I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) (18 page)

The resemblance between these two episodes triggers a dizzying implosion of fury. I hurl my cell phone at the floor. The battery detaches and winds up who knows where.

Alessandra Persiano comes over to me, uneasily.

“What's happening, Vincenzo? Who was that?”

“I don't know.”

“You sure? You're so angry.”

I stand up.

“What the fuck do they want from me? Now you tell me,” I say to myself, walking aimlessly back and forth. The funny thing—so to speak—is that I'm naked, too. Which is not something I'd normally do.

Alessandra Persiano remains on the bed, sitting in silence.

“Sorry Ale, forgive me,” I say after a while.

“What's going on?” she asks.

So I sit down next to her and explain. I start with the judicial hearing of Burzone, pausing to savor the finest moments of my performance as a public defender. Then I tell her about Picciafuoco's phone call, the invasion of my office by the First Lady, the cell phone, the threatening phone call, and the report to the police.

“So what it means is that they want to hire you,” she says after I'm done summarizing the salient points.

“That's the way it looks.”

“It must mean you're good.”

I strike a pose.

“Oh, please.”

“And you turned them down.”

“Exactly.”

She taps her lips with the index and middle fingers of her right hand, tosses her hair back, gets to her knees on the bed.

“You know what I think? The fact that you turned them down is exactly what convinced them that you're the right man for the job.”

“It strikes me as a somewhat optimistic opinion,” I say, wondering at the same time what's become of my underpants.

“Look, I can think of hundreds of lawyers who would falsify documents to be in your position. Whoever it is has powerful people behind him, don't you doubt it.”

I'm on the verge of responding, but Alessandra Persiano's gaze blurs as she pursues another thought, so I skip it.

“But there's something that strikes me as strange,” she says.

“What.”

“I mean strange. Odd, I guess.”

“What does.”

“The interrogation.”

“The interrogation?

“Yeah. The judicial interrogation in the assistant district attorney's office.”

“Strange how? I don't get what you mean.”

“Usually the ADA doesn't conduct a judicial interrogation in cases like this. That is, he ought to, in theory, but in practice he skips it. The Carabinieri just send him a transcript of their interrogation, he checks to make sure that the arrest was done in compliance with the law, and then he immediately asks the preliminary judge to confirm the detention.”

Really? I think.

“Yeah, I know,” I say.

She goes on thinking, staring into empty space.

“As if he were interested in talking to him, this Burzone.”

“You think?”

“Well, I don't know. I could be wrong.”

She drops her suspicion.

“Why would someone send me a cell phone?” I ask, changing the subject. “What's it mean?”

“I don't know. But with people like that you can't always go looking for a meaning. It's not like it's the Mafia, communicating metaphorically. If you ask me, that's exactly what they want, for you to wonder what it means. They want you to feel confused, frightened. They're trying to hem you in, you see.”

“Yeah, I thought the same thing, though maybe not in such analytical terms,” I reply, feeling depressed.

She strokes my hair.

“Oh, stop worrying, it's not like anybody's threatened to kill you. They just want you defend the guy. And since you told them you wouldn't do it, they're asking you again, in the only buffoonish way they know how, that's all.”

“Yeah, I know, but still . . . ”

She moves closer to me.

“It's complicated, the work we do, you know that, Vincè. I understand the way you feel about it. That's why I got out of criminal law. People don't understand these contradictions.”

I say nothing.

“Anyway, don't make a big deal about it. If you don't want to take the case, they can't force you to. They'll get tired of asking, and they'll look for someone else.”

I nod, but I'm not convinced.

“There's just one thing,” she asks me suddenly. “Why don't you want to defend this guy?”

“Because I wouldn't know where to begin” is the answer that I can't give her.

“I don't want to get mixed up with these people.”

She glances at me, skeptically.

“So, wait a minute, how did you wind up representing him at the interrogation? Were you standing in for someone?”

“No, I was appointed by the court,” I answer without thinking.

“Now come on, Vincè,” she says, clearly not satisfied. “You don't just get appointed as a public defender.
You have to sign up for it.
You signed up, didn't you?”

There's an accusatory note in her voice now.

“In fact,” I admit.

“And when you signed up to work as a public defender, who exactly did you think you would be representing? The crème de la crème?”

Hm. Well, you'd better answer her.

“You have a point. I don't even know why I did it. I thought it was something that interested me, maybe.”

She turns all understanding again.

“But then, when it came to it, you lost interest.”

“Right.”

