And that’s what happened to me.
I was fourteen and always wore a green anorak that I was very proud of. One afternoon I was strolling in the middle of town with two of my friends – the three of us little more than children – when we suddenly found ourselves surrounded. They were only sixteen, seventeen, but to us they were men. At that age two years’ difference is a lifetime.
One of them was a tall, thin, fair-haired guy, with a face like David Bowie. He wore Ray-Bans, even though it was already dark. When he smiled, through thin lips, my blood ran cold.
A short, very sturdy-looking guy with a broken incisor approached me and told me I was a Red bastard and I should take off that fucking anorak immediately, or they might think of giving me what I deserved: the castor oil treatment.
In the mindless terror of that moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. Until then I’d never heard of the Fascist custom of pouring castor oil down their opponents’ throats.
My friend Roberto peed himself. And I don’t mean metaphorically. I saw the liquid stain spread over his discoloured jeans. In a thin voice, I asked why I had to take off my anorak. The short guy slapped me very hard between my cheek and my ear.
“Take it off, comrade.”
I was terrified and felt like crying, but I didn’t take off my anorak. Trying desperately to hold back my tears, I again asked why. The guy slapped me again, then punched me, then kicked me, then punched and slapped me some more. People passing by looked away.
I was on the ground, curled up to protect myself from the blows, when someone made them run away.
What happened next is clearer and more vivid in my memory.
A man helps me to my feet and asks me in a strong local accent if I want to go to casualty. I say no, I want to go home. I have my house keys, I add, as if he’d be interested, or as if it meant anything to him.
I walk away, and my friends aren’t there any more, and I don’t know when they disappeared. On the way home, I start crying. Not so much because of the pain I’m still feeling, but because of the humiliation and the fear. Few things leave such a strong impression as humiliation and fear.
Fucking Fascists.
And as I cry, and blow my nose, I say to myself out loud that despite everything I didn’t take off my anorak. This thought makes me stiffen my spine and stop crying. I didn’t take off my anorak, you fucking Fascists. And I remember your faces.
One day I’ll get my own back on you.
When Paolicelli entered the lawyers’ room, it all came back to me, in a rush. Like a sudden violent gust of wind that throws the windows wide open, causes the doors to slam, and scatters papers.
He held out his hand, and I hesitated for a moment before shaking it. I wondered if he noticed. Memories – vague things, noises, boys’ voices, girls’ voices, smells, cries of fear, songs by Inti-Illimani, the face of someone whose name I couldn’t remember and who’d died of an overdose in the school toilets at the age of seventeen – crowded into my head like creatures suddenly released from a spell that has been keeping them prisoner in the basements or the attics of memory.
It was obvious he didn’t remember me.
I waited a few moments, in order not to be too abrupt, before asking him why he had appointed me and why he was inside.
“They arrested me a year and a half ago for cross-border drug trafficking. I opted for the fast-track procedure in court and was given sixteen years, plus a fine so huge I can’t even remember what it was.”
You deserved it, you Fascist. You’re paying the price now for all the things you did then.
“I was on my way back from a holiday in Montenegro. At the harbour in Bari the customs police were doing random checks on cars. They had dogs with them to sniff out drugs. When they got to my car the dogs seemed to go crazy. The customs police took me to their barracks and dismantled the car, and under the bodyshell they found forty kilos of high-quality cocaine.”
Forty kilos of high-quality cocaine was certainly enough to justify the sentence he’d received, even with the fast-track procedure. But I didn’t believe that the customs police had been doing random checks. Someone had tipped them off that a courier was bringing in a consignment, and they’d acted by the book in making it look as if the check was random. In order not to blow their informant’s cover.
“The drugs weren’t mine.” Paolicelli’s words broke into my thoughts.
“What do you mean, they weren’t yours? Was there someone else in the car with you?”
“My wife and daughter were with me. We were on our way back from a week’s holiday by the sea. And the drugs weren’t mine. I don’t know who put them there.”
So that’s it, I thought. He’s ashamed that he was carrying the drugs in the same car where his wife and daughter were travelling. Typical of you Fascists: you’re not even capable of being criminals with any dignity.
“I’m sorry, Paolicelli, but how could someone have planted those drugs without you knowing? I mean, we’re talking about forty kilos, quite a lot to pack under the bodyshell of a car. I’m no expert on these things, but that must have taken time. Did you lend the car to anyone in Montenegro?”
“No, but for the whole of the holiday it was in the hotel car park. And the hotel porter had the keys; I had to leave them with him because the car park was full and sometimes a car had to be moved to make room. Someone, with the porter’s knowledge, must have planted the drugs during the night, probably the night before we left. I assume they planned to retrieve them once we’d got through customs. Perhaps they had accomplices in Italy who’d do that for them. I know it sounds absurd, but the drugs weren’t mine. I swear they weren’t mine.”
He was right. It did sound absurd.
You hear a lot of absurd stories like that in courtrooms, barracks, prisons. The commonest one is the one invariably told by people who’ve been found in possession of guns in full working order, with the hammer cocked. They all say they only just found the gun by chance, usually under a bush, or under a tree, or in a dustbin. They all say they’ve never handled a gun in their lives and that they were just on their way to hand it in to the police. That’s why they were carrying it in their belt with the hammer cocked, somewhere near a jeweller’s shop, for example, or the house of a gangland rival.
I felt like telling him that I didn’t give a damn that he’d brought forty kilos of cocaine from Montenegro to Italy, and that I didn’t give a damn if he had done it before, or how many times. So he might as well tell me the truth. It would make things a whole lot simpler. I was a criminal lawyer and it was my job to defend people like him. What would happen if I suddenly took it into my head to pass judgement on my clients? I felt like telling him these things, but I didn’t. I suddenly realized what was happening in my head, and I didn’t like it.
I realized that I wanted him to confess. I wanted to be absolutely certain that he was guilty, so that I could help him to get the long gaol sentence he deserved, without any problems of conscience or professional ethics.
I realized that I wanted to be his judge – and maybe also his executioner – rather than his lawyer. I had an old score to settle.
And that wasn’t right. I told myself I ought to think about it, because if I didn’t think I could control that urge, then I ought to give up on the idea of defending him. Or rather, I shouldn’t agree to it in the first place.
“What happened after you were arrested?”
“After they found the drugs, they tried to get me to cooperate with them. They told me they wanted to do a… what’s it called?”