The Silence of the Wave (17 page)

It lasted an hour and a half, maybe, and at the end—after a quick trip to the Coppedè district where Dario Argento had shot
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage—
the old taxi driver dropped Roberto a few hundred yards from where he had picked him up.

“Thank you, signore,” he said as he took the money. “I wish I had a customer like you every day.”

He got out of the taxi and looked up at the windows. There was a gleam of pale blue light behind the window of the doctor’s office. The light on the desk must still be on.

It was at this point that he wondered what to do. What to say to the doctor when he rang the bell? Paradoxically, it wasn’t what he had done, the way in which he had left the office some hours earlier, that worried him the most. It was the fact that he didn’t have an appointment. Because without an appointment, it was difficult, if not impossible, to talk to the doctor. This was the rule, never explicitly formulated, but always respected.

He could wait for him down here. And then? I’m really sorry, I got carried away. OK, thanks for the apology, see you in my office next Monday, now if you don’t mind I’m going home. Or else, thank you, but it may be best if you find another shrink, please see my secretary as soon as possible and pay for the last few sessions.

At that moment the door opened and a somewhat overweight woman who might have been Indian or Bangladeshi appeared, dragging four or five garbage bags behind her and with a duffel bag over her shoulder. Roberto held the door open, the woman smiled at him, thanked him, and slipped away with unexpected agility.

As if he were about to do something forbidden, Roberto watched the woman for a few seconds and once he was sure she wouldn’t turn round, he entered the building. He climbed the stairs, reached the landing, and rang the bell, without giving himself time to think.

The doctor opened the door after about thirty seconds, nodded in greeting, and then told him to come in. Roberto remained in the doorway.

“I’m sorry about … earlier.”

“Come in,” the doctor said again.

They entered the office. The desk was tidy again. Apart from everything else, a glass of amber liquid stood on it. From the cabinet behind him, the doctor took another glass and a bottle without a label.

“Would you like some? It’s a homemade brandy, distilled by a friend of mine.”

Roberto was about to say no thanks, but instead said yes. The doctor poured a little brandy in Roberto’s glass, added a little to his own as if to make the levels equal, and sat down.

“For this evening, though, let’s skip the medication.”

“If you give me permission, I’ll skip it forever.”

“I don’t think there’s long to go now.” He took a sip and Roberto did the same. The taste of the brandy reminded him of military cordial, which he had last drunk maybe twenty-five years earlier.

“When you left, I got a phone call from the person who has the appointment after you, the last one of the afternoon. He couldn’t come and so, all at once, my workday was over. We often underestimate the tranquilizing power of routine. Suddenly finding myself with nothing to do, after you’d left in that way …”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Please don’t apologize. As I was saying: I was left alone, without anything to do for the rest of the afternoon, so I felt the need to call my son. But as usual I couldn’t get through to him. He won’t call me back.”

“I didn’t know you had a son.”

“He’s thirty years old. Actually, nearly thirty-one—it’s his birthday in a few days. He was born when I was twenty-six and maybe I was too young, I wasn’t ready yet. Assuming there’s a time when we are ready. He dropped out of university and I’ve always thought he did it to spite me. To shatter the expectations I had of him. Of course, that’s an interpretation completely based on my own narcissism. Maybe the simplest explanation is that he didn’t like studying, or didn’t like the studies I’d chosen for him. Anyway, now he works as a clerk in a finance company. It isn’t exactly what I’d imagined for him. But to tell the truth, I didn’t devote
much time to imagining anything for him, and maybe that’s the problem. We never see each other and I don’t know anything about him, what he thinks, what he likes, what he hates—apart from me—his political ideas, if he has any. I don’t know if he reads books—I suspect not—if he goes to the movies, if he listens to music. I don’t even know if he has a girlfriend. We only speak if I phone him, he never phones me. And when I phone him he’s put out. I ask him how he is and he tells me he’s fine as usual, and in an effort at politeness asks me if I’m fine, too, and I tell him yes, I’m fine, too, and I sense his impatience, I sense that he can’t wait to hang up, whereas what I want is to ask him if he’d like to meet me, to talk properly, but I can never summon up the courage and our telephone calls always end up being sad and dreary.”

