Involuntary Witness (13 page)

Cervellati dictated the new charge for the records.

He had been true to his word. My client was now facing a charge which, if he was convicted, would lead him straight to life imprisonment with hard labour.

The judge asked me if I intended to apply for time for defence. This was a courtesy gesture, she was not bound to do it. I thanked her and said no, I did not so intend.

Then it was the turn of Cotugno, who was even briefer than Cervellati. He associated himself with the requests of the public prosecutor and also asked for a committal for trial.

I had little to say, because in a case like this there was obviously no chance at all of an acquittal in the preliminary hearing.

So I simply said that we had no observations to make on the request for committal.

Then the judge pronounced the ruling.

The trial of Abdou Thiam, born Dakar, Senegal, on 4 March 1968, on the charges of unlawful restraint and murder with aggravating circumstances, was fixed for 12 June, before the Assize Court of Bari.

I was on my way home from the office, thinking I’d have to do a spot of shopping to avoid eating out yet again when I heard a woman’s voice, slightly throaty, just behind me.

“Could you please give me a hand? I’m about to collapse.”

My neighbour Margherita. It was a wonder she hadn’t collapsed already. She was lugging a bursting briefcase, numerous plastic bags full of food and a long tube of the kind used by architects to carry drawings around.

I gave her a hand, meaning I took over all the shopping. So we set off walking side by side.

“Just as well I met you. A week ago I was in more or less the same straits when I met old Professor Costantini, and he offered to help me. I gave him the shopping bags and after one block he was on the verge of a heart attack.”

I gave her a faintly idiotic smile. I should evidently have known who this Professor Costantini was.

“Who is Professor Costantini?”

“The one on the second floor of our building. Excuse my asking, but how long have you been living there?”

It struck me that I’d been living there for more than a year. And I didn’t know any of the tenants by name.

“More or less a year.”

“Congratulations! You must be a really sociable type.
What do you do? Sleep by day and go round at night in tights and a cloak and mask, ridding the city of criminals?”

I told her I was a lawyer and she, after pulling a rather wry face, said that she too, long ago, had seemed destined to become a lawyer. She had done the training, passed the exams and was even on the rolls, but then she had done a switch. Total. Now she worked in advertising and other things. However – we agreed – in a sense we were colleagues, so we could address each other as
tu
. She said that made her feel more at ease.

“I’ve always had trouble using
lei
. It really doesn’t come naturally, I have to force it. They tried to teach me some years ago that a well-brought-up girl doesn’t use
tu
with strangers, but I’ve always had serious doubts about being a well-brought-up girl. How about you?”

“About being a well-brought-up girl? Yes, I do have some doubts about that.”

She gave a short laugh – a sort of gurgle – before speaking again.

“I can see you have doubts all along the line. You always look ... I don’t know, I can’t find the word to describe it. As if you were turning over questions in your mind and didn’t much like the answers. Or didn’t like them one bit.”

I turned to look at her, slightly disconcerted.

“Seeing that this is the second time we’ve seen each other, may I ask what you base this diagnosis on?”

“It’s the second time
you’ve
seen
me
. I’ve seen you at least four or five other times since I came to live in this building. On two occasions we passed in the street and you literally looked straight through me. So much so that I didn’t even feel inclined to say good morning.
It hurt my vanity, but your thoughts were wandering.”

We walked on in silence for thirty or forty yards. Then she spoke again.

“Have I put my foot in it?”

“No. I’ve been thinking about what you said. Wondering how come it was so obvious.”

“It isn’t so obvious. It’s that I’m observant.”

We had reached the entrance to our building. We went in together and up the few steps to the lift. I was sorry the moment had come for us to part.

“You’ve succeeded in arousing my curiosity. Now how should I set about having a more detailed consultation?”

She thought for a moment or two. She was making up her mind.

“Are you the kind who gets the wrong idea if you’re asked to supper by a girl living on her own?”

“In the past I was a professional getter of the wrong idea, but I’ve given that up, I think. I hope.”

“In that case, if you don’t get the wrong idea and you’re not otherwise engaged, this evening would suit me.”

“This evening would suit me too. Are you on the sixth or the seventh?”

“The seventh. I’ve even got a terrace. A pity it’s still too cold in the evenings, otherwise we could have eaten outside. Is nine o’clock all right for you?”

“Yes. What can I bring?”

“Wine, if you drink it, because I haven’t any.”

“Very good. This evening, then.”

“Don’t you take the lift?”

“No, I use the stairs.”

She looked at me for a moment without saying anything, but with a faintly questioning air. Then
she nodded, relieved me of her shopping and said goodbye.

 

 

I don’t remember exactly what I did in the office that afternoon, but I do remember a feeling of lightness. A sensation I’d not had for a very long time.

I felt as I had on afternoons in May in my last school years.

Almost no one ever attended classes any longer. Those who went were the ones who had to make up for poor marks and resit exams. Very few others.

For all of us they were the first days of the holidays, and the best. Because they were in a sense illegal. According to the rules, we should have gone on attending school, but we didn’t. They were days stolen one by one from the school calendar and given over to freedom.

Perhaps this was why there was that electricity, that strange tension laden with expectation, in those May afternoons suspended between school and the mysteries of summer.

Something was about to happen – something
had
to happen – and we felt it. Our time was bent like a bow, ready to shoot us who knows where.

That is how I felt that afternoon, as in those indelible memories of my adolescence.

I left the office at about half-past seven and went to a wine shop. I didn’t know what we were going to eat or what Margherita’s tastes were, so I couldn’t get only red wine, which I would have done as a rule. I don’t much care for white wine.

