The View From the Tower

by Charles Lambert

  “Have you cried yet?” says Helen, not meaning to be cruel, although she realises as soon as she has spoken that what she is doing is measuring his loss against hers. “Did you cry when they told you?”

  He shakes his head. “I can’t believe he’s dead. I haven’t seen him for what, three years? Since Corsica that summer, when Stefania was so unhappy. That dreadful dinner, do you remember? Except in the papers, of course, unavoidably. On the news. And once or twice in corridors in Brussels. The last time was maybe six months ago, but he was with these people, I don’t know, the usual hangers on, ministry people, they weren’t my type. I should have spoken to him then.”

  “You weren’t to know,” says Helen. She reaches in her own bag for a tissue, hearing what she has just said, playing it back in her head. You weren’t to know. I wasn’t to know. We weren’t to know. These are the words they’re expected to use, words made for occasions like this. She wonders how many more times she’ll come out with them during the next few days. After crying so much, she feels curiously light, as though she could float off at any minute; light but without enough energy to walk unaided. She’d forgotten about Corsica.

  “He’d stopped to buy Stilton, you know, for this evening. For you, really, he remembered how much you liked it. I said I’d do it, but he loves running errands like that, it distracts him from his work. And I think it was a way of showing that he was happy you were coming to the house after all this time. He wanted to buy it himself. He was outside the shop when they shot him. I wonder where it is.”

  She looks at Giacomo, sitting on one of the hotel room’s single beds. Once again, she remembers Martin asking her if Giacomo might have known what Federico was doing that morning, and shivers at what this means. He is fiddling with his mobile now, the way they all do, men and children, the girls as bad as the boys. At first she thinks he’s sending a text to someone. But she can tell from the rhythm of his thumbs as they tap on the keys that he’s playing a game. The snake that eats itself. The mobile beeps. She waits for him to stop.

  “Where what is?”

  “The Stilton.” She stares down at his hands, large, strong, tufts of coarse hair between the knuckles; strong hands that have never, despite their strength, really worked. They are folded round the phone, which is small and metallic and looks like a toy. A rich man’s toy, because Giacomo will be rich by now, his books, his lecture tours will have seen to that. They are all rich, more or less. Only Federico has resisted – the trappings at least. “It must be somewhere. In a box. It’s probably an exhibit.”

  “I suppose it is.” Once remembered, she can’t stop thinking about it. She could so easily have gone, she had nothing else to do this morning. She could so easily have said, as he climbed into the car and picked up his papers, No, I’ll get the cheese. And he might have said, yes. And he would still be alive. Now she has something new to feel guilty about.

  “I’m sorry, Helen,” Giacomo says in a voice so low she barely hears him.

  “But why should you be sorry?” Is he talking about what he did to me this morning, she wonders.

  “You know what I mean,” he says. “I’m sorry, that’s all. For everything. For everything that’s happened. I loved him too, you know that. I know we’ve had problems recently, and in the past, but he was my oldest friend. My only friend, really. Apart from you.”

  To Giacomo the past tense comes easily, she notices, the note of nostalgia and regret. Perhaps he’s had more practice; Federico isn’t the first person he’s lost, after all. His tone is filled with pity that strikes her as self-pity; Giacomo coming to terms with what has been lost as personal loss. Before he can say any more about friendship, about her, she changes the subject.

  “Yvonne’s never been to Rome before?”

  “Oh yes, dozens of times. She used to model. She’s planned a shopping trip. As though Paris doesn’t provide her with enough opportunity for it. I told her she didn’t have to come to the conference. She thought I’d gone mad.” He laughs wanly. “It hadn’t entered her head. I don’t think she’s heard of Iraq, never mind the war.”

  “How old is she?”

  He glances up at her from his mobile. “I know how much you like Stefania,” he says, “but things weren’t easy.” He looks sheepish and she remembers the two of them on a Corsican beach, she and Giacomo, no more than fifty yards from Stefania and Federico, lying between two beached pedalòs, fucking as though their lives depended on it.