She strokes my forearm.

“I was afraid that you'd do the same thing with me.”

“My self-esteem is not exactly flourishing,” I say.

She takes me by the chin and turns me in her direction.

“That's why I like you.”

We kiss.

“I don't want to take this case,” I whine a second later.

“So don't take it.”

“Oh, you make it sound so easy.”

“If you ask me, you shouldn't have let the wife come up to your office.”

“I told her I wouldn't take the case.”

“Yeah, but afterward.”

“So are they going to make me pay for the insult?”

“No, on the contrary, the minute you turned them down you confirmed that you're a good lawyer, I told you that. And in fact, they went ahead and fired Picciafuoco.”

“I don't get it. It's not like I'm a famous lawyer.”

“And it's not like they're asking you to represent Don Vito Corleone. Mimmo 'o Burzone, as he calls himself, is a complete nobody.”

“Oh, thanks so much.”

“It was just a way of telling you that they're not trying to put you through some test. You did nice work for them and they want to try you out, you understand,” she becomes more and more convinced as she talks, “so they start you out defending an underling, a foot soldier. Burzone is just like a fence for stolen cars, his little basement workshop is like a chop shop. They bring him the loot and he breaks it down. He's probably never even seen his employers. Look, this could be a big opportunity for you, if you're interested in getting into criminal law.”

“Are you recommending I take the case?”

She fans herself with her hands.

“Oooh, Vincè. You know what time it is?”

“Why do you ask?”

She glances over at the radio-alarm clock on the bedside table.

“I have an appointment in my law office in less than an hour. And if you consider that it takes me at least half an hour to shower and get ready, you tell me how much time we have.”

“Ah,” I say, finally catching her drift.

 

 

E
veryone knows—though nobody seems to know the reason why—that as soon as it starts raining, sidewalks become crowded. Hordes of pedestrians with furrowed brows suddenly pour out into the streets, with the obvious objective of getting home. People are suddenly there—who knows where they were just a few seconds ago—as if they had hurried outdoors just to hurry back indoors. So you see these columns of streetwalker-men that form along the walls of the apartment buildings, taking turns standing under the balconies.

I too, having just left Alessandra Persiano's apartment building in an enviable psychic and physical condition, join the line. It's sort of like queueing up for a vaccination—that's how slow the line is progressing. The more impatient line-standers lift up on the tips of their toes to try to identify the obstacle. One elderly gentleman right behind me says that he's going to be late paying a bill, and then starts laughing to himself. Somebody else emits a series of unrepeatable vocalizations. I have that delightful sense of warmth in my veins of having just made love, and I take it all very tolerantly. It's not raining all that hard.

The line starts moving again, and a short distance later I discover that the cause of the pedestrian traffic jam consists of a piece-of-shit thug sending text messages on his cell phone, stretched out practically full-length on a motor scooter that he thoughtfully parked on the sidewalk, directly under a sheltering balcony.

What would you estimate the width of a city sidewalk on a secondary street to be? Five feet, to be generous? Place in the middle of that sidewalk an overweight motor scooter of the latest generation (the ones with seats that look like club chairs and all of the various accessories that go along with them), and you can easily guess how little room is left over. Of course, there's not a policeman around, even if you called one in. And if there was one, you can just imagine how that would go.

I take a look at the perpetrator of this scandalous occupation of public property. He is tall, unmistakably reckless, with the physical arrogance of someone who chooses to appear dan­gerous and most likely is. His mouth is half-open, and even though half his face is concealed by a pair of sunglasses absolutely outsized in relation to the oval of the underlying face, he wears an idiotic expression, the kind of expression people put on just to annoy anyone looking at them. He's wearing a fishnet T-shirt and a pair of multi-lacerated jeans whose crotch, even in that languid position, sags practically to his knees. He has the bulked-up arms of a body-builder and tattoos that are even more despicable than, to use a debatable term, the
clothing
that he's wearing. His cell phone probably cost, at a glance, 400 euros or so.

But the most depressing aspect of this act of open contempt for pedestrians is the fact that nobody says a thing. People snort in annoyance, and they might even curse through clenched teeth, but they navigate around this abusive squatter and move on, leaving the affront to public utility behind them. The consequence of this forced detour is that the aspiring Camorrista has pissed on the territory, marking it as his own.

All this is an official communiqué, a memorandum, sent periodically to remind that you are living under a state of siege.

