I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) (30 page)

The dirty city air has a wonderful taste when I finally get out of that piece-of-shit car.

 

 

I
, for what it's worth, don't even know what the Camorra is anymore. Not that I have any special knowledge on the subject, because I know more or less as much as everybody else. And what people know about the Camorra is essentially the popularized version of what is written in the verdicts handed down by trial judges, which are after all the primary sources for any study of the phenomenon. Because it's clear that in order for something to be studied, it must be written down, at least to some extent. Of course, direct experience is also a form of knowledge (generally—though not necessarily—the most reliable form); but those who study things refer to written documentation, because, for the purposes of study, that is to say, the critical understanding of a subject, a written account is always preferable to an oral account. On the other hand, when we're talking about the need to convey a cumulative personal experience, that is to say, writing it down (since writing is the natural extension of experience), we immediately sense the need for other bodies of writing as a point of reference. And where is someone who writes about the Camorra going to find these other other bodies of writing as a point of reference? They're going to turn to the verdicts handed down by judges in Camorra trials. Because, let's face it, the Camorristi don't write. Or perhaps we should say: they pick up a pen and paper when they're turning their back on that life, in order to provide, in a certain sense, the written proof of a change of heart (what Camorrista still in the business would put his dealings in writing?). And it's obvious that a personal account, even a written personal account, by someone who has had a change of heart lacks the degree of reliability found in a legal verdict, which is the product of an extended, painstaking, complex effort, adhering to certain criteria of objectivity and, most important, a text that has been written by people who have no need of a change of heart in order to start writing.

There are plenty of stories in circulation about the Camorra. But what makes these stories so durable, and what takes them out of the realm (in an absolutely inexplicable way) of gossip and hearsay is that you believe them when you hear them. By which I mean that these stories immediately convey that distinctly Camorristic sense of déjà vu, so that as soon as you hear the beginning of the story, you've already figured out what it's all about.

This impression of having already experienced the thing is a trait that is peculiar to the Camorra, a faint but lasting aftertaste, like the faint hint of vanilla in a Brunello di Montalcino or the nuance of blackberry in a full-bodied Amarone della Valpolicella, details that immediately make you nod in recognition. As if the Camorra spoke to a special dedicated sector of the brain, which is capable of filling in sentences automatically. The sentence structure of the Camorra is invariably missing a piece: they give you subject and object, or else predicate and complement, or subject and predicate, leaving you to supply the rest of the sentence.

I suspect that this grammatical privilege is a product of the fact that the Camorra, if you were born in the lands that it controls, is one of those things you learn from an early age; but if you try asking around about exactly what the Camorra is, no one will tell you. It's like the mystery that surrounds the question of how babies are born, a mystery that they try to unveil only when you've reached a certain age, as late as possible, when you're old enough to understand, but by then you've already figured it out for yourself. The surrounding community basically teaches you about the Camorra by hinting at it and doing its best to scare you. It reports the news by censoring it. It gets you used to looking away, pretending not to understand; and then, when you grow up, it blames you when you fail to report something to the police.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it's my impression that in recent years the Camorra has changed a great deal, in the collective imagination even of people who experience it as nothing more than another form of atmospheric pollution. In the sense that it's no longer only one single thing, and especially in the sense that it's something that never stays put, in one place. It has kind of shredded, spread out, muddled itself into an indistinct criminal genre where there's room for professionals and dilettantes, militants and wildcat operators and loose cannons, without any certainty of a distinction between legitimate operators and fly-by-night gypsies, the careful and the out-of-control, originals and cheap imitations.

Let's take one of the best-known aspects of the way that the Camorra exercises its power: its control of the territory. Until just a few years ago, it was unthinkable that anyone might be shot and killed, or stabbed and killed, over a cell phone, or for a small amount of money you just withdrew ten minutes ago from an ATM. The rigorous application of an occult system of rules, forbidding the commission of any criminal act outside of those prescribed or specifically authorized by the Camorra, was a fundamental and indispensable condition of exercising its power.

But these days, there's a nondescript grab bag of criminals roaming the streets, generically Camorristic, deepy irresponsible, casually practicing a level of violence that's absolutely disproportionate in terms of its criminal objectives. So you can be shot in a two-bit robbery, or because you talked back when ragged and bullied by a small-time thug, high and on the streets looking for a fight, or else just because you committed the error of looking at somebody in a way that nobody even noticed but him.

Whereupon you're forced to ask yourself: where is the Camorra? Why doesn't it do something? Has it transferred its criminal interests elsewhere? Doesn't it care about its territory anymore? Where is it doing business now?

If the Camorra can't be defeated, then at least it ought to liberate the citizenry from the barbarity of disorganized crime. It shouldn't abandon its victims. The Camorra should get back in the trenches, fight the good fight, make it safe to walk the streets again.

We want a sustainable Camorra.

 

I
take advantage of the ample fifteen minutes that I'm running early on my appointment with Pallucca, Maria Vittoria to hole up in the bathroom of the Feltrinelli bookstore so I can examine the contents of the envelope I was just given by the intern in Encouragement of Unknown Lawyers for the induction of new blood into the Registry of Criminal Lawyers on the Camorra Payroll.

