‘Fabrizio, my boy.’
‘Yes, Uncle,’ he said.
‘Your farm has been burned down and your sister is dead.’
‘Is she burned too?’
‘Yes.’
‘All of her?’
‘Yes, all of her.’
‘Did you see her?’
Uncle Mauro nodded.
‘What about the animals? Are the animals burned as well?’
‘The cow, yes. I don’t know about the others,’ said his uncle. ‘They may be in the forest by now.’
Fabrizio thought about the animals in the forest. They must be cold and hungry. Particularly the pigs, they were always hungry.
‘They can make friends with the wild boar,’ said Fabrizio. He saw his uncle’s rough hand in front of his face. It wasn’t like his father’s hands, it was larger, hairier, darker. And it smelled different.
‘Your sister told you the soldiers took your father away?’
‘Yes, she said it was the Germans.’
‘Did she say where to?’
‘No,’ said Fabrizio.
‘I’ll go to Genoa in the morning,’ said his uncle.
‘But why did they take him away? Has he done something wrong?’
‘No,’ said his uncle. ‘He did what was right.’ Fabrizio could feel how tense his uncle’s muscles were.
‘Will you go and fetch him?’ he asked after a while.
‘We’ll see what they say.’ He drew Fabrizio closer. ‘You’ll stay here and live with us now.’
‘What about school? Do I have to go to school tomorrow?’
‘No,’ said his uncle. ‘Not tomorrow.’
‘Will the animals go to Heaven too?’
‘I don’t know, my boy. Animals aren’t either good or bad.’
They went on sitting there. Uncle Mauro put the coat over Fabrizio’s head. The woollen fabric was warm, but itchy on his throat.
Next day Uncle Mauro went to Genoa. He wore his best suit, and Aunt Giulia had packed four trays of eggs for their relations in the city. Fabrizio and Aunt Giulia stood on the steps waving goodbye as he drove away. For the next few days the elder labourer saw to the work around the farm, and the younger one went to the local police station to report what had happened. The chickens came back to the burned-out walls the next day, and the farm labourer found one of the pigs in the forest. The old priest came to see Fabrizio, bringing chocolate, and gave him a rosary with a little silver cross.
Mauro stayed in the city for four days. When he came back he looked tired, his shoes were pinching, the suit hung crooked on his shoulders and was stained. They all sat round the dining table as he smoothed out a piece of paper. He said he hadn’t been allowed to see Fabrizio’s father, but now he knew where he was. The piece of paper looked official, thin paper marked by two rubber stamps, one top left, one bottom right, showing swastikas. The paper bore the words ‘Security Service’. Uncle Mauro said that partisans were very special prisoners of the SS. He read out Fabrizio’s father’s name slowly, tracing the words on the page with his fingers. After every sentence they all talked at once, trying to make out what it meant. The paper gave the name of the prison; it was in the Marassi district of Genoa. The two farm labourers nodded to each other and hunched their heads down between their shoulders. And finally Uncle Mauro read out that Fabrizio’s father had been arrested by order of the security service detachment posted in Milan. He read out the name of the man who was now in charge of the prisoners, a German; Uncle Mauro took a lot of trouble to pronounce it correctly. The piece of paper gave it as SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Meyer.
15
‘SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Meyer,’ said Leinen. Several spectators in Courtroom 500 let out a gasp, and there was a commotion on the press bench as a number of reporters stood up to go and phone their newsrooms.
‘Hans Meyer,’ Leinen repeated, more quietly; it was as if he were talking to himself. He turned to the presiding judge.
‘Your honour, if it’s all right, I’d like to wait to continue this statement on the next day of the trial. My client is worn out, and… and, to be honest, I’m rather tired myself.’
Leinen knew the presiding judge was annoyed. Preparations for this trial had gone on for months, and now it wasn’t going to be possible to bring it to a conclusion in the remaining three days set aside for it. Of course defence counsel had a right to ask for an adjournment – but Leinen was glad that the presiding judge didn’t let her displeasure show, since she didn’t want to prejudice the two lay judges against the defendant.
‘Very well, Herr Leinen. It’s midday now. May we know how much longer your client’s statement will take?’
Leinen could hear the critical note in her voice, of course, but he didn’t care about that. ‘I’m certainly going to need another two or three days,’ he said. He knew that what he said next would be in the papers tomorrow. He had almost been able to sense the change in the atmosphere in the courtroom: Fabrizio Collini was no longer the deranged murderer who had shot a leading industrialist for no reason at all. ‘There will be some more surprises, your honour. I have prepared everything.’
The hum of voices on the spectators’ benches swelled.
‘Then we’ll adjourn for today. The trial will continue next Thursday morning at nine in this courtroom. All involved in these proceedings are required to attend. I’ll see you then.’ The judges and lay judges rose and left the courtroom through a door behind the judges’ bench. Senior Public Prosecutor Reimers pushed his chair back, making a good deal of noise about it, and went to the door of the courtroom without speaking to anyone. The police officers opened the door for the spectators and asked them all to leave. It was almost ten minutes before the courtroom was cleared.
Johanna was still sitting, rigid, on the accessory prosecution team’s bench opposite him. She was pale, her lips colourless. She looked at Leinen as if she had never seen him before. He stood up and went over to her.
‘Get me out of here.’ She was whispering, although no one could hear them.
The journalists were waiting outside the courtroom. An officer helped them, opening a small door and letting them through; the reporters couldn’t follow. Leinen didn’t want to go out through the main entrance; he led Johanna down long corridors to the multi-storey car park. The engine of the old Mercedes wouldn’t start at the first attempt.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked.
‘I don’t mind, just away from here.’
He drove through the city to the Schlachtensee. She sat beside him, crying, and there was nothing he could do. He parked the car on a path in the grounds of the lake, and they walked a little way through the wood there.
‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’ she asked.
‘I wanted to protect you. You’d have had to tell Mattinger.’
She stopped and took his arm. ‘Do you really think all that happened?’
He waited for a while. ‘Shall we go down to the lake?’ he said. He thought about her question. ‘Yes, I think it did happen,’ he said at last. He wished he could have said something else.
‘Why have you ruined everything?’ she asked. ‘Your profession is so cruel.’
He didn’t reply. He thought of Hans Meyer. He could almost feel the old man patting his head. As children they used to go fishing with him, and they had fried the trout they caught over a campfire and eaten them with nothing but butter and salt. Philipp and he would lie in the grass while Meyer sat on a tree trunk, in gumboots with his trousers rolled up. He remembered the dark green of the trees and the darker green of the stream where they caught the fish. The old man’s cigars, the warm smoke, the heat of summer. None of that would feel all right any more. It would never be all right again.