“Move,” the woman said, and I was prodded in the back. I started hesitantly walking, having to pull my feet up from the heavy sucking mud at each step. Somebody guided me with a hand on my arm. Then I felt firm ground underfoot, and there was a haze of light through my blindfold.
“Sit him on the floor over there.” It was the woman again. Her voice was hard and biting.
A pair of hands pushed me down by the shoulders. I went down uncertainly to a squatting position, then toppled over sideways and was unable of course to use my arms to right myself. The same hands pulled me up and arranged me against a brick wall. I leaned back against it, my knees hunched up in front of me.
The woman said, “Did he make any trouble?” Her accent was Milanese, I thought.
“No. Just lay there.” This was the quicker-talking man; the squat one, as I imagined him.
“What about the girl? Where’s she?”
“Bruno and Lucio are bringing her.”
I made a muffled noise from behind my gag. It was torn away and I said, “What have you done to Lucy?” I had to have two goes at this sentence before I could get my tongue to coordinate with my brain.
The woman said, “She’s been taken hostage as well.”
“Let her go. She’s nothing to do with all this.”
“You’re in no position to give us orders. Now keep quiet.”
“Give me some water.” I wondered whether to add “please,” but decided it would be superfluous.
She instructed someone to get water, and a plastic cup was put to my mouth. I drank some, but much of it went coldly spilling down my chin and coat front.
“Where am I?” I said.
“I said keep quiet.”
“Look, I want to know what you want with me—”
“Silence.” I could almost feel the spray of saliva as she spat the z and t of this word (zitto).
“But look—”
Something hard hacked at my shin: it could have been anyone, but I imagined it as her sharp pointed shoe, and I suddenly thought of Rosa Klebb in James Bond. I felt a sudden plummeting inside, as if my innards had dropped down a lift shaft. I was in for a rough time—and I wasn’t going to be able to see it coming. My innards came back, but definitely travel-worn. I said, “Excuse me, I’m going to vomit.” I don’t know which language I used. I twisted sideways and started retching. Somebody was already there with a bucket. A few seconds later I sat back weakly and asked for more water. It was given to me.
Well, my head was no better, but I felt just a little stronger. I said, “Who are you?”
“We’re the New Front of the Proletariat.” Again it was the woman speaking, and you’d have guessed from the way she pronounced the word she thought the proletariat were scum.
I said, “You don’t sound like the proletariat.”
“What is that supposed to mean? You don’t expect the proletariat to be articulate?”
“Forget it. It was just a—just a remark.”
“A typically patronizing one. You expect submission and deference from the working classes.”
“Look, my father was a housepainter.”
“The worst oppressors in the class war are those who boast of their humble backgrounds.” Her answers came back like ricochets. “Now silence.”
“But don’t you want me to talk? What did you kidnap me for?”
“We’re waiting for our group leader. He is going to question you.”
She gave instructions to the men who’d brought me here to keep their guns at the ready and not to let me make a single move. Then she said, “I’ll go and see if Bruno and Lucio are coming.”
“I hope they find the place in this fog,” the “squat” man said. “It’s getting thicker.” She made no answer. I heard her footsteps moving away, and imagined her poisoned steel caps killing the grass she walked through. Then there was silence. My guards occasionally shifted. It sounded as if they were sitting on the ground, and I heard the rustle of newspapers. I guessed we were in some kind of barn, a fairly ancient one, judging from the brickwork behind my back. There seemed to be no door, so the fog could sneak in and wrap us up clammily. I began to feel cold. After a while I said so, and one of them threw a blanket over me. It was my bottom that was coldest, however, and my wet feet. They were the farthest from the fierce glow inside my head. This was just what a flu convalescent needed, I thought bitterly. I twisted my hands inside the rope, but uselessly.
Eventually the noise of a boat was heard, and the men scrambled up. I had worked out that there were just the two of them, the pair who’d brought me over. “I’ll go,” said the squat man, and the other grunted assent, moving quickly toward me. He shoved a cloth into my mouth and then I felt the cold hard impress of metal against my temple—fortunately not against my bruise. I stopped feeling cold.
Then we heard the sound of voices in the distance, in the midst of which the piranha-teeth consonants of the Milanese woman. The gun was removed from my head and the cloth pulled out. I started breathing again—in fact it was only then that I discovered that I’d stopped. The voices got nearer, but I couldn’t hear Lucy. Possibly she was gagged. I wondered if it was worth shouting to her, but couldn’t think of anything to shout. Sorry might have been the most appropriate. The voices moved away again, and finally were inaudible.
Then I heard the woman coming back with the man who’d left. As she entered the barn she announced, “Emanuele won’t be coming tonight.”
I said, “Who’s Emanuele?”
“Silence,” she said automatically, but the squat man had already replied unthinkingly, “The group leader.”
“So,” she went on, “we’ll leave the interrogation of both prisoners till tomorrow.”
“Am I supposed to sleep like this?” I said.
“You’re supposed to keep still. Whether you sleep or not doesn’t interest us. There are thousands in Italy with worse beds.”
I rather doubted there were thousands sitting with their hands tied behind their backs. I said, “My friends will have got onto the police, you know.”
