PART FIVE
1
Rome, Saturday, 5 June 2004
Helen is roused by the alarm on her mobile ringing in the kitchen, where she left it beside her glass last night. She starts into wakefulness, not sure where she is at first, then half-staggers, half-rolls from the sofa, banging her knee on the corner of the coffee table. She has barely slept. She stayed up drinking after Giacomo left, reading and re-reading Federico’s papers, the legacy she was never meant to have. It made her feel dirty, in the end, as though she’d read his diary, some private part of him she’d not been meant to see. And then she was angry again, because marriage wasn’t supposed to be a place for secrets. And then she was ashamed, because she’d lied to him so often. And then, because there was no end to this, she turned her shame on him, and blamed him for not loving her enough, for placing his work before his marriage, for talking to his parents instead of her, for writing all these words she had never been meant to read, which hurt so much, and then allowing her to find them.
She slept on the sofa because she couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping in the bed, imagining the dried sweat and powdery dust of Giacomo and herself, of Federico, of all the skin the three of them had sloughed in it. Her final act before lying down and pulling a throw across her had been to set the alarm for 8am. She had an appointment with the magistrate at half past nine. She didn’t want to be late.
And now it is 8am, and she is standing in her bra and panties, rubbing her knee, and turning off the alarm. Her neck is stiff from the position she’s been in. The last thing she remembers is seeing daylight seep into the room through the slats in the outer shutters; she’d left the inner shutters open by mistake. Normally, Federico would close them before he came to bed. Normally, she thinks. This is the fourth morning without Federico. She wonders when she will lose count; if she will ever lose count. She fills the coffee pot and goes for a shower.
At half past nine, she is shown into the magistrate’s office. He is dressed more smartly this morning, as though he’s made an effort for her. He holds her chair, slides it in beneath her as she sits down.
“Thank you for coming,” he says. His South African accent seems more pronounced today, although she was probably in no fit state to notice the last time she’d seen him, in that awful room in the hospital. Not that this is much better, piles of books and files everywhere, a trolley suitcase by the door that he must use to move his papers from one place to another. This reminds her, with a jolt, of Federico’s briefcase.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “About lying to you, I mean. I don’t know what I thought I would achieve. I’ve only made your work more difficult.”
“I understand,” he says, sitting down opposite her, his voice reassuring. “I would have done the same, in your position.”
“I suppose Giacomo told you, in any case? When you spoke to him on Wednesday?”
“Is that what he said? That he’d told me?” When she shakes her head, he continues. “There was no need. By that time, I must admit, we already knew where you’d been. I took the opportunity to speak to Mura for another reason.”
She’s surprised, but doesn’t speak. He opens a drawer and pulls out an envelope.
“I’d like to show you something,” he says. “I hope you don’t mind.”
She doesn’t know how to react. She watches him open the envelope and take out a photograph. He looks at it for a moment, without expression, before handing it across to her.
She hasn’t seen this photograph for almost thirty years. She is sitting in the college room she had in her final year, laughing at something. It’s a sunny day and the light coming in through the window has created a sort of aureole around her. She looks illuminated, far prettier than she ever was, she’d thought then, although now she wonders if perhaps she had been that pretty all the time and had never really known. She’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans, her hair is longer than she normally wore it; despite this, she has a boyish look, but not androgynous;
gamine
is the word that comes to her now. She can’t remember who else was in the room with her, but she remembers the moment; she remembers, if that’s possible, her laughter. She’s never liked photographs of herself, she’s thrown them away when she’s had the chance; but this is one she loved. She flips it over and sees, in her handwriting, a dedication and a date:
To my favourite student, May 1978
.
“Where did you get this?”
“My father had it.”
“Your father was Eduardo?”
“Yes, Eduardo Cotugno.” The magistrate smiles. “You were his teacher in Turin.”
“I know that. I gave him this photograph just before he left. He asked me for one and this was my favourite. It was the only copy I had.”
“He didn’t know that, I don’t think. He’d have been more deeply touched than ever.”
“He didn’t?”
“Yes, he died two years ago.”
“Oh,” she says, shocked. “I’m so sorry.”
