Once I got home I called Turin. It was my father who answered.
“I just wanted to know how you are,” I said.
“Hold on.”
I heard him move into another room, close a door.
“And I wanted to thank you for the money,” I added.
Maybe that was a mistake. Those simple words, overheard by someone, could trigger a disastrous chain reaction. What if it hadn’t been my father who’d arranged the bank transfer? I was groping my way through a plan I didn’t know. I had only instinct to rely on, instinct and blind trust in Bern.
My father cleared his throat. “I keep thinking about what you wrote to me.”
What he added after that, in a rushed, timid voice, caught me so off guard that I’m not sure I responded before hanging up. He spoke the most natural words for a father and a daughter, the most unnatural of all for the two of us: “You know I love you too.”
For several minutes afterward, I stood there staring at the scraps of paper strewn all over the floor, as if that jumbled chaos also contained a secret message to be deciphered.
I opened a bottle of Primitivo, took it outside. The air was warm and fragrant, and I could make out the scent of peppercorns drying on the branches. The hibiscus that I had planted the year before had climbed almost halfway up the wall. Each detail produced a vivid, almost painful impression in me.
I read the book that Bern had sent me. I let the lines scroll before my eyes one at a time, until the last one. The copy had not passed through his hands, I knew that, it had come to the masseria from the shelf of a warehouse, yet I held it to my nose and inhaled its smell.
When I stood up it was dark. The screensaver’s jigsaw puzzle arranged and rearranged itself in the dim light, like a breath. I moved the mouse and the monitor returned to how I had left it a few hours earlier. The translucent eye of the webcam seemed to be off. Bern was out there somewhere, he couldn’t tell me, but he had found a way to let me know, the only way the bugs could not detect. Maybe he was watching me at that moment.
I dropped my jacket on the floor, I took off my sweatshirt. To slip off my T-shirt, I turned my back, I did it sensually, almost ironically, as if I were playing around in front of a mirror. Then I started swaying, just a hint of movement, not really dancing, even though I tried to hear a song in my mind.
I looked straight into the cold eye of the computer as I unzipped my jeans, as I stood there in my underwear and unhooked my bra and stepped out of my panties, certain that Bern could see me at that point, the computer’s lens like his close-set dark eyes. I moved again, I tried to do it the way he would have liked, what I had done for him sometimes. For a moment his hands were on me.
* * *
—
EACH DAY I waited for a new delivery. And each day, when it did not come, I went into my Amazon account to check if anything had changed. But there was no further activity.
Then, one morning at the end of November, Daniele showed up at the masseria with another young man. I went toward him as he got out of the car.
“I told you not to come back.”
“You have to come with us.”
“Are you listening to me? You’re on my property.”
“There’s no time. Get in!”
There was a commanding tone in his voice that made me obey him. He was already tilting the seat forward to let me climb in.
“You don’t need anything, just get in,” he said, seeing me glance uncertainly at the house, where my handbag with my wallet and keys was.
The wheels raised a cloud of dust as he made an abrupt U-turn. The other guy was typing swiftly on his phone. He didn’t so much as glance at me.
“Did you hear?” Daniele asked me.
“Hear what?”
“They got Danco.”
The guy who was texting on the phone said: “They’re almost there.”
“Shit!”
Daniele took a chance and passed dangerously before a curve. I leaned forward between the seats. Suddenly I was extremely tense. There was a lot of traffic on the highway, but we sped along, zigzagging to get past everyone.
“And Bern?” I asked, my mouth dry.
Daniele shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The guy on the phone ran his thumb over the screen to enlarge a picture. He showed it to Daniele, who nodded, then took a deep breath and looked at me in the rearview mirror again. “We have to get to Brindisi before they put him in a cell.”
For the rest of the way they acted as if I wasn’t there, talking on the phone with other activists, or between themselves, in a jargon that I mostly had a hard time understanding and that didn’t really interest me. I leaned back in my seat. I prayed, silently, fervently, that nothing bad had happened to Bern. That he was safe.
In Brindisi the other guy stayed to keep an eye on the car while Daniele and I ran to the police station. Two police cars drove up soon after we arrived.
A knot of people had formed, blocking the steps of the building. I thought they were journalists, but when the agents got out of the cars followed by a man in handcuffs, each taking him by the arm, and when that man, Danco, smiled brazenly at the small crowd, they formed a barricade around him, linking elbows in a human chain.
Daniele pushed me forward, but I hung back. I looked at Danco, his satisfaction as he strutted toward his companions.
Again Daniele pushed me. “Let’s go!”
“No.”
When he realized I wouldn’t move, he ran to join the demonstrators by himself. The two sides studied each other in silence. Danco acted as though he had nothing to do with what was going on around him.
At that instant he turned his head in my direction as if he knew exactly where he’d find me. He stared at me for a moment, then his lips widened in a smile that I thought seemed full of sadness.
Two armored trucks arrived and disgorged a squad of riot police who easily broke through the human barrier, creating a corridor through which Danco was made to pass. Then he vanished into police headquarters.
