Boxing seemed to have simply vanished, but I didn’t give up. I rang the local office of the Olympic Committee and asked if there were any gyms in Bari that did boxing. The chap at the other end was very efficient and helpful. Yes, there were two boxing clubs in Bari, one near the new stadium, housed by the council, and the other, which used the gym of a secondary school just round the corner from where I lived.
I went to take a look at it and found that the instructor was an acquaintance of mine from the old gym. Pino. But to remember his surname was obviously beyond me. He had started at the basement shortly before I gave up. He was a heavyweight with not much technique but really powerful fists. He’d even had a few bouts as a professional, without great success. Now he had a number of occupations: boxing instructor, bouncer in discothèques, head of security at rock concerts, mass events, festivals and the like.
He was glad to see me, and of course I could sign up, I was his guest, he wouldn’t hear of my paying. And in any case a lawyer might always come in useful.
In short, starting the following week, every Monday and Thursday I left the office at half-past six, by seven I was in the gym, and for nearly two hours I was boxing away.
This made me feel a little better. Not what you might call well, but a little better. I skipped, did the knee-bends, abdominal exercises, punched the punchbag, and fought a few rounds with lads twenty years younger than myself.
Some nights I managed to get some sleep on my own, without pills. Others not.
Sometimes I even managed to sleep for five or six hours at a stretch.
Some evenings I went out with friends and felt almost relaxed.
I still burst into tears, but less often, and in any case I managed to keep it under control.
I went on not taking the lift, but this wasn’t a great problem and nobody noticed anyway.
I passed almost unscathed through the Christmas holidays, even if one day, perhaps the 29th or 30th, I saw Sara in the street in the middle of town. She was with a woman friend and a man I had never seen. He could well have been the friend’s fiancé, or her uncle, or a gay as far as I knew. All the same, I was convinced at once that he was Sara’s new boyfriend.
We waved to each other from opposite pavements. I went on another step or so and then realized that I was holding my breath. My diaphragm was obstructed. I felt something, something hot, rising up in me to spread across my whole face, into the roots of my hair. My mind was a blank for several minutes.
I had trouble breathing for the rest of the day and got no sleep that night.
Then even that passed.
After the Christmas holidays I started working again, at least a little. I recognized the catastrophe that was threatening my practice and above all my unsuspecting clients and, ploddingly, I attempted to regain a modicum of control over the situation.
I began once more to prepare for trials, began to listen – a little – to what my clients were saying, I began to listen to what my secretary was saying.
Slowly, in jerks, like a worn-out jalopy, my life began to get moving again.
Part Two
7
It was a February afternoon, but it wasn’t cold. It had never been cold, that winter.
I passed the bar downstairs from the office but didn’t go in. I was ashamed to ask for a decaffeinated coffee, so I went to a dismal bar five blocks away.
Ever since I’d started suffering from insomnia I didn’t drink proper coffee in the afternoon. I had tried barley coffee a few times, but it really was too disgusting. But decaffeinated coffee seemed like real. The main thing is not to be seen ordering it.
I had always looked with a certain condescension on people who ordered the decaffeinated stuff. I didn’t want the same sort of looks to be cast at me now. At least, not by people I knew. I therefore avoided my usual bar in the afternoons.
I drank the coffee, lit a Marlboro and smoked it seated at an ancient Formica-topped table. Then back five blocks and up to the office.
As far as I could remember, it was due to be a rather quiet afternoon: only one appointment. With Signora Cassano, due for trial the next day for maltreating her husband.
According to the indictment, this gentleman had for years come home from work to hear himself called, at the best, a shitty down-and-out failure. For years he had been forced to hand over his wages, allowed to keep only some loose change for cigarettes and other personal expenses. For years he had been humiliated at family gatherings and before his few friends. On numerous occasions he had been slapped about and she had even spat in his face.
One day he could stand it no longer. He had plucked up the courage to leave home and had denounced her, asking for a separation and damages.
She had chosen me to represent her, and that afternoon I was expecting her for us to settle the details of the defence.
When I got to the office Maria Teresa told me that the harridan had not yet arrived. On the other hand a black woman had been waiting for me for at least half an hour. She didn’t have an appointment but – she said – the matter was very important. As always.
She was in the waiting room. I peered through the crack in the door and saw an imposing young woman, with a face both beautiful and austere. She can’t have been over thirty.
I told Maria Teresa to show her into my room in two minutes’ time. I took off my jacket, reached my desk, lit a cigarette, and the woman entered.
She waited for me to ask her to take a seat and in an almost accentless voice said, “Thank you, Avvocato.” With foreign clients I was always in doubt as to whether to use tu or lei. Many of them do not understand the lei form, and the conversation becomes surreal.
From the way this woman said “Thank you, Avvocato” I knew I could address her as lei without any fear of not being understood.
When I asked her what the problem was she handed me some stapled sheets headed “Office of the Magistrate in Charge of Preliminary Investigations, Order for Precautionary Detention”.
Drugs, was my immediate thought. Her man was a pusher. Then, almost as quickly, that seemed to me impossible.
We all of us go by stereotypes. Anyone who denies it is a liar. The first stereotype had suggested the following sequence: African, precautionary detention, drugs. It is usually for this reason that Africans get arrested.
But straight away the second stereotype came into play. The woman had an aristocratic look and didn’t seem like a drug-pusher’s moll.
I was right. Her partner had not been arrested for drugs but for the kidnap and murder of a nine-year-old boy.
The charges stated were brief, bureaucratic and blood-curdling.
Abdou Thiam, Senegalese citizen, stood accused:
a. of the offence as under Art. 603 of the Penal Code for having deliberately deprived of his personal liberty Francesco Rubino, the latter being under age, inducing him by subterfuge to follow him and thereafter restraining him against his will.
b. of the offence as under Art. 575 of the Penal Code for having caused the death of the said minor Francesco Rubino, exercising on him unascertained acts of violence and subsequently suffocating him by means and methods equally unascertained. Both offences committed in the rural district of Monopoli between 5 and 7 August 1999.
c. of the offence as under Art. 412 of the Penal Code for having concealed the body of the minor Francesco Rubino by throwing it down a well.
Polignano Rural District, 7 August 1999.
Francesco, nine years old, had disappeared one afternoon while playing football on his own in a yard in front of the seaside villa of his grandparents in Monopoli, to the south of Bari.