The Cold Summer

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  She pronounced the words emphatically, but it was as if her voice was coming from somewhere else.

  “Please print the transcript. We’ll resume on Monday. I’m sorry, Avvocato, I’ll let you know the time of the next interview. I’m sorry,” she repeated, “but something’s happened.”

  Her words hung there for a few moments, perhaps longer.

  “There’s been an explosion on the highway.”

  “Where?” Fenoglio asked.

  “In Palermo. Apparently there are survivors, apparently Falcone and his wife are being taken to hospital.”

  In the most tragic situations, we tend to remember apparently insignificant details. What remained in Fenoglio’s mind was Sergeant Calcaterra’s face. It was usually unmoving, expressionless, as if the only thing that interested him was getting statements down on paper, transforming terrible, bloodthirsty events into bureaucratic, aseptic language, sterilizing them, draining them of the incomprehensible violence of life, domesticating them, making them the material of files and records.

  But now Calcaterra looked shocked. His lips quivered two or three times, then he rubbed his eyes and blew his nose several times. “I’m from Palermo,” he whispered, in dismay, almost as if to justify his reaction.

  They went into the captain’s office and heard the TV newsreader, Angela Buttiglione, announce that Giovanni Falcone had died at 19.07.

  “I’d like to get a bit of air,” D’Angelo said, after a few interminable moments of silence. “I’m walking home. And please, I don’t want any bodyguards.”

  The captain was about to say something – It isn’t possible, don’t make things harder for us at a time like this, we can’t let you go home without bodyguards. Something like that.

  “I’ll go with you, dottoressa,” Fenoglio said.

  She looked at him as if he had spoken in a foreign language and his words needed to be translated. “All right,” she finally said.

  Within a short time they were outside, walking along the seafront. The air was cool and dry. D’Angelo kicked a beer can. Fenoglio was aware of a multitude of incongruous thoughts passing through his head. But was that any different from usual? We usually only pay attention to the stream of our thoughts – which are always incongruous – when one of them becomes particularly nagging.

  “Did you ever meet Judge Falcone?”

  “Yes,” she replied immediately, as if she had been waiting for that very question. “A few years ago, at a study day held by the Superior Council of Magistrates. A session on organized crime for those young magistrates among us who would be working in Sicily and Calabria.”

  “Was he giving a lecture?”

  “Yes. Although I remember almost nothing of the lecture itself, I mean its actual contents. At the time I thought it was interesting, that he spoke well and was easy to follow, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you today what he talked about. Obviously about investigating the Mafia, but I can’t remember anything specific. Lunch, though, when the morning session was over: now that, I remember well. In the restaurant there were these big round tables, each seating ten people, with no assigned seats. I was with colleagues from my year and with others I didn’t know. At the last moment, when there was only a single seat left, just next to mine, he came in and asked if he could sit down. We said yes, of course he could, and that was how I met Giovanni Falcone. It was a very … peculiar sensation. I can’t find a more appropriate word.”

  “Why peculiar?”

  “You have to imagine … I don’t know, a historical figure, or a character from a novel, in other words, someone who’s too remote to be real, coming and sitting down at your table, starting to chat to you, calling you by your first name, and he’s … Well, he’s normal. Likeable, even. Quite likeable. Not too much, though. That’s not a euphemism for saying he was unlikeable. You have to be careful with words. No, I mean exactly what I said: he was quite likeable. Very relaxed, very much at his ease. Normal, I can’t think of another word. But you know perfectly well that he isn’t normal. You’re familiar with what he’s done and is doing, and it crosses your mind that at that very moment, there are highly dangerous people thinking about how to kill him, this normal man you’re having a normal conversation with. And being young – I was twenty-seven – you ask yourself: Who’ll win? Us or them? I was thinking this while I was trying to say things he might remember me for, but I don’t think I succeeded. So it can’t even be said that we knew each other. If anyone had asked him: ‘Do you know Gemma D’Angelo?’ he would have replied that he was sorry, but he didn’t think he remembered her. At least that’s what I think.”

  She stopped in one of the little public gardens facing the sea. It was getting dark now. She sat down on a bench and Fenoglio did the same. He was a little embarrassed, and at the same time the situation struck him as natural. She took out her packet of cigarettes and with a mechanical gesture offered him one. This time he took it.

  They sat side by side, smoking and looking out to sea. His thoughts began shifting about again, uncontrollably. When are you ever able to control your thoughts? Fenoglio didn’t really feel like going home. It occurred to him that he ought to be angry with Serena but, absurdly, he wasn’t. It occurred to him that all he wanted was for her to come back. A man passed with a big mongrel pulling on its lead. The dog came up to D’Angelo, and she stroked its muzzle with the gestures of someone who is very familiar with animals and has never been scared of them.

  “Do you have a dog, dottoressa?” Fenoglio asked as soon as they were alone again.

  “I had one as a child. When I was with my parents. I’d like to have one now, but how can I, living alone? What about you?”

  “No. I think about it sometimes.”

