He holds out his hand. Picotti takes it, squeezing harder than Martin likes, then slaps Martin’s stomach with the back of his own hand, a hard, almost vicious slap.
“Hey, Martino,” he says, “we let ourselves go a little these past years.”
“Your fault,” says Martin, forcing a smile.
“My fault?” Picotti feigns shock, falls back a step, hands rising to his chest. His grin flips down at the corners into clown-like tragedy.
“Plural, old chap. Colpa vostra. La dolce vita.” He wouldn’t choose to conduct their conversation in English, but he knows this isn’t up to him. It’s Picotti’s favour, Martin can’t set the rules of play. Even “Martino” has to be swallowed without flinching. It has always been Picotti’s way to reduce him to a state of impotent irritation before coughing up what is called for. Not that there is any guarantee of that, there never was. The cards played closest to the chest are all too often the ones that have nothing on them.
“Long time, no see,” Picotti says, waving a hand towards the bench. “We’re getting old and the world is more full of horse shit every day. It’s not our world any more, Martino, we’re two old men.” He shrugs, sits down, hitching his pinocchietto up almost to knee level, waiting for Martin to sit beside him. When Martin does, he puts a hard dark hand on his knee. Martin ignores the hand, observing Picotti’s face with as pleasant an expression on his own face as he can muster. He is close enough to see that the T-shirt bears two green feline eyes on a black background. “All Cats Are Leopards in the Dark” it says and, below that, “Ethiopian proverb”.
“The bambini are in charge, Martino. What’s that beautiful idiom you English say? The lunatics run the asylum.” Picotti starts to laugh, then coughs, squeezing the flesh above Martin’s knee with startling force until Martin, still forcing a smile, itches to brush him off. “English humour. Very nice. We don’t have your sense of humour here, you know that? We have to make do with being the best lovers in Europe, maybe in the world. It’s hard. But we make ourselves content.” Martin nods, relieved as the hand on his leg relaxes. “I’ve missed you, Martino,” Picotti says. Despite himself, Martin is touched by the sincerity of his tone.
“I’ve missed you too,” he says, but doesn’t quite mean it, not as much as Picotti seemed to. He’s forgotten the way the presence of Picotti fills him with a sense of unfocused shame. This is the second time he’s felt ashamed today.
Picotti leans back, his elbows on the table. “And now this stupid bloody war, I ask you, who needs it?” he says. He taps out a cigarette from its soft pack, offering it to Martin, who refuses. Picotti raises an eyebrow, then takes it himself. Still smoking MS, Martin notices. Morte Sicura.
He can see now that Picotti has aged at least as much as he has. His face is lined, the skin beneath the tan looks crêpey and tired. When he smiles, as he invariably does, his teeth seem larger, more widely spaced than ever, the menacing smile the sort a horse might make. Horses also lack a sense of humour, thinks Martin.
“Your friend Di Stasi agreed with me, right?”
Martin didn’t mention Federico when he phoned, and is both startled and alarmed. “Di Stasi?” he says, his tone deliberately bemused.
“Di Stasi, right. He didn’t want this fucking war. Who does?” Picotti watches his cigarette burn, then flicks the ash into his hand and blows it away, the way a woman might blow a kiss from her palm. “Oil and money. Money and oil. Good men are dying there.” He rubs the ash into the dirt with his sandal, a gleaming complicated affair of straps and buckles. His feet are brown, the toenails a little too long, the toes curved in after decades of over-tight shoes. “Like that,” he says. He looks at Martin. “Men like us.”
“People have always died in wars,” says Martin.
“What do you want to know?” says Picotti, suddenly impatient.
“Di Stasi,” says Martin slowly. “My friend. He was killed. Shot dead in the street for no apparent reason. I wondered if you might know who would want to do a thing like that. And why.”
Picotti throws back his head and laughs. “Martino,” he says. “You ask me a question like that, what can I do? What do you think I can do now?” He slits his throat with a finger. “You want blood?”
