We drank more grappa, straight from a half-empty bottle without a label which Francesco fetched from the bedroom. He was talking faster than usual and, if possible, listening even less. In fact he wasn’t listening at all. His eyes were wide open, staring into the distance. He took out an old vinyl disc and put it on the turntable of his expensive stereo unit. I recognised it from the first bars. Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones.
I was pretty far gone even before he went into the bedroom a second time and came back out with a white plastic packet.
I’d been pretty far gone for quite a while now.
‘I kept some of the stuff from Spain. In case we needed it.’
I watched him with a stupid smile on my face as he tipped four straight lines of white powder, of identical length, onto the shiny table.
I felt a rush of fear and desire. For a moment, I lost any sense of the things around me – shapes, sounds, the concreteness of objects – and the thought crossed my mind that Francesco was gay, and that he had chosen tonight to come out. A couple of lines of coke, and then he would fuck me in the ass. For that brief moment, it seemed almost normal, or anyhow, inevitable and conclusive. A liberation, in a way.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the thought vanished and my senses started working again. I could hear the music playing and the scene in front of me came back into focus.
With one hand Francesco was rolling a fifty-thousand-lire note into a thin, straw-like tube. A simple, graceful gesture, like part of a magic trick.
He held out the tube and I took it without saying anything, but then I sat there, motionless, not knowing what to do. He made a quick gesture with his hand, as if to say, ‘Go on, what are you waiting for?’ But I didn’t move. He took the rolled banknote from my hand, pressed his left nostril, put the straw to his right nostril, leaned down over the table and quickly sucked up one of the lines. He shook his head, pursing his lips and half closing his eyes. Then he immediately repeated the sequence on the other side, and handed the tube back to me.
For the umpteenth time, I imitated him. I did what he said. I did what he did. I sniffed hard, first on one side then on the other, and as I did it I remembered the times when I had a cold as a child and Mum would put Rinazin in my nose before I went to bed. ‘Breathe in,’ she would say and I would do it and immediately taste the salty, medicinal taste of the drops in my throat. The scene formed in my mind, in my senses, with remarkable vividness.
Then it disappeared in a puff of smoke, like something in a cartoon. I was alone again, with a slight tingling, a slight numbness, in my nose, wondering if these were the famous, amazing effects of cocaine. Francesco was sitting there, calm and composed, with his eyes half closed and his arms outstretched, his hands on the table with the palms up.
I don’t know how long it was – minutes? seconds? – that I sat with my head propped on the palm of my hand. As if meditating, though I wasn’t thinking of anything. Anything at all, except that cocaine wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Then, all at once, I felt an obscenely thrilling sensation spreading through every fibre in my body, just as the first soft, down and dirty bars of Sweet Virginia started up. I had a very slight but inexorable tingling in my eyes. As if there were thousands of tiny pinpricks on my pupils. As if I was experiencing a transformation, like a superhero in the comics.
It struck me that if the walls hadn’t been there, I’d have been able to see for miles and miles.
I’m not sure when exactly Francesco started talking about assaulting a girl. I’m sure he did it quite naturally. Or at last, what was natural for him. He snorted a few more lines, turned the record over, lit a cigarette, drank some more grappa – and so did I – and talked about assaulting a girl. Together. The two of us.
‘Doing her here isn’t so much fun, when you get down to it. It’s always the same ritual. You tell jokes, you make hints, just to get closer to what you both want. And she follows you, in a kind of dance, to get to what she wants, like a bitch on heat.’
The phrase hit me in the stomach, and I leaned forward, as if to vomit. But I didn’t vomit and Francesco carried on talking. His eyes only apparently on me, but in reality somewhere else. In some nightmare country.
He carried on talking, almost without pause. He told me how exciting it could be to take a woman by force. A way of getting back to primitive roots. The rape of the Sabines. What they really wanted, deep down. They only realised it at the ultimate moment of pain and annihilation at the hands of the predatory male. Predatory males. Because the deepest form of friendship between men was taking a woman together by force. Having her together, like a ritual sacrifice.
The harmonica of Turd on the Run was tearing the air. The objects in that anonymous room were part of his madness. His madness, but also mine: my skin was sensitive, the smallest hairs on my body seemed to vibrate, all my senses were hyperactive, I was feeling something new and overwhelming. The sense that I was no longer bound by any rules. It was horrible, and it was beautiful. He knew that.
He told me he had been watching a girl, studying her movements. She was a student from out of town, she lived in the Carrassi neighbourhood, and worked in a pub to pay for her rent and studies in Bari. She went home from work every night, on her own, about one o’clock.
Very soon.
Francesco’s mouth was moving, but the sound of his words was out of sync. And the voice was coming not from him, but from somewhere else, some indefinable point in the room.
We went out without switching off the record player. Jagger’s spectral voice sounded from another world, singing I just want to see his face. Percussion, a distant chorus, fog.
I was going to meet my destiny. Once and for all.
8
THEY HAD HAD no difficulty identifying him, even though he’d grown a beard.