  “He had an ironic smile, Giovanni Falcone. But it was an irony that was barely hinted at. As I looked at him, sitting there at the table, I told myself it was like an antidote, that almost invisible irony. Normality and irony. Maybe that’s how you confront the monster. There you are: the lesson of that study day wasn’t the content of the lecture, the lecture I can’t remember. The lesson was about sitting normally at the table, that vaguely ironic smile, that being on first-name terms with the students. It was as if he was saying: we all know I am – but actually: we are – in the middle of a deadly game. But that’s not going to stop us from smiling. If it did, the others would already have won.”

  She extinguished her cigarette and immediately lit another.

  “Why did you decide to become a prosecutor?”

  D’Angelo smiled and shook her head. “For me, it was a kind of mission. Falcone and the others were my idols. I wanted to be a prosecutor because I wanted to be like them.”

  Fenoglio nodded.

  D’Angelo put her feet up on the bench and hugged her knees. She let several minutes go by without saying a word. “You know something absurd, marshal? I’m hungry.”

  “It isn’t absurd. It’s one of the many forms the survival instinct takes.”

  “Maybe you could walk me to a pizzeria and leave me there. I can get home on my own, don’t worry.”

  “Dottoressa, don’t make things difficult for me. We shouldn’t even be here, sitting on a bench like this. You shouldn’t have come out alone with me, without your bodyguards. I’ll walk with you, but I won’t leave you on your own. Let’s call —”

  “Please, I don’t want them. They’re good men, but I don’t want to be with them right now.”

  “Then I’ll wait. You eat your pizza and then I’ll take you home.”

  “Don’t even think about waiting for me. But you can be my guest, and then you can walk me home, if that makes you feel any easier.”

  “Yes, it does make me feel easier.”

  “Only I wouldn’t want to cause you any problems with your family. They must be waiting for you at home.”

  “No problem, I was thinking of having a bite to eat myself.”

  She seemed about to ask him something, but thought better of it.

&n
bsp; They went to a small pizzeria in Madonnella and found a table at the back, with Fenoglio sitting in such a way that he had a clear view of the entrance.

  “My girlfriends and I used to come here in my university days,” D’Angelo said, lighting yet another cigarette.

  “Are you actually from Bari, dottoressa?”

  “My father’s from Bari, my mother’s Sicilian. He’s a civil lawyer, she teaches literature at high school.”

  My wife also teaches literature. But she’s not at home any more. She may have someone else. I don’t know.

  “What was your first posting?”

  “I did three years in Palmi.”

  “Always in the Prosecutor’s Department?”

  “I was an examining magistrate, and for a few months, when the new code came into force, I was also a judge at preliminary hearings. Then I was transferred here.”

  “Palmi can’t have been a holiday.”

  She smiled again. “No, it wasn’t.”

  The waiter came with taralli, olives, chunks of provolone and two beers. He took the order for the pizzas – they both ordered the one with turnip tops, anchovies and breadcrumbs – and slipped away as only some waiters can.

  “When we were sitting on the bench, you started telling me about your mission.”

  She again took out her packet of cigarettes, looked at it as if she had never seen it before, and put it back. “I really am smoking too much. The next one after dinner.”

  “Good idea.”

  “My mission, yes. We were young and we wanted to change the world. Some thought they could do it through politics. I thought the best way was to become a magistrate. Without any compromises. On one side there were the bad guys – tax evaders, corrupt officials, polluters, Mafiosi, crooks of all kinds. I’d be on the other side, fighting them. Rather a naive idea, let’s say. It took me quite a while to realize that things are more complicated.”

  She drank a little beer, ate a tarallo and a piece of cheese. Fenoglio did the same, in the same order.

  “You know what the happiest moment of my life was?” she said.

  “What?”

  “We were waiting for the results of the written exams. One morning we heard they’d come out. To find out what they were, you just had to call a number at the Ministry of Justice. You gave your name, and the person there would tell you if you’d been accepted for the orals. A friend of mine – we’d studied together for the written exams – had already called and been told she’d passed. I don’t know why, but I got it into my head that she’d asked about my result, too, and that they’d told her I hadn’t got through but she hadn’t had the courage to tell me. So I called, feeling a real sense of desperation – and that’s no exaggeration. I gave my name to the person at the other end, stammering, I think. He leafed through the register – I could hear the rustling of the pages – and asked me: Did you say Gemma D’Angelo? Yes, I replied, barely able to breathe. Congratulations, dottoressa, you’ve been accepted, and he read me my marks. And I realized what it means to be crazy with happiness. Even now, when I think about it, I get the same blissful expression on my face that I went around with for at least two days.”

  Fenoglio smiled.

  “I’m making you laugh.”

  “You’re making me smile. That’s different.”

  “Is it true that you’re a literature graduate?”

  “I studied literature. Then I joined the Carabinieri, for reasons it would take quite a while to explain, and dropped my studies. Sometimes I think I’d like to go back to university and get my degree, but I imagine it’s just a whim. I still had five exams to take.”

  “Why literature?”

