“You know, when you grow up sometimes you’re afraid of time passing. It’s a difficult thing to explain, but the older you get the faster time seems to go. That’s what makes you afraid.”
She looked at me to see if I was following her. I nodded even though I wasn’t terribly sure what she was saying.
“Sometimes, when I was young, I met friends of my grandparents who maybe hadn’t seen me for some years. People I didn’t even remember. Everyone always said how incredible it was, I’d become a woman, how time flies. It seems like only yesterday you were just a little girl. It got on my nerves when they said that kind of thing. It seemed such crap …” She broke off. Mom is always very careful about swearing. She says it’s not just a question of good upbringing and not being vulgar, and that the way in which we speak influences the way we think. I’m not sure of that, but I suspect this was something that Dad used to say.
“I’m sorry, Giacomo. It just came out. When you’re tired or sad it happens. Anyway, I wanted to say this: when I heard those phrases, so many years ago, they seemed to me like nonsense. But now I understand.”
It seemed to me she wanted to add something, but she didn’t. Maybe she thought it was too complicated for someone my age. So she gave me a big hug, and I smelled her motherly smell, from when I was little, and we stayed like that, until the sadness went away a bit.
23
“I was working with an agent from the DEA, who was undercover like me, and in association with the Spanish police and special departments of the Colombian police.”
“The DEA is the American narcotics agency?”
“Yes. Often it’s difficult to distinguish one of their undercover agents from a real trafficker. But I think the same could have been said of me. His name was Phil, and right from the start I didn’t like him at all. There was something … I can’t find the word, maybe rotten, about him. He made such a negative impression on me that in the preparatory phase of the operation I thought seriously of asking to be replaced.”
Roberto stopped to think, wondering what would have happened if he had obeyed that impulse. He dismissed the thought immediately.
“Obviously I didn’t. One of the aims of the investigation was to identify a network of members of the police and the drugs agencies—Italian, Spanish, and American—who were in the pay of the traffickers. People who’d been untouchable up until then. And that was why, during the whole operation, relations with my covering team—the colleagues who were following my work and were supposed to intervene in case of emergency—were kept to a minimum. Every contact could be very dangerous.”
“How long did the operation last?”
“More than a year and a half. I was in Colombia almost uninterruptedly for about a year, by far the longest period I spent in South America. I had an apartment in Bogotá, I lived there, I was there for six months consecutively, without ever coming back. I know Bogotá much better than Rome, and I liked being there. I liked a lot of things about Bogotá.”
“Such as?”
“First of all, the climate. It’s close to the Equator but it’s at an altitude of eight thousand five hundred feet. It’s never really hot and never really cold. There’s hardly any difference between the seasons, it’s like spring all year round. Then I liked the old city—La Candelaria—a place that’s still dangerous but very beautiful. The taxi drivers always told you, almost obsessively, to keep your doors firmly locked, and sometimes, at night, you had the impression that small bands of ghosts had materialized in the streets, ready to strike and then disappear again.”
“But you were armed?”
“No, though most of the people I was with were. And yet I never had any problems, even when I went around alone and unarmed. In Bogotá you find things you don’t expect. For example, there’s an incredible tram system—the TransMilenio, a kind of surface metro—that works like clockwork: you feel as if you’re in Stockholm or Zurich. Then there are streets closed to traffic where you can’t even park a car. You imagine a South American capital—and especially Bogotá, which has such a terrible reputation—as a place where cars are one on top of the other, double- and triple-parked, just like here in Rome. Well, I lived in an apartment on the fifteenth floor in a residential neighborhood, and at night I’d open my window—the air was always cool and never cold—I’d light a cigarette, look out at the empty streets, and feel a sense of peace. I liked it a lot.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“It’s a surprising place. They have a national library in La Candelaria that they say is the most visited library in the world.”
Roberto broke off, rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, and massaged his temples.
“You were telling me about the library.”
“Yes. Actually I never went in, I only saw it from the outside. Somebody told me about it …”
All at once Roberto had the feeling he was talking in a language he barely knew. He couldn’t find the words in Italian, although complete sentences came to him in English or Spanish. This lasted some twenty or thirty seconds, then things returned to their place.
“A girl. She was the one who told me about the library. She was almost twenty years younger than me and she was the daughter of one of the men we were investigating. I met her at her father’s house and after two days it was as if we’d known each other forever. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before.”
“Was she beautiful?”
“She wasn’t only beautiful. She was intelligent, she was deep, she was full of passion. And she was friendly, she made me laugh, she made me feel like a better man than I am. She was the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met.”
“What did she do?”
“She was a student, she was about to graduate with a degree in literature, and she had no connection with what her father did. When she realized I was in business with him, which happened almost immediately, she started talking to me about the possibility of changing our lives. She said she’d like to leave there and come to Italy. We could open a shop, or a little hotel, anything to have a normal life.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said it would be wonderful. And like a madman, I really thought things would somehow sort themselves out and we’d be able to do it.”
