So the rain falls, the water eats the ground. The fact is that when that bus crossed the bridge, that bridge went straight down as if it had been built with snow. And seven people lost their lives.
At first, they talked about it constantly. As if they couldn’t help it. There were those seven photos always on display. They sang sad songs together, candles lit, with all the photos. They were mourning their dead. They mourned Amanda, the witch; Michele, the church organist; Alberto, the plumber who lost his license because he kept all the water in pipes; Teresa, the seamstress and the wife of Maglio the lumberjack; Goran, who worked in the woods and in the evening met with the other people at the train station who spoke his language; Carmela, who knew all the secrets of chocolate; and Ferdinand, who drove the bus. And they say cats don’t have a good memory. Anyhow.
Sometimes they spoke about Peter, that nice old man, Amanda’s friend, who would always give me a scratch under the chin where I really like it. No one has seen him for a long time, and everyone thinks the rain washed him away too, right where the bridge came down and the river ran over its banks and into the woods. He lived in the woods. He was looking for water. So he said. Funny thing: let’s imagine that he found too much water, as it very well seems. They never put a photo of him with the others, because he wasn’t on that bus. They left him alone and apart even in their memories. But at the end of the day, where he is now, I don’t think it makes a big difference.
In short, they’ve all moved on a good bit from those days. It’s like the rain. It’s not that all the drops stop together. But at some point you look around and it’s not raining anymore. And it was the same with them. At some point, they looked around and everyone had stopped crying. So, with time, all those nonsense discussions about how it had rained too much, about how the river had eaten the earth and all the rest of it, in short, all those discussions are over. They only met when that woman came back and spoke about her lawyer things. And I liked it when she came because they would meet here and I would arrange myself in my favorite spot, enjoying the warm air rising from the radiator that I like so much, and from time to time someone would offer me a treat.
But, as I understand it, things didn’t go the way that woman wanted. In the end it came out that no one was to blame, and then they stopped coming. Anyhow.
Now they seem to have started again. But they don’t talk about the bridge and the bus that went down. They don’t mention those seven people. They don’t even talk about old Peter anymore. They talk about this plant thing in the woods, which nobody wants. But in any case, when they come, I get back in my favorite spot and hope that someone will offer me a treat.
But sometimes I wonder. What could have happened to old Peter? And who knows what became of that woman?
They say we cats sometimes feel things before they happen.
And I have the feeling something is about to happen.
PART TWO
AMNESIA
I’m the black cat. I’ve already died, many times before.
ONE
The lawyer is wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, and a blue tie. Giulio studies him as he pulls the files from his soft leather bag, which he placed on the dining room table where they’re sitting. It’s a worn-out bag, too worn for a lawyer who’s no older than forty. Maybe it’s a family piece. Superstitious people tend to cling to these things. His name is Alberto Colletti. His shave is perfect, with a good douse of aftershave, minty breath. His semiautomatic smile reveals a row of sparkling teeth.
“Well, well, well,” he says after putting all the files in front of him. “It’s my duty to inform you of a couple of things, Giulio.”
“Is this the part where you tell me that people who lie to their lawyers tell the truth on the stand?”
“You should write legal thrillers instead of children’s stories. No, no. We’re in the real world, where no one cares about the truth. But I do have to inform you what can happen if you do get officially charged. We are still in the preliminary investigation phase, so maybe this will all go away, but we need to have a plan in case it doesn’t. A regular trial for murder and concealment of a corpse could easily come with a life sentence. If you decide to confess immediately, collaborate with the investigators, indemnify the victim’s family, etcetera, etcetera, we may get some great deals out of it, including a sentence reduction by at least a third. If we then go for an abbreviated trial, we would get another sentence reduction of an additional third. And if we could make the case for partial insanity, which is not impossible, since you have a stalking complaint lodged against you, we could get a further reduction. From life to twenty-four years, twenty-four to sixteen, sixteen to, say, eleven. You could do five on the inside and then get out on good behavior, maybe do some community service.”
“Five years in jail for killing a person?”
“This is best-case scenario. On the one hand, this, on the other hand, life. It depends on how we decide to move.”
“There are a lot of personal things in the newspaper. How did they find out about them?” Giulio asks.
“You read the paper?”
“Akan buys it every morning, then my mother hides it under the sofa.”
“It’s the prosecutor. They’re rummaging around in every corner of your life and passing any info they find to the press. It’s how they turn up the heat and push you to confess.”
“Do you think I killed her?”
The lawyer is taken aback and doesn’t bother to hide it. He reclines in his chair and assumes a more relaxed position, as if he were accepting that the conversation was shifting to a more personal level.
“You’ve already admitted to the stalking. Calling in the middle of the night, messages with an unmistakable tone. You threatened to kill the victim more than once.”
“Patrizia. Let’s call her by her name.” Giulio stares out the window. A light snow has begun to fall.
