Reasonable Doubts (18 page)

“Your Honour, I’d like to make a few observations on what the assistant prosecutor had just said.”

“On what in particular, Avvocato Guerrieri?”

“On the assistant prosecutor’s outline of the presumed inadmissibility of Avvocato Macrì’s testimony.”

“If necessary, you can make these observations at another time. For the moment we agree to the examination of your client and of his wife. We will decide on the other request once these are over.”

Then, before I could add anything else, he dictated his ruling to the clerk of the court. “Having considered the admissibility
of the examination of the defendant and of his wife, and having considered that it is not possible at the present time to come to a decision as to the admissibility of testimony from Avvocato Macrì, it being necessary to hear said examination in order to evaluate its bearing on this case, the court admits the examination of the defendant and of his wife, and reserves any possible further decision until it has been completed.”

All things considered, it was the right thing to do. I would probably have done the same in their place.

Mirenghi again addressed me. “Avvocato Guerrieri, how long do you think the examination of your client will take? If it is something we can get through in a few minutes, we’ll proceed now. If not, as we have to close today’s session early due to a personal engagement of my own, it would be better to adjourn.”

“Your Honour, I don’t think it will take long, but I doubt that a few minutes would be enough. It may be better to have a short adjournment.”

Mirenghi made no comment on this. He put it on record that the next hearing would take place in a week’s time, and then said that there would now be a recess of five minutes.

I was on my way to tell Paolicelli that things were going more or less as I’d expected, when I saw his eyes moving towards the door of the courtroom. I turned and saw Natsu coming in.

I found myself blushing, in a way I hadn’t since I was a child. This was the first time, since this whole business had started, that we were all together in the same place. Natsu, her husband and I.

Paolicelli called me. I hesitated for a few moments, hoping the blushing would disappear or at least fade a little, and then walked to the cage.

He wanted to say hello to his wife and needed his guards to let her come closer. I asked Montaruli, and he authorized the defendant and his wife to have a brief conversation. As a rule this isn’t done - only a limited number of such conversations are allowed and they can only take place in prison - but in practice prosecutors who aren’t complete bastards bend the rules a little during the pauses between cases.

Natsu leaned against the cage and he took her hands through the bars. He squeezed them in his, and said something which luckily I couldn’t hear. I felt a twinge of jealousy, and a simultaneous pang of guilt. They were very different but both hurt equally.

I had to leave the courtroom to overcome the feeling that everyone was looking at my face and could see in it what was happening inside me.

A few minutes later the escort passed me, taking Paolicelli away in handcuffs. He greeted me with a kind of weak smile and raised his fettered hands.

31

The afternoon before the second hearing I went to visit Paolicelli in prison. I told him what would happen the following morning-I would begin with his wife’s testimony and then I would examine him - gave him advice on how to conduct himself in court, and went over the questions I was going to ask him and the answers he should give me.

It didn’t take very long. We finished in less than half an hour.

As I was putting my papers in my briefcase, getting ready to leave, Paolicelli asked me if I didn’t mind staying another ten minutes or so for a chat. Those were his exact words:
You couldn’t stay another ten minutes or so for a chat?

I couldn’t help the look of surprise on my face, and obviously he noticed.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s ridiculous, I don’t know what came over me ...”

I interrupted him with an awkward gesture of the hand, as if to tell him he didn’t need to apologize. “It isn’t ridiculous. I know how alone you can feel in prison.”

He looked me in the eyes, then covered his face with his hands for a few seconds and gave an almost harsh sigh, heavy with suffering but also a kind of relief.

“Sometimes I think I’m going mad. I think I’ll never get out of here. I’ll never see my little girl again, my wife will meet someone else and make a new life for herself—”

“I met your daughter. Your wife brought her into the office one evening. She’s really beautiful.”

I don’t know why I said that. To interrupt what he was saying, I guess, and make my guilt more bearable. Or maybe there was another reason. Whatever it was, the words just came out, and I couldn’t control them.

I couldn’t control anything in this situation any more.

He was looking for something to say in reply but couldn’t find it. His lips were tight and he was on the verge of tears. I didn’t look away, as I would have done as a rule. Instead I reached an arm across the table and put my hand on his shoulder. As I did so, I thought about how many times I’d fantasized about getting my hands on him one day.

None of this makes sense, I thought.

“How do you spend your time in here?” I asked him.

He rubbed his eyes and sniffed before replying. “I’m quite lucky. I work in the infirmary, and that helps. Part of the day passes quickly. Then in my free time ...”

As he said this, he became aware of the paradox.
Free time
. He seemed about to make a joke out of it, but then must have thought it wouldn’t be funny or even original. So he just made a tired gesture and continued talking.

“... well, anyway, when I’m not working I try to do a little exercise, you know, press-ups, stretching, that kind of thing, and apart from that I read.”

Right, I thought. That was the only thing missing. A Fascist who reads. Do they have the works of Julius Evola in the prison library? Or maybe highlights from
Mein Kampf
?

“What do you read?”

“Whatever I can find. Right now I’m reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography,
A Long Road to Freedom
. It’s a good title, for someone in my position. Do you like reading, Avvocato?”

I thought of telling him he didn’t have to keep calling me Avvocato. It was a bit absurd, considering - how shall I put it? - everything there was and had been between us. Only he didn’t know what there was and had been, between all of us. He would probably never know.

“Yes, I like it a lot.”

“And what are you reading now?”

I was reading
Nothing Happens by Chance
. And as I answered his question and told him the title I had the feeling that everything suddenly had a clear, distinct meaning. Or rather, that this clear, distinct meaning had always been there, like Poe’s purloined letter, but I simply hadn’t been capable of grasping it. Because it was too obvious.