  She looks down at her watch.

  “I have to go to the hospital. You will come with me?”

  “Of course.”

  “As though there were any doubt it’s Federico.” She stands up. “Apparently, it’s a formality. Which means it has to be done.” She pauses. “Perhaps they’ll have made a mistake. Perhaps it won’t be Federico at all.” She is torn between a nervous need to giggle at the horror of what awaits her and the return of tears, because she half believes what she has just said. That she might find a man she has never known. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. More words she will need. This time she holds out her arms and Giacomo comes to her, as he should have done before; but this time they are alone. He folds her to him, his stomach and hips against hers, his chin on the side of her head; he bends a little to kiss her hair, comforting kisses, and she lets herself cry into his neck in a gentler, almost resigned way. They stand together, embracing for a minute or two, more like old friends than lovers, until she becomes aware that he is no longer kissing her, that his arms are stiff and posed. She breaks away.

  “We have to go. They’re waiting.”

  “I’ll need to tell Yvonne.”

  “You can call her from the car. She’ll understand.”

  “Oh yes,” he says. “She’ll understand.”

  7

  She hadn’t expected journalists, let alone a television troupe milling outside the hotel. She recognises the nearest interviewer from a national news channel just as he recognises her. In a jaw-snapping double-take that might have amused her in any other circumstance, he also recognises Giacomo. For a long indecisive moment, with an instinct for the larger story, he seems to consider holding the microphone out not to Helen Di Stasi, the grief-stricken widow, but to Giacomo Mura, the terrorist redeemed; but he pulls himself together as she walks towards the gaping door of the waiting car. He pushes the microphone into her face; behind him, as if attracted by the scent of her, people she thought were guests or passers-by also gather and she understands that she is about to be mobbed by reporters, a scene she has witnessed so often on TV but can barely believe is happening to her. The jostling begins as tape recorders are poked towards her, followed by questions she can’t quite catch. Federico always manages – managed – to avoid this somehow, she thinks, and she feels a wave of envy and loss so crippling she reaches out to steady herself against Giacomo. Enclosed by babble, the only question she clearly hears is asked by a woman she sat next to once at a dinner some months ago, whose high-pitched grating voice rises above the rest. She wants to know what it feels like to have lost one’s husband, a question so fatuous Helen finds it difficult not to burst into appalled laughter. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Before she can speak, a microphone catches her on the side of the face, cutting her lip; she feels the sting and trickle of blood, with a rush of relief. Giacomo pushes the journalist away, the others falling back as he swears and hustles Helen into the car, sitting beside her a second later and pulling the door shut behind him. The camera swoops down to film them both as the car pulls off. She slumps back into the seat with a long sigh from deep in her lungs that surprises them both. The driver is apologetic.

  “That’s torn it,” says Giacomo. “I’m hardly ideal company for you at the moment. In the eyes of the world, I mean.” He squeezes her hand and she feels herself relax. My skin remembers his, she thinks. I still have Giacomo. After a moment, gently, she pulls away.

  “They were bound to find out you were here sooner or later. It’s not a state secret. Yo
u used to be Federico’s friend.”

  “Still, the two of us together like this, today of all days.”

  “You never used to be so discreet. You’ve become a politician.” She turns to look at him. “Unless you’re worried about Yvonne?”

  “I’m worried about you.” He lights a cigarette but doesn’t offer her one. She never thinks about smoking these days. But she would accept a cigarette if she were offered. She turns away from Giacomo, watching Rome pass by the window of the car, people shopping, groups of tourists she might have seen but not noticed this morning, before she knew; a city about its usual business. It strikes her that the death of Federico has, in fact, changed nothing and she thinks for the first time – what a long time it has taken her! – of the people who have done this to him. Who have done this to her. She wonders who they could be, and what could have made them do it. Federico has meant nothing but good.