“As you like. You threatened Patrizia in front of witnesses, and you admitted to doing it. The night she disappeared you drank a lot of alcohol, which causes you to have partial amnesia. But you remember going over to her apartment, you remember almost tearing her door off the hinges. You remember attacking the neighbors, who told you she wasn’t there. You don’t remember how, exactly, but you managed to get yourself to the place where Patrizia was drinking with friends and colleagues. You knew she would be there because you knew where she hung out. And then you proceeded to act like a lunatic with the security personnel until she came outside to get you out of trouble. The people who were with her say she came back inside and said she couldn’t leave you in that state, because you had been drinking and it was something you couldn’t do, and she said she’d bring you home. They all told her not to, for obvious reasons. One of them offered to go with her, but she said no and called a taxi. And that’s the last time anyone saw her.”
“Who offered to go with her?”
Alberto checks the files. “Maccari. Leonardo Maccari. Another attorney. He works at the same firm.” He continues reading, then snaps the file closed. “But that’s irrelevant.”
“He’s the tennis player.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tall, blond, broad shoulders, he plays tennis every Tuesday and Friday evening, usually from seven to eight.”
“Did you stalk him too?”
“Patrizia was seeing another man. I saw her with someone. I only tried to figure out who he was.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a controlling maniac.”
“Exactly. And since you haven’t been charged for it yet, let’s try to keep that between us, okay?”
“He’s a prime candidate.”
“Who? What do you mean?”
“The tennis player.”
“Christ, Giulio.”
“Why did you close the file?”
“Because there was nothing else to read.”
“There was something written about Maccari, but you didn’t read it.”
&n
bsp; “Nothing in there is relevant to us right now.”
“It was him, wasn’t it?”
“Stop it.”
“Give me the file.”
“I’m leaving.”
“The fuck you are! Give me the file.”
The lawyer surrenders, flinging the file in Giulio’s face with a huff. Then he gets up and walks over to the table where Giulio’s mother has left a pitcher of juice.
Giulio reads quickly. His eyes skip from one page to another.
“They didn’t write it down. There must be another file like this. Where is it? Didn’t they give it to you?”
Alberto returns to the table with a glass full of blood orange juice.
“Let’s talk about the footage of the attack now.”
Giulio drops the file and grants a truce. “All right.”
“It was picked up by the surveillance camera at a credit institution ten minutes from your apartment. The attorney is still waiting for Patrizia’s phone records to check her calls, but especially what the towers picked up. Anyway, after she left your apartment, Patrizia must have decided to walk home. And after ten minutes she reached the camera. Giving you enough time to go back downstairs and catch up to her.”
“Have you already written my sentence?”
“The camera is positioned in a narrow street and only captured a reflection of the scene in a window. So the image quality is poor. You can still recognize Patrizia, but not her attacker. He’s basically a shadow that jumps out and kills her, without a doubt. He grabs her from behind with one arm, she squirms, then the attacker gives a hard tug, and it’s pretty clear that he breaks her neck. Patrizia’s body goes unnaturally limp. The attacker drags her away and disappears from the frame.”
“Am I the attacker?”
“As I said, the attacker isn’t recognizable. He’s more or less your body type. Six feet tall, strong build. But a lot of men look like that. The video isn’t going to put you in jail, it’s the fact that you knew where Patrizia was and, as you said before, that you’re a controlling maniac. And I assure you, that could help us a lot in a psychiatric examination if we need to go for a sentence reduction.”
Giulio gets up from his chair. He recognizes the anxiety that’s overtaking him. It’s like a movie with long, missing parts. White. The streets that waver and the lights that blur. The hedge, the one he crashed into, the dirt on the ground. The quickening breath, the feeling that his heart is about to explode. Patrizia’s neighbors. The bar, with its red and blue lights and that loud music, the voice of Lady Gaga. The heaters warming the people outside, where they could smoke. Moving headlights, the smell of plastic and vanilla, maybe a Little Trees air freshener. It could be the inside of a taxi. Patrizia’s face, the expression of pity. The bed is unmade. His headache. The disgusting taste of alcohol. The vomit that climbs his throat. Pain in his face and blood in his eye.
Giulio approaches the window. His face is reflected in the glass, the bandage on his eyebrow. Outside it’s snowing. A terrible white that conceals everything. Meadows, flowers, rocks. Everything is under it. Everything is covered by this continuous, monotonous, uniform, stifling expanse of white.
“You didn’t answer me,” he says to the lawyer.
“I don’t remember the question.”
“Do you think I killed her?”
Alberto Colletti is quiet. Giulio looks out at the white, but he can imagine his movements. The attorney takes a deep breath as he leans back in his chair and looks up at the ceiling, exhaling loudly as if he were stretching.
The noise coming from outside the house is that of a car engine.
The carabinieri’s Alfa Romeo is approaching. In it is Annalaura Lorenzon, deputy prosecutor of the republic, head of the Giulio Rodari investigation.
TWO
In the barroom, the voices of the various members of the Committee for the Defense of the Old Woods mix like a dough reminiscent of a good piecrust.
This is what Barbara is thinking, about how you need a good piecrust to serve as a base for the sweet apples, the cheeky cinnamon, the whimsical whipped cream. She listens as their conversations merge into a single background hum.