* * *
—
FROM THAT EVENING ON, the news broadcasts gave a daily report of Danco’s silence. He said nothing: neither about where he had been for all that time, nor about the accomplices who may have been with him, nor the reason why he had suddenly decided to come back and turn himself in. His obstinacy astounded everyone, but not me.
Later on, it became clear that he was merely leading up to his big moment. We were already into the new year when he decided to tell his version. He did so with a statement that he read before the judge and the media, insisting that he be heard without interruption from beginning to end.
He was much better groomed than he’d been when I had seen him in front of police headquarters. His hair and beard were shorter, and he wore a gray suit, with an olive sprig in place of a pocket handkerchief, a touch that would draw sarcasm from many commentators.
He read with a firm, scathing tone of voice, his eyes moving from the paper to the judge, without a trace of subjection. He read to those who were present in the courtroom but also to everyone who would hear him in a recorded broadcast, conscious of our large numbers. He read his letter from prison, not as a confession or surrender, but as an all-points bulletin.
He described a plot behind the felling of the olive trees. He spoke of a member of the European Parliament, a certain De Bartolomeo, who had signed the first order to cut down the trees and soon afterward had designated a new species to replace the existing one. Genetically modified olive trees, resistant to Xylella, with a patent registered by a company in Cyprus, a company in which De Bartolomeo’s wife, coincidentally, was a shareholder. Millions were at stake. He explained that the owner of the Relais dei Saraceni, Nacci, had given bribes to De Bartolomeo to ensure that his olive trees would be among those chosen to be felled. Perfectly healthy olive trees.
All this to satisfy the needs of an increasingly blind, ravenous, and ruthless capitalism.
From time to time he sipped water from a glass. Those pauses too appeared calculated. His lawyer sat beside him, with his arms crossed and a defiant expression. Danco explained that he had always found the use of violence repugnant, and that therefore he was dissociating himself from some of the “unpleasant” events that took place that night at the Relais dei Saraceni.
“With regard to the death of Nicola Belpanno,” he concluded with the same lack of emotion, “I can only affirm that I was not the one who crushed his skull. I was there, I saw what happened, but it wasn’t me. And that’s all I have to say on the subject.”
* * *
—
IN WINTER, moss grew in the cracks of the concrete, a springy, shiny cushion that disintegrated at the beginning of summer, and then came back.
I painted the outside of the house because the rain had stained it with brownish drips. The scandalous drawing that Bern and I had once painted had completely disappeared, buried under layers and layers of whitewash. I scratched with my fingernails to find a trace of it, to no avail.
The last official words pronounced on Nicola’s death were those of Danco in the courtroom. The prosecution had objected that the mark of the bruises on Nicola’s cheek was compatible with a shoe worn by him, but the defense had shown that those hematomas were so indistinct as to be compatible with anyone’s shoe. Consequently, his deposition prevailed, a unilateral testimony that, albeit indirectly, blamed Bern. But Danco was lying, I knew it. Bern’s innocence was imprinted in my flesh, like the certainty of our days together.
I put in a request to the prison in Brindisi for a private interview. Though there was much resistance, the request was granted, but when I sat in the visiting room, Danco did not show up. I tried a second time, and again he didn’t come. On the third request, the prison staff told me that the detainee did not wish to receive visits.
On the phone my mother kept repeating the same words: “You’re still young.” At first it was a consolation, “You’re still young, you can start over again,” but the more the months went by, the more ominous the message seemed. “You’re still young, but not for long, thirty-one, thirty-two now, and you have to start all over again.” But start what over again?
Moneywise, at least, things were better. A couple of guys from Noci, two dreamers, hired me as a consultant. They wanted to start a permaculture project. I didn’t know if they were aware of my connection with the policeman’s murder, they probably were, but still, it hadn’t been talked about for a long time.
A neighbor asked to rent the greenhouse. He paid little but regularly. Plus, there was the money that my father now deposited for me every month. I learned that he now spoke of me as a skilled agronomist. For a long time I’d thought he was the only element missing in my life. During the lengthy period in which he’d refused to speak to me, I kept telling myself that if only things were put right between us, my life would be perfect. A notion that now seemed foolish.
* * *
—
NEARLY TWO YEARS: from the time Danco surrendered to the police, to when Mediterranea Travel, a travel agency in Francavilla Fontana, phoned to tell me that my plane ticket had been issued and that the flight was confirmed for the following day.
“You have the wrong number,” I replied.
The woman on the other end took a moment to consult something, then asked: “Am I speaking with Mrs. Gasparro? Teresa Gasparro, born in Turin on June 6, 1980?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Then we spoke yesterday. You really don’t remember? You told me to book the flight urgently.”
A rush of adrenaline charged through my arms and legs.
“But of course. I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry. Would you please tell me the flight times again?”
“Departure from Brindisi at 20:10. You have a two-hour stopover at Malpensa. The Icelandair flight is at 23:40. It arrives in Reykjavík at 1:55.”