  These thoughts are interrupted by sirens. Their driver pulls over to allow two police cars with an official blue car sandwiched between them to pass. She tries to see in, momentarily convinced against all sense that Federico is the passenger. But the windows reflect her own car. In their swiftly passing glass, she catches a glimpse of Giacomo’s profile and of her own face, shadowy and pale before it’s gone.

  The sirens remind her of the sirens she heard that morning, no more than fifteen minutes after the shooting of Federico, and the death of Massimo. The world was already dealing with it all by then, as she made her way to Giacomo’s hotel, its mechanisms of defence already in full play. She had no idea. How is it possible not to know, she thinks, after almost thirty years, that your husband has been shot less than half a mile from where you are?

  “Helen, I’ve been wondering about something.” Giacomo interrupts her thoughts. “The police must have asked you about this, obviously.”

  “About what?”

  “About the Stilton. They must have known he’d be stopping at that shop.”

  “I don’t know. They might have been following him and realised it was a good moment. A back street. Not many people around.”

  Giacomo shakes his head. “These things are planned in advance, down to the last detail. They must have known he’d stop there.”

  “Yes, they did ask me.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “That I knew.”

  “And? Who else?”

  “No one, as far as I know. Apart from the shop. He’d called to make sure they had some Stilton in.”

  “Do the police know that?”

  “Yes. Although I wish they didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the shop couldn’t possibly be involved, Giacomo. It’s one of Federico’s favourites. He’s been going there for years. His mother goes there, for God’s sake.” As soon as these words are said she sees how ridiculous they are. “Oh, give me a cigarette. I think I’m going mad.”

  She smokes rapidly, holding the smoke in her lungs as long as she can, her head immediately starting to spin. She’s eaten nothing since breakfast, having turned down lunch, and drunk too much coffee, more than she’s used to. Her stomach feels empty and queasy at the same time. He’s right, of course, but she doesn’t want to think about it. To break the mood, she utters a short, forced laugh.

  “I did something foolish this morning,” she says.

  Giacomo doesn’t answer at once. After a moment, he says, “You mustn’t think about that.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about that.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m thinking about myself.”

  “I told the police a lie,” she says. “About us. Or rather, not about us.” She turns to him, then gives him her half-smoked cigarette, to dispose of. “When they asked me what I’d done this morning, I didn’t tell them I’d seen you. I don’t know why. I suppose I felt it would look bad.”

  Turning away from her, he stubs out the cigarette, then sighs. “Silence looks worse. I think you’d better tell them the truth, Helen.” He sounds annoyed.

  “What, all of it?” She is tense with him now. She wants him to tell her it doesn’t matter, although she knows it does. She wants him to take at least part of the blame for what she has done. “To Yvonne as well?”

  “There’s so much we need to say to each other.” Giacomo’s voice is urgent now. “That I need to say, I mean. Helen, darling. So much I need to explain.”

  “About Yvonne?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Helen. Yvonne doesn’t matter. About you and me. About Federico.”

  8

  Giacomo is smoking some distance from Helen, his elbows on a windowsill, blowing the smoke out into the early evening air. He’s forgotten how pleasant the first part of the summer can be in Rome, before the heat sets in. He can just hear Helen on her mobile some yards away. She sounds agitated, one hand holding her hair off her face, the other clutching the phone, her knuckles white. She is standing in a corridor in the hospital, with two young policemen beside her, their patience plainly visible on their faces and in the way their arms are clasped behind their backs, as if to render them defenceless. Giacomo glances at his watch and then at a television suspended from the wall at just above head-height, angled down towards a row of empty seats. He is waiting for the news. There have been flashes throughout the day apparently, but now the programming is back to normal, a quiz show, flashing lights, fabulous prizes. Someone will be in deep shit for this, he thinks, this insensitivity. He looks at Helen and wonders how she is coping. He wishes he could be alone with her. What a cool customer she must seem to everyone. Still elegant, more so than before to be honest, she used to look too frail, too lightweight to be really elegant. The first time he saw her, hovering behind Federico in that dreadful freezing flat they’d found in Turin, he wondered why Federico had been so proud of her. Skinny, almost anaemic, not his type at all. And now, here she is, expensively dressed, even chic. Yvonne could learn a thing or two, although he’d never say this to either of them. He has always loved women with large, generous bodies, by which he means he has loved making love to them, loved fucking them. Yet the ones that stick with him are the others, the Audrey Hepburn types, the clothes-horses. He can’t regret this morning, whatever else might have happened, nor the other times, all the other times, and he doesn’t think she can either, though she’s trying, he’s sure of that. Whatever they had, he thinks, they still have. If only he knew what that was. Perhaps Helen will know, if he has a chance to talk to her. Perhaps everything will be all right.

