But forgiveness is not absolution. It’s someone showing you the doors and explaining how to open them. That’s what love is: the gift of possibility. I needed possibilities. I needed someone who believed in me, someone to bring new materials into the poverty of prison. And that’s what the other prisoners need, too, if they are to forge their own destinies. As Shakespeare teaches us, destiny doesn’t exist. We are made up of actions and our future is in our hands.
If there’s something, some kind of energy, conditioning us, we’ll discover it on the other side, when the soul goes to dwell elsewhere. But today we are this: beings capable of looking in the mirror and taking responsibility. If we give ourselves credit when things go well and blame it on destiny when they go badly, then what we are no longer counts. We’re just air; there’s no substance to our treading the earth. Whereas in reality, the stuff we’re made of is actions, reactions, feelings, love, passion and poetry. Peace towards your enemy.
We have to make the effort to forgive, and to be forgiven, not as a favour to ourselves but as a favour to our enemies. Forgiveness belongs to them, not us. Letting yourself be forgiven means allowing someone to regain peace, that peace we took from them. This is Shakespearean forgiveness. This is freedom.
Freedom is a strange word. It can be that script sitting on my bedside table in my cell, which I have to be careful not to spill coffee on, because I’d be damaging my freedom. Freedom is a dangerous thing—it’s a stone that can strike and injure. It ought to be respected. Some people have so much of it that they can’t even approach you for a hug. Others have so little that just a slap on the back might cause them to swallow it. Everybody finds freedom in something. Some find it in a woman, some in a child; I found it in plays, characters, books. I found it inside a prison. Even while still inside, I was already out. But one Sasà can’t move a thing. One of me is not enough. There are so many people we have to help out of prison if we’re truly going to change things.
Give freedom to the thousand Ariels locked up in the prisons of the world. Give them the words to ask for it.
13
‘Oh happy torment, when my torturer Doth teach me answers for deliverance!’
Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice
Act III, Scene II
The sounds of celebration wake me. In prison, it’s similar to the sound of a riot: applause, feet stomping on the ground, pots and pans and other objects banging against the cell bars.
Last night I fell asleep, exhausted, as soon as the adrenaline stopped pounding through my veins, but it was very late and my sleep was more restless than usual.
What time is it? What’s happening? I’ve had just long enough to wonder this when a word reaches my ears; a word that explains everything. It’s echoing from mouth to mouth through the corridors: a pardon.
Incredulous, I look towards the cell window. It’s the middle of the day. Last night’s bright star is no longer visible, but I know it’s there. So it was mine, after all.
‘Shakespeare has given me grace,’ I murmur.
Is it truly possible? Could this be freedom? Four years early?
The tears that had only just dried up start flowing all over again. I can’t believe it. I’m afraid even to breathe. What if I’m dreaming? I pinch myself hard to make sure I’m awake and it really hurts.
It’s real. They’ve granted a pardon. By now I know the penal code well enough to know that I’ll be among those released early.
Shakespeare has given me freedom and now I owe him ten years of my life. It seems a ludicrously small price to pay.
In the course of a few hours it’s confirmed: I’m getting out. It’s a matter of a few weeks.
So when the warden suddenly summons me, I’m a bundle of nerves.
Why does he want to see me? This isn’t the process. I should be released and that’s that. My mind fills with doubts, with bad omens, even. I was once Sasà of the Hotheads. What if they say I’m not getting out after all? What if one of the gang members on the outside became a pentito and now there are new accusations against me, a new trial to face, a new sentence?
As I follow the guard along the corridor, all the bad deeds I haven’t paid for are running through my head, like the words of a curse. Of course I haven’t paid all my debts. Nobody does, at least no habitual criminal. If a guy kills his wife, it’s different—he’s committed a crime and he pays for it. Not quite the case for someone who, say, gets picked up after his eighth armed robbery and serves a sentence for one, or a drug dealer caught the fourth time round who has nevertheless dealt on three previous occasions. Then again, what if a new witness emerges with evidence of another of his misdeeds, and if he turns up just before a guy’s release…Maybe somebody doesn’t want me to get out. Maybe they’ve gathered more evidence against me, to keep me in here. But why? Is it once again because I’m a ‘social menace’? Or is because they’re wondering if they’ll ever find another actor who will bring down the house with his performance?
Shakespeare, you can’t have played such a cruel trick on me.
Tell you what. If you have, when I finally do get out I’m going to come looking for you.
‘What’d you say?’ The guard looks at me in surprise and I realise I said this last bit out loud. He didn’t catch the exact words but he picked up on my threatening tone. He looks nervous, suspicious.
That’s just what I need, to get myself into more trouble. Calm down, Sasà.