“I don’t think so. Your girlfriend phoned them and told them you’d decided to spend the night with her.”
“Ah.” I wondered whether they’d believe it. If they didn’t, it put them in a nice dilemma: though perhaps less of a one than I was in. But mine was my own fault. “I couldn’t have another blanket? And one for underneath. I mean if you want me to be still alive tomorrow.”
“As it seems necessary that you should be so, we’ll give you a sleeping bag.”
“Can’t I speak to my friend?”
“No.”
There seemed to be no point in trying to argue with this. I said, “Remember she’s nothing to do with the whole thing.”
“I heard you. Now silence. We’ll bring the sleeping bag. If you need to piss or shit, say so.” She spat out these activities, as if these too were filthy habits of the borghesia.
“I—I—well, where…?”
“Outside, of course.”
One of the men pulled me up, and my head screamed like fingernails on a blackboard as I rose. I was escorted outside for a pee. My hands were freed for this; it obviously seemed the least distasteful solution. But the knowledge that there were certainly guns trained on me didn’t help with the relaxation of the bladder muscles. Eventually I did what I had to do, and wondered briefly if I should now make a sudden run for it, before they retied me. But blindfolded, with my fly down … maybe not. I was shoved back into the barn. My coat was removed. Then, instead of the rope, a pair of handcuffs was produced. My hands were linked in front now, and a chain ran from the cuffs to somewhere in the wall. I was made to sit down again and my shoes were removed. I was then fed into the sleeping bag. “Remember,” the woman said, “there will be someone on watch all night. So don’t think of trying anything clever.”
I said, “Can I have something to rest my head on? It’s extremely painful.”
The blanket was folded, and I brough
t my head down delicately on it. I lay on my side, with my hands in a praying position, so that the chain wasn’t taut and rubbing against my face. A groundsheet had been lain down, but the ground was hard and cold under me all the same. My head sang, but not a lullaby. At least, I thought, the sleeping bag was warm. I could feel my socks drying.
I didn’t even attempt to go to sleep for some time, but lay there listening, hoping to catch words that might tell me their intentions. But they left the barn whenever they wanted to talk, and conducted the conversation in low mutters, among which I could nonetheless distinguish the venomously salivating voice of the woman. The one thing I kept repeating to myself was they wouldn’t keep me blindfolded if they weren’t thinking of releasing me sooner or later. Then the thought struck me that that might merely be what they wanted me to believe, just to make sure I cooperated—and I wished I hadn’t thought of this.
I thought of Lucy and tried by thought transference to communicate my sincere apology to her. I could have done with her company.
I must have got some sleep that night. But it wasn’t the sort you wake from with a luxurious yawn and stretch—particularly if you’re handcuffed. It came in crumbly bits, like Parmesan cheese. I was often aware of the squat man walking around, rubbing his hands and stamping his feet, and this was at least a tiny consolation. At some point in the night I heard him waking the other man to change guard, and this too—the more-porcine-than-usual “What, what?” followed by a resigned imprecation—was a meager source of satisfaction. I noticed the extreme silence otherwise: not the faintest noise of engines, nor any sheep or cows. I guessed we must be in some particularly remote island of the lagoon—and if the fog kept up, there was little chance of our being discovered here: certainly there would be no helicopter search.
I noticed grayish light through my blindfold and stirred. I was reminded of my head at once—and then of almost every bone and muscle in my body, each one making its little protest at this unwarranted disturbance. The exposed part of my face tingled with cold and damp. I brought my right hand up to scratch my nose, and was reminded of the handcuffs. I scratched with both hands and pushed my hair up from the blindfold; the hair and the blindfold were clammy. I listened to the world. I could hear the crackly voice of a newsreader on a tiny transistor radio. Somebody said, “Ssh,” not to me, and I realized they were all awake, gathered around the radio.
The newsreader was saying: “… two of the carabinieri are seriously injured, while three others escaped with minor cuts and wounds. The carabinieri are taking seriously the phone call that came just twenty minutes after the explosion, in which the New Front of the Proletariat claimed responsibility for the bomb as a direct reprisal for the death of the terrorist Simone Gerosa five days ago. This is the first action of the group in Padua, and perhaps indicates a shift of the terrorists’ attention from the lagoon city, which is at the moment preparing itself for the first weekend of Carnival. Messages of firm condemnation and…” The voice was drowned as the listeners set up cries of “They did it!” and cheers. Another “ssh” was issued—with so much saliva I had no difficulty in identifying the woman. The newsreader read out the messages of condemnation and revulsion from various politicians, which were greeted with a chorus of jeers and raspberries. Only the woman, as far as I could tell, did not join in. I had by now a picture of her, her face set in a permanent cold sneer, with spittle hanging from the corner of thin lips—or perhaps blood. The newsreader went on to talk of the roadblocks and the searches in the surrounding area and then said, “Meanwhile in Venice, the authorities remain firm in their decision not to call off any of the manifestations for Carnival. It is not possible, they say, to disappoint the enormous number of people involved, and to do so would be to give in to the criminal plans of the terrorists.…”
“You’ll give in soon enough,” the squat man said.
