The three policemen are in front of me, on the last flight of stairs before the landing. As far as we can get without running the risk of being seen. We are very close, almost on top of each other. I can smell the pungent sweat of the taller one: Loiacono maybe, or maybe Cassano. The doorbell makes a strange, out-oftime noise. A kind of ding dang dong, with an oldfashioned echo that’s quite unsettling. There’s a voice from inside the apartment, and Claudia says something in reply. Then silence, a long silence. I assume he’s looking through the spyhole. Then a mechanical noise: locks, keys turning. Then silence again, apart from the sound of our held breaths.
Tancredi has his mobile stuck to his left ear. With his other hand he’s holding his pistol, like the other two. Against his leg, the barrel pointed downwards. I remember the action all three of them performed before coming in. Slide pulled back, round in the chamber, hammer cocked gently to avoid accidental firing.
I look at Tancredi’s face, trying to read in it what he can hear, what’s happening. At a certain moment, the face distorts and before I need to think what it means, he cries, “Shit, all hell’s breaking loose. Smash the door down, damn it, smash the door down right now.”
The bigger of the two officers – Cassano, or maybe Loiacono – gets to the door first, lifts his knee almost to his chest, stretches his leg and kicks the door with the sole of his foot, at the height of the lock. There’s a noise of wood splitting, but the door doesn’t yield. The other policeman does exactly the same. More splitting wood, but still the door doesn’t yield.
Another two, three, four very violent kicks, and it opens. We all go in together. Tancredi first, the rest of us behind. Nobody tells me to wait outside and do my job while they get on with theirs.
We pass through a number of rooms, guided by Scianatico’s cries.
When we get to the kitchen, the scene that meets our eyes looks like some terrible ritual.
Claudia is sitting astride Scianatico’s face: she’s gripped him between her legs, keeping him immobilized, and with one hand she’s pinned his throat, her fingers digging into his neck like daggers. With the other hand clenched in a fist, she’s striking him repeatedly in the face. Savagely and methodically, and as I watch, I know she’s killing him. The frame widens to include Martina. She’s on the floor, near the sink. She isn’t moving. She looks like a broken doll.
Cassano and Loiacono seize Claudia under her armpits and pull her off Scianatico. Once her feet are on the ground, she does what the two officers are least expecting: she attacks them so quickly they don’t know what hits them, they don’t even see the punches and the kicks. Tancredi takes a step back and aims the pistol at Claudia’s legs.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Claudia. Don’t let’s do anything stupid.”
She’s deaf to his cries and takes a couple of steps towards him. I don’t think she’s even seen me, even though I’m very close to her, on her left.
I don’t actually make a conscious decision to do what I do. It just happens. She doesn’t see me, doesn’t even see my right hand as it comes towards her and strikes her on the chin, from the side. The most classic of knockout blows. You can be the strongest man in the world, but if you’re hit by a good straight jab, delivered the correct way, right on the tip of your chin, there’s nothing you can do. Your lights go out and that’s it. It’s like an anaesthetic.
Claudia falls to the floor. The two policemen are on top of her, twisting her arm behind her back and handcuffing her, with the automatic, efficient movements of people who’ve done it many times before. Then they do the same with Scianatico, but with him there’s no need to hurry. His face is unrecognizable from all the blows, he’s uttering monosyllables, and he can’t move.
Tancredi goes to Martina and places his index finger and middle finger on her neck. To see if there’s still any blood circulating. But it’s a mechanical gesture, a pointless one. Her eyes are staring, her face is waxen, her mouth is half open, showing her teeth, and there’s a trickle of blood, already dry, from her nose. The face of death, violent death. Tancredi has seen it many times. I’ve seen it too, but only in photos, in the files of homicide cases. Never, until now, so concrete, so vivid, so terrifyingly banal.
Tancredi passes his hand over her eyes to close them. Then he looks around, finds a coloured dishcloth, takes it, and covers her face.
