“Thank you, Dottoressa Fumai. I have no more questions for the moment, Your Honour. But I request that the documents shown to the witness and identified by her be admitted to the case file.”
Dellisanti fell for it and objected. I should have requested this admission at the preliminary hearing, he said, without even standing up. Besides, as far as he could tell, these were the same records which the defence had already produced. The request was therefore superfluous.
“Your Honour, I might say that if these are the same documents already produced by counsel for the defence, I don’t see why there should be any objection. Or perhaps I do see, but we shall look at that at the appropriate moment. Yes, it is true, these are the same documents produced by counsel for the defence. Theirs are a copy and so are ours, taken directly from the medical records of the nursing home. But on our copy there are a few annotations in pen, made by the doctor who treated the plaintiff after her admission to hospital. As I said, the annotations on our copy are in pen. So we could say that our documents are both a copy and an original. One only has to look at our documents and those produced by the defence to realize that theirs are a copy of ours. For reasons that we will explain further in the course of the hearing, but which you, Your Honour, have surely already realized, the admission of our copy is relevant.”
Caldarola couldn’t find any arguments to refuse my request, and those put forward by Delissanti were
really insubstantial. So he allowed the admission of the documents and then ordered a ten-minute recess before cross-examination.
26
When Caldarola told Delissanti that he could proceed with the cross-examination, Delissanti replied, without even lifting his head, “Thank you, Your Honour, just a moment.” He was rummaging among his papers, as if searching for a document without which he couldn’t start his questioning.
He was faking it. It was a trick, to make Martina feel tenser, to force her to turn to him and meet his eyes. But she was good. She didn’t move a muscle, didn’t turn towards the defence bench, and in the end, when the silence was starting to be embarrassing, it was Delissanti who gave in. He closed his file, without taking anything out, and began.
You lost the first round, fatso, I thought.
“If I understand correctly, you have regular meetings with a psychiatrist. Is that right, Signorina?” The way he said
Signorina
, it was clear he meant it as an insult. In other words: a woman who’s pushing middle age and hasn’t yet found a husband.
“We meet every three or four months. It’s a kind of counselling session. And he’s a psychotherapist.”
“Am I correct in saying that since your nervous breakdown and your admission to a psychiatric ward, you have never stopped treatment for your mental disorder?”
I half rose, with my hands on the desk.
“Objection, Your Honour. Put in those terms the question is inadmissible. Its purpose is not to get
an answer, not to elicit information from the witness which may help in reaching a decision, but only to obtain an offensive and intimidating effect.”
“Don’t judge counsel’s intentions, Avvocato Guerrieri. Let us hear what the witness has to say. Answer the question, Signorina. Is it true you have never stopped therapy?”
“No, Your Honour, it isn’t true. The therapy itself lasted, as I’ve said before, a year and a half, maybe a little more. During that time, I had two sessions a week with my therapist. Then we reduced it to once a week, then twice a month . . .”
“Let me rephrase the question, Signorina. Is it correct to say that you have
never
stopped seeing the psychiatrist, but you simply see him less frequently?”
“If you put it like that—”
“Can you tell me if you have ever stopped seeing the psychiatrist? Yes or no?”
Martina clenched her mouth shut and her lips became very thin. For a moment, I had the absurd feeling that she was going to get up and walk out without saying another word.
“I’ve never stopped seeing the psychotherapist. I see him three or four times a year.”
“When was the last time you paid a visit to your psychiatrist?”
He kept repeating the word
psychiatrist
. It suggested a stronger, even if implicit, connection with the idea of mental illness. It was a simple trick, and a dirty one, but it made sense from his point of view.
“They aren’t visits, we just meet and talk.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“The last time I went to my . . .”
“Yes.”
“. . . a week ago.”
“Ah, how fortuitous. Since you insist on calling this person a psychotherapist, and just so that we can clear up any ambiguity: is he a doctor specializing in psychiatry or a psychologist?”
“He’s a doctor.”
“Specializing in psychiatry?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you still see him if, as you say, you’re cured?”
“He considers it advisable for us to meet and check how things are in general—”
“Excuse me for interrupting, but I find this interesting. It’s the psychiatrist himself who considers these occasional meetings necessary?”