“He often spoke about you. He said you were the only person he trusted during his last few months in Italy. You gave him the strength to continue. My mother made it hard for him. He felt alone. You helped him cope.”
“I don’t know how,” she says. She is shaken, shaken and moved, to find herself thinking once more about Eduardo. She looks at the man opposite her, as if for the first time. “I remember him telling me he had two sons.”
“Yes, my brother stayed in South Africa. My father lived with his family for the last few years of his life, in Durban. He’s a doctor.”
“And you came back to Italy.”
“Yes, eventually.” He smiles. “My father thought I was mad.”
“He didn’t want to go away at all,” says Helen.
“Oh, he loved it there. He got himself into trouble almost immediately. You know what my father was like.” He laughs. “But when things changed, when apartheid came to an end, he was vindicated. He could never have come back to Italy after that.”
“Why not?”
“Because he was living in a place he’d fought for. And because the people who’d driven him out of Italy were running the country.” He looks at Helen. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply–”
“No,” she says, “don’t apologise, you’re quite right,” as memories of Eduardo rush back. Sitting there with his leg on a chair as they ran through the paradigms of irregular verbs before he persuaded her that what he needed was conversation, to talk about the world. Running his hands through his hair, which was like his son’s hair, she sees as she looks at the man before her. She remembers Eduardo as an older man, but he must have been ten years younger than she is now, in his early forties at the most. He’d thought his life was destroyed, but he’d been wrong. Lives can be remade, she thinks, with a little courage.
“Was he happy?” Before he can answer, she says, “I’m sorry, I can’t remember your first name.”
“Piero,” he says. “Oh yes, he was happy, most of the time. He was challenged, but he inspired great respect, great affection. It suited him; he’d have been stifled here. He spent his last years in the country, until my mother died – they had a farm – and then my brother took him in, as I said.”
Helen puts the photograph on the desk, face-down. “Did you bring me here to show me this?”
“Yes,” he says, with a sheepish grin. “I’ve brought you here under false pretences, but I thought you would want to know that you made a difference to someone’s life. He would have wanted you to know that. So often people don’t. It’s all we
can
do in the end, isn’t it? With any luck, for the better.”
They sit together for a moment, in silence. Eventually, when she can stand her thoughts no longer, Helen speaks.
“Do you know who killed my husband, Piero?”
“No,” he says. “Do you?”
“Knowing won’t bring him back,” she says.
She’s leaving his room when the site of the trolley case reminds her.
“Federico’s briefcase. He had it with him when he was shot. I don’t suppose I could have it, could I?”
“I don’t see why not,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do.” He’s picking up his phone when Helen’s mobile rings in her bag. It’s Martin.
She’s about to tell him she’ll call him back when she hears, not Martin, but a woman speaking. “Is that Helen? Am I speaking to Helen?”
“Yes. Who’s that?”
“I’m a friend of Martin’s. I’m calling from the hospital. I have some bad news for you.”
2
Helen keeps saying
It’s my fault
as she drives to the hospital across a city whose traffic, always chaotic, has been slowed down to a virtual halt, in preparation, she supposes, for the demonstration later in the day. It takes her forty minutes to reach the hospital gates. She is stopped by the sentry, who glances into the car in a bored, desultory way before waving her on. Frantic, already playing with the clasp of her safety belt, she drives into the grounds.
A thin blonde woman in evening dress, with a dark stain in the lap, is sitting in the corridor. She jumps up when Helen arrives.
“Where is he?” Helen says. “I want to see him.”
“He’s through there,” she says, pointing to a door. The woman steps across to open the door for Helen. Her eyes are dog-tired, ringed with black, she couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Helen walks past her, confused. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?” she says. What she wants to ask is who the woman is, but this isn’t the moment.
“I didn’t know who to call. I waited until Martin could tell me.”
“But if he’d died,” Helen says, her hand to her mouth. “I couldn’t have lived with that, I couldn’t have coped.”
“There’s no danger of that,” the woman says. She has switched to English, but Helen only realises this later, when she replays the scene in her head. “Not now. The doctors say he’ll pull through. He’ll feel the worse for wear for the next few weeks, that’s all.”
