Set Me Free

by Salvatore Striano

  With a nod of the head I indicate that he should come with me to el Tigre. He hesitates, but follows. So does Toc-toc, but I tell him to wait for me outside.

  ‘What’s up?’ don Juan asks, annoyed, as soon as the door closes. ‘Are you pulling out of the business?’

  I lay into him like a madman. He’s so surprised he drops all the mobile phones, but I know his surprise will only last a moment.

  ‘Don’t move a muscle and I won’t get out my knife,’ I say, even though I don’t have a knife. ‘If you behave yourself maybe I won’t even get angry. But you need to explain why you’re trying to screw me over.’

  ‘Me, screw you over?’ he sounds astonished. Genuinely. ‘Sasà, have you snorted more than what’s good for you? Were the phones I brought you no good?’

  ‘Oh, they were good. But why are you delivering these ones now instead of during my visiting time?’ I tighten my grip around his neck.

  ‘Well, because one of the other guards was asking some strange questions…I thought—’

  ‘Sure! And what kind of strange questions do you think they’re going to ask me when they see me picking up a bag of prohibited items? It’ll be strange questions followed by solitary confinement, perhaps with fast-track extradition thrown in for good measure! Is that what you want? What have I ever done to you? Hasn’t Monica given you this month’s money?’

  ‘Sasà, who did you think was going to see you? We were the only people in the corridor, apart from that idiot friend of yours.’ He’s getting worked up too now, and it seems genuine. Is it possible?

  ‘It was you, me, Toc-toc and two video cameras, Juan. What kind of a fool do you take me for?’

  He stares at me. I see the astonishment light up his eyes. Then realisation. And then, unexpectedly, amusement.

  Don Juan bursts out laughing, pressed up against the bathroom wall.

  ‘Sasà…let me go, come on,’ he says, panting. I’m so surprised I actually do let him go. What’s with the hysterics?

  When he’s had a chance to calm down, he says, ‘Do you really…video cameras…Sasà, those things aren’t recording!’

  ‘They’re not recording?’ Now I’m the one who sounds like an idiot.

  ‘The CCTV cameras in this place don’t actually record anything. They’re just there as a deterrent,’ he explains. ‘But I thought you knew that.’

  ‘How was I supposed to know that? Nobody knows that.’

  ‘Well then, don’t you tell anyone.’ He bends down to pick up the bag. ‘And take these off my hands, because if we stay in here any longer we really will be in trouble.’

  He shoves the gear towards me.

  ‘Look after yourself, Sasà, and try to calm down,’ he says as he leaves.

  I’m left standing in the middle of the bathroom holding the bag, until Toc-toc sticks his head in.

  ‘Sasà, all good? I saw the guard come out…’

  I stare at his big, placid face; he’s wearing the kind of worried look a mother has when her son hasn’t come home. And suddenly it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

  I start to laugh, right there in that shitty bathroom. ‘All good, Toc-toc.’

  How embarrassing. Video cameras that don’t record. Who’d have thought. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I really want to serve out my sentence here. I don’t want to go back to Italy.

  3

  ‘This world to me is like a lasting storm Whirring me from my friends.’

  Marina in Pericles

  Act IV, Scene I

  ‘Ask for an appointment.’

  Pierre has come up to me in the coffee queue in the common room. He’s my French friend, and he’s awaiting extradition, too. He’s been sentenced to twenty years.

  I don’t ask what he’s referring to. He’s already more or less told me. Pierre doesn’t want to go back to France to serve out his twenty years. He’s going to escape from hospital—three of his friends are going to turn up and make sure he’s handed over to them. He’s offered me the chance to escape with him.

  What else can I do? Three days ago I was called to the sentry box and told my extradition papers had come through. I’ve got forty days before I’m taken back to Italy. My run of luck will be over. In Italy I’ll have to stay in my cell the whole time with the guards breathing down my neck. In Spain, prison’s not costing me a cent—I’m actually making a little bit of money—but Italian guards are harder to corrupt than Spanish ones. And there aren’t as many jobs you can do, apart from dealing. No more business means no more money.

