I don’t remember what we talked about. The things young men of twenty usually talk about, I suppose. Girls, politics, sport, books we were reading – or that we’d like to write – how we’d change things, how we’d leave a mark, if we didn’t burn ourselves out, like so many others had done.
Some nights in late spring, when it was very late, we’d walk back across the old town, which was completely deserted by now and dense with strong smells, dirty, disturbing and beautiful.
The air throbbed with our infinite possibilities, on those spring nights. It throbbed in our eyes that were a little blurred from the beer, in our taut, tanned skins, in our young muscles.
In our raging desire to have it all.
Emilio Ranieri had killed himself on Tuesday. The stupidest day.
That evening, he’d driven out to the perimeter wall of the airport, where many years earlier we used to go at night to watch as the last flight from Rome landed. He’d attached a rubber tube to his car exhaust and put the other end in the passenger compartment. Then he’d closed all the windows, started the engine and waited.
The airport police had found him the following morning. There was no note in the car, or at home. Nothing.
I heard the news in the afternoon, while I was in the office. I carried on working as if nothing had happened, until it was time to close. When I was alone I phoned Margherita.
There was no need to tell her I wasn’t coming home that evening.
I went for a walk around the city, in search of memories, in search of a meaning, whatever. Which of course wasn’t there.
I walked around the places we’d known. I walked to the seafront, near the monumental entrance to the Fiera del Levante. I walked around the Teatro Petruzzelli, which wasn’t a theatre any more, but only an empty red shell in the middle of the city. I sat down on a car opposite where the Jolly, a tiny, legendary third-run cinema, had once been. Now there’s only a dirty, closed shutter. I noticed the occasional sad Christmas decoration, blinking intermittently, nervously, on the balconies and in the shops. It was less than two weeks to Christmas.
At a certain point, I even thought of taking my car and driving out to the perimeter wall of the airport.
I didn’t do it. Fear of ghosts, maybe. Or maybe just fear that the police would find me, maybe take me to the station and ask me what I was doing there, if I had anything to do with Emilio Ranieri’s suicide, that kind of thing. I didn’t go because I didn’t want to get into trouble. Because I was a coward.
I ended up, late at night, sitting on the wall of the moat in front of the castle, opposite where Nino’s pizzeria had been.
It’s an area that’s never been invaded by the developing nightlife of the last few years. A few hundred yards away there’s an invisible border. On the other side, the pubs, the pizzerias, the piano bars, the vegetarian restaurants, the fake traditional taverns, and a constant stream of people all through the night. On this side, around the castle, Old Bari. Just a couple of old beer shops, a woman who roasts meat on an unlicensed stove in the street in summer, another who sells fried slices of polenta. Boys playing football in the street. Previous offenders, being kept under observation, in small groups near the drawbridge. Or rather, what used to be a drawbridge, but is just a small stone bridge now. Police arriving every now and again and taking away those they have under observation, to “take a statement”, as they put it. The ones under observation are forbidden to meet among themselves, or generally to meet up with previous offenders. If they do that, they’re committing an offence. But they do it all the same. The other previous offenders are their friends. Who else are they supposed to meet and chat to? Their favourite spot is the castle bridge. Everyone knows it, and obviously the police know it too – the police station is a few hundred yards away – and they go there when they need to improve their statistics and make it look as if they’re dealing with complaints.
The people involved in the nightlife of Bari don’t go near the castle, don’t even go anywhere close to it. At this time of night, when the people of the area have gone to sleep, it’s deserted there. Just as it was many years ago.
I sat down on the low wall without knowing why I’d come here. Without knowing why I’d been wandering around. Without knowing anything. Looking into space, unable to bring any specific memory into focus. Words, a voice, anything perceived by the senses at any moment of the distant past. In which we had lived before setting out into the dark, unknown future.
“Avvocato, is everything all right? Got a problem?”
I jumped, like when you’re just about to fall asleep and somebody shakes you.
It was a dealer I’d defended a few years earlier: I couldn’t remember his name. He had a face like a tortoise, good-natured and at the same time absent.
“An old friend of mine killed himself, and I’m feeling sad. Very sad.”
He didn’t say anything – just nodded slightly – and after thinking about it for a few moments sat down on the wall next to me. We both sat there in silence. The last noises faded away in the alleys of the old town. I felt a strange sense of calm.
After a few minutes Tortoise Face stood up and, still without saying anything, gave me his hand. It seemed natural to me to get to my feet, as a mark of respect.
His hand was small, his grip delicate but not weak.
He walked off in the direction of the cathedral. I set off in the other direction, through the deserted streets, listening to the noise of my steps on the old, shiny stones.
23
After that night, I didn’t think any more about Emilio. The days passed, smooth and silent. Without rhythm, without colour. Without anything.
A few days before Christmas, Claudia phoned me. A strange call. She wished me a happy Christmas, I returned the greeting, and then we both fell silent. A silence heavy with embarrassment. I had the impression she’d called me for a specific reason, to tell me something specific, not just to wish me a happy Christmas, and then had changed her mind while the phone was ringing.
The silence continued, and I had the strange sensation of being suspended somewhere, or over something. Then we hung up, and I still hadn’t understood.
I don’t think she’d understood either.
On 23 December a card arrived at the office, from Senegal. Nothing on it except the words: For Christmas and the New Year. No signature.
It was Abdou Thiam, my Senegalese client – a street peddler in Italy, an elementary school teacher in Senegal – who had been tried the year before on a charge of kidnapping and murdering a nine-year-old boy. After being acquitted, he had returned to his country and every now and again sent me cards, with just a few words on them, or sometimes nothing at all. Always without a signature and without his address.
Abdou had narrowly escaped life imprisonment and these cards were his way of letting me know that he hadn’t forgotten what I’d done for him. I thought again for a few minutes about that trial and all the things that had happened just before and just after it. It had been less than two years before, but it felt as if a whole lifetime had gone by, and I told myself I had no desire to start thinking about the meaning of time and the nature of memory. So I put the card away in a drawer, with the others, and called Maria Teresa, in order to get through the remaining papers, leave, and let myself be sucked into, and overwhelmed by, the crowded, frantic streets.