The Past is a Foreign Country (21 page)

THEY HAD HAD no difficulty identifying him, even though he’d grown a beard.

He was almost always at home during the day. He went out late in the afternoon, or in the evening, or sometimes not until night. He usually came back very late, often just before dawn.

They started to tail him immediately.

Sometimes he’d go for long, aimless walks around town.

At other times he would take his car – that strange, unreal old DS – and drive around for hours on his own, both inside and outside the city.

Sometimes he would park by the sea and stay there. They could see the glow of his cigarette in the darkness. Sometimes he’d
disappear
for a while. Maybe he slept, Chiti thought one night.

And sometimes they lost him – maybe he’d spotted them – and they’d give up, hoping tonight wasn’t the night.

It went on like this for two weeks. Chiti – the others, too,
probably
– couldn’t help thinking, over and over: Was it really him? Or were they wasting their time tailing someone who was clearly a bit unhinged but basically innocent? What if one evening, or one night, while they were following this man all over the city and the province, the call came in that there had been another assault?

Once, he went back to his mother’s apartment, stayed there for several hours, then came out at night and again wandered the city like a werewolf.

It can’t not be him, Chiti would repeat to himself. He fits, he fits perfectly. We just have to be patient and catch him as soon as he tries something.

Sometimes, Chiti thought he would like to get to know him. Go to his place and invite him out for a beer, a smoke and a chat.

He would think all these things as he sat in the car, surrounded by the smells of men, leather jackets, cigarette smoke, gun oil, pizzas and rolls and cans of beer, coffee thermoses.

Sitting in silence through the night with these hunting
companions
of his – sometimes he couldn’t even remember their names.

Could they ever imagine the things that crossed his mind?

HE AND PELLEGRINI were on duty tonight. As usual, they saw him leave just after midnight.

They were about to set off after him when they realised he wasn’t alone.

‘There are two of them,’ Pellegrini said.

Chiti did not reply. This was the first time he’d had someone with him since they had started following him. He didn’t like it, and at the same time it gave him a rush of excitement. He wouldn’t have been able to put it into words, but there was something about them, something about the way the two men were moving, that gave him the impression they were going to
do something
.

None of the girls had ever talked about two attackers. But was there anything that ruled out the possibility?

As they let the two men walk some distance before getting out of the car and starting to tail them – not so easy at night, when the streets are deserted and there are no passers-by to mingle with – Chiti went over the girls’ statements in his mind, trying to see if any of them had said anything compatible with the idea that there were two attackers. He and his men had always taken it for granted that there was just one attacker. When you think of serial crimes, you always think of a lone criminal. Maybe they’d been over-influenced
by this stereotype. But what had the girls said? As he got out of the car, he wished he had all their statements to hand, so that he could check. They had all said they were struck from behind. This
obviously
did not rule out the possibility that there was more than one attacker.

They had all said they were dragged bodily into the entrance of a nearby building. Even that didn’t contradict the possibility that there were two men acting together. In fact, when he thought about it, the theory of two attackers made this part of the act more plausible.

He had a shooting pain between his temple, forehead and eye. He tried again to gather his thoughts. What had the girls said about the actual assaults? Was there anything that would lead them to rule out categorically the idea that there were two attackers? He didn’t think so, but his head was hurting more and more, and on the screen in his brain the face in the drawing grew ever larger.

The
faces
in the drawing.

Pellegrini’s voice broke in on him with the impact of a stone smashing a window pane, or a mirror. Even though he was speaking in a low voice.

‘We have to get going, lieutenant. They’re already three blocks away. If we keep waiting there’s a risk we’ll lose them.’

Chiti jumped, like someone who is shaken just as he is about to fall asleep. He started moving without saying anything, his eyes on the two figures, who were already far away. Too far away, maybe.

‘I’ll follow them. You get another couple of cars along here as soon as possible. Our own cars, not patrol cars. Give the officers exact descriptions of the two men, and tell them to scour the area. If they spot the men they have to just keep watching them. They mustn’t stop them and they mustn’t be seen. And they must call us straight away. When you’ve finished join me.’

Without waiting for a reply, he set off, his head throbbing. Just then, the two men turned a corner, two hundred metres ahead of
him. He started walking faster. He could hear Pellegrini talking over the radio, but he couldn’t make out the words. Then he actually broke into a run. A few metres from the corner, he slowed down again and slowly crossed the road, as if minding his own business. He looked to his right, where the two men had turned.