  But above all, no more intimacy. I won’t be able to make love to Monica anymore. I’ll barely get to speak to her on the phone.

  Nothing is going to happen in the next two weeks. They’ll let me have one more meeting with Monica, which was already scheduled. And then they’ll come to get me.

  I look at Pierre and nod. The first chance I get I put my name down for a hospital visit the same day as him. They take us there in groups.

  I’ll go to the hospital with him and I’ll escape.

  What else can I do? I’ve fought so hard, and I’ve lost.

  When they brought me the paperwork, months ago, I laid it out on the table in front of everybody. It was my arrest warrant, setting in motion the extradition process. I’d paid forty million lire to stop these documents coming, to have them get lost back in Italy for a few weeks. If the paperwork hadn’t arrived within ninety days of my arrest, they’d have had to release me. But it had arrived, brought specially by car from Italy. Someone had snitched, letting them know what I was up to. Someone who knew me well. A friend, in other words. Some friend.

  That was all I had to read, those papers. Everything was in there. Timelines, my rights. Maybe there would even be some way of not getting extradited.

  I appealed every last detail of the ruling all the way to the highest level. I became a regular at the judge’s office. It was kind of like a bet between us. I’ve never asked for freedom. I’ve only asked for my rights.

  ‘Can you reopen the case?’ I asked him. ‘These papers show that the way in which I was convicted was illegal.’

  ‘Are you aware that you were convicted not just once, but three times?’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I wasn’t present.’

  ‘You should have been present.’

  ‘I know.’ My Spanish lawyer had already told me off. If I hadn’t been on the run, if I’d turned up to my trial, I could have presented extenuating circumstances, defended myself. Instead they convicted me in absentia. ‘But I wasn’t there. Why can’t a citizen defend himself, explain his position, demand his rights?’

  ‘The Spanish legal system doesn’t allow for a trial to take place in the absence of the defendant, that’s true,’ the judge admitted. He’d understood. He knew what I was getting at. This case could make legal history.

  This was the first time a detainee had asked for his help in changing the law.

  ‘They can’t extradite you immediately,’ he concluded. ‘You can work your way through each of the legal stages, and that will take time.’

  It did take time. Reading through all the legal documentation became my speciality. I looked over other people’s as well. I got really good at spotting all the loopholes in an Italian extradition order. I helped out a number of inmates with life sentences, as well as people who were convicted in absentia like me.

  We had our last meeting.

  ‘The law has been passed,’ the judge said. The world fell down around my ears.

  According to the new law regulating the common European jurisdiction shared by Italy, France, Spain and Belgium, you can no longer question the validity of a sentence handed down in another country. You must simply return their criminals home. Italy has been on high alert since the Mafia assassinated Falcone and Borsellino, and in Spain there have been a number of ETA attacks. So they’ve decided that everybody must take back their own terrorists.

  But I’m not a terrorist.

  ‘I�
��m a European citizen and I want to serve my sentence here.’

  ‘It’s not possible.’ The judge was sorry. Our adventure was at an end.

  ‘But I’m happy here,’ I protested, but without any hope. ‘Back in Italy there’s the Camorra, the Mafia…I don’t want to go back to all that.’

  ‘But it’s the same in here. People get knifed and deal drugs… It’s not as if we don’t know about it.’

  ‘I want to defend what I’ve got.’

  It was futile. It’s all very well to be a European citizen, but some are more European than others. I’m an Italian European and I have to take my country’s justice.

  I’ve lost.

  So tomorrow, I’m out of here. I’ll go to the hospital with Pierre and then I’m gone. On the run again, with all that fear and uncertainty. But I’m not going back to Italy.

  In the yard a Neapolitan inmate approaches me. He was arrested in Spain and he hasn’t been inside for long. He hasn’t even brought me his paperwork to look at yet.

