The Past is a Foreign Country

by Gianrico Carofiglio

  I made a smug gesture with my hand, as if to say that he was telling me something obvious.

  No, he didn’t have to say it.

  8

  HE HAD BEEN having these dreams since he was a child. They were set in a vague past that may never have existed. In strange but comfortable places, filled with friendly presences. Warmth, anticipation, order, wishes, excitement, cozy and brightly-lit rooms, children playing, familiar voices in the distance, serenity, smells of food and cleanliness.

  A sense of nostalgia, melancholy but sweet.

  They were recurring dreams. There was nothing in them that had actually happened, no recognisable people, no places he knew. And yet – and this was the strange thing – he felt at home in these dreams.

  Whenever he had them, it was always a terrible wrench waking up from them.

  Very much like the time his mother died.

  He wasn’t yet nine. One morning, he had woken up and found the house full of people. His mother wasn’t there. The wife of one of his father’s – the general’s – officers had come for him and taken him to her house.

  ‘Where’s Mummy?’

  The woman had not replied immediately. First, she had looked at him for a long time with a mixture of embarrassment and sorrow. She was a big woman, good-natured and awkward.

  ‘Your mother isn’t well, sweetheart. She’s in hospital.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’ And as he said the words he felt the tears erupting, together with a sense of despair he’d never known until that moment.

  ‘She’s had an accident. She’s … not well at all.’ Then, not knowing what else to say, she hugged him. She felt soft and smelled just like their maid. A smell little Giorgio would never forget.

  His mother had not had an accident.

  The previous evening his father had gone out, as he often did. Official dinners, work, other things. His mother almost never went with him. She had put him to bed at the usual time – exactly half past nine – and had given him the usual kiss on the forehead.

  Then she had gone to the remotest point in that vast apartment – the lodgings of the commanding general, the biggest of all – and locked herself in the servants’ bathroom with a pillow and a small .22 calibre pistol which his father had given her as a present the year before.

  No one had heard the gunshot. It was muffled by the pillow and dispersed through the dark corridors of that gloomy, overlarge apartment.

  She had celebrated her thirtieth birthday that evening.

  She would be thirty forever.

  Lieutenant Giorgio Chiti often thought he would go mad, too. Just like his mother. She had suffered from nerves, his father had told him many years later, in that icy, distant tone of his, a tone devoid of compassion or regret, devoid of anything.

  Suffering from nerves meant mad.

  And he was a lot like his mother. The same features, the same complexion. There was something slightly feminine in his face, just as there was something slightly masculine in hers as it appeared on those few blurred photographs and in his ever more faded memories.

  He was afraid of going mad.

  There were even moments when he was sure he would go mad. Just like his mother. He would lose control over his thoughts and actions, just as she had done. Sometimes this idea – madness as an inescapable destiny – became an obsession, an obsession he found hard to bear.

  It was at such moments that he would start to draw.

  Drawing and painting – along with playing the piano – were the things his mother had done to fill the long, empty days, in those lodgings tucked away behind the barracks. Lodgings that were always too clean, with the same shiny floors, the same smell of wax, all of them silent, with no voices to warm them.

  Pitiless places.

  Giorgio took after his mother in this, too. Ever since he was a little boy, he’d had the ability to copy really difficult drawings, and to invent animals that were fantastic and yet incredibly realistic. Half cat and half dove, for example, or half dog and half swallow, or half dragon and half man. What he liked most of all, though, was drawing faces. He loved doing portraits from memory. He would see a face, imprint it on his mind and later, sometimes hours or even days later, reconstruct it on paper. That more than anything else – that ability to draw people’s faces from memory – had stayed with him as he grew up. They were always excellent likenesses, and yet subtly different, as if he had somehow grafted his own fears and anxieties onto other people’s faces.

  Faces. Mad faces. Unhappy faces. Frozen faces, distant and stand-offish like his father’s. Cruel faces.

  Remote faces, full of melancholy and regret, staring into the distance.

  9

  THE RESULTS OF their trawl through the records had been disappointing. There were about thirty men whose records were compatible with the details of the assaults they were investigating. Some were rapists, some Peeping Toms, some had molested women in parks. They had checked them all, one by one.

  Some were in prison at the time of the assaults, others had cast-iron alibis. Some were crippled or old, physically incapable of committing that kind of assault.

  They had ended up with three men who didn’t have alibis and whose appearance didn’t clash with the shreds of physical description provided by the victims.

  They had obtained warrants and had searched the men’s homes. They had no real idea what they were looking for. Just something, anything, that they could link to the case. Even if it was just a newspaper cutting about the assaults. It didn’t have to be a clue, just something to give the investigation the impetus it badly needed.

  They had found nothing, apart from piles of porn magazines and other obscene material.

  For a month, they had gone back again and again to the scenes of the assaults, looking for possible witnesses, anyone who had seen anything. Not necessarily the act itself, but a suspicious person hanging around earlier, for example, or someone who’d been past there again a little later, or on the following days.