‘No, nothing, I was just thinking aloud.’ I attempt a reassuring smile, but I’m so anxious, who knows what kind of grimace comes out. ‘Do you know why the warden wants to see me?’
‘No idea,’ he replies, with stony expression. He doesn’t know, or more likely doesn’t want to tell me. It’s bad news for sure.
By the time I enter the warden’s office, the desperation has tied me into a knot.
‘Sir, has something happened?’ I blurt out, without even saying hello, and ignoring his outstretched hand. I’m looking at him the way a man dying of thirst looks at some water just beyond his grasp.
‘No, what could’ve happened?’ The astonishment on his face seems genuine, and some of my tension releases. At least enough for me to be able to shake his hand.
‘Well, I don’t know…’ I say weakly.
‘Striano, what’s the matter? Are you hiding something from me?’ he asks, half joking, half suspicious.
‘Well, sir, you can imagine…’
I sit down in front of his desk even though he hasn’t invited me to, because my legs are about to give way. Maybe everything will actually be all right.
‘Striano, I wanted to say goodbye to you the way you deserve, because we’ve been on an extraordinary journey together,’ he says, sitting down and looking at me earnestly. ‘And to be quite honest I’m also a little worried, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you for a few minutes.’
‘Worried about me? Worried about me getting out?’
‘Yes, because someone like you…How are you going to manage on the outside?’
‘Sir, the question is, how’s a man going to manage on the inside, not on the outside,’ I reply. I think he’s raving. Does he have any idea what I’ve survived—turf wars in Spain, psychiatric medication in Rebibbia…
‘The thing is, in here I felt I could protect you,’ he continues. ‘The journey we’ve been on has been a protected one. Sheltered from the world, and all its violence, all its temptations. I’m afraid that once you get out of here you’ll go back to your old life. I’m afraid that world will suck you back in. It’s not an easy world.’
You’re telling me? I think, surprised. At nine years of age a security guard was sticking needles in my hands, at twelve I was stealing watches, at fourteen I was dealing cocaine…
‘Sir, are you offering me a job as a guard?’ I say, trying to make a joke of it. It’s certain that danger awaits me on the outside, but that doesn’t strike me as a reason to stay in jail. ‘Because, you know, otherwise I’m going to have to leave—
the government said so.’
This makes him laugh and he realises he’s not making any sense.
‘You’re right, Striano. What are we talking about? It’s normal that you should leave at some point.’
His furrowed brow doesn’t relax, though. I can understand him. I’m not just one of his inmates, I’m one of his actors. This place is not just a prison, it’s his castle. And from today, the entertainment will be missing from his court.
‘Sir, I’m sure of what I need to do,’ I try to reassure him. ‘But as an honest man, which I consider myself to be, a man of my word, I can assure you of at least one thing. It’s true, I’m like an addict who says he’ll never use again, only because I didn’t like the drugs available in here. It’s true that when I go out into the world it’s possible I’ll find some drug I do like. But I don’t think it’ll get me into trouble, sir.’
‘Drugs won’t get you into trouble?’ he asks. He doesn’t follow.
‘No. Because I promise you that theatre is my drug now,’ I reply resolutely.
He relaxes, and the lines on his forehead disappear. He stands and offers me his hand again. This time I shake it firmly.
‘Striano, I’m sure you’ll become a great actor.’
I glance around. My things are all in disarray, scattered around my cell, as though I was heading out to a rehearsal. Instead of…
I snap my toothbrush in half and throw the two pieces on the bed.
This is what you do when you’re released—you break your toothbrush so you don’t end up back inside. Here’s hoping. It can’t do any harm.
I put on my backpack, with the few objects I’m taking with me: photos, a folder containing my personal documents, including all of Monica’s letters. We’ll burn them when I get home: in prison we’re all fiercely protective of our women’s letters, and some of us are tempted to tear them up to stop a cellmate reading them, but you don’t do it: it’s like tearing up love. They’re to be burned when you’re released, alongside the person who wrote them to you. It symbolises a bad period coming to an end; your words no longer need to be written down, because at last they can be said in person.
I think about the wives of those men I wrote love letters for. I wonder whether they’ll be upset when they learn their husbands are not such poets after all. There’s nothing I can do about it. I did what I could to help out.
I say goodbye to the inmates as I walk down the corridor for the last time. I say goodbye to the guards. I’m sorry it’s not Gaetano taking me through to the outside, but he works in maximum security…
And here I am back in the reception area.
This is where you enter and where you leave. You go through all the entry procedures in reverse. It’s the same as before, but you do it with a smile instead of tears: photographs, fingerprints, signatures on piles of forms. There’s one important difference, though: instead of coming in through the dirty side you go out the clean side. There are two different doors, and the exit is as beautiful as the entrance is ugly. When you exit Rebibbia it’s like you’re stepping out of a palazzo. At Poggioreale prison in Naples they go one better—the entrance is underground and the exit is above ground. Can you get any more symbolic than that?