  ‘I know who got you arrested.’ He explains that his police files included transcriptions of phone taps in which an informer mentions my name. There’s a guy in it saying, ‘Last week I got Striano picked up.’

  He can tell me who the traitor is.

  I only think about it for a second.

  ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know,’ I say, picking up my pace.

  He comes after me.

  ‘But I have to tell you,’ he insists. ‘It’s someone close to you.’

  One of the Hotheads, for sure. My curiosity is making me hesitate. There were five or six of them who could have been informers or traitors. The cops picked me up on 11 January and I know I was grassed on around Christmas time. I’d even made sure the guys had a special Christmas, I gave everybody watches…I know when the police came to get me they were tailing Monica’s family. How did they know to do that?

  I realise that whoever it is, they’re close to Monica. The traitor is the same person who told the court that I was trying to arrange for my documents to get lost. And they could only have found that out from Monica.

  The Neapolitan opens his mouth to speak.

  But if he tells me who betrayed me, my only dream from now on will be to hunt that person down as soon as I get out of here. I’ll want only revenge. And really, I want to leave all that poison behind. Otherwise, nothing good will ever happen to me.

  Shit, Sasà. What good is ever going to happen to you? You’re in prison.

  But still…

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ I say, pushing him back and moving away from him.

  That night I can’t sleep.

  I’m thinking about the traitor, about tomorrow morning.

  It’s eating away at my stomach.

  Tomorrow will involve a shootout, that much I know. It’s not as though we can just walk out of a hospital, like visiting relatives do. I know Pierre’s friends. I had a bit to do with them in Marbella one time when a reckless bunch of Italians stole a thousand kilos of hash. It was not a pleasant experience. Somebody might get killed tomorrow. And I don’t want to shoot anymore…I’m fine doing business and smuggling, but I’m done with gunfire.

  I turn over and over in bed like a frittata. I can’t get any sleep. I can already hear the guns, as loud as they are in Naples.

  The next morning, when Pierre comes by on his way to his appointment, he looks at me in astonishment. I’m in my cell. I’ve cancelled my appointment.

  I give him a wave.

  ‘Good luck,’ I mouth.

  I feel both light and melancholy, as he stands tall and walks on.

  But I’m standing tall, too. I don’t want to get out of here only to go into hiding again, having to worry about who turned me in, or use brute force to regain everyone’s respect. I want to be respected for who I am, not feared for what I can do.

  That evening at dinner, Pierre is missing.

  I glance across at the French table and my eyes meet those of a guy who knows for sure. The others are saying, ‘He’s been admitted for treatment.’ There’s no television, so no one knows about the attack at the hospital. But if Pierre’s not back, either something went horribly wrong, or they pulled it off.

  Later on, at nine, when we’re already locked in our cells, we see the Special Unit from Madrid arrive. They search Pierre’s cell and take all his papers.

  From the other cells, applause begins. In unison, heartfelt. One of us has made it. There’s some whistling, and the mood is one of general cheer, as though we’ve all flown out, carried by the birds, like in that drawing on the wall in the corridor. All the best, Pierre.

  I put on my headphones with the volume turned up high, and flop down on the bed. For the first time since deciding not to go to the hospital I feel stupid. I don’t want to hear that applause.

  I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept a wink in nearly forty-eight hours, but here I am turning over and over in bed once again. You always miss out on the good stuff, Sasà, I think to myself. You always miss out on the applause. You’ve got to be in it to win it, otherwise this is what happens. You had the chance to be involved, you could have gone along with them, and instead here you are.

  That applause should have been for me, but I’ve missed out on it.

  Next week Monica is coming. It will be our last visit. After that, they will take me back to Italy. Any day now.

  The bedroom is the kind that would make you queasy if you had to sleep there. The colour of the walls is that bad. Maybe this is the Spaniards’ idea of relaxation and good cheer. But I’m not complaining: at least it’s four walls that are different from what I’m used to, and that’s easy on the eyes.