The street was deserted, apart from the cars parked up on the pavements. 

THE GIRL WAS walking quickly, and we had to hurry to keep up with her. I soon started to feel breathless. I think the effects of the cocaine and the alcohol were staring to wear off. There was a
tightness
in my chest, and I was finding it hard to breathe. My vision was blurred.

Francesco said the girl was about to turn into the Via Trevisani.

Just after the corner, she would pass the entrance of a disused, unsafe building. We had to stop her in front of that entrance and drag her inside. He would grab her from behind. I just had to follow him.

As the girl approached the corner, we started walking faster.

He
started walking faster, and I followed.

A sentence kept bouncing around my head: ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?’ And as it bounced – bounced, like an actual physical object – between the walls of my skull, I felt a sense of inevitability. This was my destiny. Everything was about to go to hell, once and for all, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

While that sentence was still bouncing around my head,
Francesco
put on a last burst of speed and caught up with the girl just as she came level with the entrance.

He punched her on the head, from behind. Accurately and hard. The girl didn’t make a sound. Her knees bent, and she started
falling
. Francesco caught her before she hit the ground, and put a hand
over her mouth and his other arm round her chest. He dragged her inside the entrance, saying something to her in a terrifying, sibilant voice. As if in a nightmare, I followed him.

Inside the entrance hall, there were wooden beams from wall to wall. The building was unsafe. I’d even glimpsed a sign as we went in, clearly a warning sign.

He dragged her to the other side of the hall. The place was dark and stank of cats. The girl was groaning.

‘If you say a word I’ll beat you to death.’ Then he let go of her head and mouth. He gave her two very hard slaps, and kneed her in the side. Still from behind.

‘Kneel, bitch. And keep your eyes down. If you try and look at us, I’ll kill you.’ Francesco’s voice was unrecognisable, and at the same time familiar.

‘That’s enough now, Francesco,’ I heard myself saying. ‘Let her be.’ The words had emerged of their own volition.

For a moment, everything stopped dead. Then Francesco hit the girl a few more times, in the sides, rapidly. But less accurately and less calmly than before.

He turned and came towards me. I realised I had spoken his name, and the girl had heard. She must have heard.

He punched me in the eye. It felt as if he’d pushed the eyeball through the socket into my head, and inside that empty socket there were concentric circles that grew wider and wider until they filled the whole world. There was a deafening noise inside my head. He kicked me in the groin. I bent double and he kneed me in the face. I felt my cheek tearing, over the molars. I had the salty taste of blood in my mouth. Then I vomited, a gush of liquid vomit.

I think I blacked out for a few seconds.

The rest is fragments. A film shot by a madman with an old Super-8 cine camera.

Francesco is back with the girl. He’s saying something to her.
Another man staggers towards them. This other man is me, seen in a high-angle shot. From some vague point in the ceiling, amid the fetid wooden beams and rotten plaster. The two men cling to each other and there’s an acrid smell. Dreamlike punches, my hands
looking
for his throat, his hands looking for mine, the girl’s body below us as we fight. There’s no longer anything human about what’s
happening
. A bite, his flesh tearing. A scream. Like an animal’s.

Then other people yelling. Francesco pulls himself away from me and tries to escape. A flashing blue light. The hall is suddenly full of people.

And then I’m on the ground, with a knee on my back and some cold iron thing aimed at a point between my jaw and my ear.
Someone
twists one arm behind my back, then the other, and I hear the click of metal. They drag me out, bundle me in a car, there’s a noise of wheels and brakes and gears, and someone steps on the accelerator.

And we’re away.

THE CARABINIERI STARTED beating me in the car, on the way to the barracks. I was in the back seat, with my hands cuffed behind my back, sitting between two guys who stank of cigarette smoke and sweat. The car was speeding through the city, not even slowing down at junctions, and the two men were punching me and elbowing me in the head and stomach. Calmly and methodically. This was just for starters, they said. When we got to the barracks, they’d really tear me apart. I didn’t say anything. I took the blows in silence, apart from a few groans. It was strange. I could hear the sound of the blows. Dull and toneless for the blows to my stomach. A kind of amplified knocking sound when their knuckles and
elbows
hit my head.

