“Why don’t you leave her alone?” says Giacomo, who has finally come into the room, barely covered by Federico’s dressing gown, which is too small for him. No, thinks Helen, please don’t. You’ll make it worse. But Giulia pays no attention to him. She walks over to Helen in her usual brisk way, placing a hard cool hand on her shoulder. Helen fights the urge to push her off.
“He’s worked so hard,” Giulia said. “He’s given his life to his work. Surely you can see that. I know you’ve never really cared. You were the worst sort of person for him, I’ve always known that. What Federico needed was someone who would support him, someone who cared about Italy.” Not some foreign woman with her own life, Helen thinks, hoping her silence will egg Giulia on. It’s doing Helen good to be treated like this, knowing that she could hurt the woman so much, if she wanted to. But she’s changed her mind about that, for today at least. Federico never spoke about her. He always made such an effort to do what she wanted, the holidays, the lunches, the friends of the family that had to be entertained, yet he never once said to Helen that he loved her. He never once said, I love my mother. Federico understood duty, he learnt that from Giulia. But duty wasn’t love. What a weight the woman’s hand is, as though she is actually bearing down on her, pinning her down by brute force. Helen wriggles to shake her off but the fingers tighten.
“Someone who would give him a child,” says Giulia.
When the phone rings, Giacomo moves to answer it, but finds himself blocked by Giulia, who darts across the room with unexpected speed. She, in her turn, is stopped by Helen. How farcical we must look, she thinks as she picks up the receiver.
It’s Fausto. “Can I speak to Giulia?”
“So you knew she’d be here.”
“How are you?”
“All right,” she says. “And you?”
“I didn’t sleep,” he says. “I couldn’t.” After a moment’s silence: “Can you pass her over to me?”
“You’re in this together.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he says. “I’m sorry.” He sounds both hopeless and determined. This isn’t Fausto, she thinks. Fausto has always been on my side. Giulia is standing beside her, as close as she can get, her foot tapping briskly on the parquet floor. Helen can feel the heat coming off her and smell a sourness that must be the woman’s sweat. She wants to tell Giacomo to drag her off, but thinks better of it. She turns her shoulder to block the older woman, grips the receiver. “Tell her to leave me alone,” she cries down the phone as Giulia tugs at her arm with her bony hands. “For Federico’s sake.”
“Give him to me,” says Giulia.
“What does she want from me, Fausto?” Helen is close to tears as Giulia’s hard old fingers prise hers away, first one, then two together. Helen threshes out, catching her mother-in-law in the face, and Giulia staggers back, then snatches the phone from Helen’s hand. Rigid with shock, Helen sees a trickle of blood on Giulia’s cheek, where her engagement ring must have gashed the skin. She starts to shake. Giulia snaps into the phone, “I’ll call you back,” but doesn’t put the receiver down. Fausto must have said something to make her listen. Giacomo has walked over and is holding Helen; she can feel his hand on her hair, stroking it over and over again. She gasps for breath, her snot on his robe, her eyes tight shut. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry.” She lets Giacomo lead her to the bathroom, closing the door behind them. “I can’t take any more of it,” she says. She stands by the basin like a child while her face is splashed with cold water and wiped dry.
“It isn’t just what you want, Helen,” Giulia says from the other side of the door.
“Just fuck off and leave me alone,” Helen shouts out, in English, then listens, hand over her mouth, as Giulia walks away.
“I can’t go out,” she says to Giacomo, who tries to embrace her. But almost immediately, as if she is dreaming, she has pushed him off and is standing in front of Giulia, seated once more at the table as if waiting to be served.
“You really are beyond me, Helen,” says Giulia, apparently unaware of the blood on her cheek. “You’ve done everything wrong so far, you realise that. You’ve ignored the press when all you needed to say was a word, a single word would have done, you’ve locked yourself up in this house as though you had something to hide. You’ve refused to cooperate with the government or the president or anyone else. You’ve behaved like a spoilt child and it isn’t acceptable.” She glares at Helen, her contempt unconcealed. “And look at you,” she continues, with spite. “Already in bed with someone else, on the second night. And with that man. That loathsome man.” She stops short, as though something has only just occurred to her. And, of course, it has. Helen watches the colour drain from her face. Giacomo is smirking behind her, but she has no time for that.