He was almost always at home during the day. He went out late in the afternoon, or in the evening, or sometimes not until night. He usually came back very late, often just before dawn.
They started to tail him immediately.
Sometimes he’d go for long, aimless walks around town.
At other times he would take his car – that strange, unreal old DS – and drive around for hours on his own, both inside and outside the city.
Sometimes he would park by the sea and stay there. They could see the glow of his cigarette in the darkness. Sometimes he’d disappear for a while. Maybe he slept, Chiti thought one night.
And sometimes they lost him – maybe he’d spotted them – and they’d give up, hoping tonight wasn’t the night.
It went on like this for two weeks. Chiti – the others, too, probably – couldn’t help thinking, over and over: Was it really him? Or were they wasting their time tailing someone who was clearly a bit unhinged but basically innocent? What if one evening, or one night, while they were following this man all over the city and the province, the call came in that there had been another assault?
Once, he went back to his mother’s apartment, stayed there for several hours, then came out at night and again wandered the city like a werewolf.
It can’t not be him, Chiti would repeat to himself. He fits, he fits perfectly. We just have to be patient and catch him as soon as he tries something.
Sometimes, Chiti thought he would like to get to know him. Go to his place and invite him out for a beer, a smoke and a chat.
He would think all these things as he sat in the car, surrounded by the smells of men, leather jackets, cigarette smoke, gun oil, pizzas and rolls and cans of beer, coffee thermoses.
Sitting in silence through the night with these hunting companions of his – sometimes he couldn’t even remember their names.
Could they ever imagine the things that crossed his mind?
9
HE AND PELLEGRINI were on duty tonight. As usual, they saw him leave just after midnight.
They were about to set off after him when they realised he wasn’t alone.
‘There ar
e two of them,’ Pellegrini said.
Chiti did not reply. This was the first time he’d had someone with him since they had started following him. He didn’t like it, and at the same time it gave him a rush of excitement. He wouldn’t have been able to put it into words, but there was something about them, something about the way the two men were moving, that gave him the impression they were going to do something.
None of the girls had ever talked about two attackers. But was there anything that ruled out the possibility?
As they let the two men walk some distance before getting out of the car and starting to tail them – not so easy at night, when the streets are deserted and there are no passers-by to mingle with – Chiti went over the girls’ statements in his mind, trying to see if any of them had said anything compatible with the idea that there were two attackers. He and his men had always taken it for granted that there was just one attacker. When you think of serial crimes, you always think of a lone criminal. Maybe they’d been over-influenced by this stereotype. But what had the girls said? As he got out of the car, he wished he had all their statements to hand, so that he could check. They had all said they were struck from behind. This obviously did not rule out the possibility that there was more than one attacker.
They had all said they were dragged bodily into the entrance of a nearby building. Even that didn’t contradict the possibility that there were two men acting together. In fact, when he thought about it, the theory of two attackers made this part of the act more plausible.
He had a shooting pain between his temple, forehead and eye. He tried again to gather his thoughts. What had the girls said about the actual assaults? Was there anything that would lead them to rule out categorically the idea that there were two attackers? He didn’t think so, but his head was hurting more and more, and on the screen in his brain the face in the drawing grew ever larger.
The faces in the drawing.
Pellegrini’s voice broke in on him with the impact of a stone smashing a window pane, or a mirror. Even though he was speaking in a low voice.
‘We have to get going, lieutenant. They’re already three blocks away. If we keep waiting there’s a risk we’ll lose them.’
Chiti jumped, like someone who is shaken just as he is about to fall asleep. He started moving without saying anything, his eyes on the two figures, who were already far away. Too far away, maybe.
‘I’ll follow them. You get another couple of cars along here as soon as possible. Our own cars, not patrol cars. Give the officers exact descriptions of the two men, and tell them to scour the area. If they spot the men they have to just keep watching them. They mustn’t stop them and they mustn’t be seen. And they must call us straight away. When you’ve finished join me.’
Without waiting for a reply, he set off, his head throbbing. Just then, the two men turned a corner, two hundred metres ahead of him. He started walking faster. He could hear Pellegrini talking over the radio, but he couldn’t make out the words. Then he actually broke into a run. A few metres from the corner, he slowed down again and slowly crossed the road, as if minding his own business. He looked to his right, where the two men had turned.
The street was deserted, apart from the cars parked up on the pavements.
10
THE GIRL WAS walking quickly, and we had to hurry to keep up with her. I soon started to feel breathless. I think the effects of the cocaine and the alcohol were staring to wear off. There was a tightness in my chest, and I was finding it hard to breathe. My vision was blurred.
Francesco said the girl was about to turn into the Via Trevisani.
Just after the corner, she would pass the entrance of a disused, unsafe building. We had to stop her in front of that entrance and drag her inside. He would grab her from behind. I just had to follow him.
As the girl approached the corner, we started walking faster.
He started walking faster, and I followed.