Cassano – or Loiacono – makes as if to go out and call the others, but Tancredi stops him and tells him to wait. He goes up to Claudia, who’s sitting on the floor with her hands cuffed behind her back. He crouches and talks to her in a low voice for a few seconds. Finally, she nods her head.
“Take the handcuffs off.”
Cassano and Loiacono look at him. The look he gives back doesn’t need interpreting: it means he has no wish to repeat the order and that’s it. When Claudia is once again free, Tancredi tells us all to leave the kitchen and comes out with us.
“Now listen to me carefully, because in a few seconds there’ll be chaos in here.”
We look at him.
“Let me tell you what happened. Claudia went in. He attacked her and a scuffle started. We heard it all over the phone, and that’s when we broke in. When we got to the kitchen they were fighting. Both of them. We intervened, he resisted, and obviously we had to hit him. We finally managed to immobilize him and handcuff him. That’s it. That’s all that happened.”
He pauses, and looks at us one after the other.
“Is that clear?”
Nobody says anything. What can we say? He looks at us again for a few moments and then turns to Cassano, or maybe Loiacono.
“Call the others, without making too much fuss. Don’t go out shouting, there’s really no need. And send in the ambulance people too. For that piece of shit.”
The officer turns to go. Tancredi calls him back.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to see any journalists in here. Is that clear?”
By the time we left, the apartment was filling with policemen, carabinieri, doctors, nurses. The deputy head of the Flying Squad resumed command, so to speak, of the operation.
Tancredi told me to take Claudia away, make sure she calmed down, and call him again in an hour. We had to go to police headquarters for Claudia’s statement, and he wanted to be the one to take it, obviously.
He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke. She, on the other hand, was looking at him and it seemed as if she wanted to say something. She didn’t say anything, but there was probably no need.
We walked back to her van, which was still there, squashed up against the dustbin.
“Could you drive, please?”
“Do you want to see a doctor?”
“No,” she said, but her hand went unconsciously to her chin, and she took it between her thumb and the other fingers, to check it was still in one piece, after the punch. “No. It’s just that I don’t feel up to driving.”
It was still light and the air was cool and mild, I thought, as I got into that old contraption, on the driver’s side.
It was April, I thought.
The cruellest month.
32
We drove along all the seafronts in the city, two or three times, in Claudia’s van, without saying a word. When I saw that an hour had gone by, I asked her if we could go to police headquarters. She said yes. In a toneless, colourless voice.
We drove to police headquarters, and they took her statement. Tancredi was there, along with a very pleasant young policewoman. They wrote down the story Tancredi had already told us when we were still in Martina’s apartment.
It didn’t take long, and Claudia signed the statement without reading it.
When I asked if they needed my statement too, Tancredi looked me in the eyes for a few moments.
“What statement? You didn’t go in until it was all over. So what kind of statement do you want to make?”
Pause. I instinctively glanced at the policewoman, but she was making a photocopy a
nd wasn’t paying any attention to us.
“Just go, we’ve got work to do. It’ll take us all night to get the paperwork ready to send to the Prosecutor’s department tomorrow.”
He was right. What kind of statement did I want to make?
There was nothing to add, and so Claudia and I left.
Margherita was out, at work. I was glad she wasn’t in because I had no desire to tell her what had happened. Not that evening, at least. So I didn’t switch the mobile on again: I’d turned it off when we went into police headquarters.
We walked back to the van without saying a word. Claudia didn’t break the silence until we were sitting. She was looking straight ahead, her face expressionless.
“I don’t want to go back. I want to go for a drive.”
I didn’t want to go back either. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I started the engine without saying anything and set off. I took the autostrada after the Bari North tollgate, drove 500 yards, and stopped at the first motorway cafe. Absurdly, I felt like eating. In that casual, unstructured way you eat on long journeys, which I really like. Maybe that was why I’d taken the autostrada. We had two cappuccinos and two slices of cake. Because, absurdly, Claudia was also hungry.