Given the restroom-claustrophobia syndrome that keeps me from locking bathroom doors, I walk into the toilet and adopt the so-called technique of the artist's compass: legs spread wide, left foot jammed against the base of the door (though I take care not to lean against that door, given the suspicious fingerprints that besmear it), tip of the right foot against the opposite wall. I then proceed to open the envelope.

I pull out the wad of bills, which are intimidating in the way they rustle with freshness and give off a distinct sense of confidence in the future (it's undeniable that tomorrow strikes you as sunnier when you have a wad of cash in your pocket), I fold it over like a sandwich (actually, I should say, like a triple cheeseburger, given the sheer bulk—and I can't say whether I find that bulk more exciting or worrisome) and I proceed to count it.

In this case, I make use of a money-counting technique I learned from an ex-girlfriend who worked as a bank teller; actually I called her up recently, in a period of absolute sex famine, beating around the bush for a good twenty minutes and winding up with a friendly turn-down, one of those turn-downs that's cushioned by the fact that the two of you have a shared sexual history, but that doesn't mean it's not still a turn-down. In fact, even now when I think back on it, I'm left with a burning pain in my ass, truth be told. Because there is something intrinsically unacceptable about turn-downs from ex-girlfriends. They start with an unexpected and completely decon­textualized phone call from you: in practical terms, you pop out of the distant past; she immediately understands what you're driving at; you give it the long wind-up to the pitch but that just makes it worse; she matches you in tone and spirit, but it's obvious that she's just waiting for you to get to the point, and when finally, after a long and cringe-inducing series of circumnavigations, she makes it clear that it's completely out of the question, you change the subject with the lightning reflexes of a motorist swerving into the oncoming lane a split second before impact, to the soundtrack of an absolutely gratuitous giggle that she validates by laughing along with you, even though nothing funny was said. Then you say goodbye and hang up, and you walk up and down in your apartment for a while.

But the turn-down in question is especially upsetting because the ex-girlfriend we're talking about—who dismisses me as if as long as we've known each other I'd done nothing but proposition her—is just pretending that she can't remember which side the scale was tipping toward, back then.

When she told me on the phone that “it didn't strike her that there was any basis for us getting together again in that context” (which in and of itself strikes me as a piece-of-shit phrase), I could have reminded her, oh I don't know, of when she used to say things to me like: “Do you realize that in the time I've known you I've seen you more with your pants off than on?”; and I would tell her that she had every right to be proud of the fact (in fact, after telling me that I was an oaf and a pig for saying it, she had to admit that she was in fact proud of the fact); or else (my personal favorite): “You and I don't talk enough!” when, immediately after walking into her apartment, I started taking my pants off, in fact; or else, reemerging after a blow job in my car: “No, listen, this is absurd. There's a boy who's been courting me for three months, a real sweetheart, believe me, gentle, polite, caring, a perfect father for my children. And it's not like he just loves me: he worships the ground I walk on. He takes me anywhere I want to go, and money is no object. When he takes me home he waits to make sure I get in the front door, and he even wants me to wave to him from the window before he'll drive away. And he hasn't laid a finger on me, you see what I'm saying? Nothing, not even a kiss on the cheek, and look at what I'm doing right now”; and I say: “Exactly: don't stop.”

Anyway, I count the money, I put it back in the envelope, I slip the envelope into the inside breast pocket of my jacket, I step out of my solitary confinement cell, I walk over to the sink, I rinse my hands without soap; the electric hand dryer doesn't work, so I shake my hands freely, scattering drops everywhere; I look at myself in the mirror as I wait for my hands to dry themselves, but since someone has just walked in and I suddenly realize that I have no apparent reason justifying my continued presence in there, I walk out with both arms outstretched and dangling, and find myself in the children's book section looking like a zombie. A little boy holding his grandfather's hand looks up at me. I go to the home video section and contemplate with lively interest a “Teletubbies” DVD while I think to myself:
Good God Almighty, I have 15,000 euros in the inside breast pocket of my jacket
.

I head over to the bookstore café, I sit down at one of the high stools by the counter, and I order an espresso. The barista takes one look at me and asks if I feel all right. I say, “Yeah, sure.”

I sip my espresso as I analyze the facts at hand. Okay, I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to legal fee structures (which for that matter is a field that belongs by feudal right to famous lawyers: if small-time lawyers talk to their clients about fees, they lose them as clients). I have no idea what the normal cost of the kind of defense I just provided would be, nor have I really given the matter a great deal of thought before now, accustomed as I am to taking whatever people pay me without objection. The one thing I'm sure of is that in the course of my entire, shall we say, career, I've never earned anything like this much money at a single time (and let's not even try to imagine how much time it would take me to earn this much money). But the question that suddenly begins to torment me is this: What if this money isn't just limited to the Burzone case? What if this money is also a down payment on future cases? The problem with these people is the language. Since they speak only through actions—accomplished or attempted—you've got to try to decipher them each time. It's not like a person can just take the money he's due and then forget about it; he's also got to worry about whether by taking this money he might not discover that he now has an uncomfortable fiduciary responsibility as a Camorra lawyer. Obviously, that's the kind of thought that contaminates whatever money you earn (which in my opinion is something that Camorristi know: it's why they pay you).