  Chiti had read that people like that sometimes liked to go back to the scene of the crime. It gave them a feeling of power, of being in control, to return to the place where they had committed their assault and go over what had happened in their mind. So he and his men had spent hours and days, showing photographs and talking to shopkeepers, caretakers, security guards, tenants, postmen, beggars.

  Nothing.

  They were searching for a phantom. A bloody phantom. There came a time – it was a bright, sunny morning in June, almost two months after the last assault, which made it the longest lull since this whole business had started – when Chiti thought they should wind down their inquiries for the moment. Although he didn’t like admitting it to himself, Chiti hoped that everything would end like this, as it had begun. The same way he always hoped his night-time headaches would pass by themselves.

  Two days later, the sixth assault took place.

  Chiti had left his office and the barracks at dinner time. He told the sentry that he would be back about midnight, and in any case he could always be reached by pager. He had gone for a pizza, as usual, then walked around the city. Alone, as always, and aimlessly.

  He had got back about midnight, a quarter of an hour after the 112 call had come in. A couple on their way home from the cinema had seen the girl coming out of an old municipal apartment block, crying. They had called the carabinieri and immediately two patrol cars had arrived on the scene. One had taken the victim to casualty, the other had brought the couple to the barracks to take their statements.

  The girl was still in casualty when Chiti got back, but they’d almost finished with her and she’d be brought to the barracks very soon.

  The couple – a husband and wife, both retired schoolteachers – hadn’t been able to tell them anything remotely useful. They had been on their way home from the cinema when they had heard sobs coming from a doorway – they had passed it a few moments earlier, the wife said – had looked back and had seen the gir
l come out.

  Had they noticed anyone immediately before that, or immediately after? No, they hadn’t noticed anyone. Of course, there’d been cars passing, and they couldn’t rule out the possibility that while they were attending to the girl, someone might have passed on foot. In fact, someone must have passed, the wife said – she was clearly the boss – but they couldn’t say they had noticed him, or were able to provide any kind of description.

  And that was it.

  As they were signing their pointless statement, the girl arrived, accompanied by a man of about fifty who looked as if he didn’t quite know what was going on. Her father.

  She was short and round, neither pretty nor ugly. Nondescript, Chiti thought, as he asked her to sit down in front of the desk.

  God knows the criteria he uses to choose them, he thought while Pellegrini positioned the paper for the statement in the new electronic typewriter – he was the only person who knew how it worked.

  ‘How are you feeling, signorina?’ Chiti asked, realising as he did so what a stupid question it was.

  ‘A little better now.’

  ‘Do you feel up to telling us what happened, what you remember?’

  The girl lowered her head and said nothing. Chiti looked around for Marshal Martinelli and made a sign with his eyes in the direction of the girl’s father, who was sitting on a small sofa. Martinelli understood. He asked the man if he wouldn’t mind going with him into the next room. Just for a few minutes.

  ‘I imagine you felt uncomfortable telling us what happened in front of your father.’

  The girl nodded but still said nothing.

  ‘And I realise you may also be embarrassed to talk to all these men. We could find a female psychologist or social worker and have her sit in, if that’s any help.’ As he said this, he wondered where the hell he was going to find a psychologist or social worker at this hour. But the girl said, no, thanks, there was no need. As long as her father wasn’t there.

  ‘So would you like to tell us what happened? Take your time, and start from the beginning.’

  She had gone out with three girlfriends, as she often did. They didn’t have any boys with them. They had gone to a club in the centre of town for a drink and a chat and at about eleven thirty she and one of the girls had left. They had classes at the university the following day and they didn’t want to stay up late. They had walked part of the way together and then had said goodnight and gone their separate ways.

  No, she’d never had any trouble going home at night on her own. No, she hadn’t read anything in the newspapers or seen anything on TV about the other assaults.

  When it came to the assault itself, Caterina – that was her name – was obviously vaguer. It was about five minutes, maybe less, since she’d said goodnight to her friend. She was walking at a normal pace. She hadn’t noticed anything or anyone unusual. Suddenly, someone had hit her hard on the back of the head. It was like a punch, or a blow from a blunt instrument. When she’d come to, she was in the entrance hall of an old apartment block. He had made her kneel. There was a bad smell in the place, she remembered, a smell of rubbish, rotting food, cat’s pee. And she remembered the man’s voice. It was calm and metallic. He seemed perfectly in control of himself. He had told her to do things. He had told her to keep her eyes closed and her head down, and not even try to look him in the face. He had told her that if she disobeyed he would kill her with his bare hands, right there. But he said all this in the same calm voice, as if he was doing a job he was used to. And she had obeyed.

  Once he’d finished, he had punched her again. Very hard, in the face. Then he had told her not to make any noise, not to move and to count to three hundred. Then, and only then, she could get up and go. He told her that he wanted to hear her start counting aloud. She had obeyed, and had counted to three hundred, aloud, in that dark, fetid, deserted entrance hall.