I didn’t say anything because I was convinced they wouldn’t
believe
me. I was afraid. Incredibly afraid.

When we got to the barracks they kept their word. They took me to a room with nothing in it but a desk and a few chairs. There were bars on the window and, for some reason, a mirror on the wall. They made me sit on an old chair on castors, still with my hands cuffed behind my bank.

And they tore me apart, as they’d promised.

They beat me with their hands, with their feet, with the yellow pages folded in half, on my ear, and with one of those white and red sticks they use to direct traffic.

Every now and again, some would go out and others would come
in. Thinking back on it, I have a feeling they were taking regular turns. Most of them were in plain clothes, though there were a few in uniform. One of the ones in uniform hit me in the face with his bandolier and cut me with the metal part.

They said it was in my own best interests to confess everything. They meant all the assaults, on all the girls. It was in my own best interests because if I didn’t talk they would beat me to death and then write that I’d resisted arrest. One of them said he’d stick a
funnel
in my mouth and pour a demijohn of salt water down it. He was sure I’d feel like talking then.

I burst into tears, and someone hit me very hard on the side of my head.

‘You piece of shit,’ I heard through the fog of tears, blood and fear. Then I fainted.

I don’t remember much about what happened after I came to. They stopped roughing me up, I think, or maybe they just slapped me around a little bit more. One of those who’d been with me in the car told me the other prisoners would deal with me in jail. Sex attackers aren’t very popular in a place like that. At that moment I
remembered
my parents and my sister, and wondered how they would feel about me being in prison. It made me infinitely sad.

I think the carabinieri were about to make my arrest formal: take a statement and do all the necessary paperwork. All the time they’d been beating me up, I’d kept repeating that I didn’t know anything about the other assaults. They hadn’t even asked me about what had happened tonight. It didn’t matter. They’d caught me in the act. They didn’t need a confession.

Then the door opened, and I assumed another person was coming in to hit me. Instead, it was someone wearing a jacket and tie, who
nodded to the two men who were still there. They went out and this man remained.

He was young, not much more than a boy, with light-coloured eyes. He had a Northern accent, and was quite ordinary-looking, but clean. His voice was gentle.

The first thing he did was remove my handcuffs, and I realised my shoulders were hurting, near the joint.

‘Would you like a cigarette?’ he said, holding out a packet of
Merits
. I stared at him for a moment, not sure if he was serious. Then I nodded. But I couldn’t take the cigarette. My hands were shaking too much. So he took back the packet, pulled one out and handed it to me. He lit it for me and let me take three or four drags before he spoke again.

‘The girl is doing well. They treated her in casualty. She’s here now and we’ve had a chance to question her about what happened.’

He paused and looked at me, but I didn’t say anything. So he carried on.

‘She’s in the next room. She just saw you.’ He made a movement with his head and eyes towards the mirror.

I turned my head to look, then turned back to him. I didn’t understand.

‘Whoever’s in the next room can see the people in here, without being seen.’

Just like the movies. The words appeared to me as if written in my head. That was happening more and more often.

‘The girl says you didn’t take part in the assault. She says you defended her.’

I moved my face a little closer to his, as if to see him better and to make sure I’d understood what he’d said. I could feel my chin trembling uncontrollably, but I didn’t cry.

Thinking about it now, it seems strange, but at the time, from the moment they’d grabbed me in the entrance hall until that boy
with the jacket and tie had entered the room, I’d never for a second imagined I would get out of this. I’d never for a second imagined that the girl would clear me.

It’s only now, I think, that I can explain it to myself. At the time it was impossible. My sense of myself as part of these events had stopped when Francesco had suggested we assault a girl together. When he had waxed lyrical about ancestral violence and all the rest of it. The shame I felt because, for the umpteenth time, I hadn’t been able to say no to him had turned me to stone inside. My guilt seemed enormous, and visible to everyone. Especially to the girl.

The fact that I had fought to defend her, out of a mixture of fear, shame and a desire for self-destruction, didn’t count. I was holding fast to my guilt. My guilt for everything. That was why I hadn’t even tried to say anything to the carabinieri who were roughing me up. In my own mind, I was as guilty as if I had really assaulted her.

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

I half closed my eyes, and shrugged my shoulders feebly,
childishly
. I was starting to feel the pain from all the blows I’d taken, and I was dead tired.