  Today, though, any kind of cheer seems impossible.

  Monica hasn’t arrived yet. I sit on the sofa opposite the bed and its two little bedside tables. The door to the bathroom is on my left. It’s just like a hotel room, but without a wardrobe. And like we would in a hotel, we spend the day here: the visit is supposed to go for four hours, but thanks to don Juan, I always get eight. We talk, we eat lunch, we make love. Sometimes we even fall asleep in each other’s arms. As though everything is normal, as though everything is just fine.

  But this is the last time. After this, nothing will be fine.

  Who knows if I’ll see her again. Italian prisons are more dangerous than Spanish ones, even though they keep you under tighter control. The common areas are enough to make you sick. You spend the whole day in your cell and the sensory deprivation dulls your senses—your eyesight and your hearing suffer. The guards don’t talk to you, and there’s no human contact, apart from the contact you get with criminals who have never stopped offending for a moment and aren’t about to stop just because they’re in prison.

  They’ll drag me back into that world. A world I thought I was done with. I’ve studied my case carefully and I know I have to try to cut down my sentence. Fourteen years minus a year and a half served in Spain minus preventive detention…That still leaves eleven years. It’s a long time.

  Will Monica wait for me? Would I wait for her? Of course I would.

  No, I wouldn’t. How could I go more than a decade without touching another woman? I wouldn’t have the strength to stay away from that kind of temptation for seven or eight years.

  I could ask don Juan to allow her come again tomorrow. To get her to come every day until they send me back to Italy. But then we wouldn’t be making love. We’d be violating each other just to spite the people who screwed me over.

  The last time I saw the judge I protested from the bottom of my heart: ‘We went to church and swore before God that we would stay together for better and for worse. Nobody has the right to separate us.’ I’m not one to beg, though I got damn close to begging him. But it was all in vain.

  Monica enters and sees at once the state I’m in.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ she murmurs as she sits down next to me.

  ‘What am I supposed to do? It’s all over.’ I’m trying to hold
back the tears but I know I won’t last long.

  ‘We’ll see each other more often,’ she says, taking my hand. I realise she’s not despairing as I am. I look at her and I don’t see sadness comparable to mine. Is it possible she doesn’t mind that she’ll no longer be able to make love to me for who knows how long?

  ‘You’ll see me in the same way you see animals in a cage,’ I growl. That’s exactly how I feel: like an animal that’s been cornered. I tear my hand from hers.

  ‘That’s the way things are. There’s nothing we can do about it.’ She’s raised her voice now, too.

  ‘You don’t even give a damn, do you? You have your freedom either way!’ I get to my feet and turn my back on her. ‘I’m the one losing everything. Intimacy, communication. Everything!’

  If she feels like going off with some other guy tomorrow, she can.

  This is not a pleasant thought.

  ‘You can go off with another man any time, but where can I go?’

  ‘I don’t want to go off with anybody! What do you take me for? Show some respect!’

  This time I can hear she has a lump in her throat, and I turn around.

  ‘I’m not the one who got us into this,’ she says softly.

  If I look deep into her eyes I can see our whole life together. The day we met, the first time we made love, our scooter rides, the evenings back at my mother’s place, cutting cocaine. She and my mother side by side on our little balcony, hoping I’d come home alive after the umpteenth day of the turf war. The ring I put on her finger and the chain we wear around our necks for all the mistakes we’ve made. Together.

  I open my arms and she runs to me. We stay like that, tears running down our cheeks, through our hair, for ages, maybe for the whole eight hours, I don’t know. I lose all sense of time. We don’t even make love. Eventually I fall asleep, exhausted from having slept so little these past few days.

  My dream is a kind of muddled blend of fairytales. The faces of people making fun of me, threatening me. ‘You’re ours,’ they’re saying. ‘You’re part of our story and you can’t get out.’