The Fugitive (3 page)

The imaginary world of those who hold, for a lifetime or a single day, absolute mastery over the life of a man demanded a character-qua-defendant midway between Totò and Alberto Sordi: obsequious, quick to tears and panic, infinitely ridiculous, and infinitely dramatic.

I was almost always impassive, cool, and remote. In that way, I was my own worst enemy, as my lawyers often told me. Remote and impassive both with respect to the tragedy and the paradoxical comedy into which the liturgy of the court often slipped.
Épater le bourgeois
was the only possible form of rebellion when you have been cast against your will in an inexorably imposed piece of ensemble theater.

David Mamet believes that the purpose of theater is the production of meaning. My character, strident and unreal on that stage, was meant only to force its audience to be rational, to abandon political and social prejudices and engage in an objective evaluation of the facts. I asked nothing more than to be judged justly. My act didn't always play well with my audience, and the reviews (which came in the form of verdicts) often panned my performance. In the end, however, the theater company of justice decided that, cost what it may, that role would belong to me for all time, even after the production had finished its run, and no more performances were scheduled. Playing “out of character” had therefore been my way of choosing freedom.

There are various categories of fugitives. There are mobsters, politicians, businessmen, bankers, and many others, who usually have resources and enjoy levels of protection sufficient to live on the run as if it were a minor inconvenience. Of course, I belonged to none of these categories. I was a classic accidental fugitive, someone who never expected to have problems with the law, who never thought that he would need to “invent” an escape from his own country as the one way to save his own life, his freedom, and his personal dignity. The defining characteristic of the accidental fugitive is a lack of resources and protection. An accidental fugitive has absolutely no idea of how to live on the run.

When I learned that my appeal to the Court of Cassation (Italy's highest court of appeal) had been denied, and that I had to decide whether to escape or serve another fifteen years in prison, the first thing I did was burst into tears. Uncontrollable tears. Then, in a catatonic trance, I went to the train station, bought a ticket to Paris, and left the country. I crossed the border with my identity card, which no one—despite my legal situation—had thought to confiscate. I remember absolutely nothing about that trip. The decision to escape had been made so impulsively that I didn't even realize what I was doing. I couldn't string two thoughts together, because I was devastated by the news of my guilty verdict, which I had always considered an impossibility.

When my train arrived in the Gare de Lyon, I burst into tears again as soon as I set foot on the platform. I only stopped crying when a Parisian
flic
asked me if I was okay.

I stumbled into the Metro, and had a hard time getting out of the underground labyrinth. I had never seen a subway before. In Padua, we don't even take the bus very often. Everyone rides a bicycle.

Paris was the only place I could go. It has long been a destination for political exiles, and generation after generation of refugees have created a full-fledged culture of solidarity for those forced to flee their homeland. A community that has given France a great deal, in terms of intellectual and artistic growth, helping Paris to become the cosmopolitan city that it is today.

I needed help and I received it, in abundance; help that I never got the chance to pay back. I met and became friends with wonderful people, who helped me to grow as a person. I had arrived screaming my desperation as the victim of a miscarriage of justice, but when I understood the horrors that had been inflicted upon the community of Greek, Turkish, Kurdish, Argentine, Chilean, and Iranian refugees, I shut my mouth and learned the value of dignity.

To all those who helped me, I was one more problem added to the mountain of burdens they were already bearing, but no one shrank from the task. I was wanted for what was considered a common crime (though my political activity in Lotta Continua had a significant bearing on my trial) and while I was risking fifteen more years in an Italian prison, what they were facing was certainly far worse—they might well be expelled from France, one of the few nations on earth willing to offer political asylum. That was why I finally left Paris, but the network of people in which I moved remained the same.

The first and only time that I left that network, I met Melvin Cervera Sanchez.

Those who return home in the middle of the sea

those who choose not to breathe

those who cultivate an expanse of sand

those who hide behind an unmasked face

 

 

 

 

For a fugitive, the look is fundamental. It's not something you can just choose at random. It has to match the fugitive's physical appearance and need to escape with the social and cultural characteristics of the place he's chosen to hide in. For instance, showing up at the Swiss border dressed as a gypsy, a punk, a goth, or a latter-day hippie is a bad idea.