  Helen has asked him to stay until she’s seen the body, or he’d have gone back to the hotel. He’s already had to cope with Yvonne on the mobile, whining that she’s neglected. She wants him beside her all the time, he’s discovered, within touching distance, to stroke, to kiss, to pamper. At first, he thought she saw him as a pet to fondle and distract, which amused him because nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that, without him, she’s nothing, a washed-up ex-model with tastes she can’t afford to indulge. And now he knows that she also knows this. He knows because he has forced her to admit it, by withdrawing, by not meeting her demands. He has made her cry, which has reduced her value in his eyes. He recognises this, and isn’t proud, but what can he do? And now, it occurs to him, he will have to contact Stefania and tell her what has happened to Federico. She’ll be distraught. The way things stand between them, she’ll probably find a way of blaming him as well.

  Helen calls him over. “He’s ready. Whatever that means. I wish to God I was.” She slips her arm through his. “That was Giulia, Federico’s mother,” she says. “They won’t leave his parents alone either.” She flicks open her mobile to turn it off.

  “They?”

  “Oh, everyone. The papers. The RAI. The Economist. Federico always says they pay more attention to him abroad than here. FT. What’s that about a prophet outside his own country? Do you know, Giulia’s even had calls from politicians? Not friends, you’d expect that. From people he’s never met. They want to rope him
in, all of us in. He must have died for something, after all. Isn’t that what you said in the hotel, about political mileage?” She grips his arm. “Oh, Giacomo,” she says, her voice faltering, “I wish I could understand what’s happening.”

  “Don’t worry about anything now,” he says, to comfort her. He’s thinking about the reports of Federico’s death, the delicacy of the phrase the news agency had used to talk about Federico, about “extra-parliamentary activities”, as though all they’d been doing was sticking up posters and spraying slogans on walls. How exciting life had been then, whatever else it had been, however shameful and destructive. How strange time is, though, the way it folds in on itself, teases you, makes you feel mortal and immortal all at once. He’s never forgotten that first time in Turin, when he fucked Helen in the kitchen. Talk about teeth and claw, fingernails like a cat, that dangerous edge to her he’s always half-loved, half-feared; nor the other times, not often enough for him, but there was all that bad feeling to get over, that misunderstanding. It took years for Helen to forgive him, or so she said, and then the logistics of it all – marriage, whatever – got in the way. She could have left Federico at any time and come to him, she’d always known that. And, as always, he wonders what stopped her. She’s never really said. He looks at Helen now as she stands beside him, a woman in her early fifties, which used to seem old and no longer does. They have so much life ahead of them, he feels, almost as though Federico’s death has invigorated him; as though he has been spared.

  With Giacomo close behind her, Helen allows herself to be led down some stairs into the basement of the hospital, along a corridor lit by humming fluorescent tubes. The walls are the usual green and beige as they segue from the wards of the living to the refrigerated cells of the dead. Giacomo hasn’t been in a morgue for decades and is curious to see how much they’ve changed, if at all. He walks a pace behind her as they enter a room and come to a halt in front of a wall of small square stainless steel doors, like the loculi of a cemetery except that, instead of the photograph and dates of birth and death, there is a metal pocket with a slip of paper inside it; half loculus, half filing cabinet. The bureaucracy of the dead.