He told me he was sorry for what had happened and asked me if I wanted someone to take me to casualty. I said no, and he didn’t insist. In fact he seemed relieved. There wouldn’t have to be a report, and no one would have to explain to the doctors, or a magistrate, how and when I had received those injuries.

‘Do you feel up to making a statement? In the meantime, if you like, we can inform your family.’

I told him not to worry about my family. And yes, I did feel up to making a statement. Could I have another cigarette? Of course I could. In fact, before I made my statement, why didn’t we have a cup of coffee together? Like old friends.

Soon after, a thermos arrived with two plastic cups, a packet of cigarettes just for me, and even an ice pack. The situation became
almost surreal. We all had coffee together. Me, two of the men who up until a little while earlier had been beating me up – and who were now being very friendly to me – and this guy with the jacket and tie whom they called lieutenant. It was an absurd situation, but at the time it seemed quite normal.

Holding the ice pack against my left cheekbone, I told them what had happened. Part of what I said was true, part of it wasn’t. I said we’d had a few beers too many and were drunk when we went out. As I said this, I was thinking that if they’d done an analysis on me they’d have found out I had more than just beer circulating in my veins, and I was pleased I’d refused the offer to go to casualty. We had seen that girl, and noticed she was on her own, and Francesco had suggested we play a practical joke on her: make her believe we were going to rape her and then, after giving her a fright, say it was all a joke and run away. We’d drunk a few beers too many, I said again, and that was why I had gone along with it, like an idiot, until I’d realised it was all getting out of hand.

They asked me about my friendship with Francesco, and if I knew anything about the other assaults. We were acquaintances rather than friends, I said. We saw each other from time to time. Sometimes we played poker together.

I don’t know why I mentioned poker – I didn’t have to – but it suddenly occurred to me as I was giving my statement that they’d be questioning him, too, if they hadn’t already done so. What if he decided to tell them everything? For a few moments, I felt a blind, uncontrollable terror.

Did I know anything about the other assaults?

No, I didn’t know anything. If they wanted my opinion – I was lying, hoping he would read my statement, would see I’d tried to help him, and wouldn’t accuse me of anything – I thought it was highly unlikely he had been responsible for those assaults. They asked me what I was basing that opinion on, and I said that as far as
I knew, Francesco was a normal person.

Those were the very words I used: a normal person. Not the kind to commit that kind of act.

They told me gently – they were being gentle with me now – that I should leave personal considerations aside. They left what I’d said out of the statement.

They went back to asking me about the night’s events. Did I
remember
the exact words Francesco had used as he was beating the girl? I hesitated. No, I was sorry but I didn’t remember. It was all confused in my mind.

It wasn’t true. I remembered perfectly well what he had said to her. And not just what he’d said: I also remembered the sound of his voice.

The lieutenant asked me to read over my statement. I picked up the sheet of paper, looked at the words in front of my eyes – lines, segments, curves, marks – and couldn’t make head or tail of them. But in the end, I nodded as if I’d actually read it and signed with a ball point pen.

‘I’ll have someone see you home,’ he said. Then, after a brief hesitation, ‘I’m sorry for what happened.’ He’d already said it once before, and he seemed sincere.

I made a vague gesture with my hand, as if to say: there’s no need, these things happen. A pathetic gesture, totally out of place.

Soon afterwards, I was back in the same car they’d bundled me into, handcuffed, a few hours earlier. We drove through the deserted streets, as the darkness of night started to lose its grim but distinct colours. I was in the back seat again, but on my own this time. A young man my age was driving, and in the seat next to him was the big man who had taken down my statement. The other man
addressed
him as marshal. They talked among themselves about banal, everyday things.

We got to my building in a few minutes. The car stopped, and the
marshal told me I could go. I gripped the door and pulled myself out with difficulty, my body aching from the blows I’d received. As I was about to walk away, he leaned out of the window.

‘No hard feelings, son.’ He held out his hand.

For a moment, everything was suspended. He sat there with his hand outstretched, an almost friendly smile on his fat face, and I stood between the pavement and the road, with the ice pack, the ice almost completely melted by now, against my swollen cheek.

I nodded and took his hand. It was felt flabby, and I immediately let go of it as if it were some slimy animal, or one of those sticky plastic things, made to look like vomit, that children use to play practical jokes.

Then I turned and went to the door, and they were swallowed up by the first light – liquid and ghostly – of that November morning.