In general, the look needs to be sobersided but, first and foremost, it must respect the golden rule of life on the run, which demands that it be as reassuring as possible. It has to convey the impression to the policemen who are watching you or who have stopped you that they are just wasting their time, because it is inconceivable that anyone who looks like that could be a good-for-nothing. As a result, I was obliged to impersonate stereotypical figures from social groups quite different from the one I belonged to and frequented (and whose look left a lot to de desired).

The characters I projected served only as camouflage; they would never have withstood a more careful inspection. So I needed to do a good job of acting and lavish an obsessive care on the details. Until I went back to Italy and discovered that no one had ever dreamed of looking for me, I had always considered myself a master of disguise; then I began to have my doubts.

I copied Bernard, my first disguise, from Louis de Funès movies. He had short hair which left his ears uncovered (in the photographs in my identity documents, you can always see the ears), a goatee-style beard, neatly trimmed, fake eyeglasses with a lightweight, pseudo-tortoise-shell frame. Light-brown suits purchased at the BHV in the Rue de Rivoli, ties that were intentionally abominable, and, at any hour of the day or night, a copy of
France Soir
protruding from his overcoat or jacket pocket, depending on the season. And finally, a leather bag, of abysmal quality, carefully worn and tattered in the right places.

Even a quick glance at Bernard conveyed the impression: a) that he had a low-paid, white-collar job; perhaps he was a civil servant (especially effective were the shoes: carefully re-soled, with a crescent-shaped metal heel tap); b) that he was married with children (gold wedding band on the left ring finger, small, unobtrusive gift-wrapped packages on national holidays, and boxes of pastries on Sundays); c) that he was a picture of existential resignation and that he was politically and socially harmless; d) and that he had an inborn respect for authority and an unshakable love of his country (as demonstrated by a French tricolor badge in the buttonhole of his lapel).

I remember how I glowed with contentment when Alessandra flew to see me in Paris and, after taking a quick look at me, said, “Darling, what have you done to yourself? You look like a cop!” Unfortunately for Bernard's sex life, I still reminded her of a cop with my clothes off.

In any case, I saw proof on a daily basis that my “mask” was working perfectly. Whenever I boarded a bus or stepped onto the Metro (after a few months I had figured out how to use it), I was immediately drawn by my supposed social counterparts into a web of silent expressions of shared disapproval—signaled by complicit glances and tiny, imperceptible head-shakes—for the homeless, gypsies, or street artists whose mere existence constituted an annoyance to the respectable citizens of the city.

And if the people that I was trying to mimic identified me at a glance, so did my social antagonists. I had a chance to verify this one evening, when I took the Metro home after going out to see a movie. I happened to sit in a car that was empty except for me and a gang of
banlieusards
. They started to make fun of me and insult me as soon as I sat down and, when the train reached the Châtelet station, they beat me up and stole my wristwatch.

Next came Gustave. I planned him as the intellectual variation on Bernard, but somehow people always took him for a Belgian. I never did understand why, but maybe that's because I've never been in Belgium. Whatever the explanation, as soon as people heard me speak, they would exclaim, “Oh, so you're
not
Belgian!” I wore a large dark-blue beret, pulled down low over my forehead and then tugged back, a scarf whose color went nicely with my light-brown duffel coat and my pea-green corduroy suit with a light-wool vest, topped off with colorful bowties. Gustave was inspired by movies about the French Resistance; he was the perfect young professor of art history or music teacher, a bit of a daydreamer, who had been dressing in this same style since he was twelve (the only concession to adulthood was long pants instead of shorts). Someone without a lot of weird ideas in his head. A harmless, reassuring individual.

