The View From the Tower

by Charles Lambert

  The man is turned away from her but she can see his face through a mirror in this palace of mirrors, just as she saw the bald patch of the other man in the lift and wanted to smile. She can see his look of irritation and pleading, addressed to Giulia, the way a teacher looks at the mother of an intractable child. Can’t you do anything with her? his face is saying. She’s being naughty. She won’t play along.

  Giulia stalks across to her.

  “Well?” she says.

  “Well, what?” says Helen.

  4

  Giacomo can’t wait any longer and tries to call Helen, but his mobile is dead. Everyone’s mobile is dead. He stops at the side of the road, the Quirinale a hundred yards away, and wonders where she is. The body of Federico is no more than five minutes’ walk from where he’s standing, and it occurs to him to go and see what the mood is there. Perhaps someone will know where Helen has gone; she can’t be that far away. He feels trapped beneath some kind of bell jar, a sensation exacerbated by the cowl of heat on the city. He hesitates outside an empty bar for a moment, then turns up the hill towards the ministry.

  He’s expected a line of people, but the room is almost empty by the time he arrives and no more than a minute or two passes before he is standing beside the coffin. It has always struck him as barbaric, this practice of displaying the dead, but now, with Federico in front of him, he is struck by the blandness of it, as though death weren’t involved. Removed from the antiseptic surroundings of the morgue, Federico looks the way he’s looked so often, distant, slightly aloof, his mind on other things. He was shot in the stomach and the heart, of course, which helps. He won’t tell Helen he’s been, he decides, because nothing he is likely to say – if he is honest – will comfort her. A woman behind him coughs and Giacomo steps aside to watch her bob at the knee and cross herself and touch the wood and kiss her fingers. It’s the rituals that invest the business with sense, he supposes, and wishes he’d been trained in them, or believed in what they stood for. Still standing by the coffin, he observes the woman, middle-aged, grey trousers and a blouse, walk off towards the door, alone, her duty done. Is she a friend of Federico’s, he wonders, or a colleague or simply a citizen paying her respects to a servant of the state? Whatever, she has at least as much right to be here as he does. He might have stood here longer if a man hadn’t crossed the room and asked him if he felt all right. I’m fine, he says, but the man stays beside him until he walks away and leaves the room, feeling like someone who’s behaved suspiciously in a jeweller’s. For a moment he experiences a trace of guilt. Not because of Helen; that’s also Helen’s choice. Because there have been times he’s wished Federico dead, and now he is. He has had his wish. Is that why I’m here? he wonders. To gloat? Is that why I slept with Helen last night and the night before last, not to comfort her at all, but to take possession, as though I were exercising my droit de seigneur? The middle-aged woman is standing outside the camera ardente. She turns to look at him as he leaves. It’s terrible, she says flatly. He was a good man. Giacomo nods. They walk together towards the street, without speaking.

  Giacomo is deciding what to do next when a black car pulls up. The door nearest to him, the back door on the right, is flung open. What appears to be a scuffle takes place inside the car, raised voices, the sound of something like a slap. He starts to move away, unnerved, when Helen stumbles from the car, tripping against the kerb. Giacomo is close enough to catch her, almost before he has seen who it is, a woman falling from a car into his arms. Helen pulls herself onto her feet and hugs him, gasping I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it’s you, as another woman – Giacomo recognises Giulia – wriggles across the back seat of the car towards the open door. Giacomo sees a man’s hand reach round from between the two front seats to restrain the older woman, whose head emerges from the darkness of the car like a caricature of rage and begins to keen, a dreadful noise. Giacomo breaks free from Helen and slams the door on Giulia, not caring if the woman is hurt, not caring if her black-gloved hand is trapped by the frame of the door, hoping deep down that it is. He slaps his own hand against the body of the car, as one slaps a horse to make it move and, after a moment, it pulls away and is gone. Behind him, Helen begins to laugh and cry at the same time, gasping for breath.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she says.

