I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) (22 page)

Burzone and I stand up in unison. I sketch out a sort of bow, he doesn't. At Anjelica Huston's behest, the idiot stands up to see us to the door. As he opens the door, he scrupulously avoids meeting my gaze. The guards greet me. One of them asks Burzone how it went. Burzone tilts his head in my direction (I notice it out of the corner of my eye, feigning complete ignorance as I do), and he traces a virtual comma down his cheek with his thumbnail, an age-old Italian signal that it's all good: I experience a warm glow, as I discover to my horror just how eagerly I aspire to win the esteem of this piece of flotsam washed up from the sea of organized crime.

In the waiting room, in the meanwhile, another prisoner has arrived, dressed in a tracksuit, loafers, bald dome, and facial features that would make anyone conclude then and there that Cesare Lombroso understood everything there was to know. The two false-cynical lawyers, who to all appearances constitute his defense team, cluster around him like squeegee men at a stoplight, one on this side, one on the other, talking at top speed, finishing each other's sentences, showing off transcripts and documents that the prisoner glances at with annoyance. A stomach-turning display.

“Who's that?” I ask one of the guards under my breath. I nod toward the prisoner.

“A piece of shit from hell,” the cop replies to my question.

Oh really? And I was just assuming that once again the system had dragged in the wrong man.

“Okay, but what did he do?” I specify.

He lifts his pudgy hand and sketches out a couple of spirals in the air.

“Ah,” I say, as if I'd understood.

Burzone comes over to me.

“How do things look now, Counselor?”

I shrug my shoulders.

“What can I tell you? Let's just wait and see.”

“What if they send me back inside?”

“Not a forgone conclusion,” I reply, in the tone of a scholastic hypothesis.

“Maybe if I told her something that she wanted to know, Her Honor would send me home.”

I stiffen, hoping that Burzone isn't about to provide the answer I'm afraid of in response to the question I'm about to ask him.

“In what sense, if I may ask?”

“I was at least hoping for house arrest.”

Which actually means: if it hadn't been for you, I might be about to get out of here.

In other words, not only have I defended this filthy creature, but I have to listen to him tell me that maybe things would have worked out better if I'd just stayed home.

I'm starting to wonder if I'm cut out for criminal law. Something about Camorristi seems to make me touchy.

“Are you guilty, Fantasia?” I snap, staring him in the eyes.

“Ah?” he says, startled.

“Do you dismember dead bodies and then bury them in the mountains, scattering the limbs to keep anyone from identifying the corpse?” I spell out in a crescendo.

“Counselor, what are you saying,” says Burzone, with a very guilty little smile playing across his lips.

“You don't know anything about the hand they found in your backyard, do you?”

“No. Yes. That is, what do you mean? Of course I don't know anything,” he gasps.

“Then what else could you have told the judge? You told her the truth, didn't you?”

Silence. He doesn't even answer that one.

“So, if you told the truth, then we have nothing to worry about. You have nothing on your conscience and I have nothing on mine, because I have represented a client who told the truth.”

Full stop. Burzone is wrung dry. He has nothing left to say.

Well, he asked for it.

 

The preliminary judge's door swings open again. We see the idiot stick his head out with the usual sheet of paper in hand. We all stop talking. He just stands there, without a fucking word. We look one another in the eye. What is this, a guessing game?

“Fantasia,” he finally decides.

We go back in.

“Have a seat,” the preliminary judge invites us.

I take a seat. Burzone sort of sits down and sort of doesn't.

The preliminary judge inhales a lungful before she begins expelling words.

“All right, Signore Fantasia, you're a free man.”

“What did you say?” I ask.

“What'd you say?” asks Burzone.

The preliminary judge looks at me with something bordering on tenderness.

“We're releasing him, Counselor. He can go home.”

I don't know if I'm capable of controlling the joy that's colonizing my face. I turn to look at Burzone. He's so overwhelmed by the news that he has practically no reaction. He's just standing there, his hands in midair, as if someone had hit pause on a remote control.

“There is insufficient evidence to order any measures of detention in your case,” Anjelica Huston explains. “The one judicial order we will issue is for periodic scheduled visits to a parole officer.”