When I’d heard the phone ring, I’d been planting the pots of strawberries. I had rich, dark soil wedged under my fingernails.
“I envy you a little,” the woman on the phone said. “I was there two years ago and it was the best trip of my life. Don’t miss the glacier that ends up in the sea. You can take a boat ride among the icebergs. Three days isn’t enough time, but make sure you don’t miss that.”
I asked her if I could pick up the ticket at the agency. She said it was electronic, she had already sent the reservation to my email address. If I preferred, she could also handle the boarding passes. She asked me to confirm that I would be traveling with only a carry-on.
I don’t remember how we ended the conversation, maybe I just hung up. Soon afterward I was studying the boarding pass on the computer monitor. I read the terms and conditions, written in small print, in their entirety, as if some crucial clue were lurking there too. But there was nothing more, just a seat number and an ad for a hotel that promised a discount on admission to the Blue Lagoon, with the photo of a man and a woman wrapped in towels, gazing at the horizon through the sulfurous vapors.
I should measure the sides of the carry-on bag, check the maximum and minimum temperatures in Reykjavík, pack my things, maybe do something with my hair, which in recent months I’d gotten into the habit of cutting myself with the kitchen scissors. Instead, I went outside and sat under the pergola.
The tablecloth with the world map was so faded that the top layer of plastic was flaking off. I touched the jagged, pale pink spot that was Iceland. A piece of continent adrift.
7.
The impact of the wheels touching down on the airstrip woke me. For a few seconds I could hardly move my neck. I’d been determined to stay awake through the entire trip, to register every detail before the moment I would see Bern again, but the late hour and the slight lack of oxygen in the pressurized cabin had gotten the better of me. On the stairway leading off the plane I was surprised by the very dry, icy wind. It was the dead of night, yet the sky was still bright, a radiant yellow line low on the horizon. I should have known, and instead I had imagined landing at Reykjavík in the dark.
Behind the security barrier a group of people were waiting for the arriving passengers. They wore mountain clothes, woolen caps that seemed quite odd to me coming from summer—a summer from which I’d been catapulted there. Still moving forward, I looked around for Bern, him or his black clothes among those garish colors. I looked for him in the first row, then in the one behind it; a few people looked at me meaningfully, in case I corresponded to the surname written on the signs they held up. I looked for Bern inside that tiny airport and instead I found Giuliana, standing apart by the window.
She raised a hand, not exactly a wave, more like saying, “Over here.” Then she walked off toward the exit.
I reached her outside. The well-lit airport signs were extraordinarily brilliant; everything was so sharp and clear, as if there wasn’t a single particle of dust to pollute the air.
“Is that all you have?” she asked, looking down at my jacket.
“It’s warm enough.”
It wasn’t, in fact. Giuliana said shortly: “I have something in the car I can give you.”
As we crossed diagonally through the parking lot, me trudging just behind her, I had so many unanswered questions, so many questions I could have asked her. The most important one being: Him, where is he? Instead we remained silent as we walked to the car, where Giuliana grabbed my bag and put it in the trunk, touching my fingers for the first time, without meaning to, I think. She pulled a windbreaker out of another bag and practically threw it at me.
We drove the first few miles through a surreal plain, the headlights revealing fluorescent lichens and small pools of a liquid that looked like milk. Giuliana said we would spend the rest of the night in a nearby village, Grindavík. It would make our trip a
little longer, but not by much. It was the only accommodation she’d been able to find.
“The place we’re going to is too far to start out now. We’ll leave early tomorrow.”
Then she asked me if I had changed my currency at the airport.
“I didn’t have time.”
“Usually the guesthouses accept euros,” she replied, annoyed, “but they’ll give you a shitty exchange rate.”
Maybe it was just the haircut, a mannish razing with a very short, upright fringe that emphasized the angular shape of her skull. But studying her from the passenger seat, I was sure that something about her body had changed too. She had shriveled up. I imagined a worrisome gauntness under the red ski jacket, an extension of the thin, nervous fingers that gripped the steering wheel.
We entered a cluster of houses, all similar, so perfect with their vivid sheet-metal façades that they resembled those of a diorama. Grindavík. It gave the impression of having been built in the span of one night. Farther on, beyond an equally pristine port, you could see the solid sheen of the sea.
A very blond young man greeted us at the reception desk. Or, better yet, he didn’t greet us at all, because he didn’t stop watching a movie on his iPad, even while he photocopied our documents, took my money, and gave us one key card for both of us.
Giuliana said something to him, very casually, in a language that wasn’t English. As we climbed the stairs, I asked her if she had learned Icelandic.
“The bare essentials,” she replied.
“How long have you been here?” She fiddled with the magnetic lock that at first did not recognize the card.
“We’ve been here for a year and a half.”
The room was microscopic, the walls wood-paneled. There was a strange smell, maybe it came from the carpet. The double bed was narrower than a normal one. As for the bathroom, it was shared. Giuliana went in before me; she didn’t take long.
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