I think the carabinieri were about to make my arrest formal: take a statement and do all the necessary paperwork. All the time they’d been beating me up, I’d kept repeating that I didn’t know anything about the other assaults. They hadn’t even asked me about what had happened tonight. It didn’t matter. They’d caught me in the act. They didn’t need a confession.
Then the door opened, and I assumed another person was coming in to hit me. Instead, it was someone wearing a jacket and tie, who nodded to the two men who were still there. They went out and this man remained.
He was young, not much more than a boy, with light-coloured eyes. He had a Northern accent, and was quite ordinary-looking, but clean. His voice was gentle.
The first thing he did was remove my handcuffs, and I realised my shoulders were hurting, near the joint.
‘Would you like a cigarette?’ he said, holding out a packet of Merits. I stared at him for a moment, not sure if he was serious. Then I nodded. But I couldn’t take the cigarette. My hands were shaking too much. So he took back the packet, pulled one out and handed it to me. He lit it for me and let me take three or four drags before he spoke again.
‘The girl is doing well. They treated her in casualty. She’s here now and we’ve had a chance to question her about what happened.’
He paused and looked at me, but I didn’t say anything. So he carried on.
‘She’s in the next room. She just saw you.’ He made a movement with his head and eyes towards the mirror.
I turned my head to look, then turned back to him. I didn’t understand.
‘Whoever’s in the next room can see the people in here, without being seen.’
Just like the movies. The words appeared to me as if written in my head. That was happening more and more often.
‘The girl says you didn’t take part in the assault. She says you defended her.’
I moved my face a little closer to his, as if to see him better and to make sure I’d understood what he’d said. I could feel my chin trembling uncontrollably, but I didn’t cry.
Thinking about it now, it seems strange, but at the time, from the moment they’d grabbed me in the entrance hall until that boy with the jacket and tie had entered the room, I’d never for a second imagined I would get out of this. I’d never for a second imagined that the girl would clear me.
It’s only now, I think, that I can explain it to myself. At the time it was impossible. My sense of myself as part of these events had stopped when Francesco had suggested we assault a girl together. When he had waxed lyrical about ancestral violence and all the rest of it. The shame I felt because, for the umpteenth time, I hadn’t been able to say no to him had turned me to stone inside. My guilt seemed enormous, and visible to everyone. Especially to the girl.
The fact that I had fought to defend her, out of a mixture of fear, shame and a desire for self-destruction, didn’t count. I was holding fast to my guilt. My guilt for everything. That was why I hadn’t even tried to say anything to the carabinieri who were roughing me up. In my own mind, I was as guilty as if I had really assaulted her.
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
I half closed my eyes, and shrugged my shoulders feebly, childishly. I was starting to feel the pain from all the blows I’d taken, and I was dead tired.
He told me he was sorry for what had happened and asked me if I wanted someone to take me to casualty. I said no, and he didn’t insist. In fact he seemed relieved. There wouldn’t have to be a report, and no one would have to explain to the doctors, or a magistrate, how and when I had received those injuries.
‘Do you feel up to making a statement? In the meantime, if you like, we can inform your family.’
I told him not to worry about my family. And yes, I did feel up to making a statement. Could I have another cigarette? Of course I could. In fact, before I made my statement, why didn’t we have a cup of coffee together? Like old friends.
Soon after, a thermos arrived with two plastic cups, a packet of cigarettes just for me, and even an ice pack. The situation became almost surreal. We all had coffee together. Me, two of the men who up until a little while earlier had been beating me up – and who were now being very friendly to me – and this guy with the jacket and tie whom they called lieutenant. It was an absurd situation, but at the time it seemed quite normal.
Holding the ice pack against my left cheekbone, I told them what had happened. Part of what I said was true, part of it wasn’t. I said we’d had a few beers too many and were drunk when we went out. As I said this, I was thinking that if they’d done an analysis on me they’d have found out I had more than just beer circulating in my veins, and I was pleased I’d refused the offer to go to casualty. We had seen that girl, and noticed she was on her own, and Francesco had suggested we play a practical joke on her: make her believe we were going to rape her and then, after giving her a fright, say it was all a joke and run away. We’d drunk a few beers too many, I said again, and that was why I had gone along with it, like an idiot, until I’d realised it was all getting out of hand.
They asked me about my friendship with Francesco, and if I knew anything about the other assaults. We were acquaintances rather than friends, I said. We saw each other from time to time. Sometimes we played poker together.
I don’t know why I mentioned poker – I didn’t have to – but it suddenly occurred to me as I was giving my statement that they’d be questioning him, too, if they hadn’t already done so. What if he decided to tell them everything? For a few moments, I felt a blind, uncontrollable terror.
Did I know anything about the other assaults?
No, I didn’t know anything. If they wanted my opinion – I was lying, hoping he would read my statement, would see I’d tried to help him, and wouldn’t accuse me of anything – I thought it was highly unlikely he had been responsible for those assaults. They asked me what I was basing that opinion on, and I said that as far as I knew, Francesco was a normal person.
