Persecution (9781609458744)

by Piperno, Alessandro; Goldstein, Ann (TRN)

  If he really was like that—harsh but fair—well, Leo had nothing to fear.

  Except for some muttered greetings, the investigator had still not addressed a word to Leo or to Herrera. For now he was involved in giving instructions, in a low voice, to those who must be his colleagues, assistants, or underlings. One, little more than a boy, sitting in front of a typewriter, would probably be responsible for the report. The other, getting on in years, would be making sure that the tape recorder, with its large reels, which was placed on a small table beside the desk, functioned properly. They must be from the investigative police. Two assistants. He sensed in them a great but at the same time affectionate respect for the investigator. Leo got the idea that, being in a government office, one breathed an air of cooperation and understanding. As if it were a fine family held together by a father who was harsh but fair.

  Finally there was a woman. Also rather young. Whose lack of attractiveness and irritating thinness were remarkably summarized by her hair, pulled back in a stiff dark-brown bun. Maybe the magistrate’s assistant. Now the two were talking. Probably she would take part in the interrogation.

  In that atmosphere heavy with concentration and expectations Leo recognized the same emotion that preceded a surgery. Although he wasn’t a surgeon, he liked to be present at the operations that, all too often, his small patients had to undergo. If only to be sure that those butchers didn’t get out of hand. So that’s how a child must feel a moment before the anesthesia, amid all those adults who were talking to each other, organizing, giving one another orders. Those adults got up like astronauts, who would soon be laying their hands on him.

  Even the light, so bright and artificial, evoked an operating room.

  Leo, noticing the way the young woman looked at the public prosecutor, was sure that she must be in love with him. Of course, madly in love! More in love than that and you’d die. Yet how could it be otherwise? Who wouldn’t be in love with a man like that? Finally Leo allowed himself to look at the man attentively. To grasp the elements of such an unmistakable fascination. He was still turned toward the woman.

  There are men whose pants, because of their meager backsides, hang with an impeccable and therefore unsustainable precision. Those men who have no ass are for the most part lacking in compassion and insufficiently provided with emotional resources, and above all they are cold, precise, and without mystery, like solved puzzles. That’s what the flat ferocious ass of the investigator said: it said everything about the severity of this young man, but very little about his temperament.

  When at last the man turned toward him, Leo was struck by his radiant virility. No more than five feet seven, lean if not exactly athletic, the investigator wore a sky-blue shirt open discreetly at the collar, the sleeves clumsily rolled up to the elbows. His summer pants of custard-colored cotton were part of a suit whose jacket drooped over a chair. His perfectly spherical head, which was perfectly shaved and shining, reminded Leo of that actor Rachel liked so much, what was his name? Ah yes, Yul Brynner. Then, there were the eyes, whose blue displayed a Flemish clarity.

  A terribly painful nostalgia for life. For his life. Leo felt overwhelmed by this. Seeing a man so at his ease in his own pants, with no a belt. Seeing a man who was allowed to do his own job freely. Seeing a man at the height of his energy, at the peak of efficiency and power, Leo felt such envy. For a second he found himself longing for—yearning, with ardor—the purloined goods: all that they had stolen from under his nose. He thought, at random, of his wardrobe, his students, emergencies at the hospital; he thought of successes and failures, of conferences and the coffee breaks between one session and the next; he thought of Rachel, of Filippo, of Samuel, and even of Flavio and Rita; he thought of the fragrance of Telma’s torta caprese just coming out of the oven; he thought of vacations, of the lagoon, of the snow, of Saturdays, of Sundays but also of Tuesdays; he thought of the great Ray Charles, the voice of the great Ray Charles, he thought above all of that . . . In an instant everything returned. Everything he had lost. Along with fear. Fear of the sinister ritual that was about to be performed, in which he had been assigned the difficult role of lead actor. Goodbye stoicism. Goodbye fatalism. This was life. In its densest and most unequivocal form. Here fatalism had no usefulness, philosophy was a pointless waste of time.

  What had happened to Herrera?

  Having vented all his anger outside the door, once he was inside he seemed to calm down. Which Leo didn’t mind. What distressed him was that, compared to the judge, his lawyer seemed an impotent, derelict creature, without authority.

  “Signor Del Monte,” the judge said, in a voice that was disappointing, not the equal of his appearance: not equally firm, not so warm, not at all that of a great man. With too any irritating high notes. And languid in a way that was unmistakably Turinese.

  “Signor Del Monte, if you have no objection I will begin.”

  “All right, but first I would like . . . ” Herrera replied with a calm and a severity that Leo both liked and disliked at the same time.

  The judge immediately interrupted, as if he hadn’t heard him: “If you have no objections, we can take as read the indictment and the state’s evidence. I imagine that both you and Professor Pontecorvo have had time to . . . And as for time we have already wasted enough.”

  We can take as read the indictment and the state’s evidence? What a bizarre expression. Leo guessed that probably they would skip the preliminaries and the courtesies, that they would get straight to the point. To the interrogation. Without passing through the reading of the indictment. Which would only delay further the moment when he would learn the nature of the crime that they were accusing him of and for which they had thrown him in jail. Leo went back to tenderly patting the pants pocket where he kept the pieces of paper.

