The Twenty Days of Turin

by Giorgio de Maria

  “Oh, yes?”

  “It might be because I don’t often visit the center of town,” I insisted, “and I don’t follow too closely how things are going at your end, but I could swear the name of the square used to be different . . . Have you been in this spot for long?”

  “About nineteen years now.”

  “Then you must’ve noticed the change . . . And you’ve never wondered why?”

  “I normally just do my job and don’t take notice of what’s going on outside,” Eligio said, hurrying the movement of the scissors. “And when the mayor changed the statues around, I was up in the mountains.”

  “Why do you suppose it was the mayor who changed them around?”

  “Who else could it have been? If you want to see the monument to Pietro Paleocapa, you only have to cross Piazza Carlo Felice and you’ll find it on the other side . . . Anyway, the statues are perfectly fine where they are, just as I’m perfectly fine right here . . . Do you want me to take some more off the sides?”

  “No, thanks, keep the trim low.”

  A customer had come in, a cockeyed, brawny type. He had grabbed a magazine and started to leaf through it noisily. In the mirror I could see that he was relentlessly shifting his legs from position to position.

  “You’re a proper Turinese?” I asked Eligio. “From the central city?”

  “Well, I was born here, if that’s enough.”

  “Then it follows that there must’ve been other changeovers like this one?”

  The customer had lowered his glossy reading and Eligio turned to look at him; I thought I saw the two of them exchanging a wink.

  “You mean to say . . . ?”

  “Yes, I mean other names that have—somehow, ­somewhere—been swapped around.”

  “No . . . None that I’m aware of . . . I’m not even sure, really . . .”

  “So just here? Lagrange sitting in place of Paleocapa, and Paleocapa instead of Lagrange . . . It seems like those two weren’t very happy with the spots they had before.”

  “So? Are you happy in the spot you’re sitting?” Eligio replied, with heavy sarcasm.

  “Well, things could be better, to be honest.”

  The customer had started to chuckle; I felt obliged to follow his lead.

  “As you can see, we each have to make do as best we can . . . Even I would like to be working in Piazza San Carlo, maybe, or running a fancy-schmancy salon for the ladies . . .”

  I couldn’t blame Eligio for that; but the chuckles of the customer, which sounded cruder and more grating by the minute, incited me to press on.

  “Yes, I agree with you that few people are happy where they sit . . . But if they all tried to change places with others who were better off—or rather, others whom they imagined were better off—they would have to carry out so much bloodshed that, as a result, only a couple of people out of every thousand would find their position transformed . . . Well, I think it’s better to leave everything where it is.”

  There was an onerous silence. The client stopped laughing and took cover behind his glossy weekly. Eligio put down the scissors and grabbed the razor. Suddenly I felt a sharp prickling at my right cheek. “Ouch!” But Eligio was ready to block my hand from rising . . . “Don’t touch it!” he said. “It’s nothing! I’ll disinfect it with alcohol . . .”

  I allowed him to fetch a cotton ball to press onto the cut. It didn’t take much for me to realize Eligio didn’t like my choice of subjects. I reopened the Tuttosport and tried to read it once more. When I raised my eyes again I noticed that the customer was gone . . . Eligio pretended not to notice my surprise. He asked me to take off my glasses because he had to run the razor against my sideburns. I obeyed in silence. We didn’t exchange any more words. After he’d finished combing me, he asked if I wanted some cologne. I told him I was fine. He went to get the mirror and show me the finished haircut. It was decent enough. Eligio brushed my shoulders and handed me an exorbitant price. I paid him and went out into the square . . . The monument to Joseph-Louis Lagrange looked a bit out of sorts on that pedestal; the inscription didn’t match up to his biography as a mathematician. If Lagrange had ever been a “hydraulic engineer and eminent statesman,” it was certainly news to my ears. I thought that if I were a sculptor I would have made some corrections to the monument . . . Yet I had to admit that I felt a touch out of place myself, even if I didn’t know enough to say what my rightful condition could be.