“It’s not that he considers them necessary—”
“Excuse me. Did your psychiatrist say to you at a certain point, when he considered that your mental condition had improved: it’s no longer necessary for us to see each other twice a week, but once a week?”
“Yes.”
“And did your psychiatrist say to you at a certain point, for the same reason: it’s no longer necessary for us to see each other once a week, twice a month will be enough?”
“Yes.”
“And did your psychiatrist say to you that you will have to meet for the rest of your life, even if only four times a year?”
“For the rest of my life? What do you mean?”
“So he doesn’t envisage treating you for the rest of your life?”
“Of course not.”
“When you’ve completely overcome your problems, you’ll be able to stop seeing him, is that right?”
Martina finally turned to him, looking like a little
girl who wonders why adults are so stupid. She didn’t answer, and he didn’t insist. There was no need. He’d got what he wanted. I’d have liked to smash his face, but he’d been good.
Delissanti paused for a long time, to let the result he had obtained sink in. His face seemed expressionless. But if you looked closely, you caught a hint of something vaguely brutal and obscene.
“Is it true that once, in the course of an argument at which a number of other people – your mutual friends – were present, Professor Scianatico lost his temper and said to you, and I quote, ‘You’re a
compulsive liar
, you’re
unbalanced
, you’re
unreliable
, you’re a
danger
to yourself and others’?” Delissanti’s tone was different now. He hammered home the words “compulsive liar”, “unbalanced”, “unreliable”, “danger”. Anyone listening with half an ear would have had the impression of a lawyer insulting a witness. Which, when you got down to it, was precisely what Delissanti was doing. An old, cheap trick, designed to provoke the witness into losing his or her cool. Sometimes it works.
I was about to object, but at the last moment I held back. If I objected, I thought, it would be obvious I was afraid, and was thinking Martina wasn’t capable of answering and getting through the cross-examination. So I stayed in my seat and said nothing. In the few seconds that passed between Delissanti’s question and Martina’s answer, I felt the muscles of my legs tensing and my heart beating faster. The signs of a body that’s about to act by instinct and then is stopped by a command from the brain. Just like when you’re about to hit someone and then a flash of reason stops you.
I was certain that Alessandra Mantovani had made the same mental journey. When I turned to her, I saw
that she was shifting slightly in her seat, as if a moment earlier she had pushed herself to the edge, ready to stand up and object.
Then Martina answered. “I think so. I think he said that kind of thing to me. More than once.”
“What I want to know is if you remember a specific occasion on which these things were said in the presence of mutual friends. Do you remember?”
“No, I don’t remember a specific occasion. I’m sure he said things like that to me. He said a lot of other things too. For example—”
Delissanti interrupted her, in the curt, arrogant tone of someone addressing a subordinate who isn’t carrying out his orders correctly. “I’m not interested in the other things, Signorina. My question is whether you remember that particular quarrel, not—”
“Your Honour, can we at least let the witness finish her answers? If counsel for the defence asks a question to understand the context in which certain words – extremely offensive words, by the way – were used, he cannot then arbitrarily limit this context to what he wants to hear, and censor the rest of the witness’s story. Apart from anything else, using an unacceptably intimidating tone.”
Alesssandra was still on her feet when Delissanti rose in his turn, almost shouting.
“Take care what you’re saying. I won’t allow a public prosecutor to address me in that tone and with such objections.”
I don’t know how Alessandra managed to get a word in edgeways with all that ranting and raving, but she came out with a single sentence, as short, quick and deadly as a knife thrust.
“No, Avvocato,
you
take care.” She said it in a tone that froze the blood. There was a violence in those
hissed words that left everyone present dumbfounded, including me.
At this point, Caldarola remembered he was the judge and that maybe he ought to intervene.
“Please calm down, all of you. I don’t see the reason for this animosity and I’m asking you to stop it now. Let each person do his job and try to respect that of others. Have you any other questions, Avvocato Delissanti?”
“No, Your Honour. I take note that the witness either can’t or won’t recall the episode to which I refer. Professor Scianatico can tell us the story, and so, above all, can the witnesses we have indicated on our list. That is all.”
“Does the public prosecutor have anything to add to her previous examination?”
