Cervellati gave me a look, seemed on the point of saying something, then shook his head and sat down at his place. He hadn’t believed me and he didn’t look exactly friendly.
Two minutes later, through a side door, surrounded by four warders, his wrists handcuffed, in came Abdou. He was wearing khaki cotton trousers and a white shirt; over his arm was some sort of jacket. He had a clean look. He was well shaven and his shirt might have been ironed that very morning.
“Your Honour, may I have a word or two with my client before the hearing begins?”
“Certainly, Avvocato. Please remove the prisoner’s handcuffs.”
The eldest of the warders produced a key and freed Abdou’s hands. When I came up to him he was massaging his wrists. I spoke very quietly.
“Well then, Abdou, if you’ve changed your mind we’re still in time. Only just, but still in time.”
He shook his head. I stood for a moment looking at him, and he gave me a straight look back. Then I returned to my seat, my heart beating faster and fear sweeping over me like a wave.
The opening formalities were quickly dispatched and then came the moment.
“Are there any requests for alternative procedures?” asked Judge Carenza.
I got to my feet, buttoning up my jacket. I darted another look in the direction of Abdou.
“Your Honour, my client and I have considered at length the possible advantages of requesting the shortened procedure, but we eventually decided together that this is a case to be submitted to a full hearing. In view of which, no, there are no requests for alternative procedures.”
I sat down without looking at Cervellati.
The judge then asked the parties to formulate their conclusions.
Cervellati spoke briefly. The case was loaded with evidence against the accused, Abdou Thiam. There were proofs that as a result of the hearing would certainly lead to an affirmation of penal responsibility on all the criminal charges – the very grave, odious criminal charges – set down in the counts of indictment. The preliminary hearing could only lead to the accused being committed for trial before the Court of Assizes, to answer to charges of unlawful restraint and wilful murder. All that was needed was to supplement the charge contained under count B. In accordance with Article 423 of the code of criminal procedure, the public prosecutor intended to alter the murder charge. From simple murder to murder with aggravating circumstances.
Cervellati dictated the new charge for the records.
He had been true to his word. My client was now facing a charge which, if he was convicted, would lead him straight to life imprisonment with hard labour.
The judge asked me if I intended to apply for time for defence. This was a courtesy gesture, she was not bound to do it. I thanked her and said no, I did not so intend.
Then it was the turn of Cotugno, who was even briefer than Cervellati. He associated himself with the requests of the public prosecutor and also asked for a committal for trial.
I had little to say, because in a case like this there was obviously no chance at all of an acquittal in the preliminary hearing.
So I simply said that we had no observations to make on the request for committal.
Then the judge pronounced the ruling.
The trial of Abdou Thiam, born Dakar, Senegal, on 4 March 1968, on the charges of unlawful restraint and murder with aggravating circumstances, was fixed for 12 June, before the Assize Court of Bari.
Part Three
21
I was on my way home from the office, thinking I’d have to do a spot of shopping to avoid eating out yet again when I heard a woman’s voice, slightly throaty, just behind me.
“Could you please give me a hand? I’m about to collapse.”
My neighbour Margherita. It was a wonder she hadn’t collapsed already. She was lugging a bursting briefcase, numerous plastic bags full of food and a long tube of the kind used by architects to carry drawings around.
I gave her a hand, meaning I took over all the shopping. So we set off walking side by side.
“Just as well I met you. A week ago I was in more or less the same straits when I met old Professor Costantini, and he offered to help me. I gave him the shopping bags and after one block he was on the verge of a heart attack.”
I gave her a faintly idiotic smile. I should evidently have known who this Professor Costantini was.
“Who is Professor Costantini?”
“The one on the second floor of our building. Excuse my asking, but how long have you been living there?”
It struck me that I’d been living there for more than a year. And I didn’t know any of the tenants by name.
“More or less a year.”
“Congratulations! You must be a really sociable type. What do you do? Sleep by day and go round at night in tights and a cloak and mask, ridding the city of criminals?”
I told her I was a lawyer and she, after pulling a rather wry face, said that she too, long ago, had seemed destined to become a lawyer. She had done the training, passed the exams and was even on the rolls, but then she had done a switch. Total. Now she worked in advertising and other things. However – we agreed – in a sense we were colleagues, so we could address each other as tu. She said that made her feel more at ease.
“I’ve always had trouble using lei. It really doesn’t come naturally, I have to force it. They tried to teach me some years ago that a well-brought-up girl doesn’t use tu with strangers, but I’ve always had serious doubts about being a well-brought-up girl. How about you?”
“About being a well-brought-up girl? Yes, I do have some doubts about that.”
She gave a short laugh – a sort of gurgle – before speaking again.
“I can see you have doubts all along the line. You always look ... I don’t know, I can’t find the word to describe it. As if you were turning over questions in your mind and didn’t much like the answers. Or didn’t like them one bit.”
I turned to look at her, slightly disconcerted.
“Seeing that this is the second time we’ve seen each other, may I ask what you base this diagnosis on?”