His voice dispelled everything before I could find the words to define that meaning and remember it. “Is it a novel?”

“No, it’s an essay by a Jungian psychoanalyst. It’s about chance and coincidence, and the stories we tell ourselves to give meaning to chance and coincidence. It’s a good book, a book about the search for meaning, and about stories.” And then, after a brief pause, I added, “I like stories a lot.”

Why was I saying these things? Why was I telling him that I liked stories? Why was I talking about myself?

We carried on chatting. A bit more about books, then about sport. He would never have guessed I was into boxing, he said, I didn’t really look the type, I didn’t even have a broken nose. He himself played tennis, quite well in fact. A pity there weren’t any courts in prison - that might have been why his backhand wasn’t what it should be. He was more relaxed now and the joke came out quite freely. At that point I remembered that the first time we met he’d told me he’d started smoking again in prison, and yet I’d never seen him light a cigarette.

How come? I asked him. He didn’t want to make me feel uncomfortable, he replied, seeing that I’d quit smoking. I said thanks, but smoke didn’t make me feel uncomfortable any more.
Almost
never, I thought without saying it. He nodded, but said he’d continue not to smoke when we met. He preferred it that way.

After smoking we got on to music.

“I think music is one of the things I miss the most.”

“Do you mean to listen to or to play?”

He smiled, and shrugged slightly. “No, no. To listen to. I’d have loved to learn an instrument, but I never tried. There are a lot of things I’ve never tried, but there you go. No, I love listening to music. Especially jazz.”

“What kind of jazz?”

“Do you like it too?”

“Fairly. I listen to it a lot, though I’m not sure I always understand it.”

“I like all kinds of jazz, but here in prison what I miss most is some of the classic tracks I used to listen to when I was young.”

“My father was a great jazz fan. He had this incredible collection of old records, including some really rare LPs from the Fifties. They’re mine now, and I still have a real turntable to play them on.”

That record collection must have been in one of the rooms I didn’t go into, I thought, and suddenly the smell of the apartment filled my nostrils, and I felt sad.

“Do you have a favourite piece?”

He smiled again, looking into the distance, and nodded.
“Yes, I have. ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’. If I get out of here, one of the first things I’m going to do is listen to a very old radio recording I have of that piece. It was made by Louis Armstrong in the RAI studios in Florence, in 1952, I think. He sings and plays on it. It’s a crackly old recording, but it still sends shivers down my spine.”

He startling softly whistling ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’, perfectly in tune, and for a few moments forgot about me and everything, filling that shabby, silent room with notes, while the questions ricocheted around my head like billiard balls.

The music faded away without my even noticing, and with it my thoughts, and my answerless questions. Some of my certainties had already faded away some time previously.

Paolicelli told me I should go. He had taken unfair advantage of my kindness. He was very grateful to me for this chat. He’d really enjoyed it.

I told him I’d enjoyed it, too.

I wasn’t lying.

“So, we’ll see each other tomorrow in court.”

“Tomorrow. And thank you. For everything.”

Yes, for everything.

32

I went straight from the prison to my office, where I had an appointment with Natsu. I told her more or less the same things I’d told her husband, about what would happen in court, how she should conduct herself, and so on.

Before going to the prison, before talking to Paolicelli, I’d thought of asking Natsu if we could see each other that evening. But after that conversation, I didn’t feel like saying anything.

I felt a mixture of tenderness, shame and nostalgia. I thought how nice it would be if that hard lump of pain deep inside me over Margherita disappeared as if by magic, and how nice it would be if I could just fall in love with Natsu without having to worry about anything. I thought how nice it would be to make plans in my mind for the future, for all the days and nights we could spend together. For many things. It was probably nothing to do with her; it was about the idea of being in love, of playing the game, the idea of a life that wasn’t one of resignation.

But it wasn’t possible.

So, when we’d finished talking about the case, I simply told her that she was more beautiful than ever, walked around to the front of my desk, kissed her on the cheek, and told her I’d be working late.

She looked at me for a long time, as if she hadn’t quite understood. Who could blame her? Then she also kissed me on the cheek and left.

The usual routine followed, just a little more melancholy than usual. Coming back from the office, punchball, shower, roll, beer.

It wasn’t a good evening to stay indoors, so I decided to go to the cinema. At an old cinema called the Esedra they were showing Altman’s
The Long Goodbye
. It took me twenty minutes to get there, walking quickly through streets so deserted and windswept they were almost scary.

The man in the box office wasn’t pleased to see me and made no attempt to conceal the fact. He even hesitated for a few moments to take the banknote I had placed in front of him. I had the impression he was begging me to leave. I must have been the only person there. Without me they could close up early. In the end, he took the money, tore off the ticket and handed it to me, bad-temperedly, along with the change.

I entered the completely empty auditorium. I don’t know if the total absence of human sensory stimuli sharpened my sense of smell or if the cinema needed a good cleaning, but I could distinctly smell the upholstery on the seats and the dust that permeated them.

I sat down and looked around. The place was a perfect setting for an episode of
The Twilight Zone
. Indeed, for a few seconds I had to resist the impulse to go and make sure the man in the box office hadn’t turned into a giant man-eating crustacean and that the emergency exits hadn’t become portals into another dimension.

Then a woman came in. She sat down close to the exit, some ten rows behind me. If I wanted to look at her I had to make a deliberate effort to turn round, which could seem dodgy if I overdid it. So I managed to get only a vague idea of her before the lights went out and the film started. She
was of medium height, was wrapped in a large shawl, or maybe a poncho, had very short hair, and seemed to be more or less my age.