I came up with Gustave as a way to go out to art galleries, independent movie houses, and cafés at night without constantly being taken for a cop. This happened all the time with Bernard, and it was embarrassing to my friends. It got so bad that one evening, at La Coupole in Montparnasse, where I used to hang out on Saturday evenings to savor the Parisian milieu that Manuel Scorza (my favorite writer at the time) used to frequent, a prostitute approached me, assuring me that there was a guaranteed discount for members of the police force.

The problem with these two characters was that they weren't particularly appealing to the female sex (professionals aside). In fact, most women reacted with a certain distaste at first sight. I never ventured past this first reaction, but I have always wondered where the Bernards and the Gustaves of this world find their girlfriends, since as a rule they get married. For Gustave, I suppose that the answer is Belgium; for Bernard the question remains shrouded in mystery.

In my experience as a fugitive, I was obliged more than once to invent characters for just a few days, either because they were specially suited to a specific situation, or else because my cover of the moment had been blown.

For instance, in the summer, when I took the train across the border between France and Spain (then considered a tough border crossing because of the chronic excesses of the Basque independence movement), I would assume a disguise of such completely reassuring innocence and naïveté (even if slightly shabby) that the French and Spanish police wouldn't even ask to see my identity papers. I shaved off my goatee, cut my hair even shorter, and became Lucien the tourist. I would cross the border wearing a white tennis cap, a white “I Love New York” T-shirt, dark-blue knee-length bermuda shorts, canary yellow terry cloth socks, and a pair of white Adidas. Hanging around my neck was a leather water bag, inscribed with
Recuerdo de España
if I was coming from the Basque Country, or a canteen with the Madonna of Lourdes if I was traveling in the opposite direction. Instead of the classic backpack—a known irritant to policemen, likely to arouse suspicion and dislike—I carried a lizard-green vinyl suitcase covered with decals from youth hostels and Catholic sports associations.

My acting style consisted of a relentless cheerfulness and a total self-abnegation toward others. You know the type: he'll stand in the aisle throughout a train trip even if he got to the station an hour before departure time, because he gives his seat away to anyone who looks into the compartment; the whole time he is also helping women and old men to board and leave the car, all the while scattering phrases like “Have a good trip and enjoy your day!”

Other borders I crossed by bicycle. Mountain bikes weren't available then, and I rode a racing bike, covered with headlights, reflector disks, and luggage racks. I would arrive at the border crossing exhausted, drenched in sweat and gamy as could be (I wonder why all the border crossings I've ever seen are perched on inaccessible mountain tops), arousing in the border police that special feeling of pity that one feels toward those who like to suffer through their holidays. Often, they would make a big show of ignoring me.

The way I liked to cross borders best was illegally, over the mountains. Hiking through the woods, with a backpack on my back, filled me with a sense of happiness. It made me feel like one of the smugglers in the movie
L'amante dell'Orsa Maggiore
(
The Smugglers
).

I was forced to eliminate both Bernard and Gustave because of a phone call made over a line that might have been tapped by the police. That's right. When you are on the run, a simple “might have been” is enough to make you drop everything and start over from scratch.

The screw-up was the work of Horacio, a politically effervescent Argentine exile. I had told him a thousand times to use pay phones to call me, but he couldn't grasp the difference between an accidental fugitive and a political exile. He called to invite me to a party; I couldn't hear any noise in the background, which filled me with misgivings. “Horacio, you're calling from your house, aren't you?” I asked. The guilty silence on the other end of the line was all I needed to be certain. Fifteen minutes later I was already on my way. I pulled a folded sheet of paper out of my wallet with an emergency phone number. I stepped into the first phone booth I found and picked up the receiver.

My ace in the hole was a Greek Communist who had fled the country when the Colonels took over. He stayed in France and enjoyed a highly successful career as a psychiatrist. I had never met him, but he knew about my situation; I told him what had happened and we made an appointment to meet near Place de la Bastille. He showed up late in a beat-up mustard-yellow Lada: a skinny little guy, about forty-five, well dressed, with a dark complexion that made him look more like a North African than a Greek. Courteous and friendly, he told me that I could use his apartment; he would sleep at his girlfriend's place until I could find another place to stay.