“Can you tell me her name?”
Roberto stared at him in surprise. The doctor returned his gaze, expectantly.
“Now that you ask me, I realize I probably never called her by her name. We didn’t call each other by our names. We said the kind of things to each other that lovers say, the kind you later feel ashamed to repeat. I called her darling and sweetheart, in Italian. She liked to hear me speak in Italian. It’s taken me a few seconds to remember her name. It was Estela.”
“Why the past tense?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why do you say her name was?”
Instinctively, Roberto moved his head back and to the side, as if he were about to receive a slap or a punch and he wanted to soften the blow.
“I didn’t realize. She isn’t dead … I think. I don’t know why I used the past tense.”
“Is she the person in your dream?”
“Yes.”
A long pause. Like a final summing-up, a silent, rapid, conclusive settling of accounts.
“I shouldn’t have gotten involved, of course. But at first I told myself it was only a fling—I’d had others during my missions—even though everything told me this was something different. With any other woman it would never have happened. I’ve never loved a woman the way I loved her.”
And, then after a few minutes’ pause, after superimposed images that did not respect the rules of chronology: “Things were gradually wearing me down, and I couldn’t control it. I continued doing my work—gathering information, sending reports, organizing shipments of cocaine, and preparing the arrests—and at the same time I was living another life, in which I was a man in love, I did romantic things, and indulged in absurd plans
for the future. I was completely unaware of what I was doing, and I didn’t realize I was heading toward a precipice.”
“How long did it last?”
Once again, Roberto seemed surprised by the question. He had to think a lot before he found the answer. When he did, he seemed even more surprised.
“Six months, maybe a little more. If I hadn’t thought specifically about the time I would have said it had lasted much longer.”
“You have an inflated perception of that time.”
“Yes, that’s exactly it. As the moment approached when the final part of the operation would get underway and I’d have to disappear, I pretended that everything was fine, hoping there’d be some kind of magic solution that would solve everything, without anybody getting hurt.”
“Was her father one of those you were hoping to arrest?”
“He was one of the most important. He wasn’t just a trafficker, he was in charge of vast quantities of money and also controlled the political side of things. On the one hand, he could get members of parliament and mayors elected, and on the other he was in direct contact with violent criminals all over the world. There was even a group of Colombian police officers who, when they’d finished their day’s work—their regular work—did a few hours for him as bodyguards. It had been extremely difficult to get close to him, this was the most important operation of my life, and I’d gotten myself involved with his daughter. Every time the thought went through my head, my legs started to shake. I dismissed it, telling myself that when the right moment came I’d find a way to sort things out.”
“And then the moment arrived.”
“And then the moment arrived,” Roberto repeated. “We’d organized a shipment by sea. A ship literally filled with cocaine. Tons of it. In the previous months, with my work, and Phil’s, and wiretaps in various countries—especially in Italy—we’d gathered enough evidence to put hundreds of people in prison. My task was over and I was supposed to go back to Italy. Obviously what all those people thought, starting with José—Estela’s father—was that I was going to Italy to supervise the final stages of the shipment. Which was true, of course, but not in the way they understood. I’d told them that once the operation was over, I’d be back in Colombia within a few weeks. The real reason I had to go back to Italy was that when the shipment arrived at its destination, there’d be arrests and confiscations all around the world. The last place I ought to be, at that point, was Bogotá.”
“Did this … José know about you and his daughter?”
“I think so, even though nothing was ever said openly. In any case we didn’t hide it. I don’t think José knew quite how to react to the matter. He liked me and trusted me. On the other hand he knew I was a drug trafficker like him and he wasn’t happy that his daughter was with somebody who did the same work as him. Typical of criminals trying to turn themselves into legitimate businessmen. Anyway, he didn’t do anything to stand in our way, she … we enjoyed complete freedom. It was the happiest and craziest time of my life.”
Roberto took a series of deep breaths.
“It was just a few days before I was due to leave that Estela told me she was expecting a baby. She wanted to keep it. I was in a trance. I said yes, I wanted it too. She hugged me tight, and she was so happy—she was crazy with happiness because of the baby—that I felt my heart breaking. That’s not just an image: as she held me tight I really felt a physical pain in the middle of my chest. So strong that I thought I was going to have a heart attack. That night I didn’t sleep at all. I seemed to be suffocated by anxiety, though actually I seemed isn’t the right expression. I was suffocated by anxiety. And along with anxiety there was panic.”
Roberto rocked back and forth on his chair, apparently unable to control himself. He picked up the pack of cigarettes, took one out, and lighted it. The doctor asked for one for himself too.