I can't take any more marketing campaigns hatched by disorganized crime, by dogs off their leashes who engage in criminal narcissism and gratuitous murder as a form of self-promotion and propaganda (because that's what they are, the purse snatchings that end in violence, the robberies that are preceded by murders, the pedestrians beaten bloody for no discernible profit, the faces slapped by motor scooters passing at speed, or even just the simple exhibitions of rudeness and annoyance like this one: they're commercials. Display ads. Press releases).

The point is that you can refuse to accept certain provocations. It's just that you pay for that kind of refusal with your self-respect. And here's the problem with paying in self-respect: it seems like you're not spending much, but then you find yourself throttled by the interest.

And so, what's new, you say, Well, this time, I'm not paying. I'm not going to play along with this ring around the motor scooter. Fuck 'em. And I don't even give it a lot of thought: when it's my turn, instead of going around him, I stop.

After a few seconds the hooligan registers the fact that I'm motionless. He looks up from his cell phone and focuses on me from behind his super-boorish black sunglasses.

“Something you need?” he asks.

I think of Alf, of what must go through his mind at times like these, of his complete lack of fear, and I screw up my courage.

“Yeah, the sidewalk,” I answer him, expecting at the very least a head-butt in the face in response.

Instead he snaps his cell phone shut, removes his sunglasses, puts them on the handlebars of his scooter, tilts his head to one side, bugs out his eyes, opens his lips, sticks out half an inch of tongue, and starts drooling intentionally, getting his T-shirt all wet. The most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life. Why doesn't he just drop dead?

“You really are a piece of shit, you know that?” I say, unable to control my words.

The thug's eyes realign and focus on me with all the cunning of a reptile. A grimacing sneer is stamped on his lips. He immediately suspends his pantomime of an epileptic fit, he wipes his mouth clean with the back of his wrist, and he prepares for the massacre.

I can't hear or see a thing. All around me, everything is silent and motionless. I squint my eyes to see as little as possible, sort of like when you're about to have a car crash and your instincts automatically censor the horror that's about to arrive.

How much time goes by, an instant or two? It feels like ten thousand instants. But the strange thing is that none of what I'm expecting happens. Because the arm of a third party intervenes between us, and a fist flashes down like a cleaver onto the hooligan's shoulder, knocking him back into a seated position with an impact so powerful that the motor scooter almost drops off its kickstand.

“
Aaah
,” moans the unfortunate thug, and he touches his shoulder with genuine compassion.

At that point, I start to focus again.

Where did this savior, maybe 5'3” tall, short and stout, thick tar-black hair, square jaw, marginal forehead, disproportionately short legs, K-Way jacket, and running pants, come from? And how on earth, with the body type that he has, does he manage to hit as hard as he does? From the way the miserable hooligan's arm is dangling, I'd have to guess he fractured his shoulder.

I step forward impulsively, in a completely reckless manner, to take part in some way in the events that I've caused; but as I'm on the verge of stepping into the combat zone my defender halts me with a wave of his left hand, as if to say: “Don't worry, I've got this.”

The stunning detail is that in order to show me this act of courtesy, he actually turns in my direction, completely ignoring his adversary, who in fact immediately takes advantage of the opportunity to land a straight punch with his good arm, striking him on the right cheek with a sound that comes out, roughly,
chock
.

Whereupon we all three go to our corners and take a pause.

I expect at this point that my volunteer gorilla is going to fall to his knees and then pass out, leaving me to the tender mercies of the thug, who will take advantage of the opportunity to take his revenge on me, giving me change back from my dollar, as we used to say when we were kids. Instead, the gorilla looks down at the ground, adjusts his jaw with one hand, and then turns toward his unfortunate assailant.

Then everything happens in a sequence straight out of Italy's Most Horrible Home Videos. The dwarf—and I now notice what remarkably long arms he has—grabs the hooligan by the hair at the back of his head. The thug doesn't even try to put up resistance, as if he were curious about the treatment he's about to receive. The little powerhouse jerks the thug's head toward him with one sharp pull, preparing himself for the toss.

The sound of his nasal septum stamping violently down on the scooter's handlebars comes just a second later.

Oooomammamia
, says a fishwife, grabbing my jacket and hiding behind me.

An unnatural silence descends over the street.

The thug emerges from his encounter with the handlebars looking like a Futurist version of himself. Disfigured and with one arm dangling, he starts his motor scooter and putts off, sobbing.