When I paid, I asked the cashier for a cigarette lighter and a packet of MS. The packet was soft, and I held it in my hand for a few seconds before putting it in my pocket.
We set off again, into the still, welcoming darkness of that April night.
“Do you remember there was a story I wanted to tell you?” “Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Let’s stop somewhere. Somewhere quiet.”
About twelve miles further on, I pulled into a parking area, surrounded by deserted, dark, silent trees and dimly lit by a few street lamps. There was something strange and reassuring in the occasional muffled sound of a car speeding by. We got out of the van and went and sat on a bench.
White Nights came into my mind. I mean the actual words written in my head in printed characters. Along with images from the film, and words from the book. A bench, two people who can’t sleep, spending the night talking. Hovering in a suspended universe.
Calmly, I unwrapped the packet. First the silver thread, then the plastic at the top, then the tinfoil. I tapped the closed part with my index and middle fingers to get the cigarette out.
I closed my eyes and felt the smoke hit my lungs and the cool air on my face.
I didn’t care about anything, I thought, as I smoked that harsh, strong cigarette with my eyes closed. I lost contact with reality, I was floating somewhere, which was both there, in that car park, and at the same time somewhere else. Somewhere in the distant past, somewhere dark and welcoming and forgotten.
“I’m not a nun.”
I opened my eyes and turned to her. She had her elbow on her knee and her head on her elbow. She was looking – or seemed to be looking – towards the dark shadow of a eucalyptus.
She told me her story. I opened the door and stopped just inside the room, my arms hanging at either side of my body. He raised his head and looked at me. There was a hint of surprise in those filmy eyes. “Where’s Anna?” As I answered, I realized I was shaking all over. And I mean all over. Legs, arms, shoulders, chin. “Leave her alone.” He craned his neck towards me and half closed his eyes, in an instinctive gesture. As if he didn’t believe what he’d just heard. As if he didn’t believe that I could challenge him like that. “Tell Anna to come up here right now.” “Leave the child alone.” He got up from the bed. “I’m going to show you, you little bitch.” I was shaking all over, but I stayed where I was, just inside the room. All I did was lift my right arm, when he was almost on top of me. That was when he saw the knife. It was a long, sharp knife with a point. The kind that’s used for cutting meat. He was so close, I could see the hairs in his nose and ears. I could smell his body and his breath. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with that knife, you whore?” Those were his last words. I put my left hand over my right, and pushed with all the strength I had. From bottom to top, all the way. He jerked slightly and then, slowly, put his hands on mine, in a gesture of self-defence that was pointless now. We stayed like that, united for an endless moment, hands and eyes locked. His eyes were full of astonishment. Mine were empty. Then I freed my hands, took a few steps back, without turning. And closed the door.
Anna hadn’t heard a thing – he hadn’t even groaned – and didn’t notice anything. I took her by the hand and told her we had to go down to the yard. She took her dolls and followed me. As we were going downstairs, she stopped and pointed. “You’ve hurt yourself, Angela. There’s blood coming out of your hand.” “It’s nothing. I’ll wash it at the tap in the yard.” “But you have to put disinfectant on it.” “There’s no need. Water will be fine.”
After that, my memories are confused. A series of fragments, some clear, others so dark you can’t see anything. At a certain point, my mother came back, passed us and went upstairs. I don’t remember if she greeted us, or just saw us. A few minutes later we heard her terrible screams. Then people leaning over the balconies, or coming down to the yard, or climbing the stairs in our block. Then noises of sirens, and flashing blue lights. Dark uniforms, a crowd pressing around our door, the hours passing, night starting to fall, people talking under their breaths while two men in white shirts carried out a stretcher with a body on it, covered in a sheet. I stayed behind, holding my sister by the hand, until a nice lady came up to us and said we had to go with her. We were taken to an office. There was a man there, and the lady asked us if we wanted something to eat. My sister said yes, I said no thanks, I wasn’t hungry. They brought her a ham roll and a Coke, and when she’d finished eating they asked us questions. They wanted to know if anyone had come to see our daddy, if we had seen any strangers entering our block, anything like that. I asked if they could take my sister out, because I had some things to tell them. They looked at each other and then the lady took my sister by the hand and took her out of the room. By the time she came back, I was already telling my story. I told it all, calmly, starting with that summer morning and finishing the Thursday before Good Friday. Calmly, without feeling anything.
