So he had no idea he had been an obsession of mine all through my teenage years.
He had no idea that, in my waking dreams of revenge, I’d often smashed his friend’s face in first, and then his. He had no idea, and now I was his lawyer, in other words his only hope.
He continued wringing his hands. I recalled the speech I had imagined myself making when the moment came.
Do you remember when you and your friends beat and humiliated that young boy who didn’t want to take off his anorak? Do you remember? That bastard friend of yours smashed his face in and you watched and smiled smugly. Well, I was that boy and now I’m here to smash your face in. You won’t look like a David Bowie of the suburbs any more and our account will finally be settled.
Or rather, no, before settling our account you have to tell me if it was you who stabbed that other boy. Did you hold the knife, and then sacrifice the poor bastard who killed himself in prison? And if you didn’t actually hold the knife in your hand, were you part of the gang? Tell me, damn it.
I noticed that he was clenching his fists under the desk.
Then he thanked me. For being so frank with him, and so fair. He said he was sure that if there was a way out, I would find it.
Then he said something else. “You realized that I needed to get it out of my system and you didn’t interrupt me, didn’t say you had to go. You’re a good man.”
As I left the prison, these words were still clattering around in my head.
I was a good man.
Of course I was.
11
The next day I called Tancredi again and told him about my conversation with Paolicelli in the prison.
He listened without saying a word until I’d finished.
“As I told you last time, if you wanted to identify the hotel staff, there’d have to be an ongoing official investigation. If there was, then we could go through Interpol and let the police in Podgorica fuck us around officially.”
“I was thinking about the man on the ferry. The one who was in the same hotel as Paolicelli, the one he saw again on the return crossing.”
“And what do you suggest we do? Oh, yes, the passenger list. We trace all the male passengers on that ferry – only a few hundred at most – and then we get hold of their photographs and take them to your client in prison. Look, is it this one? No? What about this one? No, it’s that one! Bingo! We’ve identified a dangerous tourist we can charge with aggravated international travel. You’ve practically won the case.”
“Carmelo, listen to me. I know perfectly well we’re not going to get anywhere with the people in the hotel or with what happened in Montenegro in general. But I must tell you this: the more I think about it, the stronger the feeling I have that Paolicelli is telling the truth. I know intuition and all that is mostly bullshit, but I talked to him and the way he tells it, the look on his face, everything-”
“Let me introduce Guido Guerrieri. No one can ever tell him a lie.”
But there wasn’t much conviction in his voice. It was a last skirmish. Carmelo knew I didn’t easily go overboard for my clients.
“All right, what would you like us to do?”
“The passenger list, Carmelo. Get hold of it, narrow it down to the Italian citizens – Paolicelli said the man was Italian – and then check your database to see if any of these people have a record for drug trafficking.”
I could just see him shaking his head. He said it would take him at least a day, he would have to waste one of his days off, and it wouldn’t lead anywhere anyway, but in the end he took the details of the boat and the crossing.
“After this, Guerrieri, you’ll be in debt to me your whole life.” And he hung up.
I spent the whole afternoon preparing my opening argument for a case due to be heard the following morning.
I was representing an association of people who lived a few hundred yards from a waste disposal plant. When the wind was blowing the wrong way – in other words, from the plant to the built-up area where they lived – the smell was revolting.
The delegates of the association had come to my office and explained the situation. Before they would agree to entrust me with the case, they had demanded that I take a little trip to where they lived so that I could be made directly aware of the nature of the problem.
As I entered the home of the association’s chairman, I could sense something slightly nauseous in the background. A smell that suggested something mysterious, unnameable, hidden in that apparently normal dwelling. The man asked me to follow him into the kitchen and sit down, and his wife made coffee.
After a while, I had the impression that the chairman, his wife and the other members of the association were exchanging knowing glances. As if to say, now we’ll show him.
They’re a Satanic sect, I told myself. Someone’s going to come up behind me now and hit me on the head. Then they’ll take me to a garage equipped for sabbaths and black masses and cut me in pieces with ceremonial knives acquired at the local discount store. Maybe before that, they’ll force me to have ritual sex with this priestess of Mephistopheles here. I looked at the chairman’s wife – five feet tall, weighing about twelve stone, a pleasant face and a moustache like a pirate – and told myself this would probably be the most Satanic part of the whole thing.
The chairman’s wife served the coffee and we drank in silence.
Then, without a word, they opened the window, and in a few seconds the air was filled with a smell so thick you could almost touch it. It was a mixture of rotten eggs and ammonia, with a strong pinch of essence of putrefying wild animal.
The chairman asked me if I understood their problem. I said yes, I understood it a whole lot better now. If they would excuse me, I really had to run – literally run – but they could rest assured I would give the case the attention it deserved. And I meant it.
They were very persuasive, I thought as I returned to my office. The smell was still on my clothes and in my stomach, and I knew it wouldn’t go away any time soon.
