their private schools, while drivers waited below in expensive cars, armed against kidnappers. They had their days free, and seemed to spend them in beauty salons. Helen had sometimes wondered what happened in such places, but turned down their offers to take her with a nervous smile. One of them, usually Miriam, would drive her home, then watch her until she was safely in the building. They worried she had no money and needed new clothes. Everyone wants to mother me, she thought, except Federico. She wasn’t sure how much she liked it.

  She didn’t tell Giacomo about Eduardo; Federico did. She’d heard enough of Giacomo’s views by then to know what he would think, and she was right. He said it was sentimental of her to suppose that Eduardo’s disgust and acceptance and anger were more important than anyone else’s, to which she said that of course no single person was worth more than any other single person, she knew that, although she wasn’t sure she believed it. She told him that it was through Eduardo that she understood the others. That’s what she said, but she heard herself speaking and wondered what she meant. Was she afraid to say what she really thought, that none of this violence made se
nse to her? She’d heard Giacomo use the word “injury” to describe kneecapping. It seemed so bland, so anaemic, as though being shot in the leg were a sort of accident, like falling off a kerb. It might have been no more than a blip in his otherwise perfect English to use the word in this way, but she didn’t think so. She thought it reflected his state of mind.

  She couldn’t be sure how Federico felt. When she told him about the extra lessons, and the reason for them, he listened with what looked like sympathy. He didn’t seem to be jealous any longer, which puzzled and upset her, though she couldn’t have explained why. He asked her questions she couldn’t answer about Eduardo’s union work, about how it was seen within management. Was he seen as a collaborator? he wanted to know. What effect had his kneecapping had on morale? he asked her, as though that mattered. He wanted the best for everyone, she said, he’s a good man, although she couldn’t know this; it was just what she felt. Federico listened and nodded, silent. The idea that she was missing something, some larger sense, stayed with her and made her uncomfortable.

  6

  At the top end of Via del Tritone, with helicopters circling above his head, Martin strides out. He’s had a brief siesta and now he’s sweating slightly in the late-afternoon heat, marvelling at the tawdry bazaar-like feel of the tourist shops, their amateurish window fronts, the dark unwelcoming bars, handwritten signs in broken English and Japanese, the démodé displays of ties and bags and gloves. It’s odd the way this side of Rome has survived, he thinks, as though people still came to the city for its leatherwork and silk, expecting bargains. He pauses just before reaching the Messaggero building, wondering if snipers have their rifles trained on him, because there are always snipers on days like this, days of parades and state festivities, dotted like urns above the gutters of the buildings, visible to one another and the hovering pilots. A helicopter’s shadow skims above him like a cloud. He glances up, tempted to wave, catching his hat as it slides off. When the impulse passes and he looks ahead, he sees Adriano Testa standing beside the newspaper kiosk in a pale blue polo shirt and linen trousers, and is pleased to find him both balder and more out of shape than Martin is. With a bound of contentment, his hand outstretched, he walks across.