Whereupon, like a videotape when you take it off pause, reality begins to flow normally again. Traffic begins flowing, people get moving, the knot of rubberneckers begins their post-game commentary. You can already hear the voice of the impromptu editorialist, pleased at the thoroughness of the beating.

I'm standing there, semi-traumatized.

The cave-dweller turns and looks at me.

“That's all taken care of,” he says.

I nod, automatically, since it strikes me as in poor taste to express my gratitude.

“Are you hurt at all?” the beast asks me.

“Me?” I reply. It sounds like a joke to me.

“Yeah, you.”

“No, not at all.”

He moves toward me and wraps his left arm around my waist, inviting me to come with him.

“Come on, let's get something to drink, you're pale as a sheet.”

I comply. The audience parts to make way for us. We walk past a first bar, and then a second, whereupon I start to wonder if I understood his invitation. We cross one street, then another, and then my unexpected bodyguard ushers me into the place that he evidently prefers.

“This is very kind of you,” I say, accepting his offer to let me go in first.

He sketches out a courteous bow with his head.

“The least I could do.”

The least I could do?
I think to myself.

At that very moment, I recognize the voice.

The bar we've just walked into is called the Love Café, and it stinks like a heap of carrion, wafting odors of late-night casino, narcotics dealership, and marshaling yard for prostitutes. It has, I don't know, four picture windows overlooking the street, each of which is surmounted by a sign touting the varied attractions of the place: “Pastry Shop,” “Gastro-Pub,” “Coffee & Wine Bar,” “Snacks & Foods,” “Smith & Wesson” (just kidding), and other modern-day novelties. I've walked by it more than once, but I never dreamed it was like this inside. That is, I don't know if you're familiar with this impression, but it's an unmistakable impression: there are places that, even if you see that they've spent lots of money fixing them up, and used top-notch materials and hired professional designers, still the minute you walk in you catch a whiff of organized crime. Like you'd be willing to bet a large sum of money that if you started banging away at any given wall with a pickaxe, before long a human leg would flop out.

I swear there are times when I have to if wonder if there is a specific curriculum for a degree in the architecture of the Camorra. If not, then I don't know how to explain this recurrent style in the buildings occupied by the Camorristi. In fact, I almost have the impression I could identify it from the materials, the architectural style in question. Most of all, it's the marble that transmits this horrendous sensation. And also the Venetian-style fauxing of the walls.

Among other things, if you ask me, the Camorra has a distinct preference for fuchsia. I wonder if it's the wives, or even more likely, the daughters of the Camorristi who impose this touch of class on the family places of business. Now, I don't want anyone to take me for a racist when it comes to fuchsia. But, when I walk into a restaurant or café or bar and I see a fuchsia wall with Venetian-style fauxing, I can't wait to get out of there, truth be told.

Among other things, these bars all seem to have names that drip with such a pornographic sentimentalism that you can spot the chip on the owners' shoulder from two hundred feet away: Love Café (in fact), the Inamorata Bar, Guys & Dolls, Walking on Air, Love a Little
. . .
(with the ellipsis), Let's Got Lost, The Last Kiss (okay, I invented most of these, but it was just to convey the style of the latter-day Camoralist).

So anyway, this is where I am right now.

The interior room we're ensconced in now is enormous, with mood lighting, and is practically empty, aside from a leather jacket draped over the back of a chair at the far end of the room, not far from certain horrible draperies that conceal the entrance, I imagine, to the restrooms.

Fuchsia continues to dominate in all directions, depressing me, and on the facing wall—overlooking our little café table with its floral ceramic surface and its wrought-iron base—is a gigantic liquid-crystal television screen transmitting images of a twenty-year-old woman in a workout costume, telling the television camera how unhappy and miserable she was until she discovered Ab Swing. Just talking about the days when she still wore size 18 pants makes her voice break (the show is dubbed, by the way).

While waiting for the cavern-dweller, who has gone to the counter to place his order in the meanwhile, I listen to her talk, and as I notice that the television shopping channel is somehow (I can't say exactly why) perfectly in tune with the surrounding environment, I suddenly feel a frantic need to run away, and I look in all directions for an emergency exit, which a place like this must certainly have.

The troglodyte makes his return, this time in the company of a young waitress with an irritated look on her face, probably Polish by nationality. He pulls out a chair and takes a seat at the café table.

“What'll you have, Counselor?” he asks, with the tone of a part-owner of the bar.

“I'll take an espresso and a glass of mineral water.”

“Mineral water how?” asks the waitress.

I don't bother to answer, because I find her tone to be rather irritating.