  “I liked books and I didn’t think I had any particular qualities. And the situation hasn’t changed even now. I still like books and I still don’t think I have any particular qualities. Apart, perhaps, from a certain stubbornness.”

  “And do you like being a carabiniere?”

  “There are lots of things I don’t like. But there are some I like.”

  “What don’t you like?”

  “I don’t like the brutality. I don’t like the abuse of power, especially when it’s done in the name of supposed justice. I don’t like some of your colleagues, I don’t like many lawyers – but on the other hand there are some I like a lot – I don’t like the hierarchy, I don’t like some officers. Obviously I don’t like criminals. Some are truly repulsive.” “There has to be something you like a lot to make up for all that.”

  “I like finding out what happened. In so far as it’s possible. I like it that people trust me and decide to tell me what they know, even in the most unexpected situations. I like it when what I do – and it does happen – gives a little dignity back to those who’ve lost it. It gives meaning to chaos. And I like some of the people I come across in my work. A few of your colleagues, a few of my colleagues, even a few criminals. Some are pleasant people.” He paused, surprised by what he had just said. “That was a pathetic little outburst.”

  “No. It really wasn’t. I like the idea of giving meaning to chaos.”

  The pizzas arrived, and for a few minutes the conversation was put on hold. It was Saturday evening, the place was full, the voices from the various tables mingled in the discordant symphony typical of a crowded downmarket restaurant.

  “You know what my first moment of disillusion was?” D’Angelo said after eating the last triangle of pizza with her hands.

  “When people you’d sent down were acquitted in the appeal court?”

  She gave a little laugh. “No, no. It was long before that.”

  Fenoglio pushed his plate to one side.

  “Immediately after I graduated, I enrolled on a course to prepare for the magistrates’ exam. It was given by a famous Neapolitan judge, who was said to be very good. And having attended the course I can vouch for that: he really was very good. To cut a long story short, I enrolled, did the trial month, then went to him and asked him how to make the payment, if a cheque from my father would be all right. He smiled, looking at me the way you’d look at an innocent little girl – which is exactly what I was – and said no, unfortunately he couldn’t take cheques, I had to pay cash.”

  “It was all off the books.”

  “Precisely. I stammered something, said I didn’t have the cash and if he didn’t mind I’d bring it the following week. He said that’d be fine. It made me feel really bad. He was there to help us become magistrates, he was such a good teacher, and he was a tax evader. Without any embarrassment, without any shame, as if earning money – a lot of money, there were a great many people on the course – and not paying tax on it was completely normal. I didn’t think it was right, I thought it was inadmissible, intolerable. I thought of not continuing. I was already kicking up a fuss in shops and restaurants if they didn’t give me a till receipt, just to give you an idea.”

  “But you did continue.”

  “Yes, I did. And I paid on time every month, in cash like everyone else. I can still see it: us giving him the money, just like that, all rolled up, and him taking it without looking at it and putting it in his pocket.”

  Fenoglio smiled and shrugged. Life is made up of compromises.

  “But it was thanks to him that I passed the exam. If I hadn’t followed his course, in all probability I wouldn’t have got through.”

  The waiter came over. Gerardo, his name was, and he had dyed black hair with an incredible comb-over and white roots.

  “Would you like a dessert, marshal? Panna cotta, tiramisu, sporcamussi?”

  Fenoglio looked at D’Angelo. She shook her head. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  “Thank you, Gerardo, just bring us the bill, please.”

  “You know what they say about you?” D’Angelo said when the waiter had again disappeared.

  “Who?”

  “People. Even a few of my colleagues.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Basically, that you’re good but not lik
eable. Do you know why?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “What do you imagine?”

  “I imagine I won’t make myself likeable by saying it.”

  She laughed. She looked much younger when she laughed, Fenoglio thought.

  “Go on, be brave, or you’ll make yourself not very likeable, even to me.”

  “Many of your colleagues, and almost all my superiors, love the rituals which ensure that other people acknowledge their authority.”

  “Is that a way of saying that they want to be respected?”

  “More or less.”

  “And you don’t bother with the rituals. Which makes you unlikeable.”

  “It’s a reasonable simplification.”

  “And what do they say about me?” she asked, playing with a cigarette but without lighting it.

  “That you’re good but not likeable. But I have to add that so far, in the circles I move in, I’ve never heard of a female magistrate being considered likeable.”

  “So I can take some consolation from the fact that it’s a stereotype?”

  Fenoglio smiled. “Yes, I think you can.”

  “Dropping the question of likeableness, a few of your colleagues, and a few police officers, too, have told me that you’re good at making people talk, that they tend to confide in you. Is that true?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why?”

  “I assume they realize I’m not trying to trick them.”

  “Is that enough?”

  “No, not really.”

  “What, then?”

  “I think it’s also important to see things from their point of view. Which of course isn’t the same as justifying their acts.”

  D’Angelo nodded pensively, then finally lit her cigarette. “God alone knows what it must be like to see things from the point of view of whoever pressed the button to set off that bomb,” she said grimly.