In short, at about half-past two in the afternoon, the judge read out the formula and adjourned the trial until December, since, as all the defendants were at liberty, there was no hurry.
I was used to it. I donned my raincoat, picked up my briefcase, made my way through the now deserted law courts and set off for home.
I was walking along Via Abate Gimma, towards Corso Cavour, when I heard myself called from behind, “Avvocato, Avvocato”, in an accent from somewhere inland which I couldn’t place.
There were two of them, and they seemed to have stepped straight out of a documentary on suburban thuggery. The smaller one came up very close and spoke, while the bigger one hung back a little and looked at me through half-closed eyes, as if measuring me up.
The small man was a friend of – he said the name – whom I knew well because he had been a client of mine.
His voice conveyed a forced, almost diplomatic politeness. I said I had no recollection of his friend and that if they wanted to speak about professional matters they could make an appointment and come to the office.
They had no wish to come to the office and, according to the small man, I should stay calm. Very calm. The diplomatic tone hadn’t lasted long.
They knew that I intended to represent those arse-holes of the Anti-Vivisection League, but it was better for all concerned if I minded my own business.
I took a deep breath through the nose, at the same time placing my briefcase on the bonnet of a car, then pronounced the four syllables which, ever since I was a child, had always been the prelude to a street fight: “What if I don’t?”
The small man opened with a wide, clumsy blow with his right. I parried with my left and almost simultaneously delivered a straight right to the face. He fell back, cursing and calling to his friend to give me the works.
The big man was a lumbering great oaf, six foot four and eighteen stone at a guess, much of it paunch. From the way he covered the space between us and squared up to attack, I realized he was a southpaw. And in fact he started with a left swing, which was probably his best punch. If the fist had connected, no doubt it would have hurt, but this lout was moving in slow motion. I parried with my right forearm and went instinctively for his liver with a left hook, doubling with a straight right to the chin.
The big man had a glass jaw. He stayed on his feet for a moment, motionless, with a queer look of surprise on his face. Then he fell.
I resisted the temptation to kick him in the face. Or to insult him; or to insult them both.
I picked up my briefcase and left, suddenly aware of the blood throbbing in my temples. The small man had stopped swearing.
I turned the corner, walked for another block and then stopped. They were not following. No one was following, and since it was three in the afternoon the street was deserted. Putting down my briefcase, I raised my hands in front of my face and saw they were trembling violently. My right hand was also beginning to hurt.
I remained like that for a few seconds, then I shrugged. An infantile smile flickered on my lips. I went on home.
14
The next day I found my car with four slashed tyres and a deep scratch – the work of a knife or a screwdriver – running the whole length of the body.
Rather than anger at the damage, I felt humiliated. I found myself reflecting on what it is like for someone to come home and find the place turned upside down by burglars. Next I thought of all the petty thieves I had defended and got off.
Lastly, it occurred to me that my brain was turning to pulp and I was becoming pathetic. So, luckily, I dropped moral speculation and made an attempt to be practical.
I called up a client of mine who had a certain reputation in criminal circles in Bari and the surrounding province. He came to the office and I told him the story, including the street-fight. I said I didn’t want to go to the police or the carabinieri, but I would if these people forced my hand. In my opinion we were even. I would pay for the damage to the car and they, whoever they were, could nurse their bruises and leave me to get on with my work in peace.
My client said I was right. He also said that they really ought to pay to repair my car and provide new tyres. I said that I’d get the car done up and I didn’t want new tyres.
It had occurred to me that neither did I want a summons for receiving stolen goods, seeing that they certainly wouldn’t have gone and bought them from an authorized dealer. But this I didn’t say.
All I wanted was for everyone to stay put and not go making trouble for anyone else. He didn’t push the point, and gave me a nod signifying respect. A different kind of respect from that usually paid to a lawyer.
He said he’d let me know within two days.
He was as good as his word. He came back to the office two days later and mentioned a name that carried weight in certain circles. That person sent word offering his apologies for what had happened. It had been an accident – two accidents in fact, thought I, but let’s not split hairs – that would not be repeated. He, however, was at my disposal should I need anything.
The story finished there.
Apart from the two million lire I had to fork out to put the car in order.
A few days later I discovered the identity of the new tenant in our building. Or rather, the tenant ess.
About half-past nine in the evening I had just come back from the gym and was about to thaw two chicken breasts, grill them and prepare a salad, when the bell rang.
I spent a few seconds wondering what had happened. Then it registered that it must be my own doorbell, and while on my way to answer it I realized that this must be the first time anyone had rung it since I’d been living here. I felt a pang of melancholy, then I opened the door.
At last she’d found someone in. It was the fourth time she’d tried my door but there was never any answer. Did I really live alone? She was the new tenant, on the seventh floor. She had introduced herself to all the other tenants in the building, I was the last. Her name was Margherita. Margherita, and I didn’t catch the surname.