He took a sip of brandy, then another, and then emptied the glass.

“Obviously we shouldn’t be having this conversation. When you rang the bell I shouldn’t have opened, or, alternatively, I should have told you I’d see you at our next appointment. Anything except invite you in to have a drink with me and put up with the confessions of a failed father.”

They were silent for a long time.

“I often think about my son too,” Roberto said at last.

The doctor looked at him.

“I can’t remember if I ever told you what my code name was.”

“No, what was it?”

“Mongoose.”

“That’s the animal, a bit like a marten, that can kill a cobra, isn’t it?”

“Yes, we almost all had animal names. Do you know why the mongoose can kill a cobra and snakes in general?”

“I suppose because it’s very fast and can grab the snake by the throat before the snake has a chance to bite it.”

“That’s true, but sometimes the cobra manages to inject its poison all the same, and still nothing happens to the mongoose.”

“Do you mean they have a kind of immunity to snake poison?”

“Yes. They have a defense mechanism—it has something
to do with chemical receptors—identical to that of snakes. Which is why snakes aren’t poisoned and killed by the toxins they themselves produce.”

“Who gave you that code name?”

“One of our captains. But he didn’t know that bit about poison and immunity. Neither did I. It’s something I only discovered years later, reading an article. At the time I just registered the information. Then I remembered it, a little while later, and it seemed to me that it had a meaning. The mongoose, even if you hunt it down, is like a snake: it can live with poison in its body.”

The doctor seemed to be about to say something. Then he had second thoughts.

“For many years I lived with criminals. They trusted me—in fact, they admired me—and I was working to bring them down, even when, as sometimes happened, we’d become friends. And you know why I was so good at that job?”

“Why?”

“Because I was like them. For example, I liked stealing. When you’re working undercover you have money and means at your disposal that a normal carabiniere couldn’t even dream about. You have lots of ways to pocket quite a bit of money or use it for different purposes that have nothing to do with your mission. That’s what I did. I didn’t feel any sense of guilt. In fact, I liked it. I liked it a lot.”

Roberto emptied his glass and asked if he could have some more.

The doctor opened a drawer, took out a pack of chocolate cookies and pushed it into the middle of the desk, halfway between them.

“Maybe we should eat something too.”

They ate the chocolate cookies and drank some more brandy, without speaking for a couple of minutes.

“My job was to be someone else. And it’s not at all bad to be someone else from time to time: it makes you feel free. The problem arises when you have to be someone else most of the time. The problem arises when you have to be someone else in order to feel yourself. And when you’re not someone else you know you’re out of place. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You couldn’t have explained it any better.”

“And anyway, I liked the company of criminals. Obviously to do my job properly, I had to act in such a way that they trusted me, but I know I did more than that. I wanted their approval, I wanted them to
like
me.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“When I heard that one of the bosses had said I was a good boy, or a reliable guy, or that I really knew what I was doing, I was happy. Much happier than when my colleagues or my superior officers said similar things. I wanted to nail them, yes, but before anything else I wanted to win them over.”

“How long did this last?”

Roberto tried to smile, but what emerged was a grimace.

“Do you mind if I light a cigar?” the doctor asked.

“No, not at all. And can I smoke a cigarette?”

“But let’s not tell my other patients about this irregular session, all right?”

Roberto had the distinct sensation, or rather the certainty, that the doctor knew about him and Emma. It was a reassuring sensation, like a signal that things were going in the right direction.

From a drawer of the desk—the same one where the cookies had been—the doctor took a box of Tuscan cigars. He took one out, cut it in the middle with a penknife, poured a little more brandy in the glasses, and lit the cigar. Roberto lit his cigarette.

“There’s a point I’d like to clarify before you continue with your story.”

“Yes?”

“If you had the opportunity now, would you still like to steal? If you had the opportunity—in the same conditions, with a guarantee of impunity—would you like to go back to breaking the rules?”