  No, she couldn’t describe him. She had the impression he was tall, but she couldn’t be any more specific than that.

  And she hadn’t seen his face, not even in passing.

  Would she at least be able to recognise his voice if she heard it again?

  The voice, yes, the girl said. She would never, ever, forget it.

  When the girl had finished her statement, Chiti made her sign it, and told her to call them if she remembered anything more about the man, or if she needed anything at all. She nodded at everything Chiti said to her. Mechanically, like a slightly defective clockwork device.

  When she left the room, she moved in the same way.

  10

  FROM THAT AFTERNOON on, studying card tricks became my main occupation. My only occupation.

  I would wake up in the morning when my parents had already gone out. I would wash, dress, check that the law books I should have been studying – and which my parents thought I was still studying – were in full view on my desk, take out the cards, and practise for hours. In the afternoon I’d do the same, only then I had to be more careful because my mother was usually at home and I had no intention of talking to her about my academic commitments.

  A couple of times a week, I went to Francesco’s place for my lesson. He told me I had a lot of talent: nimble hands and a willingness to learn. Within a short time, I was able to do things I’d never even dreamed of.

  The three card trick in particular. I got so good, it sometimes occurred to me that I ought to go the gardens of the Piazza Umberto, sit down on a bench, and challenge some passing idiot to bet on where the queen of hearts was.

  I knew how to pretend to shuffle the pack – leaving it exactly the same as it was before I started – in at least three different ways. Once a hypothetical opponent stepped forward, I could then put the pack back exactly as it had been previously. I could do it with one hand, well enough to deceive any spectator – or player – who wasn’t paying attention.

  I could take the bottom card from the pack and deal it as naturally as if it had been at the top, and I had learned to place six cards of my own choosing on the top, just by shuffling in a particular way. Francesco could go up to twenty cards, but for a beginner I was doing extremely well.

  Obviously I wasn’t yet in a position to cheat at the gaming table. I didn’t yet have Francesco’s absolute self-control, that hypnotic ability of his to walk a tightrope with his eyes closed, unafraid to fall.

  He was almost the only person I went out with in the evenings now, though occasionally we’d have company, always chosen by him. I saw less and less of my old friends. I was bored with them. I couldn’t talk to them about the few things that interested me. The poker games, the money I was pocketing and spending with grim determination, my progress in the art of doing card tricks.

  In the meantime it was starting to get hot. Spring was nearly over, and summer, as they say, was knocking at the door. Many things were about to happen, in my life and in the outside world. One of them was meeting Maria.

  It happened one night when we played in a villa by the sea, near Trani.

  Francesco had been invited by the owner of the villa, an engineer who owned his own construction company and had a whole series of law suits pending against him. As usual, I couldn’t figure out how Francesco had come to meet him, or how he had managed to get himself invited. The man was about fifty. He could have been my father. Though I don’t suppose my father would have appreciated the comparison.

  When we arrived, we realised that there was a party going on. A lot of tables had been laid on a lawn as large as a tennis court.

  Inside, in a kind of reception room, a number of round green baize tables had been made ready for poker. There seemed to be quite a few people keen to play. But there were also a lot of people who were only there to drink, eat and listen to music. Or for other things, as I would realise by the end of the evening. The male guests were all noticeably older than us. On the other hand I saw a number of female guests our age, all accompanied by men who were getting on a bit – dirty old men, I thought.

  Francesc
o, as usual, seemed perfectly at ease. While waiting for the gambling to start, he moved among the groups of chattering people, butting into the conversations as if these were people he saw every evening.

  About eleven, the gamblers sat down to play. The initial stake was five million each – rules of the house. We’d never before started with such a huge amount.

  That night, everything seemed to be on a large scale. With a stake like that to start with, it struck me that anything could happen.

  I was already sitting when suddenly, without warning, I was overcome with panic. It seemed to me that I was in over my head: the game was too big for me, too mad, too uncontrollable. I felt the impulse to run away from the table, and from that house, and from all of it. While there was still time.

  The voices of the people around me merged into an indistinct hum, and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.

  Francesco realised that something was happening to me. I don’t know how he realised, but he did. He was sitting to my left, and he moved his hand under the table and put it on my leg, just above the knee. I didn’t have time to jump at the contact. He was already digging his fingers, hard, into the soft, sensitive area on the inside of my thigh.

  It hurt, and I had to force myself not to show any reaction. Just as I was about to put my hand under the table, he let go and looked at me with a smile. For a few moments I sat there, stunned, until I realised that the panic had passed.

  We played, and I won a lot of money. The most we’d ever won.

  It sometimes happens that for no particular reason – or for no reason you can figure out – you forget the details of an event. A psychoanalyst could probably explain that there’s an unconscious motivation for this selective memory. I don’t know. What I do know is that I can’t remember how much I won that evening. It was certainly more than thirty million lire, but that’s where my memories stop. I don’t know if it was thirty-two or thirty-five or forty or whatever. I simply don’t know.