  And then, as the car drives off and Giacomo turns to face her, she says, her face excited, her voice hoarse: “Fuck them, Giacomo, fuck the lot of them. I need your help. Can you get hold of a car at the hotel? Mine’s back at the flat. For God’s sake, Giacomo, come on!”

  5

  Martin swings his panama between his knees. He’s finished his second coffee and is thinking of ordering another one, or maybe a draught beer, a small one, if the waiter comes across, but so far he’s been left on his own, with his thoughts. He had a call from Alina this morning; she said she wanted to see him. Of course, he said. This afternoon.

  He is sitting in the second row of tables, protected by the awning. The first row, the farthest from the bar, is dedicated to tourists who need to tan, the third to knots of older men who might, or might not, have ordered something in the last hour. He’s where he likes to be, neither here nor there. His first wife called him ambiguous, but didn’t explain what she meant, and he hadn’t insisted. He hadn’t wanted to clarify his ambiguity. What was it Socrates said? That the unexamined life is not worth living? He’s always preferred George Eliot’s line about a window providing more enlightenment than a mirror. He is alone in his row, which is a source of satisfaction to him. He wonders what Alina wants from him, and what he wants from her.

  There is something missing, he knows that, something essential, something the size of St Peter’s. But he can’t put his finger on what it is. He’d ask Picotti if Picotti, he’s started to sense, weren’t somehow part of the problem. He’s spent some time this morning reading up on Don Giusini and the man seems genuine, decent, slightly off the wall as these anti-global Franciscan types tends to be, a pain in the arse to the church but allowed to do pretty much as he wants, for now at least. There is nothing that doesn’t ring true. Part of the problem? Part of the solution? Martin is waiting for Corti, his cell phone contact, who might have been able to lay his hands on some of the transcripts of conversations the priest has had with Federico, but he doesn’t hold out much hope. Corti sounded unforthcoming, even furtive, on the phone this morning. “I’ll see what I can do. A coffee later, maybe? After lunch?”

  Martin said, “Yes, why not? The usual place.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Corti said again. Like most attempts at reassurance, this failed to reassure.

  Martin is about to leave when Corti waves from the other side of the square.

  “Sorry, Frame. Held up by all this security,” he calls out, twenty feet from the table, as though he and Martin were alone in the square. “They wouldn’t let me through,” he says, stressing me in an affronted way. He isn’t used to having his movements impeded. He sits down moving the ashtray in a finicky way, then uses a paper napkin to wipe the sweat from the sides of his nose, the corners of his mouth, dropping it on the floor after a rapid offended glance at the smear of grease he’s gathered.

  “Don’t worry,” says Martin. “Drink?”

  “I’d rather not,” Corti says. “Stomach.” He glances across to the door of the bar. “A glass of water if he comes.”

  After they have both been silent for some minutes, not looking at each other, as though gathering their thoughts, Corti turns towards Martin and spreads his hands in a gesture of surrender. “No luck, I’m afraid. I did my best.”

  “You mean the conversations weren’t recorded?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But there aren’t any transcripts?”

  Corti purses his lips. He has some kind of gel on his skin, Martin notices. Either that or he’s been waxed. He’s certainly been promoted, he has a slick of power about him that wasn’t there in the past, when Martin helped hi
m salvage his career.

  “Not now. There were. That is, there might have been.”

  “They’ve been removed?”

  Corti pushes his thick grey hair from his face with both tanned hands, momentarily reminding Martin of Sandra Dee. Martin knows that he is lying.

  “Can’t say.” Teasing.

  “Won’t say?” Teasing back. Martin hates this.

  “What’s the difference?” He pauses. “There is something else that’s rather odd.” Corti’s tone is confidential. “I thought I’d have a look at one or two other mobiles, to see what they’ve been up to.”

  “Which other mobiles?”

  “Well, his wife’s to start off with. You never know. The bosom that harbours the asp and so on. But no surprises there. Then I had a quick look at his father’s. Nothing of any consequence. Calling his son, constantly, which is rather sad as things have turned out. You wonder what he’ll do with himself.” He glances at the empty tables around them, lowers his voice.