  X.

  NEW GLEANINGS

  I KEPT UP MY CORRESPONDENCE with the stranger, but it’s probably useless for me to linger on the content of our letters. All I can say is that I made an attempt to pick out my mystery pen pal—a nocturnal ambush, close to the spot where I’d deposited one of my envelopes. I was left waiting well after midnight but, perhaps because of the rain or for some other reason, I saw no trace of him. That didn’t prevent another of his letters from reaching my home, this time sent by regular mail.

  To interrupt our exchange of letters—at least from my end—came a series of small incidents that I took note of walking around the city. I’ll try to explain as broadly as I can. Indeed, it took me quite some time myself to grasp that these events had, so to speak, an abnormal character. Who would pay attention to an individual who stops for a moment at a public wastebasket—one bin out of the many standing around—to throw in an advert or a leaflet? Or a man or woman who bends down to pick something off the ground, just like a hobo gleaning a used cigarette? It would take the trained eye of a film director to notice such things. And even then, why would they do it? To shoot a documentary about urban life? How much of it would be worth recording?

  If I came to realize an unnatural side to the whole affair, I owe it entirely to my mail-drop intrigue with the stranger. His words had left my eyes rather sensitive to everything involving dross or waste . . . And so it struck me that not everyone was using those bins to get rid of wastepaper they didn’t need; some of them were putting their hands inside to take things out, then hiding whatever they’d taken deep in their pockets. Even the people who bent down on the pavement seemed to have a very special interest in the paper refuse: they weren’t just grabbing coins, lost stamps, packs of smokes that might’ve still had a cigarette inside—at least not all of them were.

  Hence I too started rummaging around in those receptacles, collecting balls of scrunched-up paper seeded throughout the streets.

  For the first few days, I didn’t land on anything remarkable. But one morning—as I traveled to work on foot, for a change—I found something in my hands that put me on the alert. It was a small notebook, the kind you can buy at a tobacconist’s, with rather messy binding and greasy sheets of squared paper filled top to bottom with minuscule handwriting. There was a date on each page and the last page had a name and address. I started reading it, and at once I could tell what it was. I’d found a diary! A diary very similar to the ones that were donated ten years before to the now-defunct Library! Similar by general kinship . . . Its content went well beyond the typical confessions of before: here, we had signs of a dreadful aggravation! I shoved it back into the bin I’d taken it from, then, at the cost of being penalized for turning up late for work, I stopped and kept my eye on the opposite sidewalk. It didn’t leave me disappointed. After an hour or so—during which many citizens had surrendered their litter to the bins out of pure civic duty—I saw a person approaching the container with something voracious in his stare. He was a man just about my age, a still-respectable period of his life. He could well have been a fellow tenant at the house I lived in. But the way he plunged his hands into the bin, how he wormed around inside it, and the gleam of perverse joy that appeared in his eyes as soon as he had extracted a notebook, made for very telling signs. He gave it a greedy look and pocketed it, then walked away in haste, keeping close to the walls.

  I’m not going to pause, then, to enlarge on the reasons why I cut short my correspondence with the stranger. The vision of that solitary passerby had unsettled m
e all the way to my marrow. I realized, what’s more, that I wasn’t the only one studying the sidewalk: at the opposite corner of the same block, I noticed two other people who’d also found it extremely riveting to follow that sequence of events. Except that, while I was horrified, they seemed pleased with the outcome. They jotted down observations on a little notepad, exchanged wily glances every so often and gave knowing smiles. Both of them were young, refined-looking people that any respectable family would be delighted to invite over for dinner. They wore dark suits like those fellows I saw in front of Gran Madre de Dio. They made me think of the kids ten years earlier who’d been set loose to canvass for the Library at people’s doorsteps; only there was no contagious enthusiasm in these youngsters, just a cold determination to achieve a goal that was unclear to me . . . Shortly afterward they were approached by a third figure—somewhat older, with chunky, black-rimmed glasses—and left the notepad in his hands. He nodded at the pair, who departed in different directions. When I set off for work again, I had to call on all of my willpower not to look behind me: if I’d noticed someone following me at that moment, I wouldn’t have had the wits for simple arithmetic, let alone my day job!

