A Fine Line Page 24

  There. I’d said it. It wouldn’t make any difference, but at least I’d managed to say it.

  “You’re mad.”

  “It’s possible.”

  His face was transformed. He opened his eyes wide, and his mouth twisted in a grimace that was meant to express anger and indignation but was as grotesque as a living caricature. “You want to judge me. You are judging me. You want to turn into a prosecutor, a judge, and even an executioner.”

  “I don’t think you’re in any position to formulate these opinions.”

  “People like you disgust me. You think you’re superior and judge other people only because you’re afraid of the wickedness you have inside you.”

  “You’re raving. It’s best if I drive you home.”

  “You moralists don’t understand something that Aristotle understood and talked about over two thousand years ago: all men commit wicked and immoral acts, if they have the opportunity. All of them.”

  “It’s a very convenient argument. All men are wicked, therefore I haven’t done anything wrong. Very convenient.”

  “Did you never cheat on your wife when you were married? Have you always declared everything you earn to the tax people? Have you never bought a property and put in the contract a figure lower than the one you paid, then paid the difference in cash to save on the registration tax? Have you never driven through a red light, after checking there was nobody at the crossing? Have you never exceeded the speed limit on a clear, deserted road?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. We all break the rules, you at least as much as the others. The difference isn’t between breaking them and not breaking them. The difference is in the consequences. We need to claim the right to evaluate and decide, using our intelligence and common sense, when breaking the rules doesn’t cause any major harm, as I said before. If it doesn’t, then there should be no obstacle to the legitimate human desire for freedom of action.”

  “It seems to me you were saying rather different things in your lecture to the postgraduates. But maybe I’m not intelligent enough to grasp certain nuances.”

  Once again he ignored my words and my futile sarcasm. “Have you ever smoked grass and offered it to your friends? That’s an offence, you know. Have you ever driven after drinking? That’s also an offence. Have you ever been in a fight? Another offence. Who do you think you are to judge? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “I’ll drive you home.”

  “Go fuck yourself. You’re not driving anyone. Let me give you a piece of advice, you arsehole: in future, try not to take on any defence in my court.”

  He stood up and left. I sat there, not moving.

  29

  By the time I left, maybe half an hour later, it had stopped raining. Everything was wet and shiny and precarious. They must have been doing roadworks in the area, because there was a strong smell of water and asphalt. The air was grey, with a few gaps of blue in a sky like thick cotton wool. I got in my car, set off, and called Annapaola. The phone rang for a long time, but she didn’t pick up. I tried again, but she still didn’t pick up. I was thinking of phoning Tancredi – the only other person I could talk to about this business – and wondering if it was a good idea when Annapaola called me back. I stopped the car near the gate of the San Francesco pinewoods and answered.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the phone. How’s it going?”

  “I can vaguely remember better times.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No, I don’t think I am.”

  “Actually, your voice—”

  “I met Larocca. I spoke to him.”

  The silence hovered between our two phones. In the end she gave an audible sigh.

  “Shall we meet and you can tell me about it? How does that grab you?”

  “Weren’t you supposed to be away on business?”

  “I just got back. Well, how about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, I’ll take a shower and join you in your office.”

  Pasquale seemed to be on the verge of contravening his rigid personal protocol and asking me if something was wrong. He managed to restrain himself, but he looked worried. First Consuelo, then Maria Teresa came into my office to say hello. Both asked me if something had happened. To both I replied, no, thank you, nothing had happened. I was sitting there with my feet on the desk. I never do that. Your posture can set alarm bells ringing.

  Consuelo said, “If you want to talk, boss, I’m here,” and went out.

  Maria Teresa said, “Don’t get me all worried now, Guido. Please,” and also went out.

  Annapaola arrived.

  I gave her a complete account, starting with those two absurd letters I’d written, which I still had in my pocket.

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I did something stupid. I wrote a letter, using a fictitious signature, and made two copies, one for the Prosecutor’s Department and one for the customs police, basically saying what you told me about the Swiss account and giving them some useful tips for their investigation. I thought… It was idiotic. I thought of telling him to hand in his resignation. If he accepted, I’d destroy the letter, otherwise I’d send it. That was what I thought.”

  “And did you do it?”

  “No. It was a stupid thing, something I thought of doing. I realized it was nonsense, as well as an offence – making a personal threat. So I told him I’d learnt from my sources that inquiries about a Swiss account were in progress, but that the information so far was vague, and I asked him to explain.”

  “And he told you the whole nasty business.”

  “He told me the whole nasty business, yes. And then, as if nothing had happened, he asked me how we should formulate a defence strategy in the light of this information.”

  “Because you’d made him think that the account had come up in the course of the investigations; in other words, that the investigators were aware of it.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So: he asked you how you should formulate a defence strategy. What did you say?”

  “I told him I didn’t feel up to representing him any more and that I was giving up the brief. Unless he resigned from the bench.”