She gave me her hand across the invisible frontier of the doorway. It was a fine, masculine hand, large and strong.
Certain women – and especially certain men – give you a strong handshake but you realize at once that it’s for show. They want to make themselves out to be decisive, no-nonsense people, but the strength is only in the hand and arm. What I mean is, it doesn’t come from inside. Some people can actually crush your hand, but it’s as if they were doing body-building.
There are others, if only a few, who when they shake your hand tell you that there’s something behind the muscles. I held Margherita’s hand for maybe a second or two more than necessary but she went on smiling.
Then I asked her awkwardly if she’d care to come in. No, thank you, she had just stopped by to introduce herself. She was actually on her way home after being out the whole day. She had a mass of things to do, what with having just moved in. When things were more organized, she’d ask me up for a cup of tea.
She had a good smell about her. A mixture of fresh air, dry and clean, a masculine, leathery smell.
“Don’t be sad,” she said as she made for the staircase.
Just like that.
When she was already out of sight I realized that I had never really looked at her. I went back inside, half closed my eyes and tried to reproduce her face in my mind. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t sure I’d recognize her if I saw her in the street.
In the kitchen the chicken breasts had thawed in the microwave. But I no longer felt like having them simply grilled, so I got out a recipe book I kept in the kitchen but had never used.
Tasty chicken rissoles. That sounded just the job. At least, the name did. I read the recipe and was glad to see I had all the ingredients.
Before starting I opened a bottle of Salice Salentino, tasted it, and then looked for a CD to listen to while I was cooking.
White Ladder.
The syncopated rhythm of “Please Forgi
ve Me” started and then, almost at once, came the voice of David Gray. I stayed near the speakers to listen until it got to the part of the song I liked best. I won’t ever have to lie
I won’t ever have to say goodbye…
Every time I look at you
Every time I look at you.
Then I went back to the kitchen and got down to work.
I boiled the chicken and minced it, along with a couple of ounces of cooked ham that had been in the fridge for some days. Then I put the meat into a bowl together with an egg, some grated Parmesan, nutmeg, salt and black pepper. I stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon before kneading it with my hands, having added some breadcrumbs. I shaped the mixture into rissoles the size of an egg, then dipped them into beaten egg to which I’d added salt and a little wine, then rolled them in breadcrumbs to which I’d added another pinch of nutmeg, and finally sizzled them in olive oil over a moderate flame.
I drained the rissoles – which smelled delicious – on kitchen paper and prepared a salad with balsamic vinegar dressing. I laid the table with a cloth, real plates, real cutlery, and before sitting down to eat I went and changed the CD.
Simon and Garfunkel. The Concert in Central Park.
I pushed “skip” until number 16 came up. “The Boxer.”
I stood and listened to it until the last verse. My favourite. In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him, till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
I’m leaving, I am leaving
But the fighter still remains…
Then I turned off the CD player and went to eat.
The rissoles were excellent. So was the salad, while the wine had a bouquet and reflections danced in the glass.
I wasn’t sad that evening.
15
“The fact is that we have opted for American-style trials, but we lack the preparation the Americans have. We lack the cultural basis for accusatory trials. Look at the questioning and cross-questioning in American or British trials. And then look at ours. They can do it, we can’t. We never will be able to, because we are children of the Counter-Reformation. One cannot rebel against one’s own cultural destiny.”
Thus, during a pause in a trial in which we were fellow counsels for the defence, spake Avvocato Cesare Patrono. A Prince of the Forum. Mason and Millionaire.
I had heard him express that idea about a hundred times since the new code of criminal procedure had come into force in 1989.
It was to be understood that others couldn’t do it. Other lawyers – certainly not him – and especially the public prosecutors.
Patrono liked to speak ill of everything and everyone. In conversations in the corridors – but even in court – he loved to humiliate his colleagues and, most of all, he loved to intimidate and embarrass magistrates.
For some unknown reason he had a liking for me. He was always cordial towards me and occasionally had me assist him in the defence, which was big business, from a financial standpoint.
He had just finished expressing his views on the current criminal procedure when there emerged from the courtroom, still wearing her robe, Alessandra Mantovani, Assistant Public Prosecutor.
She hailed from Verona, and had asked to be transferred to Bari to join her lover. Behind her in Verona she had left a rich husband and a very comfortable life.
As soon as she had moved to Bari her lover had left her. He explained that he needed his freedom, that things between them had gone well up to that point thanks to the distance, which prevented boredom and routine. That he needed time to think things over. In short, the whole classic load of shit.
Alessandra Mantovani had found herself in Bari, alone, with her bridges burnt behind her. She had stayed on without a murmur.
I liked her a lot. She was everything a good public prosecutor ought to be, or a good policeman, which comes to more or less the same thing.
In the first place she was intelligent and honest. Then she didn’t like crooks – of any sort – but she didn’t spend her time eating her heart out at the thought that most of them would get off scot-free. Above all, when she was wrong she was up to admitting it, without argument.