At that point, Burzone starts giving off blazes of light. “Periodic scheduled visits” was, evidently, the password. He clasps his hands together, crosses his fingers, puts them to his lips, and kisses his crossed fingers a dozen times or more. Then, in a completely unexpected twist, he leans over me and gives me a hug. I try to extract myself, but he just grabs me tighter and goes on panting and drooling into my ear, muttering words that I can't understand. I'm not only immobilized, I'm baffled and embarrassed by this sudden piece of theatrics. Instinctively I work around the bulky thorax of Burzone as he continues to wrap his arms around me and sob with happiness to get a look at Anjelica Huston across the desk. She covers her mouth with one hand and laughs. I throw open my arms, signaling my surrender, in order to convey to Burzone that now it's really time for him to release me. And he finally lets me go. He's soaked the collar of my shirt and half my tie, I'm revolted to discover. I try to sort myself out with both hands, combing and straightening, while he dries his tears and does his best to recover, after which he thanks the preliminary judge and hurtles out of the room.

 

 

I
emerge from the prison, catatonic, with my briefcase in one hand and a copy of the decree—which I don't even want to read—in the other.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Counselor. I hope to see you again soon,” said Anjelica Huston, ushering me out with an expression of professional esteem that veered dangerously close to the realm of the ambiguous. I glossed over it, because I have to say that I always find come-ons in the course of my duties just a bit awkward.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not a hundred percent sure that I'm happy with how it all went. Okay: Burzone was released from prison despite all expectations to the contrary, I come off looking masterful, the preliminary judge flirted with me throughout the hearing, and yet something doesn't add up.

It's like when you buy a house, and the minute you walk out of the settlement office you're suddenly assailed by an inexplicable and paranoid suspicion that you've been the victim of some form of fraud. And you ask yourself why on earth the seller and the closing agent exchanged that glance at a certain point during the document signing. So you slow from a brisk walk to a crawl, and in your mind you see the local television news, opening the evening broadcast with a report on a multi-million-euro ring of false real estate transactions. At that point, unless you manage to calm down, you're on the verge of retracing your steps, ringing the buzzer, going upstairs, and knocking on the office door: the secretary is surprised when she opens the door and sees you (her surprise only adds to your suspicion), you apologize and ask whether by any chance it was in their office that you left the cell phone that you can't find anywhere, she says that she'll be glad to go take a look for you and would you mind taking a seat in the waiting room, and there you sit, scrutinizing every detail of the place to make up your mind whether it's really a settlement office after all; you stick your head out and look up and down the hallway, well it certainly does look like a typical Italian settlement office, antique furniture and paintings, rows of law books in the bookcases lining the walls, hardwood floors, Persian carpets; then you wonder why the secretary is taking so long; ah, maybe she rushed into the fraudulent settlement agent's office to warn him, and he—having already doffed jacket and tie to return to the natural shirtsleeve state of the con artist (it's amazing how quickly con artists resume their natural appearance, as soon as they're done with a con job)—quickly puts on his jacket and knots his tie so that he can receive you with the most nonchalant of expressions, in case you happen to demand to see him; oh, there she is now, “No, I'm sorry, there's no cell phone in the conference room, you must have left it somewhere else”; and you say, “Oh, that's all right”; “I'm very sorry,” she says, and accompanies to the front door; you hesitate, then you wonder if you might ask the settlement agent just one last question, and the secretary tells you that he's in the middle of a long phone call right now (how can she know that he's on the phone if she just went into the conference room to look for your cell phone?), but if you like she'd be glad to take note of the question and then let you know the answer, and at that point you decide to put an end to this Stations of the Cross that you've voluntarily chosen to undertake, “Oh, it's not important, don't worry about it,” you say, and so you head back downstairs; on the way down you shake your head and even laugh about it, you decide that you really ought to have your head examined for the unlimited credence that you give your overheated imagination; but the next morning you call the settlement agent, the secretary puts you through, and you ask him when you can have a copy of the title to the property, whereupon he says, “The title? We only did the closing yesterday, and you already want a registered title? Listen, don't worry,” dismissing your request with unconcealed annoyance, “as soon as the title's ready I'll have my secretary give you a call, all right?” and you finally put that worry to rest, but not so much.