33
I lit my third or maybe fourth MS and gratefully felt the smoke split my lungs.
Claudia told me the rest. What happened afterwards. The years in reformatory. Her schooling. Sister Caterina, who worked there as a volunteer and came almost every day to see the boys and girls who were confined there. She was an unusual nun, different from the others. She dressed in normal clothes, she was young, she was friendly, she was determined not to talk about religion, and she befriended little Angela. The only inmate who was there for a murder, committed before her fourteenth birthday. Confined to reformatory as a security measure because she was under fourteen years of age, and couldn’t be charged with a crime. And because she was dangerous.
Sister Caterina taught a lot of things to that strange, silent child, who minded her own business and didn’t make friends with anyone. She brought her books, and the girl devoured them and kept asking for more. She taught her to play the guitar, she taught her to make really nice desserts. She taught her first aid, because she was a nurse.
One day, as they were chatting together in the courtyard of the reformatory, the girl, who was now a young woman, told the sister that she didn’t want to be called Angela any more. She’d soon be leaving the reformatory and she wanted Sister Caterina to give her a new name. For outside. For her new life.
The sister was disturbed by this request and told the girl she would have to think about it. When she came back the next time, the first thing the girl asked her was whether she had her new name. Sister Caterina said her mother’s name was Claudia. The girl said it was a beautiful name, and from now on she would be called Claudia. Sister Caterina was about to say something, but then didn’t. She took off the little wooden crucifix she always wore – the only visible sign that she was a nun – and put it round the gir
l’s neck.
When she left the reformatory, Claudia was entrusted to a family in the north, because she had said she didn’t want to go back to live with her mother. She took a vocational course, gained a diploma, got a job, started practising martial arts. Karate first, then that lethal discipline invented centuries earlier by a nun.
One day, she heard they were looking for volunteers to lend a hand in a community that provided a shelter for ex-prostitutes and abused women. She applied, and at the interview she said she was a nun. Sister Claudia, from the order of Lesser Franciscans. Sister Caterina’s order.
“I don’t know why it came into my head to say I was a nun. I couldn’t explain it even now. Maybe, unconsciously, I thought if I was a nun I’d be safe. I don’t mean physically. I’d be safe from relationships with people. I’d be safe… from men, maybe. I thought everything would be easier, that I wouldn’t have to explain a whole lot of things.”
She turned to look at me, passed her hand over her face, then continued.
“I know what you’re thinking. Wasn’t I afraid of being found out? I don’t know. The fact is, nobody ever doubted I was really a nun. It may seem strange, but that’s the way it is. It’s funny. Say you’re a nun and nobody thinks of checking if you really are. Nobody asks for your papers. Why should a woman pretend to be a nun? People accept it and that’s it. If anyone asks you how come you never wear a habit, you just say it isn’t compulsory in your order, and that’s the end of it. So before you know it, everyone thinks you’re a nun.”
Another pause. Again, she passed her hand over her darkened face.
“It felt comfortable. It was my way of hiding while still being in the middle of people. It was my way of protecting myself. It was my way of escaping, while staying in the same place.”
There wasn’t much else to tell. She’d started working in that community. It was part of an association that had branches all over Italy. When she heard they were planning to open a new refuge near Bari, and were looking for someone with experience to work there full time, for a small salary, to get the community started, she applied.
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