“He’s conscious?” says Helen, still standing at the door, abruptly afraid to go in. Who is this woman? she thinks.
“Yes. But they’ve told me to say that he can’t have visitors for long.”
They go into the ward. There is only one bed, near the window. Martin is lying down, the left side of his head shaved clean and criss-crossed by stitches along a jagged gash. His face is swollen and bruised, with ragged wounds on the cheek and forehead and the tip of his nose beginning to scab. A tube is attached to his nostrils by a flesh-coloured clip. Helen wouldn’t have recognised him. Other tubes dangle from the sheet, draped across some sort of tent to protect his legs, ending up in a bottle attached to the bed frame or rising in an arc to a flat plastic bag full of drip, dangling from a stand. Next to the bed, on a metal trolley, is a box with dials and flashing lights to which Martin has been wired up. Helen stands by the bed, while the young woman in her blood-stained dress smoothes the sheet on the far side with a calming, professional air. Helen sits down in a chair beside the bed, watching Martin’s eyes move round the room, to see who is there. He smiles when they rest on her. “Hello, my dear,” he says. His voice is surprisingly strong, but distorted, as though he is holding something soft, a marshmallow, a ball of cotton wool, in his mouth. “The more the merrier,” he says. He winces when Helen kisses him. Pulling back, she sees that his lip has been cut and stitched. When he opens his mouth to speak again, she notices he’s lost two teeth.
“You’ve met Alina,” he says, raising a hand to indicate the other woman in the room. “She saved my life. She’s my guardian angel now.” He smiles. “I hope for some time to come.”
“Did you see who it was? Who did this?” says Helen, turning to Alina, who shakes her head.
“They were wearing helmets.” She spreads her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “They were men, two men, on a motorbike. In Piazza Barberini.”
“The number plate?” Helen says, insistent. “Did you get their number?”
“I looked, of course, but the number plate was covered. Maybe there wasn’t a number plate.”
Martin waves his hand impatiently.
“Not important,” he says. “I know who did it. I’ll come to that. Right now, I want to talk to both of you. I want you to know what I think. If we all know, we’ll be safe. I’ll be safe.”
“All right, Martin, all right,” says Helen, reaching for his hand and holding it. He tries to raise his head from the pillow, but the effort is too much for him and he lets it fall back with a sigh. “Bloody drugs,” he says, then smiles. “A good shot of whisky might do the trick. No chance of that, I suppose?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” says Alina, smiling, but Martin has started to speak in an urgent, breathless way.
“I know who did it, or I think I do. Not this,” he says, waving his hand impatiently towards his legs, “Federico. Who killed Federico. I spoke to one or two of my old friends, Helen; you knew that’s what I’d do, I didn’t need to tell you who. But they weren’t my friends at all. Or not only mine, at least. They were Giulia’s friends as well.” He looks at Helen, as if for confirmation. “That’s her name, isn’t it? Federico’s mother? Giulia?” She nods, and he stares at the ceiling, satisfied. “They were Giulia’s friends.” He stops to breathe, while Alina bathes his lips with a strip of dampened gauze. “She’s been phoning someone I used to know. That’s bloody odd, I thought, something fishy about that.” He laughs, as if to himself, then grimaces at the pain from his mouth. “She’s been calling him. She’s got a special SIM card for her phone. It’s all in the records. Check it, you’ll know someone who can check it. If you all know, you’ll be safe. We’ll all be safe. They can’t kill all of us.”
“He’s spoken enough,” says Alina. “We must leave him to sleep.” She stands up, ushering Helen out, but shows no signs of leaving herself.
Helen stands in the corridor, breathing deeply, in and out. Martin is delirious, she thinks, and she can’t understand why nothing he has said, his impossible accusation, has shocked, or even surprised, her. She waits until her heart has calmed, then takes her mobile from her bag and calls Giacomo. Please let him still be here in Rome, she says to herself as his phone rings out. He might have left for Paris already, after the way she dismissed him last night. Please God let him still be here. When he answers, she can barely talk for the relief.