Those were the very words I used: a normal person. Not the kind to commit that kind of act.
They told me gently – they were being gentle with me now – that I should leave personal considerations aside. They left what I’d said out of the statement.
They went back to asking me about the night’s events. Did I remember the exact words Francesco had used as he was beating the girl? I hesitated. No, I was sorry but I didn’t remember. It was all confused in my mind.
It wasn’t true. I remembered perfectly well what he had said to her. And not just what he’d said: I also remembered the sound of his voice.
The lieutenant asked me to read over my statement. I picked up the sheet of paper, looked at the words in front of my eyes – lines, segments, curves, marks – and couldn’t make head or tail of them. But in the end, I nodded as if I’d actually read it and signed with a ball point pen.
‘I’ll have someone see you home,’ he said. Then, after a brief hesitation, ‘I’m sorry for what happened.’ He’d already said it once before, and he seemed sincere.
I made a vague gesture with my hand, as if to say: there’s no need, these things happen. A pathetic gesture, totally out of place.
Soon afterwards, I was back in the same car they’d bundled me into, handcuffed, a few hours earlier. We drove through the deserted streets, as the darkness of night started to lose its grim but distinct colours. I was in the back seat again, but on my own this time. A young man my age was driving, and in the seat next to him was the big man who had taken down my statement. The other man addressed him as marshal. They talked among themselves about banal, everyday things.
We got to my building in a few minutes. The car stopped, and the marshal told me I could go. I gripped the door and pulled myself out with difficulty, my body aching from the blows I’d received. As I was about to walk away, he leaned out of the window.
‘No hard feelings, son.’ He held out his hand.
For a moment, everything was suspended. He sat there with
his hand outstretched, an almost friendly smile on his fat face, and I stood between the pavement and the road, with the ice pack, the ice almost completely melted by now, against my swollen cheek.
I nodded and took his hand. It was felt flabby, and I immediately let go of it as if it were some slimy animal, or one of those sticky plastic things, made to look like vomit, that children use to play practical jokes.
Then I turned and went to the door, and they were swallowed up by the first light – liquid and ghostly – of that November morning.
12
CHITI WAS SITTING in the usual armchair. The armchair in which he sat out his sleepless nights and his headaches. The armchair in which he awoke from dreams, or nightmares, to confront the flaccid weight of another day about to begin. The armchair in which madness lay in wait for him, snarling and red-eyed like the Hound of the Baskervilles, which he had seen many years ago in a film, when he was a child.
This morning was different.
There was a strange, unfamiliar feeling of lightness as the notes of the sixth Polonaise – the Eroica – flowed like liquid through the silent, deserted apartment. Not at low volume, this time. The rooms, as austere as those terrifying empty rooms of his childhood, were flooded with the music and seemed to come to life. As if benign ghosts had woken and had got up to discover what was going on.
The night was coming to an end. It was like a series of scattered photos passing in front of his eyes, like something that had happened to other people. Something remote, alien.
From his pocket he took the dirty, crumpled drawing he had kept all these months. The phantom he had been hunting all these months.
He looked at it without recognising it. And the strange thing was that it had no effect on him. None at all. He couldn’t see anything in it any more. Just lines that came together, moved apart, grew thicker, crossed, and disappeared. The drawing was lifeless now, the face blank, unfamiliar.
He tore the paper, once, twice, three times, four times, until the wad of torn pieces was so small and thick that he couldn’t tear it any more.
Then he went and threw the pieces in the litter bin.
As he sat back down in the armchair, he thought for a moment about that young man. He felt sorry for him. He had really taken a beating, even though he had nothing to do with the crimes. Far from it. Then even this thought faded, as remote and alien as the rest of it.
He was not tired, and did not have a headache. He felt better, he thought, than he had ever felt in his life, apart perhaps from his earliest childhood, whose images, sounds, textures and smells are formed in equal parts from the material of memory and the material of fantasies and dreams.
Then he had a new thought, a painful, nagging, beautiful thought that made him feel dizzy.
He was free. Free to do many things. Free to leave. If he wanted.
Or stay. If he wanted.
Free.
Outside, opposite the barracks, day was breaking over the sea.
13
FRANCESCO DIDN’T ACCUSE me. He didn’t say anything about me. He didn’t say anything at all. He availed himself, as they say, of the right not to answer any questions.
Four months after that night, he stood trial for all eight assaults.
None of the victims, though, were able to identify him. One said that it could have been him and another that she seemed to recognise his voice.
The presiding judge asked her if she could be certain and she said no, she couldn’t. ‘It seems like his voice,’ she repeated, wringing her hands, trying to drive away the ghosts.
The others couldn’t really say anything at all about their assailant: his voice, his face, his general appearance.
Whoever the man was, he had always made very sure none of them saw his face.