“The days that passed between the news of the pregnancy and my departure were a nightmare. When my mother died a few years ago, I felt enormously sad. When my father was arrested and then died it was terrible. But there’s nothing I can compare to what I experienced then. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I had to be careful not to start crying in public. Sometimes I caught myself repeating a gesture or a movement obsessively—I don’t know, walking around and around an armchair or constantly shifting an object on a table—like animals at the zoo that go crazy in cages. And you know what the worst thing of all was?”
“What?”
“Talking to Phil, the DEA agent. He was pleased that everything was coming to an end and we could get out of there. I was desperate and had to pretend to be as pleased and relieved as he was. With Estela on the other hand, I had to pretend to be happy about the future that was waiting for us, the fact that we’d be getting married, and we were going to have a baby, and that we’d give it an Italian name because she liked Italian and we’d live in Italy, which was the most beautiful country in the world …”
The doctor put out his cigarette, crushing it in the ashtray with more force than necessary.
“Was there a moment when you thought of telling her how things were?”
“Yes. I thought of telling her the truth and asking her to run away with me, but it was a completely mad idea. How could she come with me when I was sending her father to prison, maybe for the rest of his life? Then I thought of blowing the operation, quitting the Carabinieri and everything else, and staying with Estela in Colombia. I thought about that seriously—or rather I like to think I thought about it seriously—but I didn’t have enough courage to do something like that. So when the day came for me to leave, I went to say good-bye to José, hugged him, and told him I’d see him in a month. Then I went to see Estela and as she kissed me she told me she’d miss me terribly, that she’d count the minutes until I got back, and that meeting me had been the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to her. I told her it had been the same for me, and I was telling the truth.”
Roberto had spoken with his head down, his eyes fixed on the wooden surface of the desk. Having reached this point, he looked up and his eyes met the doctor’s.
“I left and never saw her again.”
It was like a sudden silence after a deafening noise.
Roberto took one hand in the other, swayed forward for a few seconds, and then remained motionless, staring into the air. The pain slowed. And of course, it was pain, but less unbearable than this thing that had remained closed up for so long. It lasted a while.
“Over the Rainbow. That was the code name.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Over the Rainbow was the code name for the operation.”
“Like the song.”
“Like the song, yes.”
The operation had reached its climax, with arrests all over the world, and confiscations of companies, money, drugs, cars. It was one of the most important operations in the history of the war on drugs.
Obviously, Estela’s father was among those arrested.
Roberto’s colleagues couldn’t understand why he took no interest in the arrests and the start of legal proceedings. He seemed apathetic, even after three weeks’ leave and the news that he had been put forward for a solemn commendation. He started working again but no longer seemed the same person, either to his colleagues or his superiors. His superiors realized almost immediately that now was not the time to give him any difficult new assignments. And after a few months everyone realized that now was not the time to give him any assignments at all. Sometimes people caught him talking to himself in the office. Others met him, still by himself, dressed in rumpled clothes—he had always been so careful about his appearance—his eyes red and watery with alcohol, his beard long, his back stooped, a cigarette always hanging from the corner of his mouth. And then that young officer found him in the office, with the barrel of his gun in his mouth and the empty expression of someone who was already on the other side.
They had asked him to hand over his gun and had given him leave f
or health reasons. A neutral expression meaning that he had gone mad, that he was unfit for duty, a danger to himself and others.
“Maybe ten months had passed when I found the courage to call a colleague in the Colombian national police. Someone I’d become almost friends with. I thought of beating about the bush and letting the question come out as if it was just idle curiosity. But then I realized I had no desire to play games. Let him think whatever he wanted. I asked him for information about Estela. I asked him if her father was still inside, if she’d been dragged into the investigation in any way, and if she was still living in Bogotá. I asked him to let me know everything he could.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t make any comment, didn’t even ask me why I wanted the information. All he said was that he’d need two or three days. He was as good as his word. On the third day he called me and told me what he’d managed to find out: Estela was still living in Bogotá, in her father’s house, and had been left out of the investigation. She went regularly to see her father in prison. Before telling me the last piece of information, he hesitated for a few seconds, and at that moment I was absolutely certain he knew everything about me and her.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Something he’d gotten from one of his informants. He told me that a couple of months after the arrests Estela had been admitted to a private clinic, where she’d had an abortion. In secret, because abortion is illegal in Colombia. The baby she aborted was my son.”
There Roberto’s story broke off, like a street that comes to a sudden dead end.
According to the wall clock, it was after two. The doctor stood up to open the window and let the smoke dissipate. The air was mild and there weren’t many cars passing. The night air carried a vague, premature scent of lime trees.
“It’s time for bed,” the doctor said, going back toward the desk but without sitting down. Roberto stood up, and it seemed to him as if the muscles of his legs had lost all their elasticity.
“What … What happens now?”
The Silence of the Wave Page 15