“I want help,” says Martin.
Picotti, serious now, looks up at the sky, where a helicopter is heading towards the coast. They watch it turn left, towards Castel Porziano and the presidential estate.
“It’s a busy time. Too many important people to look after. Too many lunatics. All the asylums are one now, you know? One big Yankee asylum. One big boss. I don’t have the stomach for it, that’s how you say, right? The stomach.” He smiles. “Not like you, Martino, not like you.”
He stands up, pushing the legs of his pinocchietto down to below his knees.
“I have a new young wife. You didn’t know that, did you? They keep you young, no?” He smiles more broadly. “Young clothes, I mean. Like this. She says it makes me look good, it makes me look sexy, but I’m not so sure. An old man, it’s too easy to take the piss. Don’t worry, Martino. I don’t ask you what you think.”
When Martin is standing beside him, wriggling his own trousers loose at the crotch, Picotti throws his arms around the larger man and pulls him close in a clumsy embrace that startles Martin, who stiffens, but immediately relaxes. If his own arms were free and not pinned to his sides, he thinks, he would hug Picotti back. He wants to ask him about his first wife, whom he has never met, but fears the answer, whatever it might be. He already knows it won’t be good news. Divorce or death. Acrimony, illness. He knows that whatever it is would be hard to stomach. Yes, that’s how we say it, Picotti. To have the stomach for it.
Picotti pulls away.
“That was my son, my bambino. The one who took you here. Big boy, eh? Tattoos, the lot.”
Martin nods. “You’re keeping it in the family. Wise man.”
“Hey, Martino. If you can’t trust family,” Picotti says. He slips his arm through Martin’s and steers him gently but firmly towards the car.
Martin has already opened the door and is about to slump down into the stifling heat inside, disappointed but not surprised that Picotti has offered no help, when Picotti gives him a slip of paper with a phone number scribbled on it.
“Leave it with me, Martin. I do what I can.”
4
Helen carries the pot over to the table and pours them both coffee, watching its glutinous trickle puddle and fill the cups.
“I can’t believe Giulia treated me like that,” she says.
“You were wonderful with her,” says Giacomo.
“I wasn’t. I was horrified. I think she’s gone mad. She wants to see her son carried home on his shield, that’s all she can see. She’ll do anything to get it. Her beloved republic. I just can’t bear the thought of Federico being used to bolster up something he hated.”
“But worked for?”
Helen shakes her head. “He didn’t, Giacomo. He worked against it. From within.”
“I’m not sure that can be done.”
“I’m not sure either. But Federico thought it could.”
Giacomo lays his hand on Helen’s. Helen looks down at their hands, then raises her head to smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad I’m here as well.”
They are both silent. They haven’t eaten but Helen isn’t hungry and, in any case, there is nothing in the house. This can’t go on, she thinks. I’ll die in here if I let myself. Giacomo’s hand is warm and heavy on hers. For a second, she wants to pull it away. She can feel his eyes on her: cautious, anxious, almost oppressive. Is she glad he’s here, or not? She can’t tell. This is the first time in her life she’s been with Giacomo without betraying anyone. She imagines them leaving the building together, arm in arm, and walking towards the river. Is this what she wants? To lose one man and take on another? She eases her hand away. She’s restless, stifled.
“I suppose I’d better turn on
my mobile,” she says. “Giulia’s right. I can’t just hide away like this.”
“They’ll expect you to answer it if you do.”
“I know that.” Helen stands up, turns on her mobile, stares blankly at the screen as she tries to recall her PIN, inserts it, sighs. “I don’t care. I’ll go and talk to him if I have to. Why shouldn’t I? I’m not afraid of him. It doesn’t mean I have to do what he says.”
Immediately, the mobile starts to ring. She answers without even looking to see who it is.