  At work, I was summoned by the company director, who upbraided me for being late too many times. I promised to be more punctual. He gave me a letter that had reached him, and said that the envelope, addressed to me, had come inside another envelope bearing his own name. He couldn’t explain to me why it had happened; still, I swore I’d warn my friends that my boss didn’t fancy being viewed as my postman. On their behalf, I felt the need to apologize. I pocketed the envelope and went to my cubicle.

  Before I got started on another day of form-filling, I decided to read the letter. It was the stranger. I sensed he would be sending me letters through the director from now on—and, of course, explaining his motives for doing so at painstaking length. He brought me news of a personal nature: the filth had reached the sixth story; two more floors now and it would be touching him. He’d have to spend the remainder of his days under house arrest. However, he hadn’t ruled out being able to live to the age of ninety. In fact, he had begun to consider the possibility of surviving on human excrement—and that, while the tenants on the ninth floor (very old, but as eternal as the whole Administration) were uncorking champagne bottles and munching caviar! The fact didn’t seem quite as unfair to him now as it had once been: it was rather in harmony with the laws of Creation. He hastened to write this. Within two weeks’ time, it would be physically impossible to continue our correspondence. This time, however, I didn’t reply to him. Leaving the office—and perhaps I shouldn’t have done this—I threw the stranger’s letter into the wastepaper bin where I’d found the notebook, adding another “addressee” to the mix. Maybe somebody plucked it out and took my place as pen pal. I didn’t stay to keep watch; there were already “others” around quite happy to shoulder that task.

  In the middle of the night, I was woken with a start by a terrifying blow against my front door; I struggled to fall asleep again—was this how the insomnia began?—and the terror I felt at the blow echoing in the stairwell mingled with my anger at the surprise awakening. I wanted to run downstairs in my pajamas to teach a lesson to whoever had disturbed my rest, but I stayed tucked in. There was too much violence in the impact; it couldn’t have been produced by a human fist, not unless it came equipped with a hammer—but not even that! If anything, it had to be a mace, like the ones medieval warriors used. My fear kept me from even looking out the window. I had the suspicion that this was just what the “mace-bearer” was waiting for: to see my head stick out so he could strike me on the forehead with another blow. I took three sleeping pills and decided to leave off examining any damage to the door until daybreak.

  But early in the morning—before my alarm was timed to ring—the phone set out to inflict another shock to my already insecure sleep. This, however, wasn’t another mute caller; it was Segre the attorney, and he was panting heavily. He apologized for waking me so early in the morning but a dreadful thing had happened that he’d only discovered now. The newspapers hadn’t even mentioned it in the obituary columns . . . The event dated back to a few days ago. He felt obliged to warn me as soon as he’d gotten the impression that we were both in danger. Perhaps we’d do well if we could get together soon, preferably that evening. Paolo Giuffrida had been murdered! He’d been found dead in his garden, strangled, as if someone had placed two thumbs on his windpipe and throttled him. Gauguin was left for two days, trembling and howling against an iron railing, until a dogcatcher came and put him down with a strychnine shot. Segre had no doubt that they’d stolen Giuffrida’s cassette of “voices”; as for the physical perpetrator of the killing, he preferred not to give me his ideas over the phone. Hiding behind the crime, Segre believed, there must have been something even more worrying . . .