We had become friends, or something like it. Enough to lunch together sometimes, and occasionally tell each other something of our personal histories. Not enough for anything more to happen between us, even if our presumed affair was one of the many bits of gossip that did the rounds of the courthouse.
Patrono detested La Mantovani. Because she was a woman, because she was an investigating magistrate, because she was more intelligent and tougher than he was. Even though, naturally, he would never have admitted it.
“Here, Signora,” – he called all women magistrates Signora, not Dottoressa or Judge, to make them nervous and unsettle them – “come and listen to this story. It’s the latest, really a peach.”
La Mantovani stepped nearer and looked him in the eye, tilted her head to one side and said not a word. A slight nod – yes, go on and try to tell your story – and the ghost of a smile. It was not a warm smile. The mouth had moved but the eyes were utterly still. And cold.
Patrono told his story. It wasn’t the latest, or even very recent.
It was the story of a young man of good family talking to a friend and telling him how he is about to marry an ex-prostitute. The youngster explains to his friend that his fiancee’s ex-profession is no problem as far as he is concerned. No problem either are his fiancee’s parents, who are drug pushers, thieves and pimps. Everything therefore seems hunky-dory, but the lad confides to his friend that he has one really big worry.
“What’s that?” asks the friend.
How’s he going to tell the bride’s parents that his father is a magistrate?
Patrono had his snigger all to himself. Personally, I was embarrassed.
“I’ve got a rather good one too. About animals,” said La Mantovani. “Snake and Fox are wandering in the woods. At a certain point it starts to rain and they both take shelter in an underground tunnel, going in at opposite ends. They begin making their way along the tunnel, where it’s pitch dark, getting nearer and nearer each other until they meet. They actually bump into each other.
“The tunnel is very narrow and there’s very little room for them to pass. In fact, for one to pass the other has to flatten himself against the wall, in other words give way.
“But neither of them is willing to give way and so they start to quarrel.
“ ‘Move over and let me pass.’
“ ‘Move over yourself.’
“ ‘Who d’you think you are?’
“‘Who are you anyway?’
“ ‘You tell me first.’
“ ‘No, my dear, you tell me first who you are.’ And so on and so forth.
“In short, the situation seems to have reached an impasse and the two of them don’t know how to get out of it, partly because neither wants to take the initiative of attacking the other, not knowing who he is up against.
“Fox then has an idea. ‘Listen, it’s no use going on quarrelling, because that way we’ll be in here all day. Let’s have a game to solve the problem. I’ll stay still and you touch me and try to guess who I am. Then you stay still, and I’ll touch you and try to guess who you are. Whoever finds out the identity of the other wins and can pass first. What d’you think of that?’
“ ‘It’s an idea,’ says Snake. ‘I agree, but I have first guess.’
“So Snake, moving sinuously, starts touching Fox.
“ ‘Now then, what long, pointed ears you have, what a sharp muzzle, what soft fur, what a bushy tail… You must be Fox!’
“Fox is rather miffed, but has to admit that the other has got him.
“ ‘However, now it’s my turn, because if I guess right we’ll be even and we’ll have to find another way of deciding who goes first.’
“And he starts to touch Snake, who in the meanwhile has stretched out on the floor of the tunnel.
“ ‘What a small head you have, you don’t have any ears, you’re long and slimy… And you have no balls!
“ ‘You wouldn’t by any chance be a lawyer?’ ”
I lowered my eyelids and laughed to myself. Patrono tried to laugh too, but failed. He came out with a sarcastic cackle and tried to say something, but nothing equal to the occasion occurred to him. He didn’t know how to lose.
La Mantovani took off her robe, said she was going to her office, that we’d all be meeting when the hearing resumed and went her way.
Every so often, a real man, I thought.
16
Some days passed and then I got a telephone call from Abajaje.
She wanted to see me. Soon.
I told her she could come that very day, at eight in the evening, when the office closed. That way we’d be able to talk more calmly.
She arrived almost half an hour late, and this amazed me. It didn’t fit with the image I’d formed of her.
When I heard the bell ring I was already beginning to think of leaving.
I crossed the empty offices, opened the door and saw her. In the middle of the unlit landing.
She came in, dragging a big box. It contained the books and a few other belongings of Abdou, including an envelope with several dozen photographs.
I told her we could go through and talk in my room, but she shook her head. She was in a hurry. She remained where she was, one step inside the door, opened her bag and took out a roll of banknotes similar to the one she produced the first time she came to the office.
She held out the money and, without looking me in the face, began talking quickly. This time her accent was very noticeable. As strong as a smell.
She had to leave. She had to return to Aswan. She was forced, she was forced – she said – to return to Egypt.
I asked when and why, and her explanation became confused. Broken at times by words I didn’t understand.
Involuntary Witness gg-1 Page 7