 

I walk out the front gate, and in the little roundabout in front of the prison building, not far from the intercom, is a small knot of women with their children standing there, in a tight cluster, waiting for I can't imagine what. You often see them outside the front gates of prisons, these mothers staging the symbolic dismemberment of their families by implementing this form of open-air detention. It's unclear whether they want to go in but are not allowed, or if they've already gone in and, after emerging, they've just done some socializing with other women who share their unenviable fate, or if they've brought their children on this pilgrimage to the hermitage of their fathers, or whether they're organizing a sit-in, or if this is already in fact a sit-in. They're free to go, but they stay there. They're not demanding anything, but they're waiting. There they stand, proving that they don't count for anything, but still they won't go away.

What I wonder whenever I find myself in the presence of a spontaneous representation of a common social problem is whether or not those who have staged it—usually people who have little if any experience with the notion of metaphor—know what they're doing. In my opinion, they don't know, so they
do
it.

The air is filthy and muggy, I'm hot, it's hot, I'm bracing myself psychologically for the hike I'll have to take to get to the bus stop when, as I happen to glance around, I spot Tricarico's Vespa, with Tricarico sitting on it, exactly where I left him, like a stalker who can't bring himself to accept reality. His insistence is starting to irritate me, even if I have to admit that a ride would be more than welcome right now. This must be what the first stage of corruption feels like, I say to myself, and I walk toward him just to reiterate the concept. He seems a little intimidated as I walk toward him.

“Why are you still here?”

He bows his head.

“Unless I'm mistaken, I told you not to wait for me,” I add, since he doesn't answer me.

“What do you think, that I'm having fun, Counselor?”

“I don't give a damn whether you're having fun or you're bored to tears. I just want to stop finding you underfoot all the time.”

“Listen, what harm am I doing you, excuse me very much?”

“I'll be glad to tell you exactly what harm you're doing me, I really don't like the fact that . . . ”

And that's when I suddenly say nothing, because I don't know what to say anymore. You know, it's a horrible thing to be asked to explain something that strikes you as self-evident. You just can't find the words, you can't get them up. Among other things, to be perfectly straightforward, I can't tell if the question is reasonable (in fact, what harm
is
he really doing, after all?) or just so stupidly mulish that the mere effort of searching for an answer makes me feel as if I'd just stepped into a pile of shit. So I try to get out of it by spreading my arms and then letting them drop to my sides, playing the part of someone too deeply disgusted by the level of the conversation to go on any further; then I turn on my heels and leave, hoping at least that that works.

Of course it doesn't work, because as I reach the street and turn onto the sidewalk, I hear the Vespa starting up. I go on walking, minding my own business, concentrating—no, distracting myself—to the extent possible in order to ignore the annoyance in motion behind my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I can register the constant distance of the slow-motion chase. The unit of measurement is provided by the puttering engine.

From a repair shop across the street, a mechanic with nothing to do watches us. From the way he's watching us (and I'm not even going to bother describing how he's watching us), it's unmistakable that we must strike him as a couple of queers. Especially Tricarico, I imagine, since he's following me.

Now what am I supposed to do? Turn around and make a scene? Run? Continue walking at a steady pace as if nothing had happened? Accept the ride? None of the four options would rescue me from the mechanic's bias.

Well, Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.

On the verge of complete exasperation, I come to a halt. With great precision, Tricarico stops as well. There we stand, looking at one another, motionless, in a pathetic pantomime of the crucial scene in
Duel
. The empty-handed mechanic actually lights a cigarette at this point.

After a while my nerves give out, and I wave Tricarico over. He walks hopefully toward me.

“Are you going to fucking stop buzzing around me or not,” I blurt in a fury. “I mean what do you imagine that guy thinks is going on between us?”

Tricarico turns to look at the repair shop, glances at the mechanic, who promptly looks away, turns back to me and lip-syncs “Huh?” as he lobs the problem back into my court.

I'm speechless.

“Do you mind if I ask how the hearing went?” he asks.

“It went great: your colleague's getting out of jail,” I blurt out, in the hope—based on nothing in particular—that this piece of good news might get him out of my hair, once and for all.