  “His mother’s, though, that’s another business entirely. She has two numbers, did you know that? Well, why should you? You know who she is, of course. Giulia Paternò? Battleaxe of the Republic? She must be in her eighties by now, ninety maybe. Not the kind of woman you’d expect to be so wired up. One of them is used for family and friends, but the other one isn’t. Not by a long chalk. She’s got two or three interesting friends for an octogenarian, even if she is a senator.”

  “One of them called Picotti by any chance?” Martin says, on a hunch.

  Corti sucks in his breath. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “If you already know…” Corti sounds annoyed.

  “I hadn’t realised I did,” says Martin.

  “If you take my advice,” says Corti, in a tone that recognises the unlikelihood of this, “you’ll drop the whole thing right now.”

  “Drop what?”

  “The whole thing. Di Stasi.” Corti leans back in his chair. “Look at it this way, Frame. He’s dead. He’d have been dead in any case. Maybe not today. Next week. Next month. You knew that, surely?” His voice is cold. “Drop it.”

  “I’m sorry?” says Martin. “Dead in any case?” What the hell does he mean? So he has read the transcripts after all.

  “Ask his confessor.”

  Corti stands up, smoothing the wrinkles from his trousers, tugging discreetly at his crotch.

  “Look after yourself, Frame.”

  “You too, Corti.”

  Martin goes into the bar to settle the bill. He is about to leave when his attention is caught by a small television in the corner. It is the midday news. Martin watches as Helen walks away from the cameras, having refused to speak to the waiting journalists, surrounded by dark-suited people he doesn’t know, wearing a black dress that doesn’t suit her. He sees Giulia hop beside her like a rickety diminutive crow, her hair bound tightly into a dancer’s poll, black mourning gloves in one hand, the other constantly touching the shoulders, the back, the arm of her widowed daughter-in-law as she follows her towards the official car. He notices Helen glance out of the car towards the cameras with an odd look of interest, as though she has only just seen them and is wondering what they want. He sees the black car pull away towards the Quirinale and disappear, replaced by a panning shot of the crowd outside the ministry, a ragged line of mourners, and the voice of a journalist talking about the people these people represent, the loss to the nation, the mooted arrival of Bush, as yet unconfirmed, committed to the war on terrorism in all its forms, on all its fronts.

  He looks at the clock on the wall. He needs to get home. He wants to shower and change before Alina turns up.

  6

  Half an hour later, Giacomo and Helen leave Rome along the Via Pontina in a car Giacomo hired at the hotel. Helen has taken some sunglasses from her bag and put them on. This dress she’s wearing does her no favours, thinks Giacomo. With the glasses on, big wraparound things with D&G on the side in glittering paste, she looks like a typical Italian widow. As, of course, she is.

  “Did I tell you I had a premonition?” she says. “Not really a premonition, because it wasn’t pre anything. More of a vision, I suppose. I saw Federico the morning he was shot. He was standing in front of me, smiling in this odd puzzled way as though he’d been told a joke he didn’t understand, you know, when you smile without knowing why. I looked at my watch, I remember thinking: I’ll have to ask him exactly what he was up to at 9:27. He was shot at 9:27. It makes no sense.”

  “I didn’t know you believed in that kind of thing.”

  “I don’t.” She sounds upset. They are driving along an avenue flanked by maritime pines and oleander that makes Giacomo think of travelling into the warmth of the south. Perhaps we can have a holiday later this summer, he thinks, when it’s all blown over. Somewhere in Sicily. He still has relatives there.

  “But I think Federico did,” says Helen. “I know it sounds stupid, but I think he may have had the strength somehow to make me see him, I don’t know how.” Giacomo, who hates this sort of thing, is about to tell her not to be so foolish, but before he has a chance he hears a stifled gulp and a sob. He reaches across and touches Helen’s knee, his hand on the bare skin where the dress has ridden up.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about you,” she says, not moving his hand, or her leg, perhaps waiting for him to do so.