  I took a moment to get dressed and jump in the car. Not caring again whether I was late for work, I drove up the hill to reach Giuffrida’s home. I wanted to check what had happened with my own eyes. I didn’t manage to see very much, however: the house was cordoned off by police, who asked me what reasons I had just for trying to get near the gate. I said that I was a friend of the victim and that I’d only recently learned of his death; I asked when the funeral was set to be held. “No funeral!” an officer shot back. I took a glance at the garden through the railing: everything looked calm and ordinary. If the authorities were searching the house, they were doing it discreetly; the front door was closed. I saw the statue of Diana the Huntress, still there, secure on her pedestal; there were no signs of footsteps around her; no ground had been disturbed. Tidy flower beds, tidy pebbles: everything seemed like it was recently raked. If it hadn’t been for the presence of the police I would’ve sworn that Giuffrida was still alive and that Segre the attorney had invented the news . . . Failing to worm anything out from the surroundings, I left soon enough. That evening, toward nine o’clock, I met Segre in Piazza Castello.

  He wore a pale leather jacket, dark brown velvet trousers, a blue shirt and a flamboyant print necktie in perfect balance with the rest. Remembering his phone call, I’d expected to see him arrive looking ragged like me, and I felt a bit ashamed for letting myself be carried away by emotion at the cost of decorum. He almost appeared to be smiling; when he invited me to come with him into a typical piazza restaurant, where patrons sat exposed to the street through a glass window, I asked him if it mightn’t be better to go somewhere more private for our dinner. He replied that it made no difference. Someone who truly wanted to shadow us would find a way—even if we chatted underground in one of the sapper tunnels Pietro Micca dug at the Siege of Turin!

  At the table, I consulted the menu very carefully, lingering especially on the wines, and after Segre had agreed with me on a light wine from the Cinque Terre region that seemed first-rate, he gave a nod to the waiter. He made some choices from the menu that I didn’t object to, then came to our main topic. His opinion was that I had to leave the city. It didn’t matter where I went; the important thing was that I didn’t stay in Turin, at least not for the time being. The problem wasn’t as serious for him: he would leave for England the following day; he had a busy work schedule that would keep him away for quite some time, and being a man of the law, he could always watch his own back—even now. I mentioned Venice to him . . . Yes, he knew someone in Venice who could point me toward a job. If I needed some money to ­quietly leave town, he was happy to lend it without a due date for the repayment . . . In the end, he felt a little bit responsible for my fate: he was the one who’d sent me to Giuffrida; if I hadn’t gone to listen to the tape with the “voices,” my situation would be quite different, and maybe, who knew, Giuffrida might still be alive.

  “And why on earth is that?” I asked, fearful.

  “Because Giuffrida and I were the only ones who knew about the ‘voices’; when they realized that we’d introduced a third party—and many were already aware of your research�
��they began to sense the danger that the knowledge would spread, and there’s someone who absolutely cannot allow you to publicize it.

  “And who is that ‘someone’? The regional authorities? The mayor?”

  “Mayor Bonfante is one of the most honest and decent people I know. It’s not the forces that he represents which you should be worried about . . . It’s something very different, with a history that goes quite a ways back . . .”

  I filled my glass up to the brim.

  “Have you sensed anything odd these past few days?” I asked him.

  I told Segre everything that had happened to me, starting from my encounter with Sister Clotilde.

  “I see . . . The envelopes from your mystery pen pal, the people picking manuscripts up off the streets, those polished-­looking young men with their walkie-talkies in front of the statue at Gran Madre de Dio, the loud blow struck against your door last night . . . A business which we believed was over and done with is coming back into motion, and with a coldness, a clarity, which would have been unthinkable in the time of the Twenty Days . . . Perhaps even the letters you’d gotten from that stranger were part of the design.”

  “In what sense?”

  “I think they might’ve been a lure, an attempt to snare your subconscious mind and reduce it to passivity. Whoever wrote them knew his addressee very well, weaknesses and all . . . Too many things about us are already on record . . . They wanted to pry open a chink in your armor and use your determination to their own advantage . . . With you, they only got midway, but who knows how many more gullible people have fallen into their trap? . . . They even tried to do it with me.”

  “If that’s the case,” I postulated, “then we shouldn’t have any reason to fear for our lives . . . The trap hasn’t sprung; our energy is still there, for the most part.”

  Segre looked at me, smiling at my naïveté.