Roberto stiffened on his chair, surprised. That wasn’t the question he been expecting and he had no answer ready. It took him a few minutes to formulate one.

“I don’t think so. I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so.”

“When did you realize—when did you start to realize—that you didn’t like it anymore?”

Roberto lit another cigarette with the stub of the first. An action he hadn’t performed for quite some time.

“I couldn’t say for sure, but there are a few episodes, all from the last years, that always come into my mind together, one after the other.”

“Then maybe you
can
say for sure.”

“Maybe I can, now that you’ve made me think about it.” And then, after a long pause spent putting his thoughts and memories in order: “Yes, that’s how it is. There were these three episodes when I should have realized that the machine wasn’t working anymore, the mechanism was breaking down, and it was probably time to stop.”

“Then tell me about them. And if it’s all the same to you, tell me about them in chronological order, from the oldest to the most recent.”

* * *

It was in Mexico, in a small town close to the border with Arizona, and he was working in partnership with an officer from the federal police, who was also undercover.

There had been a working dinner at the house of a local chief; they had eaten and drunk and finalized their business. Now they were smoking and drinking and telling each other stories, more or less true, more or less invented.

The host was a man named Miguel, known as El Pelo. He had had a hair transplant, and dyed not only
the hair on his head but also his pubic hair. He boasted of only having sex with girls less than twenty, which he said helped to keep him young.

After a while, El Pelo made a sign to one of his two bodyguards. The man went out and soon afterward came back accompanied by three young girls. In actual fact, they were not much more than children, one of them especially. They were heavily made-up and dressed like whores, but under the makeup and the clothes it was perfectly obvious they were no more than twelve, the youngest probably even younger. There was an excited buzz in the big dining room.

El Pelo was smiling smugly. He was proud of his hospitality: a perfect host who knows what a real party is and doesn’t simply offer wine and food and liqueurs. With a regal gesture, he announced that, in honor of his guests, he had bought three virgins, never touched by anyone before tonight. His favorite kind of merchandise. He concluded his brief speech by telling his guests to help themselves—
que aprovechen
.

The Mexican federal officer realized that something might be about to happen that couldn’t be undone: Roberto could well say or do something that would blow the whole thing sky high. He hissed in his ear not to do anything stupid. There was nothing they could do about any of this, he said, nothing at all. The only thing that would happen is that their cover would be blown and they’d be killed. Roberto seemed not to hear. His
colleague had to squeeze his arm until the nails penetrated the skin.

“Roberto, don’t do anything stupid,” he repeated. “Just think, soon we’ll have all these sons of bitches arrested. And they’ll pay for this too.”

The scene in front of them was frighteningly grotesque. Hairy bellies, sweaty, contorted faces, animal-like sneers. Some of the men pressed around the girls’ bodies, while others watched and masturbated.

Roberto and the Mexican officer waited until several men had drifted away and so there was no risk of being conspicuous, then went out onto the patio, lit cigarettes, and smoked in silence.

* * *

Roberto passed a hand furiously over his face, almost as if trying to remove something sticky and tenacious. The doctor’s face was motionless, his complexion had turned livid, and his tight lips formed a scar.

“I watched the rape of three little girls and I couldn’t do anything. And you know what the worst part of it was?”

“What?”

“The girls were—how can I put this?—consenting. It wasn’t rape in the sense of physical violence. They … 
went along with it
, and the frightening thing was their smiles and their eyes. I tried not to watch but always ended up meeting the eyes of the youngest one. No. Meeting
isn’t the right word. She wasn’t looking at anything, her eyes were open but they were like those of a dead girl.”

He couldn’t go on. He remembered the murder victims he had seen in his life. Murder victims always have their eyes open. Open in terror or surprise or both at the same time. We close the eyes of the dead because we can’t bear to look at them, open onto nothing, lifeless. The memory of that evening in Mexico was silent. He couldn’t remember the voices, or the cries, or the laughter, or the grunts. Only an unbearable mechanism of bodies and a line of distorted faces, a silent inferno.