12
When I’d finished preparing my argument and had only a few details left to check, I told Maria Teresa to phone Signora Kawabata and ask her if she could come to the office some time in the week, because I needed to talk to her.
Officially because I wanted to hear her version of what had happened during the last days of the holiday, and on the ferry crossing, and all the rest of it.
Maria Teresa came back a few minutes later. She had Signora Kawabata on the line. She could even come now if that was all right with me.
I pretended to think it over for a few seconds, then said yes, all right, we could do it now.
When Maria Teresa had gone out again, I went to the washroom. I tried as best I could to wipe from my face all signs of the hours I’d spent studying reports by expert chemists and statements from environmental groups. I washed my face, combed my hair, pinched my cheeks a few times to get some colour back into them, and after a brief hesitation put on a little of the scent I kept in the office and had hardly used. Not since Margherita had left anyway.
As I came out of the washroom it struck me that I might have overdone the scent and was going to look really stupid, at least to Maria Teresa. She was sure to figure out what was going on if she came back into my room and it smelled like an employment agency for gigolos.
I tried to get back to work, with non-existent success. I twice opened and closed a book of environmental regulations, leafed through the file, finally put on a CD, and even before the music started switched off the stereo. Again, I thought Maria Teresa might be suspicious, might imagine I’d put on the music to create a mood or something like that.
In the end I settled down, sitting on the edge of my swivel chair, my elbows propped on the desk, my chin propped on my hands, my eyes on the door.
Finally I heard the buzz of the entryphone. Then I noticed that the desk was untidy and tried to clear away a few papers and arrange some of the books in piles. When I heard the office door
bell ring I sat down again, pinched my face a few more times, and assumed a casual posture. If you could call it that.
By the time Maria Teresa came in to announce Signora – it seemed to me she emphasized the word – Kawabata, I’d turned into a third-rate imitation of the main character from Play It Again, Sam. The only thing I hadn’t done was scatter a few books of philosophy around, just to look like an intellectual.
Natsu entered. With her, holding her left hand, was a little girl. She had her mother’s face: the same cheeks, the same mouth, the same colouring, more Vietnamese than Japanese. And amid all that, her father’s blue eyes.
She was very beautiful.
The moment I saw her, I felt an acute, incomprehensible twinge of nostalgia.
“This is Anna Midori,” Natsu said, smiling slightly. Because of the look on my face, I imagine. Then she turned to her daughter. “And this…” She hesitated for a moment.
“Guido, my name’s Guido,” I said, walking around the desk, trying to give the kind of smile that meant, I’m used to dealing with children.
I was a complete idiot.
Anna Midori held out her hand solemnly, and looked at me with those incredible blue eyes.
“How old are you?” I asked, holding her hand in mine.
“Six. And you?”
For a moment I was tempted to shave a few years off my age. “Forty-two.”
This was followed by a few seconds of embarrassed silence. Natsu was the first to speak.
“Do you think we could leave Anna with your secretary for a few minutes?”
I thought we could. I called Maria Teresa and asked her if she’d mind keeping an eye on this lovely child for a bit.
This lovely child. Why was I talking this way? I was about to introduce them, but Maria Teresa interrupted me.
“Oh, Anna and I already know each other. We were just introduced, weren’t we, Anna? Anna Midori.”
“Yes. We have the same eyes.”
It was true. Maria Teresa wasn’t a particularly pretty girl, but she had amazing eyes. Blue, like Anna Midori’s. And Fabio Paolicelli’s.
“Come on, Anna. I’ll show you a game on my computer.”
The girl turned to her mother, who nodded. Maria Teresa took her hand and they went out.
“Are you really forty-two?”
“Yes. Why?”
“You don’t… you don’t look it.”
I resisted the impulse to ask her how old I looked and told her to take a seat. I walked back behind my desk and sat down.
“Your daughter is… very beautiful. I’ve never seen such a beautiful little girl.”
Natsu smiled. “Do you have children?”
The question took me by surprise. “No.”
“Aren’t you married?”
“Well, that’s rather a long story…”
“I’m sorry. I always ask too many questions. It’s a failing of mine.”
No, don’t say that, it doesn’t matter. If you want me to, I’ll tell you my life story and then you can tell me yours. It’ll be better than talking about work. Which would mean talking about your husband.
Damn it, what was I getting myself into?
I shook my head politely. It’s no problem, really.
“We’re trying to figure out who put the drugs in your car and how. It seems very likely that it happened when the car was in the hotel car park. Do you remember the name of the porter on duty the last night?”
She didn’t remember. She was usually a bit distracted and didn’t pay much attention to people.
She would obviously be a great help in our so-called investigation.
“Apart from the porter, did you notice anything unusual during your stay or during the return journey? When you were on the ferry, did you see anyone you’d already seen during the holiday, staying at the same hotel?”
She hadn’t noticed anything. She hadn’t even noticed the man who’d stayed at their hotel and then had travelled back on the same ferry. She told me her husband, when he’d talked to her about our conversation, had already mentioned this man and had asked her if she remembered him.