In other words, the charges, except in the case of the last assault, were based almost entirely on the similarities in the MOs.
In an attempt to compensate for the lack of concrete evidence, the prosecutor had asked a criminologist and a psychiatrist for an expert report. Both had been asked to consider two things. The first was whether the defendant was capable of understanding and free will. The second was whether the defendant’s psychological type was compatible with committing serial sexual assaults.
The two professors concluded their long report like this: The defendant has a markedly above-average IQ (135-140) with very high scores in the field of spatial intelligence. He demonstrates manic-depressive tendencies, antisocial personality disorder with features of narcissistic disorder, a propensity towards the systematic use of lies and deceit, and a strong tendency towards manipulation in relationships. According to DSM III (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) individuals with antisocial personality disorder find it hard to conform to the rules of society as laid down in law. They may repeatedly commit acts for which they could be arrested and systematically disregard the desires, rights and feelings of other people. They are frequently manipulative for the purpose of profit or personal pleasure. They may repeatedly lie, use false identities, simulate, swindle, or cheat at cards. Antisocal disorder, also known as sociopathy or psychopathy, does not usually imply the abolition of, or even any reduction in, the capacity to understand and exercise free will. In this particular case, the defendant, despite suffering from personality disorder, is certainly capable of understanding and exercising free will.
The psychological portrait thus far outlined is characteristic of the perpetrators of serial crimes involving the use of violence and deception in the spheres of property and sexuality. In extreme cases, this may lead to the committing of serial homicides.
In passing sentence, the judges rejected this conclusion as insufficient. They were right, of course. It’s one thing to say that someone corresponds to the psychological type of the serial sex attacker, and quite another to say that he has committed a specific series of assaults, if there is no evidence and the accusation is based entirely on conjecture. Reasonable conjecture, plausible conjecture, but still conjecture, and you don’t get far in court with conjecture even if it’s very reasonable.
So Francesco was found guilty only of the attempted assault on A.C.
I had to testify, of course. The night before my appearance in court I couldn’t sleep, and when the usher called me I felt a wave of nausea.
I entered the courtroom and walked from the door to the witness stand with my eyes down. I answered everyone’s questions – the prosecutor’s, the defence counsel’s, the judges’ – staring constantly at a point in front of me on the grey wall. I spoke mechanically, with my back to the dock where Francesco was confined. I managed not to look his way, not even for a moment.
Leaving the courthouse, I vomited in a flower bed, in front of the statue of justice. Then I staggered quickly away. A few people looked at me for a moment, without much interest.
Francesco was sentenced to four years in prison, and the sentence was confirmed on appeal. I don’t know how long he was inside. I don’t know when he got out, or where he went. I don’t think he stayed in Bari, but I only say that because I never saw him again.
I never heard anything about him again.
For months on end, I drifted. I remember hardly anything of that time. Apart from the nausea and the waking in panic early in the morning while it was still dark.
Then, for no particular reason, I started studying again. Like an automaton. Exactly two years after that night, I graduated. Only my parents, my sister and an aunt attended my graduation. There was no party. I didn’t have any friends left to invite.
Later I continued to study, like an automaton. I took the exam to become a magistrate and passed.
I’m a prosecutor now. I play my part in sending criminals to prison. For crimes like extortion, gambling, fraud, drug smuggling.
Sometimes I feel ashamed about that.
Sometimes I feel sure that something – or someone – is going to emerge from the past and suck me back in. To make me pay what I owe.
<
br /> Sometimes I have a dream. It’s always the same.
I’m on that beach, in Spain. It’s dawn, just as it was then, and like then there’s this acute feeling of a perfect moment, of overwhelming, invincible youth. I’m alone, looking at the sea, waiting. Then my friend Francesco arrives, though I can’t see his face. We go into the water together. By the time we’ve swum out to sea I realise he’s disappeared. Then suddenly I remember it’s my graduation day today. I won’t be able to attend, because I’m in Spain. The sky is full of dark clouds. The sun may be rising, but I can’t see it. So I stay in the water as the waves start to rise, feeling that everything is ending and I can’t do anything about it. Feeling an infinite nostalgia.
14
ANTONIA TELLS ME she’s a psychiatrist. She works in a centre that specialises in helping victims of violence.
Every person chases away his own ghosts the best way they can, I think. Some succeed better than others.
She tells me she’s thought of trying to find me from time to time. She never thanked me, she explains.
Not only for saving her from being assaulted that night.
But for giving her back her dignity.
I keep my head down. It isn’t true, I think. I want to tell her I was a coward. I am a coward. I’ve always been afraid. I’ll always be afraid.
Then I look her in the eyes and realise, with a shudder, that in some strange way she’s right.
So I say nothing. And she also falls silent. But she doesn’t go. I’d like to thank her, too, but I can’t.
So we just sit there in the bar. The silence hanging between us.
Outside, it’s cold.
Copyright
First published in 2007
The Past is a Foreign Country Page 20