A sentence kept bouncing around my head: ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?’ And as it bounced – bounced, like an actual physical object – between the walls of my skull, I felt a sense of inevitability. This was my destiny. Everything was about to go to hell, once and for all, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
While that sentence was still bouncing around my head, Francesco put on a last burst of speed and caught up with the girl just as she came level with the entrance.
He punched her on the head, from behind. Accurately and hard. The girl didn’t make a sound. Her knees bent, and she started falling. Francesco caught her before she hit the ground, and put a hand over her mouth and his other arm round her chest. He dragged her inside the entrance, saying something to her in a terrifying, sibilant voice. As if in a nightmare, I followed him.
Inside the entrance hall, there were wooden beams from wall to wall. The building was unsafe. I’d even glimpsed a sign as we went in, clearly a warning sign.
He dragged her to the other side of the hall. The place was dark and stank of cats. The girl was groaning.
‘If you say a word I’ll beat you to death.’ Then he let go of her head and mouth. He gave her two very hard slaps, and kneed her in the side. Still from behind.
‘Kneel, bitch. And keep your eyes down. If you try and look at us, I’ll kill you.’ Francesco’s voice was unrecognisable, and at the same time familiar.
‘That’s enough now, Francesco,’ I heard myself saying. ‘Let her be.’ The words had emerged of their own volition.
For a moment, everything stopped dead. Then Francesco hit the girl a few more times, in the sides, rapidly. But less accurately and less calmly than before.
He turned and came towards me. I realised I had spoken his name, and the girl had heard. She must have heard.
He punched me in the eye. It felt as if he’d pushed the eyeball through the socket into my head, and inside that empty socket there were concentric circles that grew wider and wider until they filled the whole world. There was a deafening noise inside my head. He kicked me in the groin. I bent double and he kneed me in the face. I felt my cheek tearing, over the molars. I had the salty taste of blood in my mouth. Then I vomited, a gush of liquid vomit.
I think I blacked out for a few seconds.
The rest is fragments. A film shot by a madman with an old Super-8 cine camera.
Francesco is back with the girl. He’s saying something to her. Another man staggers towards them. This other man is me, seen in a high-angle shot. From some vague point in the ceiling, amid the fetid wooden beams and rotten plaster. The two men cling to each other and there’s an acrid smell. Dreamlike punches, my hands looking for his throat, his hands looking for mine, the girl’s body below us as we fight. There’s no longer anything human about what’s happening. A bite, his flesh tearing. A scream. Like an animal’s.
Then other people yelling. Francesco pulls himself away from me and tries to escape. A flashing blue light. The hall is suddenly full of people.
And then I’m on the ground, with a knee on my back and some cold iron thing aimed at a point between my jaw and my ear. Someone twists one arm behind my back, then the other, and I hear the click of metal. They drag me out, bundle me in a car, there’s a noise of wheels and brakes and gears, and someone steps on the accelerator.
And we’re away.
11
THE CARABINIERI STARTED beating me in the car, on the way to the barracks. I was in the back seat, with my hands cuffed behind my back, sitting between two guys who stank of cigarette smoke and sweat. The car was speeding through the city, not even slowing down at junctions, and the two men were punching me and elbowing me in the head and stomach. Calmly and methodically. This was just for starters, they said. When we got to the barracks, they’d really tear me apart. I didn’t say anything. I took the blows in silence, apart from a few groans. It was strange. I could hear the sound of the blows. Dull and toneless for the blows to my stomach. A kind of amplified knocking sound when their knuckles and e
lbows hit my head.
I didn’t say anything because I was convinced they wouldn’t believe me. I was afraid. Incredibly afraid.
When we got to the barracks they kept their word. They took me to a room with nothing in it but a desk and a few chairs. There were bars on the window and, for some reason, a mirror on the wall. They made me sit on an old chair on castors, still with my hands cuffed behind my bank.
And they tore me apart, as they’d promised.
They beat me with their hands, with their feet, with the yellow pages folded in half, on my ear, and with one of those white and red sticks they use to direct traffic.
Every now and again, some would go out and others would come in. Thinking back on it, I have a feeling they were taking regular turns. Most of them were in plain clothes, though there were a few in uniform. One of the ones in uniform hit me in the face with his bandolier and cut me with the metal part.
They said it was in my own best interests to confess everything. They meant all the assaults, on all the girls. It was in my own best interests because if I didn’t talk they would beat me to death and then write that I’d resisted arrest. One of them said he’d stick a funnel in my mouth and pour a demijohn of salt water down it. He was sure I’d feel like talking then.
I burst into tears, and someone hit me very hard on the side of my head.
‘You piece of shit,’ I heard through the fog of tears, blood and fear. Then I fainted.
I don’t remember much about what happened after I came to. They stopped roughing me up, I think, or maybe they just slapped me around a little bit more. One of those who’d been with me in the car told me the other prisoners would deal with me in jail. Sex attackers aren’t very popular in a place like that. At that moment I remembered my parents and my sister, and wondered how they would feel about me being in prison. It made me infinitely sad.
The Past is a Foreign Country Page 19