“It’s the second time you’ve seen me. I’ve seen you at least four or five other times since I came to live in this building. On two occasions we passed in the street and you literally looked straight through me. So much so that I didn’t even feel inclined to say good morning. It hurt my vanity, but your thoughts were wandering.”
We walked on in silence for thirty or forty yards. Then she spoke again.
“Have I put my foot in it?”
“No. I’ve been thinking about what you said. Wondering how come it was so obvious.”
“It isn’t so obvious. It’s that I’m observant.”
We had reached the entrance to our building. We went in together and up the few steps to the lift. I was sorry the moment had come for us to part.
“You’ve succeeded in arousing my curiosity. Now how should I set about having a more detailed consultation?”
She thought for a moment or two. She was making up her mind.
“Are you the kind who gets the wrong idea if you’re asked to supper by a girl living on her own?”
“In the past I was a professional getter of the wrong idea, but I’ve given that up, I think. I hope.”
“In that case, if you don’t get the wrong idea and you’re not otherwise engaged, this evening would suit me.”
“This evening would suit me too. Are you on the sixth or the seventh?”
“The seventh. I’ve even got a terrace. A pity it’s still too cold in the evenings, otherwise we could have eaten outside. Is nine o’clock all right for you?”
“Yes. What can I bring?”
“Wine, if you drink it, because I haven’t any.”
“Very good. This evening, then.”
“Don’t you take the lift?”
“No, I use the stairs.”
She looked at me for a moment without saying anything, but with a faintly quest
ioning air. Then she nodded, relieved me of her shopping and said goodbye.
I don’t remember exactly what I did in the office that afternoon, but I do remember a feeling of lightness. A sensation I’d not had for a very long time.
I felt as I had on afternoons in May in my last school years.
Almost no one ever attended classes any longer. Those who went were the ones who had to make up for poor marks and resit exams. Very few others.
For all of us they were the first days of the holidays, and the best. Because they were in a sense illegal. According to the rules, we should have gone on attending school, but we didn’t. They were days stolen one by one from the school calendar and given over to freedom.
Perhaps this was why there was that electricity, that strange tension laden with expectation, in those May afternoons suspended between school and the mysteries of summer.
Something was about to happen – something had to happen – and we felt it. Our time was bent like a bow, ready to shoot us who knows where.
That is how I felt that afternoon, as in those indelible memories of my adolescence.
I left the office at about half-past seven and went to a wine shop. I didn’t know what we were going to eat or what Margherita’s tastes were, so I couldn’t get only red wine, which I would have done as a rule. I don’t much care for white wine.
So I chose a Primitivo from Manduria and, just to show myself for the provincial I was, a Californian white from the Napa Valley.
When I had chosen the wine I had some time to spare so I went for a walk along Via Sparano.
The crowds milled round me and time, it seemed, had been suspended.
The air seemed full of gentle melancholy, and also a certain something I didn’t quite manage to grasp.
I got home at a quarter to nine, had a shower and dressed. Light-coloured trousers, denim shirt, soft, light leather shoes.
I shut the door, holding the two bottles by the neck in my other hand, and bounced up the stairs, the image of Alberto Sordi impersonating an American in Rome.
The result was that I tripped up and only just avoided smashing everything. I couldn’t help laughing, and when I knocked at Margherita’s door two flights above I must still have been wearing a rather stupid smile.
“What’s up?” she asked after saying hello, narrowing her eyes in puzzlement.
“Nothing, it’s just that I nearly fell on the stairs, and since I’m a bit of a loony anyway I found it amusing. But don’t worry, I’m harmless.”
She laughed, again with that kind of gurgle.
Her flat had a good smell to it, of new furniture, cleanliness and well-cooked food. It was bigger than mine, and evidently some walls had been knocked down, because there was no hallway and one entered straight into a kind of living room with a big french window giving onto a terrace. Not much furniture. Just a kind of low cupboard that looked Japanese, a number of light wooden shelves attached to the wall, and a glass and wrought-iron table with four metal chairs. On the floor a large coconut mat and, on two sides of the room, a number of big coloured candles of varying heights, blue glass jars containing some kind of crushed stone, and a black stereo unit.
The shelves were full of books and knick-knacks and gave the impression of a home that had been lived in for some time.
On the walls were two reproductions of paintings by Hopper, Cape Cod Evening and Gas. That one of petrol pumps out in the country. They were beautiful and moving.
I said so, and she gave me a quick glance as if to see whether I was talking simply to show off. Then she nodded, gravely. Pause. Then: “Can you eat hot things?”
“I can eat hot things.”
“I’ll just slip into the kitchen, then, and finish getting it ready. You look around if you like, it’ll be ready in five minutes. We’ll chat when we’re at table. I’ll open the red wine because it goes with what we’re going to eat. And in any case the white won’t get chilled in such a short time.”
She vanished into the kitchen. I began to examine the books on the shelves, as I usually do when I enter an unknown house.