I finish my cup of espresso and walk off stiff-legged, like someone who's just stepped in dog shit, but I have to go back because the barista practically yelled after me that I've forgotten to pay.

I head upstairs, I loiter around in the nonfiction section in a catatonic state, I leaf through a book called
The Antibi­ological Man
that I don't give a damn about, and then I head for the exit.

Across from the wall where the new titles are on display I run into Pallucca, Maria Vittoria as she contemplates the latest best-sellers with a look of bafflement, and, come to think of it, now I seem to remember that we had an appointment.

“Counselor,” she says, overjoyed to see me.

“Ah, hi there,” I reply.

“I got here a little late, sorry.”

“What?” I ask.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Of course I am,” I reply.

Why is everyone asking me that question?

“Well, shall we go?” she says.

“Where?” I ask.

“What do you mean,
where
, Counselor?” she asks with a note of concern in her voice. “To the bank, right?”

I touch my brow.

“Oh, of course. But I can't come with you.”

“Why not?” the woman asks, perplexed.

I pull the check out of my wallet and hand it to her. Her face lights up when she sees the figure.

“I have an appointment,” I say.

“Then what are we going to do? I can't pay you unless I cash the check.”

“That's all right, you can drop by my law office this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?” she says again, incredulous that I'm willing to let her go, since the check (which includes my fee) is made out to her, and so there would be nothing to keep her from cashing it and then claiming that she had paid me.

“Why, are you busy this afternoon?”

God, it's heartbreaking to see how she clutches that piece of paper to her heart.

“No, no, I'm not busy.”

“Well, all right then. Would six o'clock be convenient for you?”

“Six . . . o'clock. Okay.”

“Don't hold that check so everyone can see it,” I say.

“Oh, right,” she says, looking at her hands, uneasily. And she stuffs the check into her purse.

“Then I'll expect you.”

“All right, Counselor.”

She shakes my hand, uncertainly.

Then we walk out into the street and part ways.

I head off for my date with Alagia, but before I've gone more than a few yards, as I expected, my critical angel starts off on his diatribe.

Ah, excellent work, I have to say, my compliments. You know, don't you, that you're never going to see her again?

She's an honest person, I reply.

Oh, really? And how do you know that?

She would never do anything like that to me, I reply.

Who is she, your sister?

I just decided to trust her, I reply.

So what you're trying to tell me is that she's coming to your law office this afternoon to bring you the money?

Sure, I reply.

Truly noble on your part, I say to myself, but don't come crying to me later.

Fine, now would you mind leaving me in peace for a while? I reply.

And before I can ask myself another question, I pull out my cell phone and consider an array of alternative text messages to send Alessandra Persiano: her absence is starting to take on the general appearance of an abandonment that is threatening to devastate me.

Here is the range of options that presents itself to me, after a while:

 

A) WHERE DID I GO WRONG?

B) OKAY, YOU PREFER TO KNOCK, BUT THEN WHY DON'T YOU KNOCK?

C) WHATEVER THE PROBLEM MAY BE, LET'S TALK ABOUT IT

D) IF IT'S OVER, AT LEAST DO ME THE FAVOR OF LETTING ME KNOW

 

So I write:

 

HOW ABOUT GETTING SOME CHINESE FOOD TONIGHT?

KISSES, VINC

 

Hitting
SEND
demands an enormous effort, I'm so disgusted with myself.

Then I dial Alf's number.

He only answers after it rings repeatedly, and in a whisper.

“Dad, I've told you three hundred times not to call me at school.”

“I know, but there's something I need to say to you.”

“All right, okay, just hold on while I step over here.”

“What are you doing?”

“Phys ed. Would you mind telling me why you're calling me?”

“Listen, is there something you want?”

“What?”

“Something you want. Tell me something you want, anything at all. I'll buy it for you.”

Pause. He must be in the hallway at school, because the voices of his classmates have that unmistakable echo.

“Dad, what are you talking about?”

“What's the matter, you don't know what to say?”

“What happened, did you win some money?”

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I think to myself.

“Is there something you'd wish for or not?”

He takes a moment to think.

“For you and Mom to get back together?”

“Ha, ha, funny guy.”

“What do I know, Dad. Just let me get off the phone.”

“You don't know what you want?”

A short silence follows.

“No. Really, there's nothing I want.”

“That can't be.”

“Yes it can.”

“Alfre',” I say, after a pause, “I've never given you a real gift.”

“That's not true. Why are talking such bullshit, Dad?”

“Trivial stuff aside, I mean. You've never really asked me for anything.”

“Maybe that's because I had everything I needed.”

“Because your mother took care of it.”

“And who gives a damn about that, Dad? Do you really think that I bothered to wonder which of the two of you had paid for it when I got something?”

 

I hadn't actually considered that, I say to myself.