  “And he said you were crazy and could go to hell, something like that.”

  “More or less.”

  “And the letters?”

  “They’re here,” I said, touching my jacket where the inside pocket was.

  “You didn’t send them.”

  “It was stupid even to think of writing them. Apart from anything else, it was your confidential information and I had no right to use it in that way. But that isn’t even the main reason. In theory, I could have asked you for your permission.”

  “What is the main reason?”

  “I’m a lawyer. I can’t harm a client of mine. If I did, I’d face charges, I’d be struck off, maybe even sent to prison. That didn’t only just occur to me, it’s why the letter is signed with a fictitious name. It’s an anonymous letter, and I can’t send an anonymous letter. I wouldn’t be any different from him if I did something like that.”

  “An original theory.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That it’s an absurd idea putting the two things on the same level. We judge people’s actions – those they’ve done or those they’re thinking of doing – according to their motives. His motive is pure, unadulterated greed. Yours is disgust at that greed, your dismay at seeing the work of a judge being prostituted. Forget about legal subtleties: one motive is nasty and immoral, the other is moral and – forgive the rhetoric, I know you don’t like it – inspired by a need for justice.”

  I didn’t reply. That wasn’t exactly it. It was a bit too simplistic as an argument. Things are more complicated, I told myself. But I had no desire to explain it to her. Maybe I was afraid I wouldn’t be capable, or maybe I was afraid she was right, that things were actually quite simple,
and that I would have to confront that unbearable dilemma again.

  “Could you show me the letters?”

  I took out the envelopes and handed them to her. “They’re sealed with glue. But I have a third copy.”

  I gave it to her. She took it and read it.

  “I think you should send them,” she said when she had finished.

  I barely moved my head. “I’m not capable. I can’t.”

  “Then I’ll keep them. If you don’t mind. It’s a pity to waste stamps.”

  I looked at her face. She had the neutral but threatening expression of a boxer just before a match.

  “No,” I said. “You can’t.”

  “I’m not a lawyer; disloyal advocacy is an offence that doesn’t apply to me—”

  “Annapaola—”

  At that moment it struck me how much I liked her name when I said it.

  “Anyway, I was the one who found that information, and I can do what I like with it. I can give you back these letters if you like, but be aware that as soon as I leave here I’m going to rewrite them. And you can’t do a damn thing about it.”

  She took a paper handkerchief and started to carefully clean the surface of the envelopes. Then she put them in her bag.

  “See you,” she said.

  See you, I replied, when she had already left.

  30

  I left too, almost immediately after Annapaola, thinking that however this thing ended, being a lawyer would never be the same again. Maybe now was the time to quit, as I had said a few weeks earlier to Tancredi. A lifetime seemed to have gone by since that morning when we had stood talking in the sun, leaning on the wall of the courthouse. And maybe it had, because the true measurement of time isn’t days, weeks, months, years. The true measurement of time is the unexpected events, the kind that change everything and make you realize how many other things happened before that you weren’t aware of and should have been, and how many things you took for granted will never happen again.

  Once again, I asked myself how I would remember the events of these days in a few years’ time, or even when I was old. I couldn’t find an answer.

  And naturally I thought about what would happen after Annapaola had dropped the two envelopes into a postbox.

  They would reach their destination in a couple of days and in all probability, in spite of precautions, nobody would think of looking for fingerprints. Instead, the prosecutors and the customs police would immediately ask themselves how to use this statement. In theory, anonymous letters should not be used; the law forbids it. In theory they should be thrown away immediately.

  In theory.

  In practice, all prosecutors’ departments find a way to make use of them, employing the most diverse arguments to interpret the law.

  I hadn’t the slightest doubt that would happen in this case, too. Within a few weeks they would send letters rogatory to Switzerland, and within a few months the reply would arrive. Then Larocca really would be in trouble, and there was little chance he’d be able to squirm out of it. An account in Switzerland filled with millions from cash transactions or bank transfers doesn’t exactly look good for a judge accused of corruption.

  I thought these things and many others all of Friday evening and the whole of Saturday. An interminable Saturday, spent in solitude. Annapaola hadn’t called me back. She had taken it upon herself to do what I should have done. This probably hadn’t increased her respect for me, and I assumed she had no desire to speak to me, let alone see me. I didn’t feel up to disagreeing with her: at this point I wouldn’t have enjoyed Guido Guerrieri’s company either.

  It certainly wasn’t anything new – a solitary weekend, I mean – but with all these things to mull over, it was very hard, at times unbearable. I considered the people I would have liked to speak to. I thought of calling Tancredi, Nadia, Consuelo. I even thought of calling my old friend Alessandra Mantovani, now a prosecutor in Palermo, who I hadn’t seen for years and hadn’t spoken to for months. I didn’t call anybody. I’ve always been reluctant to ask for help.

  The day passed, as certain days pass, after certain other days.