So I chose a Primitivo from Manduria and, just to show myself for the provincial I was, a Californian white from the Napa Valley.

When I had chosen the wine I had some time to spare so I went for a walk along Via Sparano.

The crowds milled round me and time, it seemed, had been suspended.

The air seemed full of gentle melancholy, and also a certain something I didn’t quite manage to grasp.

I got home at a quarter to nine, had a shower and dressed. Light-coloured trousers, denim shirt, soft, light leather shoes.

I shut the door, holding the two bottles by the neck in my other hand, and bounced up the stairs, the image of Alberto Sordi impersonating an American in Rome.

The result was that I tripped up and only just avoided smashing everything. I couldn’t help laughing, and when I knocked at Margherita’s door two flights above I must still have been wearing a rather stupid smile.

“What’s up?” she asked after saying hello, narrowing her eyes in puzzlement.

“Nothing, it’s just that I nearly fell on the stairs, and since I’m a bit of a loony anyway I found it amusing. But don’t worry, I’m harmless.”

She laughed, again with that kind of gurgle.

Her flat had a good smell to it, of new furniture, cleanliness and well-cooked food. It was bigger than mine, and evidently some walls had been knocked down, because there was no hallway and one entered straight into a kind of living room with a big french window giving onto a terrace. Not much furniture. Just a kind of low cupboard that looked Japanese, a number of light wooden shelves attached to the wall, and a glass and wrought-iron table with four metal chairs. On the floor a large coconut mat and, on two sides of the room, a number of big coloured candles of varying heights, blue glass jars containing some kind of crushed stone, and a black stereo unit.

The shelves were full of books and knick-knacks and gave the impression of a home that had been lived in for some time.

On the walls were two reproductions of paintings by Hopper,
Cape Cod Evening
and
Gas
. That one of petrol pumps out in the country. They were beautiful and moving.

I said so, and she gave me a quick glance as if to see whether I was talking simply to show off. Then she nodded, gravely. Pause. Then: “Can you eat hot things?”

“I can eat hot things.”

“I’ll just slip into the kitchen, then, and finish getting it ready. You look around if you like, it’ll be ready in five minutes. We’ll chat when we’re at table. I’ll open the red wine because it goes with what we’re going to eat. And in any case the white won’t get chilled in such a short time.”

She vanished into the kitchen. I began to examine the books on the shelves, as I usually do when I enter an unknown house.

There were a lot of novels and collections of short stories. American, French and Spanish, in the original languages.

Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Carver, Bukowski, Fante, Montalban, Lodge, Simenon, Kerouac.

There was an ancient, tattered edition of
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
. There were travel books by an American journalist – Bill Bryson – that I liked a lot and had thought I was more or less the only person who knew them.

Then there were books on psychology, books on Japanese martial arts, catalogues of exhibitions, mostly of photography.

I took out the catalogue of an exhibition in Florence
of Robert Capa and leafed through it. Then I looked at Chatwin and then Doisneau, with his black-and-white kisses in the Paris of the 50s. There was a book on Hopper. When I opened it, I saw there was a dedication, so I quickly turned the page, embarrassed.

I read a line or two of the introduction: “Images of the city or the country, almost always deserted, in which are mingled realism of vision and an agonizing feeling for landscape, for people, for things. Hopper’s paintings, beneath an appearance of objectivity, express a silence, a solitude, a metaphysical astonishment.”

I put back the Hopper, took down
Ask the Dust
by John Fante and went with it onto the terrace. The air was cool and dry. I wandered around a while among the potted plants, looked down into the street, stopped to finger some strange little flowers with the consistency of wax. Then, leaning against the wall under a kind of wrought-iron lantern, I flipped through the book to the last page, because I wanted to re-read the ending.

 

 

“Supper’s ready.”

I came to with a slight jolt and went inside. The table was laid.

The Primitivo was in a carafe, and in another like it was water. There was a tureen of chilli con carne and a dish of boiled rice. Arranged on a plate were four corncobs with some whorls of butter in the centre.

We began with the corncobs and butter. I picked up the carafe of wine and was about to pour her a glass.

She said no, she didn’t drink.

“I had what they call a drinking problem. A few years ago. Then it became a
big
problem. Now I don’t drink.”

“Forgive me, if I’d known I wouldn’t have brought the wine ...”

“Hey, it was me who told you to bring wine. For you.”

“If it upsets you, I can drink water.”

“It doesn’t upset me.”

She said it with a smile but in a tone of voice that meant: discussion over.

All right, discussion over. I filled my glass and set to work on the corncob.

We talked very little while we ate. The chilli was
really
hot and the wine suited it to perfection. For pudding there was a date and honey cake, also Mexican.

It was scarcely a slimming meal and after it I felt the need for something strong. For obvious reasons I said nothing, but Margherita went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of tequila gold, still sealed.

“I bought it for you this afternoon. One can’t have a Mexican meal without finishing off with tequila. Take the bottle with you afterwards. And the white wine.”

I poured myself a tequila, pulled out my cigarettes and then – too late – thought that perhaps she didn’t like people smoking. But in fact Margherita asked for one and fetched a kind of mortar of volcanic rock as an ashtray.

“I don’t buy cigarettes. If I do, I smoke them. But when I can, I bum them off someone else.”

“I know the method,” I replied. For many years it had been
my
method. Then my friends had begun to say no, I had become not a little unpopular and, well, in the end I was forced to buy them.