“You were with him, weren’t you? You were with him when Federico died. Those lies you told the police were designed to protect him.”
How odd, thinks Helen, that this simple fact, this irrelevant coincidence, should finally make the woman feel something. Because Giulia has no right to talk about grief. What does she know about the way Helen feels? What does she know about lies to the police?
“What makes you think I lied?”
“Don’t brazen it out with me.”
“You have your spies, I suppose,” says Helen. “Old habits die hard.”
Giulia stands up. “I belong to this country, as Federico did. As you never will.”
“I’m glad I don’t belong.” Helen is incensed. “I don’t care two figs about your fucking country.”
Giulia gives a scornful laugh. “Do you really think you’re fit to make decisions about my son? A woman who can’t wait forty-eight hours after her husband’s murder before being caught in bed with a convicted terrorist.” For the first time, her hand rises to touch the scratch on her cheek. She strokes it thoughtfully. Perhaps she has only just noticed the pain. “Of course,” she says, after a moment, “if you were prepared to listen to reason.”
“Reason?”
“Fausto says they’re prepared to send a car round for you.”
“A car?”
“You have to speak to the PM,” Giulia is saying. “He won’t take no for an answer, you know that perfectly well. I despise him quite as much as you do, we all do, but that isn’t the point. He’s not entirely unreasonable. Listen and let him tell you what he wants.”
Without realising what she is doing, because she hasn’t really understood – her mind is on Giacomo, who is still in the bathroom – Helen moves her head in what might be a nod. Giulia leans over to pat her daughter-in-law’s hand. “Leave it to me,” she says, as though she has won her point and can afford to be generous. She hurries to the phone, punches in a number she obviously knows by heart, glancing back to see how Helen is taking it.
But all Helen wants to do is walk. She wants to leave the flat for the first time, it occurs to her now, since the day Federico was shot, which seems a lifetime ago. How strange time is, entirely emotional, whatever the clocks and calendars might say. She wants to leave the flat and walk, without purpose, across Via Giulia and take the steps down to the river, along the bank as it narrows and widens, past the hospital on the Isola Tiberina and the synagogue up to her left and on towards Testaccio. She wants to leave the old city and see the gasometer and later, much later, when the sun is in the right position, the light that reflects on the gold of the mosaic of St Paul’s Outside the Walls. She wants to walk in her own sweet time past the gypsy camp and the old dog track and leave the river behind her as she clambers up the dried long grass that covers the bank into what starts to feel like open country, although there are buildings everywhere, ugly and low, in all directions, most of them newish, houses and workshops of one kind or another, small factories, allotment sheds, warehouses. She and Federico would cycle round there in their early days in Rome, Federico stopping to talk to people with that earnest curiosity he always has, or had, because curiosity is a feature of the living, p
erhaps the most important. Federico would listen and later, when there were just the two of them, jot down notes of what he’d heard. This is where it all starts, he liked to say, tapping his notebook, these words in here. He’d done this in Turin as well, with Giacomo laughing behind his back. Always the three of them, and then Stefania, and then, at a distance, the others. She wants to walk until there is no one and nothing left but the dark coarse sand of the coast and the empty sky, and then, after all this, she will breathe. She tries it now, in the poisonous air of the flat, a deep breath in, a forced breath out, her mother-in-law whispering into the phone only feet away, lowering her voice each time she utters Helen’s name.
“What’s that about a car coming for me?”
“Later,” says Giulia. “We’ll talk about that later.” She picks up her bag. She seems to be on the point of leaving when something, some thought, stops her. She stares at Helen with a pained expression on her face.
“We mustn’t argue, you know. There mustn’t be bad feeling between the two of us, not now. We have Federico’s legacy to think of.” She glances towards the bathroom door. Moving closer to Helen, she adds, in a confidential, intimate way: “He isn’t important. You know that, don’t you?” She taps Helen’s wrist with a finger. For Giulia, this must be a gesture of affection, Helen thinks. “And you needn’t worry about your phone. I’ve made sure no one can pester you.”