“Yes, I have a couple of questions, the necessity for which has emerged as a result of the cross-examination.”
Technically, it wasn’t necessary for her to say that. But it was a way of underlining that this extension of the plaintiff’s testimony – which was sure to be unfavourable to the defendant – was due to a mistake on the part of counsel for the defence. In other words, it wasn’t a gesture of reconciliation.
“Dottoressa Fumai, would you like to tell us the other things the defendant said to you? To be more precise, the things you were about to tell us when you were interrupted.”
Martina spoke about them, these other things. She spoke about the other humiliations, apart from the blows and the mental cruelty she had talked about before. Scianatico had told her she was a failure. Only one good thing had ever happened to her: she’d met him and he’d decided to take care of her. She was incapable of making decisions about her own life, and
so she
had
to carry out his orders and his instructions on how to behave. She had to be disciplined, and to know her place.
He’d told her she was a bitch, and bitches had to obey their masters.
She told it all, and her voice wasn’t cracked or weak. But maybe it was worse. It was neutral, toneless, colourless. As if something had broken inside her again.
Caldarola adjourned for three weeks and set out a kind of schedule for the trial. At the following hearing, we would have the other witnesses for the prosecution. Then the defendant would be examined. Finally, over the course of two hearings, we would have the witnesses for the defence, including the expert witness.
I said goodbye to Alessandra Mantovani, and turned to the exit of the courtroom to follow Martina, who had left the witness stand and was just a few steps ahead of me. It was at that moment that I saw Sister Claudia. She was standing, leaning on the rail. She seemed lost in thought. Then I realized she was looking at Scianatico and Delissanti. She was looking at them in a way I’ll never forget, and catching that look I thought, without having any real control over my thoughts, that this was a woman who was capable of murder.
It may seem incredible, but in the months before that afternoon, I’d found a kind of absurd equilibrium. He’d do – and make me do – those things. All I wanted was for it to end as quickly as possible. Then I’d leave the room and hide what had happened. I was a sad girl, I didn’t have friends, but I had Snoopy, and my little sister, and the books I got from school and read whenever I had a free moment. I don’t think my mother ever really noticed anything, until that day.
After that rainy afternoon, I don’t know how, but I spoke to her. No, that’s not quite right. I tried to speak to her. I don’t remember what I said exactly. I’m sure I didn’t tell her everything that had happened. I think I was trying to see if I could speak to her, if she was prepared to listen to me – if she was prepared to help me.
She wasn’t.
As soon as she realized what I was talking about she got ver y angry. I was making up horrible things. I was a bad girl. Did I want to ruin our family, after all the sacrifices she’d made to keep it going? That was more or less what she said, and I didn’t say any more.
A few days later, I came back from school and Snoopy wasn’t there. I looked for him in the yard, I looked for him outside, in the street. I asked everyone I met if they’d seen him, but nobody knew anything. If pain exists in its purest, most desperate form, I felt it that morning. If I think again about that moment, I see a silent, washed-out scene in black and white.
That afternoon he called me into his bedroom and I didn’t
go. He called me again, and I didn’t go. I was in the kitchen, on a chair, my arms around my knees. With my eyes wide open, not seeing anything. I don’t think there are many feelings or emotions that go together as strongly as hate and fear. Then you act one way or the other depending on which is stronger. Fear. Or hate.
He came to get me in the kitchen and dragged me to the bedroom. For the first time, I tried to resist. I don’t really know what I did. Maybe I tried to kick him or punch him. Or maybe I didn’t just freeze and let him do it. He was surprised, and furious. He hit me hard, as he raped me. Slaps and punches, in the face, on the head, in the ribs.
And yet – strangely – when he’d finished I didn’t feel worse than the other times. Sure, I hurt all over, but I also felt a strange, fierce joy. I’d rebelled. Things would never be the same as before. He understood too, in his way.
When my mother came home she saw the bruises on my face. I looked at her without saying anything, thinking she would ask me what had happened. Thinking that now, faced with the evidence, she would believe me and help.
She turned away. She said something about making dinner, or something else she had to do.
He opened a big bottle of beer and drank it all. At the end he gave a silent, obscene belch.