When the topic changed to the Middle East, the radio was turned off. The squat man said, “With the roadblocks and all that they might not be here for some time. They didn’t say they were going to do it in Padua.”
“The point is to take attention from Venice,” the woman said. “We have to make it clear we’re active in the whole of the Veneto.”
“So are we going to wait here all day for them?”
“Why not? With this fog it’s the perfect place.”
“To get rheumatism,” said the grunter, and followed it with a routine imprecation.
“You know we can’t go back to that flat on the Lido. Any moment now somebody’s going to remember seeing Marco there.”
Marco was presumably the “battle name” of the dead terrorist, Simone Gerosa.
“Well, the sooner we leave Venice the better, as far as I’m concerned.”
“When we get that stuff—and Toni Sambon.” I thought that I’d never like to hear my own name pronounced with such venom. I’d probably curl up and die of my own accord. She went on: “Go and tell Bruno and Lucio the news. And see if the girl’s awake. He is.” She was presumably gesturing in my direction.
I saw no reason for sitting up. There seemed nothing outside the sleeping bag that was worth leaving it for: it was unlikely we were going to have a jolly breakfast around a campfire.
I lay still, therefore, until a boot prodded me and I was asked if I wanted another pee. Well, that was one possible reason for moving. The chain was removed from the cuffs and I was escorted outside, as on the previous evening, and I shivered in the clinging fog. The handcuffs were then removed so I could put my coat on; they were clicked back on and I was given a stale brioche and made to sit back against the wall. I ate my breakfast, feeling rather like a hamster, with both hands clumsily raised to my mouth. All my attempts at conversation were rebutted with the same hissed “Zitto” from the woman, and the promise that I’d be given all the chance I wanted to talk when Emanuele got here. I began to wonder if this building up of Emanuele was a deliberate ploy. Every so often she said something on the lines of, “With Emanuele you’ll talk, whether you like it or not.” Well, if it was intended as a terror tactic, it worked all too well.
As the day wore on they got a little more careless about chatting in front of me, or at least within earshot. I had now put names to the male voices. The squat man was Luca and the grunter Piero. Both were undoubtedly assumed names—possibly just for this operation. (At one point Piero took a few seconds to answer to his name.) The little pictures I had made of them got more detailed. The woman, of course, was by now a full-length portrait: Rosa Klebb with a touch of Cruella DeVille, painted by Fuseli. Luca I saw as a minor but active demon from a medieval fresco, with a leathery leering face, and Piero was a cross between a Leonardo grotesque and Sylvester Stallone. They made little small talk. The radio was turned on every so often to catch the latest news, which after their initial display of triumph was now commented on only briefly. They all seemed quite content to spend the day doing nothing. I occasionally heard newspapers being turned, and at one point Luca and Piero engaged in a little desultory conversation about the chances of Inter in the following day’s match. The woman did not join in.
One fragment of conversation that did catch my attention began with the woman talking about the filth of the water. A few predictable comments were made on the responsibility of the pigs in charge of Montedison (the chemical company on the shores of the lagoon) and Piero put in one of his rare complete sentences: “Of course you haven’t had to drink it like me.”
The woman’s voice kept the contempt it had had while talking about Montedison: “Only because you allowed yourself to be caught off guard—and by an unarmed woman.”
“It was Marco got caught. I was in the boat.”
So it had been Piero and the dead “Marco” who had tried to kidnap me the other night. I gathered that Piero had been taken back to their hideout on the Lido after the accident, and Marco (Simone Gerosa) had then gone out again on his own. It explained why the terrorist who had followed Osgood into the building had been on his
own. But at this point they realized I was listening and changed the subject.
I asked twice about Lucy and was each time answered by the woman and told to shut up. When the woman left us for a few minutes, I asked again and Luca said, “She’s all right, but if you keep asking…” He said no more, and I imagined him standing there preparing to jab me—or Lucy—with his three-pronged fork. I shut up.
There was one moment when a boat was heard in the distance, and I was regagged. The gun was put to my temple again. But the engine noise died away. It had probably been several hundred yards away, and quite invisible in the fog.
I was given a cheese sandwich and an apple for lunch. I did my little hamster act again, eating more from boredom than hunger. I had never realized before that it is possible to feel both bored and terrified. The thought of Emanuele’s arrival was a permanent sick dread at the forefront of my mind and the pit of my stomach, but at the same time there was a tiny part of me that looked forward to his arrival, as being at least an event. An infinitesimally tiny part, mind you.
And when the boat was finally heard, this tiny part got completely washed away by the wave of blind terror that swelled up nauseatingly inside me. This was helped, of course, by the usual routine of gag and gun. Then the boat came to a stop, voices were heard, and the gag and gun were removed. I could feel my heart pounding, five times as quick as their plashy footsteps.
Luca was continuing to say “Bravi” with reference to the Padua bomb. I had already gathered that Emanuele had placed the bomb together with an accomplice, and they had presumably both arrived. The woman said, “No trouble in getting away?”
“We drove off in the direction of Bologna,” replied a new voice. I recognized at once the cold precise tones of the man who’d burned my paintings. Padoan.
Every Picture Tells a Story Page 28