  “Do about me?” He laughs, but removes his hand. “There’ll be more than enough time to think about that.”

  “Oh,” she says. He can’t tell if this has satisfied her or not. She’s tired, shaken by the events of the morning. Either way, he thinks, it is true. There will be time for everything, for them, if not for Federico.

  “Are you sure you want to go and see this woman?” he says, swerving to overtake an Ape. “We can just go home if you’d prefer.”

  Helen shakes her head. “No, no. I need to speak to her. It won’t take long.”

  Half an hour later, she tells Giacomo to turn off to the left. The new road winds uphill, zigzagging as it goes, with the sea some distance beneath them, first to the right and then to the left. The higher they go, the wider the green-blue line of it becomes. Finally, Helen says: “Here we are. It’s down this road.”

  They pull up outside two houses, the first one fine old stone and semi-abandoned, the second constructed out of concrete blocks plastered over and painted mud brown, with bronze-coloured aluminium frames at the windows. They hear a dog bark and a door being opened and closed as they walk across to the second house. Three other cars are parked on the unpaved area outside the houses.

  When they are still some yards away, the front door is opened by a young man.

  “He’s Massimo’s brother,” Helen whispers. “He must be. He looks just like him.” Holding out her hand, she says, in a slow, slightly formal Italian, as though she has been practising the phrase in the car: “My condolences for Massimo. I’m deeply sorry.” She pauses. “I’m the widow of Federico, Federico Di Stasi. Helen. I wanted to speak to your mother.” Giacomo is startled to hear her say widow.

  The young man takes her hand, then lets it go. He doesn’t appear to have noticed Giacomo. His eyes are red from crying. “My mother isn’t here,” he says. “What do you want?” His tone is surly. He looks back into the room and shouts at a dog to be quiet, at someone else to take the dog away.

  “Where is she?” asks Helen, clearly hurt.

  “They took her away somewhere safe, where she won’t be bothered,” the man says, his face set, staring with inexplicable hostility at Helen. He isn’t going to ask us in, thinks Giacomo. He is wearing black trousers, part of a suit, black shoes, a V-necked T-shirt, as though he has just come back from a funeral and taken off his jacket and shirt to relax. Perhaps he has. Giacomo wonders if Massimo has been buried that morning. Would they have known? Would Helen have been told?

  “They?”

  “The senatrice,” the man says.

&nbs
p; “Senatrice?” says Helen, her voice low and shocked.

  “Your husband’s mother,” he says in a tone that mixes scorn and respect, as though there is only one senatrice in the world and Helen has no right not to know. “She said that she’d help us and she did. She sent a car.”

  Helen covers her face with both hands, then rubs her eyes.

  “When?”

  “After the funeral. This morning. My mother didn’t want any visitors. There have been too many people here from the television, journalists, they wanted photographs of Massimo when he was a boy, photographs of his bedroom, they wanted to…” The young man’s eyes fill with tears. “They’re jackals.”

  “Where have they taken her?”

  He shrugs.

  “You have a number for her? A mobile number?”

  “No.”

  Giacomo takes Helen’s arm to lead her back to the car, but Helen pulls herself free. “Your mother said something about a plot. Do you know what she meant?”

  “She didn’t mean anything. She was overwrought.”

  “She said that Massimo had told her something might happen. That they were in danger. She must know something.”

  He flushes with anger. “My mother’s an old woman, she’s confused, she’s just lost her first-born son. It’s natural she’d blame someone.”

  “Is that what Giulia said? That she was confused?”

  “The senatrice? I don’t know what you mean. At least she said she’d look after us.”

  “The funeral?” says Helen. “I didn’t know. Why wasn’t I told?”

  “They said you knew. We thought you’d be there. My mother asked after you.” The young man is silent for a minute or two, considering. “There was no one, no one from your family. Massimo used to talk about you all the time. He worshipped the ground you walked on, you and your husband. My mother couldn’t believe it. It broke her heart a second time.”