I step outside and find myself in an unremarkable open area in an unremarkable suburb. Even the sky is a uniform, featureless grey.
What was I expecting? Fans and a ticker-tape parade?
You’re no Hollywood actor, Sasà, I remind myself. Though I certainly can no longer make my living as a criminal: my face has been in all the papers and on television. If I committed an armed robbery, everyone would be telling the police, ‘It was that guy, the actor!’ I’m ruined as a dealer, too, but I can live with that. Worst comes to worst I’ll be a charming waiter. That’s if I can find work, obviously.
I suddenly realise what the warden meant when he said he was worried. I feel lost, like I have no direction. Where do I go now, what do I do? I’ve got no address, no doors I can knock on. It’s not as though anybody gave me instructions for the rest of my life. Not even Shakespeare, not yet anyway.
It dawns on me that on the outside I have nothing, not even theatre. Is this freedom? I’m surrounded by a world that has changed in these last seven years, that’s going at a different speed, and I risk getting left behind. I look around to see if something is following me, or someone, perhaps the ghost of one of my old selves.
I have to find a bus to take me to the station, and then a train that will take me to Naples. I haven’t told Monica I’m getting out today. I want to give her the most beautiful surprise of her life. But in Naples there are people who want to kill me, who have killed many of my friends.
I set out in the hope of finding a bus stop. Instead I come across a school.
I happen upon it quite suddenly, there are flags out the front and at first I think it’s a council building, until I read the sign. It’s a senior high school.
Poor things, I think. You’re still locked up.
When I think of school I become enraged. I’d like to have a word with a few teachers. I’d like to tell them: I never encountered any good teachers, in all my life. Some of you bring problems from home into the school. And some of you don’t understand that one student can have one type of intelligence and another can have a different type, that someone who does badly at maths might be a musical genius and it’s your job to move him in that direction. Some of you will dissuade the best leaders in the class from continuing their studies, and in doing so, you’ll create criminals. Other teachers will know how to understand them, and might even create the men of tomorrow.
The fact is, we need prisons that are more like schools, and schools that are less like prisons.
But for this to happen, the teachers also need freedom.
Freedom to go into class with a project. Freedom to talk to students, to push them in new directions, to explain the world to them. Freedom to say that there’s not one single story, one single study plan, rather that life is study and we each have a story, we just need to understand how to carry it forward, and how to tell it.
In this way, we’ll have better future generations that can once more begin to love, share and unite. These days we’re all looking for a reason to criticise or accuse. We’ve lost the capacity to love. We’ve lost the very meaning of love. We take more pride in looking for the bad in someone than looking for the good, even though everybody makes mistakes, constantly. Even though human beings are designed to make mistakes, and to get up if offered an outstretched hand.
When I realise I’ve entered the school I’m already halfway up the central staircase. It’s strange, like a dream—no students, no teachers, no other staff. Nobody stops me or notices me as I make my way down one of the faded yellow corridors. There’s that typical school smell. I stop in front of a door that says ‘VA’, meaning ‘go’. It’s actually classroom 5A (it’s in Roman numerals), but to me it seems like an omen.
These students will get out in a few months, I think. But they’ve got to serve their whole sentence, and there’s no hope of a pardon.
Who knows if, by the time they leave, anyone will have told them a story, to send them out into the world prepared?
I turn the slightly rusty handle and step through.
Twenty heads turn to look at me. The teacher stares, eyes wide. One of the students is standing out the front, clearly in the middle of being quizzed on something.
I can bestow grace on this poor kid, I think.
‘Sit back down,’ I say resolutely. ‘If you don’t mind,’ I add in a gentler tone, so as not to seem arrogant. ‘And good morning to you all.’
‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ asks the young teacher, alarmed, as the boy sits down.
‘I’m a man who’s come to tell you a story,’ and I smile at her, the smile of a true actor.
SALVATORE STRIANO was born in 1972 in Naples. During a stint in prison he discovered a love of reading and theatre. Striano is now a successful acto
r and has had a number of roles in cinema and television, including Gomorra and Cesare deve morire, based on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
BRIGID MAHER was born in Lucca and spent part of her childhood there. She has translated several Italian novels and is currently Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne.
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Copyright © Salvatore Striano 2016
Translation copyright © Brigid Maher 2017
The moral rights of Salvatore Striano and Brigid Maher to be identified as the author and translator of this work have been asserted.
The translation of this book has been made possible thanks to the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
Published by arrangement with AlferjePrestia Literary Agency.
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