Giulia has been gone for five minutes before Helen sees that she’s forgotten the keys after all. She walks across to the kitchen blackboard to hang them on one of the hooks and sees the word OLIVES in Federico’s writing, then goes to the bathroom and pushes open the door. Did Federico really give his mother the key to the flat? And not say a word? Sometimes she wonders if they were married at all. Maybe Giulia is right.
She stands there, her hands stretched over her head to hold the frame. She pushes until she feels the strain in her shoulders. Giacomo is slumped on the loo, his head thrown back against the wall, Federico’s towelling robe drawn round him, tight across his stomach. His eyes are closed, but he opens them immediately.
“You’ll send any car away, won’t you? she says.
“Of course.”
“Hadn’t you better call Yvonne?”
“That won’t be necessary,” he says.
He’s been thinking about how it all might be managed. Yvonne won’t be a problem. She’s almost as bored with him as he is with her. She might already have packed her bags and left, as she threatened to do last night. And what would I feel about that? he asks himself. It doesn’t take long to find the answer. Relief. He won’t deny it. Why should he? He’s always been ready to admit his mistakes and move on. It’s been obvious for some time that she’ll leave him, sooner or later. Sooner would be a generous miracle. She will sue him for cruelty or indifference and he will have to provide her with money, he imagines, more than she is worth, more than he can comfortably afford. He will have to get back on the lecture circuit and postpone his book, see if the States are prepared to have him yet. He’s been told he has a cult following on certain campuses. He has it in mind to do something on Federico. No theory; a sketch, some memories, observations both wise and paradoxical. Nothing too tame. A little thing to move the waters. He’ll talk to Helen when the time is right, see what she thinks. They’ll have time for that, and for everything else. He’s never understood before how right she is for him. It was wonderful to see her stand up to that dreadful old woman. He’ll have to bring Giulia into it, the influence of the mother, the role of women in Federico’s life. Maybe Stefania will have some thoughts worth sharing.
Which reminds him; he must tell Helen that Stefania called yesterday morning. She’d just got back from one of her field trips in Africa and only just heard of the murder. She was crying dreadfully, she couldn’t stop. He waited until she’d cried herself out. She wanted to come to the funeral. What funeral? he said. No plans have been made yet. It’s up to Helen. Helen, she said, and started to cry all over again. I’ll call her, she said, you must give me her number. The shock will be like this for a while, he thought then, like waves moving over the surface. Just as one person gets used to the loss of Federico, another will begin the process of understanding it. How long will that process take, he wonders, looking inside himself as Helen sighs and sits beside him on the edge of the bath, holding his hand in both of hers, her head bowed. He thinks she’s about to cry. He’s ready for that. He welcomes the chance to comfort her.
And after Stefania, whose turn will it be?
3
It’s years since Martin last played this kind of cloak and dagger nonsense. He can’t quite believe he is sitting in his car, the windows up, outside the abandoned acres of the old Mercati Generali, waiting for someone he doesn’t know from Adam. When the metallic blue Fiat Brava draws up beside him, he glances across and sees a young man, overweight or over-muscled, it’s hard to tell, his head shaven smooth like everyone else’s these days, the loveliest people in Europe transformed into a race of skinhead thugs. He is wearing a high-collared white shirt, tight round the biceps, and those wraparound sunglasses that look like the eyes of a fly, with mirrored orange glass. In any normal world, thinks Martin, he’d stick out like a sore thumb.
The man nods and pulls away, along Via Ostiense in the direction of St Paul’s. Martin follows. He expects to be taken out towards Ostia and, sure enough, the car in front turns right onto Viale Marconi and right again onto Via del Mare. Martin has always avoided this road on the odd occasions he’s had to go to Ostia these past few years. He’s hardly a sun-worshipper, his skin comes out in livid blotches at the least exposure. Via del Mare is said to be the most dangerous road in Italy, hard though it is to believe, this sun-dappled avenue of maritime pines, straight as a die, the ruins of Ostia Antica appearing on the right as they leave the city behind them, pass under the ring road, clogged as usual with traffic.
