“ T was a teacher at the local church school. High school. I was a good Catholic, I might add, although what good that has done me, I don’t know. Giovanni Galizia was one of my students. Not my best student. Marcus Galea was my best student. Giovanni was, if anything, one of the worst. But somehow, things always worked out for him. Not always the way you would expect, perhaps. But work out they did, just the same.
“I remember when he was trying to get on the football team—they call it soccer, I think, where you come from. The coaches were down to the last pick, and it was between two boys, Giovanni Galizia, and Pawla Bonnici. I think Pawla was the better player, actually, but then he had an accident. Fell off some scaffolding on the school. One of the walls was being repaired. The boys were drunk, of course; they seemed to be most of the time at that age. Pawla claimed he’d been pushed, but he couldn’t say who’d pushed him, and, of course, no one believed him. I didn’t at the time. Later, I would come to understand. Giovanni made the team.
“Another time there was an oratorical contest at the school. Giovanni and another boy were generally considered to be in a dead heat for first place. Giovanni might not have been a good student, but like the politician he was to become, he was a good talker. His speeches, while impassioned, were a little derivative—is that the word?—in my opinion, which is a polite way of saying that I suspected someone else had written them for him. Nonetheless he made it to the finals. Then the other finalist got sick, really deathly ill from food poisoning. The boys had all gone out the night before to celebrate the last day of classes, and, of course, the final of the oratorical contest. Only the one boy got sick, and Giovanni won the contest, but you probably figured that out already.
“Then there were the exams to get into a foreign University. They were a very big deal. You need to understand that it was very difficult to get into University in Malta in those days. You had to know the right people, and people like Giovanni and Marcus did not have those sorts of connections. The only hope they had was to get into University somewhere else, and in both cases, coming as they did from very poor circumstances, needed to win scholarships. Giovanni did very well, much better than I had expected, but then I found irrefutable evidence that he had cheated on his exam. I confronted him with it—it was a Friday, I remember, and I gave him the weekend to think about what he would do. I told him that if he did the right thing and told the principal what he had done, I would stand by him, and see there were no further repercussions, that is that he’d be allowed to write the exams again a few months later. If not, however, I told him I would report him myself. It was the biggest mistake I ever made, giving him time to think about it, that is.
“I went away for the weekend. I remember I took the ferry to Gozo and enjoyed the weekend there with friends. When I returned Monday morning, the story was all over the school. I was summoned to the principal’s office, and summarily dismissed right on the spot. After an impeccable career spanning twenty years! I was so shocked I could barely manage to ask why I had been sacked. The principal said I knew perfectly well, that I should have known that something so disgusting would have to come out, but I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. I was utterly baffled. I left the principal’s office and went looking for some of my colleagues and friends, but they wouldn’t speak to me.
“Eventually, of course, I heard the rumors. One of the students, unnamed of course, had reported an incident of abuse involving me. You know what I mean by abuse, don’t you? I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I?”
I told him I knew what he meant.
“I was never given an opportunity to defend myself. I couldn’t charge anyone. They wouldn’t say who the student was. It was dreadful, and I was totally ruined.
“It got worse, partly of my own doing. I entered into a rather hasty marriage to a widow with a young daughter, to try to prove I was normal, that I wasn’t the kind of person they thought I was. Totally loveless marriage, I might add. I endured years of harangues from that sharp-tongued woman. In the end I had a nervous breakdown. I’m said to have never fully recovered, but I’m not as daft as they think. My wife is gone, thank God for that. Her daughter looks after me, not because she loves me—she’s like her mother in that—but because she likes to be seen as a martyr. And I sit here and follow the career of the Honorable Giovanni Galizia with a sort of all-consuming interest.”
Suddenly he leaned toward me and grabbed my wrist. “Have you seen his eyes?” he asked, his fingers, surprisingly strong, digging into my arm.
“I have,” I replied.
“And what did you see?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“Exactly. No heart, no soul.”
His stepdaughter must have been keeping a wary eye out for her father, because when he grabbed my arm, she came outside. “Is my father bothering you?” she asked. She was a brittle-looking woman who probably looked much older than her years.
“Not at all,” I replied. “Your father is telling me some of the really interesting history of Malta.” The Hedgehog looked away.
“None of your conspiracy theories now, Father,” she said. “None of that nonsense about Giovanni Galizia!” The Hedgehog made a face at her retreating back.
“They all think I’m cuckoo,” he said, tapping his forehead with his fingers when she had gone back inside, “but if you’ve seen him, you know.”
“So what happened after that?”
“His meteoric rise to fame continued. His family had been Labour, supporters of Dom Mintoff originally. Galizia was going to run for Labour, but then it became clear the Republic Party would win the next election, so Galizia switched sides. There was no clear candidate in this area for the Republic Party, and the only one who stood a chance of winning had to withdraw. No one would say why, but there were lots of rumors. Does this sound like a pattern to you?” he asked rhetorically.
“Where was Marcus Galea in all this?”
“Marcus and Giovanni were best friends in school, although Giovanni was a year or two older. Both had had a rough start in life, both were highly ambitious. But there I like to think the resemblance ends. Marcus was genuinely talented, genuinely charming. He did well to get into the University with a scholarship, and I saw no indication that he cheated to do it. I would think well of him were it not for what happened to the little Cassar girl—I could tell you about that, if you wish.”
“You already have. The last time I was here, a few days ago,”‘ I reminded him.
“Did I?” he replied. “Wasn’t long enough ago for me to remember, I guess.” He grinned ruefully. “The real difference between the two boys was, I think, that Marcus was not so much consumed by ambition as delighted in the pleasures that success brought. Giovanni could not enjoy it, because, whatever it was, it was never enough. This may not seem like much of a difference, but I believe it is a profound one.”
“I went to a party at Galizia’s house last night,” I confessed. “Actually I crashed a party at his house, the Palazzo Galizia. I stole an invitation. I got caught, though. I was the only woman there.” The Hedgehog rocked back and forth on his chair with silent laughter.
“There were a lot of high-ranking military people there. Very high up, I’d say, although I’m not an expert in these things. And I thought I recognized one other person, but he was a member of one of the other political parties. Would Galizia be thinking of changing sides again, do you think? Maybe he disagrees with the Prime Minister’s stand on the European Union?”
“You are making assumptions, dearie,” he said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “You are assuming that Galizia changes political parties because he changes his mind about which political platform he supports. This is not about politics. It is not about beliefs, political or otherwise. It is not about values. He doesn’t have any. The only thing he believes in is himself. He will do whatever it takes to get ahead.”