There were a lot of novels and collections of short stories. American, French and Spanish, in the original languages.
Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Carver, Bukowski, Fante, Montalban, Lodge, Simenon, Kerouac.
There was an ancient, tattered edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There were travel books by an American journalist – Bill Bryson – that I liked a lot and had thought I was more or less the only person who knew them.
Then there were books on psychology, books on Japanese martial arts, catalogues of exhibitions, mostly of photography.
I took out the catalogue of an exhibition in Florence of Robert Capa and leafed through it. Then I looked at Chatwin and then Doisneau, with his black-and-white kisses in the Paris of the 50s. There was a book on Hopper. When I opened it, I saw there was a dedication, so I quickly turned the page, embarrassed.
I read a line or two of the introduction: “Images of the city or the country, almost always deserted, in which are mingled realism of vision and an agonizing feeling for landscape, for people, for things. Hopper’s paintings, beneath an appearance of objectivity, express a silence, a solitude, a metaphysical astonishment.”
I put back the Hopper, took down Ask the Dust by John Fante and went with it onto the terrace. The air was cool and dry. I wandered around a while among the potted plants, looked down into the street, stopped to finger some strange little flowers with the consistency of wax. Then, leaning against the wall under a kind of wrought-iron lantern, I flipped through the book to the last page, because I wanted to re-read the ending.
Far out across the Mojave there arose the shimmer of heat. I made my way up the path to the Ford. In the seat was a copy of my book, my first book. I found a pencil, opened the book at the fly leaf, and wrote:
To Camilla, with love,
Arturo
I carried the book a hundred yards into the desolation, toward the southeast. With all my might I threw it far out into the direction she had gone. Then I got into the car, started the engine, and drove back to Los Angeles.
“Supper’s ready.”
I came to with a slight jolt and went inside. The table was laid.
The Primitivo was in a carafe, and in another like it was water. There was a tureen of chilli con carne and a dish of boiled rice. Arranged on a plate were four corncobs with some whorls of butter in the centre.
We began with the corncobs and butter. I picked up the carafe of wine and was about to pour her a glass.
She said no, she didn’t drink.
“I had what they call a drinking problem. A few years ago. Then it became a big problem. Now I don’t drink.”
“Forgive me, if I’d known I wouldn’t have brought the wine ...”
“Hey, it was me who told you to bring wine. For you.”
“If it upsets you, I can drink water.”
“It doesn’t upset me.”
She said it with a smile but in a tone of voice that meant: discussion over.
All right, discussion over. I filled my glass and set to work on the corncob.
We talked very little while we ate. The chilli was really hot and the wine suited it to perfection. For pudding there was a date and honey cake, also Mexican.
It was scarcely a slimming meal and after it I felt the need for something strong. For obvious reasons I said nothing, but Margherita went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of tequila gold, still sealed.
“I bought it for you this afternoon. One can’t have a Mexican meal without finishing off with tequila. Take the bottle with you afterwards. And the white wine.”
I poured myself a tequila, pulled out my cigarettes and then – too late – thought that perhaps she didn’t like people smoking. But in fact Margherita asked for one and fetched a kind of mortar of volcanic rock as an ashtray.
“I don’t buy cigarettes. If I do, I smoke them. But when I can, I b
um them off someone else.”
“I know the method,” I replied. For many years it had been my method. Then my friends had begun to say no, I had become not a little unpopular and, well, in the end I was forced to buy them.
I took a sip of tequila and remained silent a moment too long. She read my thoughts.
“You want to know about my problem with alcohol.”
It was not a question. I was about to say no, what was she thinking of, I was just enjoying my tequila.
I said yes.
She took a hefty drag at her cigarette before starting.
“I was an alcoholic for three years, more or less. When I got my degree my parents gave me a present of a three-month holiday in the United States, in San Francisco. It was the most fun time of my life. When I got back I realized for the first time that my future was to be a lawyer in my father’s office. No. That’s not exactly it, that way you won’t understand it. I know now that that was my motive, but at the time I didn’t realize anything, not consciously. But I felt it clearly, even if unconsciously. In short, recreation time was over and I wasn’t ready to go back into the classroom. Not into the one I was destined for.
“To complicate matters, when I got back from the States I found myself a boyfriend. He was a sweet boy, eight years older than me. He was a notary, he had good manners, and my parents took to him at once. An excellent match. My parents had liked almost none of my previous boyfriends. They weren’t the kind to whom they would have entrusted their only daughter for life. I had always been – how can I put it? – a bit on the lively side and a bit fickle, and this didn’t go down well with them. Not that they said anything. That is, my mother sometimes said something, but they had never made any particular fuss. Or so I thought.
“However, when Pierluigi appeared on the scene it was clear that he was Mr Right. I mustn’t let him get away. I began to drink soon after the beginning of my affair with him. I drank – a lot – especially in the evenings when we were out together. I drank and became more likeable. Everyone laughed at my jokes and my fiancé was obviously proud of taking me around. To show me off.
Involuntary Witness Page 10