The first call is from a reporter, a woman she worked with once on a cultural insert for L’Unità. She’s freelance now, she says, her tone more desperate than she’d like. Of course, she knows how awful it must be for Helen, how inappropriate it is of her to call, but–. Well yes, interrupts Helen, it is. I do understand, the woman says. Thank you so much, murmurs Helen, I really can’t talk, not yet. Yes, yes, I do understand but, the woman says again as Helen hangs up. At once, the mobile makes the guttural sound that indicates the arrival of a text message or missed call. She sees that Martin has called once, but left no message. Another colleague, Martha Weinberg, has called, for the third or fourth time in the past few days. The mobile continues to cough in her hand. The other missed calls – all seven – are from numbers she doesn’t recognise. One of them has an England code, which intrigues her briefly, but not enough to call it back. There is nothing from Giulia but, of course, there won’t be. She’ll use the landline, now being vetted for Helen’s protection, thanks to Giulia. She’s surprised her mother-in-law still has the clout to engineer it, and shocked that someone should be intercepting calls on her private line. Federico has been saying for ages that their line is under surveillance. He said it went with the job. “But my calls don’t go with your job,” she told him, meaning: I don’t go with your job. “I know, I know,” he answered wearily, “I don’t like it any more than you do.” She’d felt guilty about insisting.
The second call is from Martin.
“I’ve only just turned it on,” says Helen, apologetic. “You called earlier.”
“Don’t worry, my dear. I just wanted to tell you that I’m working on your behalf.”
“On my behalf?”
“Asking questions.”
“Oh yes, of course,” she says. “I’m sorry, Martin, I’m only half here.”
“How are you coping?”
“Come round,” she says. “That’d be better. I hate the phone.”
“Are you alone?”
“No,” she says. “Giacomo’s here. But I’d love to see you.”
“Oh, that reminds me. I had a call from Martha Weinberg.”
“What did she want? She’s been calling me as well.”
“Yes, she said she had. She wants to talk to you about Federico.”
“She doesn’t know Federico.”
“Maybe you should give her a ring, see what she has to say.”
“I will,” she says. And does.
“Hello, Martha, it’s Helen.”
“Oh, my dear, how are you?”
“I’m fine,” says Helen, pulling a face, as if to say, How else can such a question be answered? “You’ve been trying to get in touch. I’m sorry. I’ve had my mobile off.”
“I’m not surprised. You must have had so many people pestering you after what’s happened. I wouldn’t have bothered you, but I felt I had to talk to you. It’s about your husband.”
“Yes, Martin told me,” says Helen. “That’s why I’m calling.”
“He didn’t tell you? That he’d been in touch with me?”
“No,” says Helen. “He’s been very busy these past few weeks.” Why am I making excuses for him? she thinks. “What did he want?”
“Well, he wanted information.”
“Information?” Helen is startled.
“Yes, he hummed and ha-ed a bit, then I got short with him and he said he wanted a contact address for this piece we’d done on the church and anti-globalisation.”
“And what did you say?”
Martha laughs, a hoarse, smoker’s laugh, then thinks better of it. “I said he should try using one of his own researchers, I mean, they came with the job, didn’t they? He thought that was funny. I told him to look at our website.”
“Was that it?”
“Well, no, it wasn’t. About two weeks later, so we’re talking about, what? less than a month ago, he called again. He wanted to meet me. I told him I didn’t have time.”
“He wanted to meet you?”
“Right. I didn’t believe it either. This man is redesigning the Italian labour market and he wants to meet me? I started to wonder if it was someone else, some sort of weird hoax. But I saw him on television a couple of days later and it was his voice sure enough.”
“A piece on the church, you said?”
“Yes.” Martha pauses, before saying, in a cautious voice: “Look, I don’t know if you’re ready for this.”
“For what?”
“He offered us money,” says Martha. “From his own pocket or somewhere else, he didn’t want to say, I don’t think. I didn’t ask.”
