I already felt much better. For me, bookshops are a tranquillizer and an antidepressant. The girls had left without my noticing. Now Ottavio and I were alone. I went up to him.
“Hi, Guido. How’s it going?”
“Fine. What did the policeman buy?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“ Uninterrupted Poetry.”
I was surprised. “Paul Eluard?”
“Yes. You must be one of the three or four lawyers in the world who know that book. And he must be the only policeman.”
“He won’t get far.”
“I agree. What are you getting?”
I showed him the books I’d chosen and he approved. Especially the Swados.
“And what are you reading?”
He was holding a small book with a cream-coloured cover, from another publisher I didn’t know: Botanical Editions.
He handed it to me. The title was The Manumission of Words. There was a subtitle, Notes for a Seminar on Writing. No author’s name on the cover.
I leafed through it and read a few paragraphs.
Our words are often devoid of meaning. This happens because we have worn them out, exhausted them, emptied them through excessive and above all unwitting use. We have turned them into empty shells. In order to tell stories, we must regenerate our words. We must give them back their meaning, texture, colour, sound, smell. And to do this we have to break them into pieces and then rebuild them.
In our seminars we give this process of breaking and rebuilding the name “manumission”. The word manumission has two meanings, apparently very different. The first meaning is synonymous with tampering, violating, causing damage. The second, which derives directly from ancient Roman law (manumission was the ceremony at which a slave became a free man), is synonymous with liberation, redemption, emancipation.
The manumission of words encompasses both these meanings. We take words to pieces (we manumit them, in the sense of tampering with them, violating them) and then we put them back together (we manumit them, in the sense of liberating them from the bonds of verbal conventions and meaningless phrases).
Only after manumission can we use our words to tell stories.
“Is this your only copy?”
“Yes, but you can have it, if you like. Why are you interested in it?”
Yes, why was I interested in it?
I have an old wish that I recently expressed, and a friend has assured me it’ll come true. The wish is to become a writer, and seeing this book I thought I’d do a bit of studying. Just to make things easier for the department responsible for magic lamps, four-leaf clovers and falling stars.
I fantasized a little about these paragraphs and about other things. Without replying to Ottavio’s question. He respected my silence, and didn’t speak until he was sure I’d come back down to earth.
“You’re not crazy about your work, are you?”
I gave a kind of sneer. It was true, I wasn’t crazy about my work.
“And if you could change professions, what would you do?”
This is getting to be an epidemic. Everyone’s asking me about my wishes. Come on, out with it, you’ve been ganging up on me behind my back.
“I’d like to be a writer. I like books more than anything else. I like reading them and I’d like to write them, if I can. Of course, I don’t really know if I can, seeing as I’ve never had the courage to try.”
Ottavio simply nodded and said nothing. I like people who don’t make stupid comments. And sometimes the best way not to make stupid comments is not to say anything at all.
“How about a drink?”
“Sure.”
“Rum?”
“Rum would be fine.”
He took a bottle from the bar counter and poured two doubles. We drank and chatted for a while about a whole lot of things. From time to time people came in. Some bought books, some just browsed.
A man of about fifty, in a jacket, tie and coat, slipped into his trousers a copy of The Trilogy of the City of K., buttoned up his coat and headed for the exit. Ottavio noticed, asked me to excuse him for a moment, and caught up with the man at the door.
He said he would like to be able to give books away. But unfortunately he couldn’t. He was obliged to make people pay for them. He said this without a hint of sarcasm. The man stammered a few words, something to the effect that he really didn’t know what he, Ottavio, was talking about. Patiently, like someone who’s said the same thing many times, Ottavio told him there were two options. Either the man paid for the book and took it away – he could even have a discount – or else he could put it back on the shelf, go home to bed as if nothing had happened, and come back whenever he liked. The man said all right then, he’d buy it. And in an extraordinary, surreal sequence he went to the cash desk, pulled the book out of his pants, paid – getting the discount – took his nice little bag, bade everyone goodnight, and left.
“Some people are completely shameless,” I said.
“You have no idea. But somehow I can’t get angry with people who try to steal books. I’ve stolen so many myself. How about you?”
I said I’d never stolen a book. Not physically stolen. I’d read lots in bookshops, without buying them. Not in his shop, I hastened to add.
Then I looked at my watch and realized how late it was. I had to be in court the next day. I asked him how much I owed him.
“The drinks are on the house. The books you have to pay for, because, as I told that man, I’m really not able to give them away.”
19
I had only just got in to the office when Maria Teresa put through a call from Colaianni.
He didn’t beat about the bush. He had to talk to me, he said, but he’d rather do it face to face.
Usually after a sentence like that, I would have made a joke about magistrates always thinking their phones were tapped, but something in his voice stopped me. So I simply asked how we could talk face to face, seeing that he was in Rome and I was in Bari. He said he was going to be in Foggia in two days’ time, to visit someone in the prison there. If I could get there after he’d finished, we could meet, have a bite together and talk. OK, the day after tomorrow. Bye, see you then.
After putting the phone down I felt strangely euphoric. After so many years of being a defence lawyer, for the first time I had a sense of what detectives feel when an investigation produces results. Because there was no doubt about it. Colaianni had some information about the lawyer Macri. Some important information.
My first impulse was to call Natsu.
Hi, Natsu, I wanted to tell you there’s news. What news? Well, to tell the truth I don’t know, but I’ll know the day after tomorrow in Foggia. Oh, by the way, what are you doing tonight?
My mental ramblings were fortunately interrupted by Maria Teresa, who put her head in through the door and told me Signora Pappalepore and her daughter had arrived. New clients. They had phoned the day before and had made an appointment. I told her to send them in, but as soon as they crossed the threshold a neon sign saying “Watch out” started flashing frantically in my head.
The younger of the two women was about fifty, all dolled up as if she was still a girl, with ridiculous red glasses, Seventies-style clothes, bright red lipstick and yellow hair. The other one was an elderly lady, wearing the same lipstick and glasses as thick as the bottoms of Coca-Cola bottles.
I asked them to take a seat. The younger one helped the elderly one to sit down, then sat down herself and gave me a somewhat disquieting smile.
“How can I help you?” I said, smiling affably and a bit stupidly.
“Who is this young man?” the old woman said as if I wasn’t there, looking at her daughter.