  “No, no objection, Dottore.”

  “Professor, as your lawyer must surely have told you, some days ago I myself went to your house for another search . . . ”

  “On that subject . . . ” Herrera interrupted again, “you must understand that Professor Pontecorvo and I have not had time to talk about anything . . . In short, I would expect . . . ”

  Again Herrera’s tone alarmed Leo. It seemed resentful, like that of someone who is about to explode but can’t afford to. The exact opposite of what it should be, not to mention the exact opposite of the judge’s, which displayed a seraphic calm.

  Leo was content, nevertheless, that they both referred to him as “professor.” It seemed to him that it was a thing among gentlemen. Among people who belonged to the same rank. The Judge, the Lawyer, and the Professor. A fine trio. The longer he was there, the more Leo felt he ought to trust that man. And answer to the point. Because he was a trustworthy type. Remember? Harsh but fair. The kind of person Leo wanted to deal with. Not an enemy but an antagonist. Not the wrinkled mathematics teacher who, in her time, had made him repeat the exam. Not the bastard who taught chemistry at the university. Not Camilla, and not even the wretched father of that wretched girl. Not the anonymous, obsessive dispenser of telephone threats. Not all the hack journalists who stubbornly insulted his integrity. In short, not all the people who wished him harm and who suddenly seemed to be crowding this vast world. A harsh but fair man. In search of the truth.

  And so Leo would have liked to tug on his lawyer’s sleeve and say to him: come on, that’s enough now, stop it, don’t go on quibbling, let the judge speak. Let’s clear up this situation and go home.

  “Dottore, you must realize that since the professor and I haven’t been able to talk to or see each other in the past few days . . . ” Herrera began, as if alluding to an ordinary impediment and not to the court injunction that had forbidden him to have contact with his client for five days and five nights.

  “And so what shall we do, professor? Would you like to avail yourself of the opportunity not to answer? Admit to the allegation? Or do you want to clear yourself?” the judge asked. And Leo couldn’t tell if his tone was sarcastic
or meant just what it said. Or if it concealed some threat. The only thing he knew was that he didn’t like it and that again it had been triggered by Herrera’s quibbling.

  Why was he dragging it on like that? Leo wondered. Why irritate the judge, who seemed so serene? Basically Leo had a tremendous desire to answer. Leo had never had such a desire to answer as at that moment. Now that he finally had before him a man with the right questions, to which the right answers could be given.

  “So shall we begin, sir, or not?”

  And Leo saw out of the corner of his eye that Herrera was assenting, still with that very guarded manner.

  Meanwhile the judge had turned to the young woman, who without hesitation handed him a substantial file. Doubtless some of the documentation that had been gathered over all those months.

  “So, professor, yesterday afternoon a search was made in your house. Over which I presided. It lasted some hours, and was conducted in the presence of your wife.”

  He said these things in an extremely impersonal way, as if he were reading a report. Even if it was obvious that he was reading nothing.

  Rachel? The judge and Rachel had met? They had been in the same rooms for some time? They had spoken to each other? While he was rotting in isolation? It was something that he really couldn’t imagine. For the first time since he had sat down across from that man, Leo felt an impulse of hostility toward him.

  What was it? Jealousy? Or shame? Or both?

  Certainly Leo had some trouble picturing Rachel and the investigator going through the house, laying hands on his things. He wondered how Rachel had faced that further humiliation. After two months of having had no relationship with his wife, Leo could say with certainty that he no longer had the slightest idea of who that woman was. That’s how things go. It had taken twenty years to get to know her and he had forgotten her in a few months. Was that why he encountered so many difficulties in imagining how she had reacted to the violation of domestic intimacy by a group of thugs directed by the judge? A mad thought led him to consider that she, in her ridiculous zeal, had helped them, thanks to the same scruples that led her to help carpenters and upholsterers. Another, no less irrational thought suggested that she had protested. Had flown into a rage. Shouting that they could not take such liberties, it wasn’t possible, this was not something she could tolerate. Another still (perhaps the most likely) was that she had docilely submitted to the will of those people. Her husband was a frightening criminal, her husband had put them in that position, demonstrating a lack of responsibility equal only to his perversion: it was right that she should allow those people to do something so serious and humiliating. Because only a thing so serious and humiliating could throw a little light on that endless terrible history.

  A search. Is there anything more contemptible in the world? Leo thought of the January day some years earlier when, coming home from Anzère, he, Rachel, Telma, and the boys had found the house turned upside down. During their absence thieves had gone in and cleaned it out. Leo remembered Telma’s shrill whining as she kept saying, “Signora . . . signora . . . ” But he also remembered the sense of rage and humiliation that had assailed him. The sense of rage and humiliation that had assailed them all. A disbelief charged with of bitterness. How could someone dare lay hands on their things? Money, pictures, silver, Rachel’s jewelry, the boys’ television, his watches, even some of his records, and many other things. But the stuff was the least of it, it could be replaced. And if it couldn’t, you could live happily without it. The problem was the violation. The outrageous violation. Those hands everywhere. Hands in the most tender place of all. In the place built with tenderness to welcome and protect the Pontecorvos. That was the frightening thing.