The plant will destroy the forest; not a soul will remain; the young people are all leaving; we won’t sell the land; what’s on the agenda?; what will we leave to the younger generations?; but this is hazelnut flour; I didn’t know we had an agenda; we sabotage them like they did in Val di Susa; I heard the committee in defense of the holm oak always has an agenda; I don’t think you can sabotage a construction site with a parachute; there is still a little bit of that cake left; look, in ’77 I led the occupation of the Bruschi movie theater myself; I don’t think it’s hazelnut flour, dear, I think it’s pistachio; the younger generations are already old; I’m just saying that if we had an agenda it would be more—how should I put it?—official; there should be Environmental Protection data somewhere—there’s always Environmental Protection data; we’ll light fires and organize lookout shifts in the woods; you think I can’t tell the difference between hazelnut and pistachio?; this whole agenda thing is getting out of hand; look, during the war my father did the same thing with the Germans.
The deputy prosecutor didn’t like it that the committee was at the bar.
“You said the place would be closed, ma’am,” she told Barbara when they met.
“Barbara, dear . . .” Barbara turns, Dorina is next to her, touching her shoulder with her hand, with the gentle touch of an old friend. “I’m sorry to distract you from your thoughts, but Fralassi keeps going on about this agenda business, and if we don’t start the meeting soon, Rosi will have planned an armed takeover before lunch.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll handle it.”
Barbara waves her hands to draw the attention of the other committee members. “All right, friends, we’re starting now.”
The piecrust thins. The background noise fades out with a few final notes.
“Let’s see how you plan on doing this without an agenda,” commented accountant Fralassi, taking a seat with an air of defiance.
Lilith is back together. The practice room is already toasty from the space heater. Arturo is doing a stretching exercise he saw Mike Portnoy do in a video shot backstage at his Dream Theater concert. Diego’s eyes are red—almost scarlet—and he reeks of marijuana, the explanation. He must have gotten carried away with Old Toby. Viola connected her laptop to the system so the band could listen to the two tracks of their first and last original song.
“Do you have a title yet?” Arturo asks, continuing to shake out his arms as if he were preparing for a freestyle boxing match.
“I’m working on it. It’s going to be an instrumental piece,” says Viola, looking out through the small window at the falling snow.
“No lyrics?” Arturo asks.
“No, just music.”
“That’s, like, so in line with our progressive approach,” says the drummer, who is already dripping with sweat.
A snowflake comes to rest on the windowpane. Viola studies it for a few moments until it melts into a tiny droplet that remains suspended on the glass.
“Do you know what they say about snowflakes?” Viola asks.
“I don’t,” says Arturo, wiping at the sweat on his arms.
“No two are alike, but they all have the identical proportions of a perfect hexagon.” Viola touches the glass with her fingers. “A bit like the moments that make up a life, don’t you think?”
Arturo closes his eyes and considers it.
As they remain silent, meditating on snowflakes, Diego continues to obsessively pluck at the first two strings on his bass in an attempt to tune them.
“I think he’s on a loop,” says Arturo, looking at him. “Hey, Diego, try the electronic tuner, the one on your phone, remember?”
Diego smiles, takes his phone, and plays with it for a while.
“Do you think he can play like this?” Arturo asks.
Viola turns and looks at
the bassist. She smiles. “I’ve seen him play in worse shape than this.”
Diego plays with his phone. Arturo wipes his sweat with the towel that he always leaves next to his drum kit.
“The first time through we’ll play it straight,” says Viola, “on the second I’ll enter with an arpeggio, on the third you start with the tom-toms for two rounds, for the fifth you come in with Diego. Got that, Diego?”
Diego smiles at her, phone in hand.
“I think he needs coffee,” says Arturo. “Or we could rub his head in the snow. It worked that other time.”
Katerina is sitting in an armchair with a warm compress over her eyes. Her pants are rolled past her ankles, and her feet are bare, propped up on a towel, her emerald-green toenail polish still fresh. Marica is working on her hands.
“Well, that one’s always been a bit strange,” Katerina says. She’s talking about Rodari, the ongoing topic at Beauty Island Beauty Center—Hairstyling and Well-Being. There’s a copy of the local daily paper, the Tirreno, resting on the table, the front page taken up with an image of the alleged murderer.
“But how did they know each other?” Marica asks.
“Her mother was from here. Right after the bridge collapsed, she came to talk to the victims’ families because she wanted to be their attorney. If they could prove the bridge came down due to negligence, they would have been able to get a ton of money. Attorney stuff. So she met him too, because his aunt was on the bus.”
“The newspaper said his aunt never took that bus.”
“When your time comes . . .” As she says it, Katerina touches the iron table next to her.
“Emerald for your fingernails too?” Marica asks.
The sound of an incoming text distracts Katerina, who turns to the table. With her free hand, she removes the compress over her eyes, takes the phone, and reads. The sender is Sara.
Let’s try to meet tomorrow afternoon. I need to show you something I got for you. Kisses—you know where.
The Hawthorne Season Page 6