“Seriously?” he says, in shock.

I enjoy the scene in silence.

“Counselor, do you realize what this means?!” cries Tricarico in excitement, letting off electric discharges of contentment like a blinking turn indicator.

He kills the engine, pulls the Vespa up onto its kickstand, and starts to get off and throw his arms around my neck, but I freeze him to the spot with such a murderous glare that he instantaneously desists.

I look at the mechanic, who's enjoying himself as he smokes his shitty cigarette. I wish an angina pectoris upon him, and I tell myself that the next time I have business in the prison, like fuck I'll go by this place. I'd rather wear a burqa, in fact.

“So now you see that we were right?” Tricarico comments enthusiastically. “But how on earth did you pull it off?”

“Search me. Wait a minute, what do you mean how on earth did I pull it off?”

“No, sorry, I just meant to say that you did a great job.”

“Well, thanks so much. Now would you very much mind getting out of here?”

“I can't do that.”

“What do you mean you can't do that?”

He shrugs.

I get the message. I inhale, and then I exhale loudly.

“Ah, I get it, now you're my handler, is that it? You drive me around, you act as my secretary, chauffeur, and when needed, bodyguard, so you can keep an eye on everything I do and report back to whomever it may concern, right?”

“Only for the first few days, Counselor.”

“What am I, on probation?”

He laughs. This is the first time since I've met him that he's gotten a joke.

“Anyway, I'm taking the bus.”

“I'll follow you anyway.”

“Oh, really.”

“Eh. I have no choice.”

I head off. This time he gives me a considerable head start before starting up his Vespa.

 

As I approach the bus stop, I decide to regain control of my personal life so I turn my cell phone back on, with all the enthusiasm of a Sunday afternoon in mid-November. I half-heartedly select Alessandra Persiano's number in my phonebook, almost completely convinced that our, shall I say, affair has already vanished under the surface and sunk to the bottom of the sea, even though I really wouldn't be able to say why, if someone were ever to ask me.

If she doesn't answer, it's disagreement by silence.

It rings once. Twice. A third time. A fourth time.

“Hello.”

My heart suddenly stops beating, I swear. I'll die if it doesn't start up again.

“Ale. Vincenzo,” I gasp. I don't have the slightest idea of how I managed to manufacture the sound.

“I know that,” she says.

The reception is impeccable. I manage to capture every nuance of her tone of voice. I could describe it (I don't know, maybe I'd say that it's somewhere between disappointed tenderness and renunciation, for instance), if I hadn't been trying so hard to stay on my feet, right here and now.

“Eh. Can . . . can you hear me?”

What a pathetic question.

“Like an iPod, Vincè.”

What really puts me through the floor right now (because it's incredible, but at the same time, inevitable), is that I have so many things I'd like to tell her, but now, I mean right this instant, it strikes me that there's not a single thing, not even one, of all the things that I could tell her, that is sufficiently interesting to be worth telling; I don't know if these self-critical panning shots with a resulting laconic silence—at the very moment when the most useful thing would be to start talking—ever happen to other people, but I sure do hope so.

“Where . . . where are you?” I ask, venturing further into the realm of the inappropriate.

An extended pause follows, which sounds more or less like: “Why, what a great question you just asked, oh, I'm just so eager to answer it,” after which Alessandra Persiano replies, in a tone of semi-resignation:

“You want to know where I am. So I'll tell you. I'm outside the judicial offices. I just got done. I just served two restraining orders and a preliminary injunction. Now I'm in the main lobby of the courthouse, in fact; can you hear how it echoes in here? Now that I think about it, there's a shoe store not far from here: I might just take this opportunity to drop by because I really need a pair of closed-toe slippers.”

I let a few seconds go by, then I ask:

“With or without the fluffy trim?”

“What?” she says, but she heard me.

“The slippers. The kind with the fluffy trim, or do you mean espadrilles?” I specify.

Whereupon I distinctly hear a snort and a hint of laughter. I feel as if I can see her, Alessandra Persiano, looking around, disconcerted and a little annoyed with herself because she can't manage to tamp down this hemorrhaging surge of cheerfulness.