  A spasm of anguish made Leo’s stomach contract and filled his mouth with saliva as he imagined the judge and his henchmen who, before Rachel’s sorrowfully compliant gaze, stuck their hands everywhere.

  At that point the magistrate, who up until then had behaved impeccably, said something that to Leo seemed definitely out of place.

  “I must say, professor, that you have a remarkable record collection.”

  How could he take such a liberty? Was he trying to be funny? Or was he speaking seriously? In either case it was a shamefully inappropriate comment. What? You throw me in jail, after tearing me to pieces, and now you start talking about records? My records? My wife and my records? As if to emphasize that while I was rotting in here you were enjoying yourself in my house, with my family, with my kinds of comfort? For a moment the surreal thought surfaced that soon—with him out of the game—this man would take his place in his life, would install himself, like the most arrogant of the Suitors, in his home, listening to his precious imported records. But he immediately chased that absurdity from his brain.

  Yet Leo still hoped that he hadn’t heard right. That he had made a mistake. He was ready to be asked “Where were you that afternoon at that time?” He was ready to be asked “Do you have someone who can testify that you were there that day?” He was ready to have addressed to him all the questions he had found in the paperback mystery books he had been so fond of as a boy. But he wasn’t ready to talk about records. And he was also very surprised that Herrera, till then so quick to interrupt out of turn, had not taken to task this son of a bitch. Who, in fact, continued his meditations unperturbed.

  “Your Ray Charles collection: really priceless. You’ve got some amazing records.”

  No, the amazing thing was not that, over the years, Aunt Adriana had sent him from the United States some “priceless” Ray Charles records. The amazing thing was that this man—the fierce prosecutor of Mafiosi and camorrists, the incorruptible judge—wouldn’t stop talking about records. And that the only response of his lawyer (a shark of the law courts) was to remain stubbornly silent. And that the assistant, without turning a hair, continued to transcribe every word without looking at him in suspicion and astonishment. That was what was amazing. Certainly not the priceless records.

  Was it a joke? Or a brand-new interrogation technique, just imported from the United States, to make both the guilty and the innocent sing? First you get them talking about their passions, then you catch them? Watch out, Leo. Watch out.

  “Thank you, sir,” Leo hissed, trying to impress on his voice all the sarcasm he was capable of. Hoping that this would irritate both the judge and Herrera. Or at least force them to come to their senses.

  “And also books, I must say. Really not bad. You have taste, professor.”

  And Herrera still nothing.

  “You know, I looked at those books,” he added. “Rather, we all did,” he corrected himself, taking in with a single glance all the people there, as if they were not in a cramped little room in a maximum-security prison but in a sophisticated book club.

  “And we formed some very precise ideas about your tastes. And your likes. Truly refined, professor.”

  Leo no longer had the strength to thank him or to reply. Professor. Professor. What at first had seemed a sign of respect, a recognition of his social position, now began to be irritating.

  “We noticed that you also have the habit of underlining in books. With a pencil, of course. A pen would be barbaric. With a pencil you can also erase.”

  “Meaning?” Leo said, encouraged. And immediately he felt a tug from Herrera. As if he were being called to order. It’s true, he thought, Herrera had said to him, “Never say yes or no. Don’t comment. Speak as little as possible.” He had repeated it ad nauseam. But this wasn’t a normal circumstance: the investigator was talking about books. About books underlined in pencil. Was it possible that Herrera didn’t have the authority to bring the interrogation back to something logical? Possible that Leo was the only one who felt how out of place everything that was happening was?

  “So, professor. I marked some sentences you underlined, which seem to me very interesting. Which deserve comment, reflection. For example, listen here. A passage underlined by you in a very famous book. ‘The
norm of Roman law on the basis of which a girl could marry at twelve was adopted by the Church and is still in force, if tacitly, in some States of America. The age of fifteen is legal everywhere. There is nothing wrong, both hemispheres declare, if a forty-year-old brute, blessed by the local priest and full of alcohol, tears off his underwear, dripping with sweat, and thrusts up to the hilt in his young bride. In temperate and stimulating climates . . . girls mature near the end of their twelfth year.’ Interesting. Professor, don’t you find it interesting?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t understand why you’re reading me these things. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know what book it is.”

  “You don’t understand, eh? And then let me read another passage underlined by you. Same book, same author. ‘Marriage and cohabitation before puberty are not at all exceptional, even today, in certain regions of India. Among the Lepcha, eighty-year-olds copulate with girls of eight and no one cares. After all, Dante fell madly in love with Beatrice when she was nine . . . ’”

  The investigator wouldn’t stop reading. And Leo began to understand what he should have understood some time ago. It wasn’t so difficult. Those passages evidently underlined by him were, according to the investigator and his group, proof of his perversion. Was this what he had in hand? Was this one of the reasons they had arrested him? Because he had underlined certain passages in a book? If he had underlined passages that discussed the slaughter of the Armenians would they have indicted him for genocide? Was this what was happening?

  “Dottore, I don’t see,” Herrera finally interrupted, “the relevance of all this to . . . ”