“Ah. Are you planning to be a journalist?”
“No, I’d like to open a bookstore, though it’s a tough business. I think I’ll get a master’s degree, and then I’ll work in a bookstore chain for a few years. Maybe somewhere outside of Italy. Someplace like Barnes amp; Noble, or Borders.”
There’s no faster way to win me over than to say you want to be a bookseller. When I was a boy, I sometimes thought I’d like to run a bookstore. It was mainly because I had a romantic and completely unrealistic idea of what that job entailed; in my vision, it would consist mostly of spending my days reading any book I wanted for free. Oh, from time to time, I’d have to stop reading to wait on someone, but customers wouldn’t hang around, probably because they wouldn’t want to interrupt me. I figured that if I were a bookseller, or perhaps a librarian, I would have lots of time to write my novels, especially on long spring afternoons, when the sun’s rays would slant in low through the shop windows-something along the line of City Lights Books-landing on the tables, the bookshelves, and, of course, the books.
“Good idea. When I was a kid, I thought it would be nice to run a bookstore. To get back to your question: You’re right, as a rule investigations are done for the defense by private detectives, but in this specific case, Manuela’s family wanted a lawyer to do it-someone with expertise in the judicial process.”
I spoke as if this were something I did all the time. She nodded her head, and her expression suggested she was happy with the answer I’d given her. To be exact: happy that she’d asked the question and happy with the way I’d answered her, treating her respectfully. I thought this was a good starting point, and decided to ask her to tell me her story.
“All right, let me start by asking you to tell me what you remember about that Sunday afternoon.”
“I told the Carabinieri everything I remember.”
“No, sorry. Don’t think about what you told the Carabinieri. In fact, I’d like you to try to forget everything you said in the Carabinieri station, when and how the interview was conducted-everything. As far as you are able, I’d like you to tell me what happened as if it were the first time, thinking visually if you can. Which is to say: tell me about going to the trulli, why you went, who you knew there. Whatever pops into your head. Just let go of the story you told the Carabinieri.”
I wasn’t doing some cop act. I’d studied these techniques while preparing to do crucial questioning in the courtroom during a trial.
Once we’ve told a story about something that happened-especially if we have told that story in a formal context, before a judge or to a detective, with a written, signed statement-and we are asked to tell it again, we tend to reiterate the first narrative rather than evoking direct memories of the actual experience. This mechanism only becomes more firmly cemented with each successive repetition and, in the end, what happens is that we no longer remember the actual events, but instead our account of the events. Naturally, this mechanism makes it increasingly difficult to recover details that we overlooked the first time. Details that may seem insignificant, but can prove to be crucial. In order to succeed in recovering these details, it is necessary to release the person being questioned from the memory of the earlier account, to bring the person back to the actual memory of the events experienced. But of course that doesn’t always work.
I didn’t go into this whole explanation with Anita, but she seemed to understand that there was a certain logic behind my request. So she sat in silence for a few moments, as if she were concentrating before doing what I’d asked. Then she began.
“I didn’t know Manuela, that is, I only met her that weekend at the trulli. ”
“Had you been to the trulli before?”
“Yeah, lots of times. It’s an odd place. All sorts of people wind up there. Maybe you’ve been there, at some point.”
I told her that I’d never been, and she explained to me that it was a large compound of trulli that a group of friends rents and where lots of people come out to spend time, all summer long. There was enough room, if everyone squeezed in, for maybe thirty people to sleep there. There were parties and all kinds of happenings every night. It was a sort of commune for well-to-do young people, generally left-wing young people, on the radical-chic side of things.
“That Sunday afternoon, I had to go to Ostuni to meet a girlfriend and Manuela asked if I’d give her a ride. She had to get back to Bari and the people she’d come with wanted to stay at the trulli that night.”
“Do you remember who came with Manuela?”
“I remember their faces. I don’t know their names.”
The names of the young people were in the file. Their statements had been so insignificant that I hadn’t even bothered to include them in the list of people to interview.
“Before you tell me about the car ride that Sunday afternoon, I’d like you to talk to me about life at the trulli.”
“What do you mean?”
“What was going on, exactly? People coming, people leaving, if you noticed any unusual people, for instance, who might have been talking to Manuela. I don’t know, someone drinking, maybe someone smoking a joint.”
I felt a little awkward as I pronounced that last phrase. I said “smoking a joint” because it struck me that using legal terminology such as, “Did you observe the consumption of narcotics?” would just interfere with our ability to communicate. Instead, I realized that I’d spoken as if I were a grownup clumsily trying to talk hip like the kids, and it made me deeply uncomfortable. In any case, I thought I saw a momentary evasiveness come into Anita’s gaze, a sudden loss of eye contact, as if the question about whether joints were being smoked upset her a little. But it was a passing moment, and I told myself that maybe there was nothing to it.
At the trulli, life began late in the morning, though a small group woke up very early, did tai chi, and then went to the beach when there was still virtually no one else there. Around one o’clock, at lunch, some drank espresso and cappuccinos while others sipped their first aperitifs-a Spritz or a Negroni, generally speaking, she told me, as if the information were crucial. Big, informal meals of pasta, drinking, music, people coming and going. Down to the beach in the afternoon, where they’d stay until sunset, happy hour on the beach, with music and more Negronis and Spritzes, then back to the trulli or to a restaurant for dinner in one of the surrounding towns: Cisternino, Martina Franca, Alberobello, Locorotondo, Ceglie, or, of course, Ostuni.
These were rituals I knew all too well, because I had taken part in them myself until just a few years ago. And yet, listening as this young woman-twenty years younger than I-described them, they seemed a world away. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.
“You said that you were a fairly frequent guest at those trulli. ”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice anyone in particular, that weekend? Or was it different in some way from what usually happened?”
“No, I don’t think so. There were some English kids, but nothing happened that seemed out of the ordinary.”
“Naturally, at a certain point, a few people smoked pot, right?”
As I expected (and for that matter, as had just happened), the mention of marijuana made her uneasy.
“I’m not sure… I mean, maybe, but…”
“Listen, Anita. Let me explain something to you, before we go any further. Something important. I’m not with the police, and I’m not with the district attorney.”
I paused to make sure she understood what I was saying.
“That means that it’s not my job to investigate crimes and prosecute the people who commit them. I don’t care in the slightest if people at the trulli smoked themselves silly, got drunk, or ingested substances of some kind. Or, rather, I care only if that information can help me find out something about Manuela’s disappearance. You have nothing to worry about. This conversation is, and will remain, completely confidential. For that matter, there’s probably no connection between someone smoking a little grass and Manuela’s disappearance. But I’m feeling my way in the dark here, and the slightest scrap of information could be helpful, in theory. The only way I can know that is if I’m able to evaluate the information for myself. Is that clear?”