But she didn’t remember him, probably because she hadn’t really seen him.
I kept going with my questions a while longer, trying to get her to remember something, anything. Even details which seemed insignificant, I said, could turn out to be very useful. This was the way an investigator had to proceed, it seemed to me. In fact I had no idea what I was doing and was basically just imitating what detectives did in crime movies.
In the end I gave up. But I told her to think about it later and, if she remembered anything, even that famous apparently insignificant detail, to call me.
As I said this, I had a sudden feeling of pointlessness. Mixed with shame. This investigation of mine was a farce. I wouldn’t find out anything. I was just trying to impress Natsu. I was unfairly deluding her and her bastard of a husband.
I told myself I should finish with this nonsense as soon as possible. I would wait to see what Colaianni told me about Macri and what Tancredi came up with on the subject of the passenger list and then, since it was highly unlikely anything would come of it, I would talk to Paolicelli and tell him that unfortunately we had no choice but to plea-bargain.
I would say that I realized how difficult it was to agree to something like that, if you think you’re innocent – if you are innocent – but unfortunately we had to be realistic. With no evidence in our favour, nothing that could be used to introduce a degree of reasonable doubt, it would be madness to give up on plea-bargaining and go ahead with an appeal. We had to limit the damage.
I stood up, and after a moment’s hesitation she stood up, too.
“You told me you’d like to try my cooking.”
“I’m sorry?”
“There’s an exhibition opening tomorrow night.” She took a small card made from rough white paper out of her handbag. “There’s a reception and I’m taking care of the buffet. Japanese food with a few variants of my own creation.”
She handed me the card.
“This is an invitation for two. You can bring your girlfriend if you like, or whoever. The reception starts at nine o’clock. I think it could be fun. It’s in a garage that’s been converted into an exhibition space.”
I thanked her and looked at the card. I had never heard of either the artist – nothing unusual about that – or the address. And that was a little more unusual, as it was in Bari.
I told her I had a previous engagement, but I’d see if I could get out of it because I’d really like to go.
Of course I didn’t have any previous engagement. I’d only said that to make myself look good. Don’t worry about me, I have a wild social life. I’m not a loser who spends his evenings in the office studying files, or in a gym taking punches, or alone at the cinema, trying not to think about his girlfriend who left him.
A stab of pain. A photographic negative of Margherita. Dissolve.
Now Natsu really had to go. She walked a little faster to the door, as if she felt embarrassed and wanted to leave in order to get rid of that embarrassment.
We shook hands, and I opened the door for her. The little girl was sitting on Maria Teresa’s lap at the computer, which was emitting strange gurgling and splashing sounds.
The girl asked when she could come back and play Bubbles and Splashes again. Maria Teresa told her she could come back whenever she liked, and the girl kissed her, jumped up and went to her mummy. On the way out, she even waved goodbye to me.
“Beautiful little girl, isn’t she?” I said when they had gone.
“Beautiful?” Maria Teresa replied. “She’s amazing.”
“Yes, she’s very beautiful,” I said, as I went back into my room, lost in thought.
I went and sat down, and stayed there for at least five minutes, without doing or saying anything.
When I came to my senses, I got out the street map to look for that address.
13
In front of the entrance stood a man who looked like a bodybuilder. He was wearing a dark suit, and had a microphone and earpiece. He asked me if I was alone. No, I’m with the invisible woman. And from the intelligent look on your face, I assume you’re Ben Grimm.
I didn’t say that, but I did go right up to him – wondering who’d emerge the winner if we got into a fight – and made a gesture with my hand, to show him that there was no one next to me, so yes, I was alone. It didn’t occur to me to say it out loud.
He let me pass, and then whispered a few words I didn’t catch into the microphone. Maybe he was warning his colleagues inside that a suspicious character was coming in and they’d better keep an eye on him. I descended a ramp and found myself in a strange place. It was a real garage, though obviously without cars. The floor was covered with porphyry building blocks, and scattered throughout the space were those mushroom-shaped heaters you find in bars so that people can be in the open air even in winter. It was fairly cold all the same, so although I unbuttoned my jacket I didn’t take it off.
There were a lot of people there. My first thought, as I entered, was that it was like some vaguely surreal film set. Groups of very well-to-do but left-wing ladies. Groups of unmistakably gay young men and women. Groups of people of different ages, dressed to display the fact that they were artists. A few politicians, a few would-be intellectuals, a few young black men, a few Japanese. No one I knew.
It was such a weird mixture that it immediately put me in a good mood. I thought I would take a quick look at the works, in order not to be unprepared, and then look for the food. And Natsu.
On a small table, close to the entrance, there were catalogues. I took one and leafed through it as I moved closer to the walls. The title of the exhibition was The Elementary Particles.
I wondered if it was a reference to the novel by that Frenchman. I hadn’t liked the book, but I assumed it was meant to be a clue to understanding the works.
Reasonable Doubts gg-3 Page 6