  Those after days. They drag slowly, and in the end you feel as if only a few minutes have passed since you got up, rolling out of bed with every muscle and joint aching. Aches you didn’t have the day before.

  About nine, after wandering through the city; after going shopping for such indispensable products as nacho rolls, cassava chips, a jar of fruit mustard, a yogurt cake mix and a box of soluble cocoa – purchases a psychiatrist might have found intriguing; after going out again and again wandering through the city; after buying a few books and a few CDs; after eating a vegetarian sandwich and drinking a small bottle of grape juice at an organic fast food place, I returned home. I put on a CD of golden oldies, took off my jacket, my shoes, my trousers and my shirt, took the rope that was as always on a shelf, next to the works of Bertrand Russell, and did a couple of rounds of skipping. The short, dull, rhythmical sound of my feet hitting the floor started to relax me. Just for me, David Gray was singing “Please Forgive Me”.

  I took the bandages and the punching gloves, which I kept on the shelf, near some old books from when I was a child. The very few I had kept. Among them, my favourite, Tell Me Why: five hundred questions and five hundred answers on the most varied aspects of science and modern life. It was a present to me when I was eight years old. Some of the happiest moments of my existence have been spent leafing through that thick volume.

  I carefully bandaged myself, watching the bandage turning around my wrist, the back of my hand, between my fingers, over the knuckles and again around the wrist, the back of my hand, between the fingers, over the knuckles, around the wrist.

  I put on the gloves. I opened and closed my fists three or four times.

  Neither I nor Mr Punchbag had any desire to talk. It was one of those evenings. So I gave him a push, starting him swaying and, to the tune of “Against the Wind” – which had started at that exact moment as if by chance, assuming the concept of chance had any meaning – I started boxing and forgetting myself.

  31

  At first, I thought it was the alarm on my phone. Why the hell had I set the alarm on a Sunday morning? Apart from anything else, for once I hadn’t opened my eyes wide at the first light of dawn and was sleeping as peacefully as I used to, many years ago.

  Recovering a modicum of contact with the world, I realized it couldn’t be the alarm. It was a very different sound, an antiquated, petulant buzzing. A sound I’m not very used to hearing at home. The entryphone.

  “Who is it?”

  “Annapaola.”

  Annapaola. It’s a nice name. I like the sound of it, both when I say it, and when she does. Annapaola.

  “Hi, has anything happened?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I haven’t looked at my watch. What time is it?”

  “7.35.”

  “Oh, 7.35. Do you want to come up?”

  “Can you come down for a minute?”

  “All right. I’ll put my trousers on.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  Three minutes later I was downstairs, in faded jeans and a white T-shirt with the words Call me Ishmael.

  “I tried to call you last night, but your phone was off.”

  “It had run out of battery. I should change it.”

  “You’re not bad in the morning. You’re much better scruffy than in a jacket and tie.”

  “Are you going away again?”

  “For a couple of days.”

  The street was deserted, the shadows were long and friendly, the air fresh. It was like a morning when I was a boy. Annapaola looked away for a moment.

  “Are you coming with me?” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Let’s just get out of the city, then we’ll decide.”

  “That’s a bit random, as a plan.”

  “I’m happy with random.”

  Me too,
I thought. “I have to take a shower,” I said.

  “I agree. Throw something in a rucksack. We’ll have breakfast on the way.”

  “Will you also teach me to ride?” I said, pointing to the motorbike.

  “If we find an empty enough road.”

  “I need about twenty minutes. Want to come up?”

  “No, I’ll wait for you here. I like this breeze.”

  “Then I’ll be right back.”

  “Hey.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s been quite a while since I liked a man.”

  “That hasn’t happened to me for some time either.”

  She stifled a laugh. “Why do I laugh at these stupid jokes?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “I have an awful feeling I do.”

  NOTE

  The lines on pp. 181–2 are taken from the songs “Balla”, sung by Umberto Balsamo, “Anima mia”, sung by I Cugini di Campagna, and “Ti amo”, sung by Umberto Tozzi.

  TEMPORARY PERFECTIONS

  Gianrico Carofiglio

  It all began with an unusual assignment, a job better suited for Marlowe than for defence counsel Guido Guerrieri. Could he find new evidence to force the police to reopen their investigation of the disappearance of Manuela, the daughter of a rich couple living in Bari? The stories of Manuela’s druggy university friends don’t quite add up. Her best friend, Caterina, too beautiful and certainly too young for Guerrieri, is a temptation he doesn’t need. He fights his loneliness by talking to the punchbag hanging in his living room and by walking the streets of Bari late at night, activities that somehow lead to solving the riddle of Manuela’s vanishing.

  PRAISE FOR TEMPORARY PERFECTIONS

  “This is not only a fascinating panorama of Bari’s neon-lit underworld. It’s a fine literary achievement: a study of angst and the efforts of a disillusioned hero to find some integrity in a shady world.” Independent