“Federico?” Helen is incredulous. “He offered you money, personally?”
“Huh-huh. Well, for the magazine, obviously. He wouldn’t give in.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’d keep calling. Three, four times a day. I asked him what he expected to get in return. I thought maybe he was trying to buy our silence, I don’t know. Nothing, he said.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said he could take out a subscription. We don’t do bribes.”
“And did he?”
“He sent me a cheque that day.”
“For how much?”
“Well, let’s just say he bought quite a few subscriptions.”
Helen is silent.
“Look,” says Martha, “I’m really sorry to have to tell you all this, but you know, I figured it might be important. I didn’t want you not to know now, and then find out.”
“No,” says Helen. “Thank you.” She’s about to hang up when Martha says something else that she doesn’t catch.
“What?”
“Saturday?” says Martha.
“What about Saturday?”
“The demonstration against the war? Iraq? I mean, I know this isn’t the right time to mention it but, well, I just thought. If you want to be on it, for Federico’s sake as well, we’d love if you could be with us. We’ll be gathering our forces at the office. You know where we are. Out by the gasometer. You don’t need to let me know. Just turn up. We’d be so proud.”
“I’ll think about it,” promises Helen, barely aware of what she is saying, and ends the call. Giacomo is sitting on a low chair in the corner of the room, tinkering with Federico’s laptop. He looks up, curious. The mobile rings again. A private number Helen doesn’t recognise. She lets it ring, then, when it’s too late, picks it up.
“Patience is a virtue,” she says. “You don’t say that in Italian, do you? Not like we do, I mean. As though we meant it.”
“Perhaps because we don’t think patience is a virtue.”
“What are you doing?”
He beckons her over. “Come and look at this,” he says. As she walks across to where he’s sitting she’s struck by how anomalous this is, this sense of normality, as though she and Giacomo had always been here, and of strangeness, the absence of Federico like a scent in the air. Why were you giving money to that woman? she wonders. She feels that there must be some way she can talk to him, and knows how insane that is, to still feel he’s available to her. Giacomo is sitting where Federico used to sit to tie his shoelaces, and check his briefcase before leaving the flat. With a stab of anguish, she thinks, his briefcase, where is it? I must ask that magistrate, he’ll know. He’ll help. He seemed to be someone she could trust. I can’t bear to think of it lying in some office. Oh Federico, she wants to say. Why did you lie to me? Who were you? It’s as if, within the
great loss, there is a smaller, more focused, loss.
Giacomo is pointing at a window on the screen. “I thought I’d take a look at this Juggernaut file,” he says. “There’s still nothing there, of course, but look here.” He points, and she sees the words Last printed and a date and time beside them. Monday 1 June 2004 14.43.00.
“That’s impossible,” Helen says. “Fede was already dead.”
“It isn’t impossible. It just means Federico didn’t do it. You say that he left the laptop at his parents?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there must have been something to print. And look here.” He points again. “The last time it was modified was fifteen minutes later. That must have been when the contents were deleted.”
“All that stuff Giulia said about Fede being strange,” says Helen.
“Yes?”
“Martha Weinberg just told me something odd.”
“Who’s Martha Weinberg?”
“She edits a magazine called Futuri Prossimi. She’s American, she’s been here for years. She used to live down the road from here, on the other side of Piazza Farnese, but she was thrown out because she had too many cats. I don’t know her very well. Federico hated her magazine. He couldn’t stand these fringe people. He said they ruined everything, like spoilt children at parties trying to get all the adults’ attention.” She can hear herself speak. She thinks, I’m rambling. Concentrate, Helen.
“So what did she say?”
Helen tells him.
“Well, it makes sense in a way. I wasn’t going to mention it to you, not yet anyway, but he’s been sending me strange messages these past few weeks.” He hesitates; she can tell he’s wishing he hadn’t started. “New age sort of stuff. Not like Federico at all.”
The View From the Tower Page 14