The man in front is maintaining a healthy speed, at the upper limit of what’s allowed, and Martin is amused to see how often they’re both overtaken. There’s a line from a Dylan song he’s always liked, that you have to be honest to live outside the law. How true that is, he thinks, his eye on the speedometer, the needle just kissing seventy. Invisibility is the best revenge. He is leaving enough space for one car to squeeze between them, but no more. It isn’t the first time he’s followed, or been followed for that matter, and, as usual, he’s enjoying himself. He’s always enjoyed what he thinks of as the game and it strikes him as strange that in the last fifteen years he hasn’t missed it more.
The car turns off to the left before they reach Ostia, and into the pine woods that run parallel to the coast from where they are now, all the way down to the president’s estate between Ostia and Torvaianica. Martin continues to follow it down a dirt track, increasingly amused by this subterfuge, a simple phone call, a simple request for information, has to lead to this. It’s the way we’re wired, he thinks, he recognises it in himself. Why make it simple when you can play the game?
The car is twenty yards in front of him when it drives into a picnic area, a dozen wooden tables with benches attached, and almost stops. This is the signal. Martin pulls over and watches the Escort drive off and it is only now that he notices the appropriateness of the model chosen.
He winces as he climbs from the car, arthritis in the hips and knees, he doesn’t need to be told he’s overweight, but what other pleasures are left to him? His sex life, such as it is, has dwindled to nothing since his doctor put him on medication for high blood pressure. Now, there’s an irony, he thinks. High pressure everywhere but where it counts. He thinks of Alina. Perhaps she has special techniques for men like him, he thinks, then feels ashamed.
He pulls his linen trousers away from the crotch and tucks his shirt back in, letting his stomach rest for a moment on his hand. The June sun is directly above his head and he realises that he shouldn’t have worried so much about looking conspicuous and brought his panama – the real McCoy, an old man�
�s whim – to protect his scalp. It will itch tonight, that low-level constant itch that stops him sleeping without sufficient alcohol, and even then he wakes up in the early hours of the morning and has to swab it with some pink lotion the dermatologist has given him that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. But these days hats draw attention to themselves so much.
Wiping his forehead on a handkerchief, he walks across to the nearest bench and sits down, his back to the table. He doesn’t look at his watch. He expected to have to wait, and here he is, alone in a derelict picnic area in the heart of the Ostia pine woods, waiting for someone he hasn’t seen for over a decade. A man, it occurs to him, he has never seen in places other than parks, and stations, and woods. Always in the open air, even in winter, always in places where no one is watching them or listening, although they can never be certain, they both know that.
What in God’s name am I playing at? he thinks abruptly and has to remind himself that he is here for Helen; here to help Helen understand why her husband is dead. “We can’t talk like this, on the phone,” Picotti had said when Martin asked him for help, intriguing Martin although he’d known it might have meant nothing at all, nothing more than the reflex of a stiff neglected muscle. And so the arrangements were made.
Picotti doesn’t arrive in a car. Or if he does, he’s left it some distance away so that Martin is startled when a pine cone bounces near his feet and a second one catches him on the shoulder. He jumps up, turns round sharply and there the man is, the same as ever, irritatingly bright and thin, his naturally bald head gleaming in the sun. Martin sucks in his stomach, sadly aware that it makes no significant difference, except that the pressure of the belt buckle on the flesh is momentarily reduced.
Picotti darts across the picnic area, his hand outstretched, his grin as curved and luminous as the new moon. He is dressed for holiday, those odd half-mast trousers with superfluous pockets round the knees and rubber toggles dangling off them, a style called pinocchietto, according to one of the younger men on the French desk, who’s actually worn a khaki pair to work. Little Pinocchio, Martin thought at the time, suppressing a grimace, whatever next? As though we have to dress for the outward bound course our lives have become. Picotti’s T-shirt says something in English, but he is still too far away for Martin to read it without his glasses. He thought the fashion this season was Spanish obscenities, but maybe he’s wrong. He generally is these days. His understanding of fashion, he’s discovered, was infinitely fallible. He’ll have to ask Jean-Paul.
The View From the Tower Page 13