The meeting with Scianatico.
And all the rest, which I partly knew already. She also told me a few things I didn’t know, about the time she lived with Scianatico and some of his predilections. Very unpleasant things, which we might be able to bring up in the trial, if I could find a way.
She also told me something about her family. A little about her mother. And her younger sister, who was married with one child. But she didn’t talk about her father and of course I assumed he was dead, but I didn’t ask her.
Martina’s story lasted at least three quarters of an hour. She seemed a bit calmer, as if she had at last relieved herself of a burden. She insisted that she hadn’t taken any medication for at least four years.
Let’s hope she doesn’t need to start taking it again after this trial, I thought.
“Can I ask you something?” she said, after lighting another cigarette.
“Of course.”
“Will he be in court when I testify?”
“I don’t know. He’s free to come or not to come. We won’t know until the day. But it shouldn’t make any difference to you if he’s there or not.”
“But will he be able to ask me questions?”
“No. Only his lawyer can ask you questions. And remember: when he examines you, and when you answer, don’t look at him. Look at the judge, look straight in front of you, but not at him. Remember you mustn’t get into any arguments with him, and that’s easier if you avoid looking straight at him. And if you don’t understand a question, don’t try to answer. Politely, without looking at him, tell the lawyer you haven’t understood and ask him to repeat it. And if I or the public prosecutor object to one of his questions, just stop, don’t answer, and wait for the judge to rule on the objection. I’ll go over all these things the day before your appearance, but try to memorize them now.”
I asked if there was anything else they wanted to know. Martina shook her head. Sister Claudia looked at me for a few moments. Then she decided now wasn’t the moment for her question, whatever it was, so she shook her head too.
“Everything’s fine, then. We’ll talk again tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll tell you how it went.” I said that as I was walking them to the door.
I wasn’t at all convinced everything was fine.
When they’d left, I went and opened the windows wide, even though it was cold outside. To get a change of air.
I didn’t want the sharp smell of fear to linger in the room too long.
17
I closed the office, returned home, had dinner with Margherita and just as we were going to bed I told her I was going down to my apartment. I had to work, to check some papers for the trial next day, and I’d be up late. I didn’t want to disturb her, so it was better if I slept downstairs.
The only true part of this was that I didn’t want to disturb her. There are nights when you know you’re not going to get any sleep. It’s not that there’s any particular, striking, unmistakable signal. You just know it. This evening I knew it. I knew I’d go to bed and lie there, wide awake, for an hour or more. Then I’d have to get up, because you can’t stay in bed when you can’t sleep. I’d have to walk around the apartment, I’d read something in the hope it would make me feel sleepy, I’d turn on the TV, and all the rest of the ritual. I didn’t want that to happen at Margherita’s. I didn’t want her to see me ill, even if it was just from occasional insomnia. I was ashamed.
When I told her I was going to my apartment to work, she looked me in the eyes. “You’re going to work now?”
“Yes, I told you. I’ve got a trial starting tomorrow. There’ll be a lot of preliminary issues, it’s a tricky case, I really have to go over everything.”
“You’re one of the worst liars I’ve ever met.”
I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Really bad, eh?”
“One of the worst.”
I felt a tightness in my shoulders, thinking that I used to be quite good at telling lies. With her, though, I hadn’t kept in practice.
“What’s your problem? If you want to be alone, you just have to say so.”
Yes, I just have to say so.
“I don’t think I’m going to get any sleep tonight and I don’t want to keep you awake too.”
“You’re not going to sleep. Why?”
“I won’t sleep. I don’t know why. It sometimes happens. I mean, that I know in advance.”
She looked me in the eyes again, but with a different expression now. She was wondering what the problem was, since I hadn’t told her and maybe didn’t even know. She was wondering if there was something she could do. In the end, she came to the conclusion she couldn’t do anything tonight. So she put her hand on my shoulder and gave me a quick kiss.
“All right then, good night, I’ll see you tomorrow. And if you feel sleepy, don’t stay awake just to be consistent.”
I went away with a vague, troubling sense of guilt.
After that, everything went as predicted. An hour spent tossing and turning in bed, in the forlorn hope that I’d been wrong in interpreting the premonitory signs. More than an hour in front of the television, watching a film to the end: Lure of the Sila, with Amedeo Nazzari, Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman.
Many interminable minutes reading Adorno’s Minima Moralia. In the hope, which I tried to keep hidden from myself in order for the trick to work, of boring myself so much that I couldn’t fail to fall asleep. I got bored all right, but sleep was as elusive as ever.
By the time I dozed slightly – a kind of laboured half-sleep – a sickly light and the soft, methodical, remorseless sound of rain was already filtering through the shutters, announcing that it was almost day.
It was still raining as I walked across the city, trying to protect myself with a pocket umbrella I’d bought a few weeks before from a Chinese woman. As usually happens the second time you use an umbrella – and that morning was the second time – it broke, and I got wet. By the time I got to the courthouse, just before nine-thirty, I wasn’t in a good mood.
18
The courtroom where Caldarola was due to preside was in the middle of a very busy corridor. As usual on trial days, the place was completely chaotic. There was a real mixture of people: the defendants, their lawyers, policemen and carabinieri who were due to testify, a few pensioners who spent their interminable mornings watching trials instead of playing briscola on park benches. Everyone knew them by now and they knew and greeted everyone.
A few yards from this group, there were other people with pieces of paper in their hands, looking lost, or like people who’d rather they weren’t there. They were right. They were witnesses in the various trials, usually crime victims, and the pieces of paper told them they were obliged to appear before a judge and “in the event of non-appearance not due to a legitimate impediment would be liable to be forced to appear, accompanied by the police, and would be subject to a fine of…” and so on, and so forth.
Even in the best of cases, they were about to live through a surreal experience. One that wouldn’t increase their faith in justice.
Between the two groups, the passing crowd moved in a constant stream. Assistants with trolleys and heaps of files, defendants looking for their own courtrooms or their own lawyers, prison warders escorting prisoners in chains, bewildered black faces, tattooed villains – obviously regular clients of the courts and police stations – other villains who you realized after a few moments were police officers from the street crimes squad, young lawyers with unseasonable tans, big collars and big knotted ties, and normal people scattered through the courts for the most varied reasons. Almost never good ones.
All of them would have liked to get out of here as quickly as possible. Me too.
Sister Claudia was sitting on a bench, staring at a grimy wall. In the usual leather jacket, and militarystyle trousers with big pockets. Nobody had sat down next to her. Nobody was standing too close to her either. For a second or two, the written words Keep your distance flashed through my mind.