“I have so much to tell you,” she says.
3
“But of course it’s possible,” said Helen. She is back at the flat, with Giacomo. “She’s capable of anything.” She’s been calling her in-laws’ flat for the past half hour, at first on her mobile from the car and now with the landline, but it’s constantly engaged. The more often she tries, the more frustrated and enraged she becomes. Right now, she’s half a mind to go round there and make a scene. But when she announces that this is what she plans to do, Giacomo dissuades her.
“No, not yet. We need to talk about this,” he says. “We mustn’t jump to conclusions. Because what you’re saying is insane, you do see that, don’t you? You’re saying she had her own son murdered.”
“She’d have done it herself,” says Helen. “With her own two hands if necessary. I know Giulia. I’ve known her for thirty years. I know what she’s capable of.”
“But why?” he says, although she’s explained half a dozen times.
“To stop him embarrassing her,” she says. “He was a loose cannon. He might have done anything. He might have killed someone.” She remembers what Federico wrote about the Juggernaut, riding roughshod over all in its path to save the world. That’s how he saw himself, she thinks. She imagines him standing there on the stage, with the cameras clicking beneath him, surrounded by the great and the less great, holding the briefcase that he’s had as long as she’s known him, each stitch along its seams his own work, the weight of the bomb. He’d have used his briefcase, she’s sure of that. No one would have questioned him. And Giacomo would have been beside him, ally to the last.
“Embarrassing her? I don’t believe it.” Giacomo is scornful. “In any case, Federico’s no murderer.”
“It wouldn’t have been so hard to believe thirty years ago.” Frustrated, infuriated by his tone, which seems to diminish her as Federico’s had so often in the past, Helen directs her anger at him. “You wouldn’t have had any problems with it. Neither of you. Not then. What about Moro? What about all the others? Don’t you see? The minute Federico knew he was going to die, it made perfect sense.”
“Things were different then,” he says.
“Things were the
same
, Giacomo, don’t you see? You were no different from Giulia. Giulia’s obsessed by the state. She talks about the constitution as though it were her child.
Her
constitution. We bled for it, that’s what she says. We gave our blood. She’s never talked like that about Federico. She must have thought, I don’t know, can you imagine what people would say about Italy if Federico really did do something stupid? Blow himself up and take half the world’s leaders with him? He wasn’t just anyone, was he?” She feels like striking Giacomo, slapping him across the face to make him listen. To make him see. “He wasn’t just a consultant at the ministry, although that’s bad enough. That’s scandal enough. He was her son. The only son of Giulia Paternò, the founding mother of modern Italy.” Her voice is ripe with sarcasm. “It would have destroyed her.”
Giacomo nods, but doesn’t speak. He looks uncomfortable. Helen doesn’t care. She wants him to look uncomfortable.
“Besides,” she says, feeling fully alive for the first time since Federico’s death, as though she’s been shaken into wakefulness, as though what she’s needed to do is
think
, “whatever he did would have played straight into the PM’s hands. She’d have known that. He’d have used it to declare a state of emergency, martial law, God knows what else.” Eduardo, her wonderful kneecapped student, comes into her head. He was right, she’s known that all this time, violence begets violence.
“But Federico would have thought of that, Helen.” Giacomo sounds defensive now, as if she were also accusing him.
“Federico was sick. Whatever he’d done thirty years ago, he’d never have contemplated killing anyone now if he hadn’t been, I don’t know…” – she searches for the words she needs – “…well, off his head.”
“And Giulia?”
“Giulia’s got what she wanted all the time. Her son is a martyr. She’s won.”
“Well, it’s a theory,” says Giacomo, perplexed. “Martin’s theory. Isn’t that what you’re saying? That this is what Martin thinks, after having been hit on the head by a motorbike?”
Exasperated and a little taken aback, because Giacomo doesn’t
want
to understand and she’s never seen him as obtuse, whatever else he might be, Helen changes the subject.
“Have you heard from Yvonne?”
Giacomo laughs briefly and waves his hand in the air.
“She’s back in Paris, I imagine.”
“She didn’t say?”
“Her sudden departure and subsequent silence are eloquent enough, I’d have thought.” He sips his coffee, grimaces, reaches for the sugar, pausing between the first and second spoonful. “I heard from Stefania. She wants to speak to you.”
“Stefania,” says Helen. “She must be so shocked.”
“She’s been waiting for something like this to happen to one of us. She thinks we got away with it all scot free. It isn’t fair. She forgets that some of us did time. And now she feels guilty, as though she’s brought this punishment down on Federico’s head herself.”
“Stefania has nothing to feel guilty about,” says Helen.
“She wants to know when the funeral will be,” he says.
“Yes.” Helen nods. “She should be here for that.” She’s restless. “I need to get out,” she says. “I’ve had enough of this place.”
She reaches for her bag, but something interrupts her, some thought of Federico leaning back in a chair, his legs stretched out, his hands behind his head, so young he’s no more than a lanky boy. He is laughing about something. And then, with a flash of recognition, she sees in her mind’s eye the photograph she was shown earlier this morning by Eduardo’s son, Piero Cotugno, magistrate, in which she is also laughing. She remembers that Federico had been there with her in that room in college, her final year, already in love with her, she was confident of that although they hadn’t made love at that point; they’d hardly been alone together before that day. It all comes back to her: the light, the warmth in the room, which was usually cold and damp like most of those old college rooms, the shirt he was wearing, which had worked out of the waistband and showed his navel when he stretched. She’d wanted to put her finger in it, she remembers, her tongue. He’d made some mistake in his English and she’d started to laugh, despite herself, because there is nothing worse than to have someone laugh at your mistakes, and he’d had a camera beside his chair. They’d spent the morning playing tourists. And he’d caught her laughing, he’d leaned forward in his chair with the camera in his hand and said, “I have made your photo. You will be mine forever.” Had he thought of what he’d said, this first declaration of love for her, when she gave the picture away to Eduardo? Had she hurt him? She’ll never know.
All at once, for the first time in almost three decades, Helen and Giacomo find they have nothing to say to each other. Helen looks at her watch. It’s almost noon. She sips her coffee while Giacomo turns on the TV for the 12 o’clock news. The screen fills with scenes of Rome, cordoned off for the demonstration.
“The march,” she says, shaking her head. “I’d forgotten all about it. I was supposed to be helping out.”
“You’re going on the march?” says Giacomo.
“You think I shouldn’t? Giulia went on the military parade, didn’t she?” says Helen. “Of course I’m going. And you’re coming too. For Federico’s sake.”
“Is this what Federico planned? To take part?”
“I think so, yes.” She stands up. “Unless he’d already done something stupid.” She rubs her face with both hands, exhausted, then pushes her hair off her face. “If only he’d spoken to someone. To me.” She looks at Giacomo. “To you.”
He takes hold of Helen, not in a possessive way, his fingers lightly circling her arms above the elbows, and stares into her eyes. “He never forgave me, did he? Not really.”
Helen doesn’t pull away, although she’d like to.
“For taking the blame? Or for taking me?” As gently as she can, she frees herself from him. “There was nothing he needed to forgive,” she says.
4
Turin, 1978
Stefania wasn’t happy. Helen found her waiting outside the building one day, when she came home from work, a wrapped tray of cakes hanging by its ribbon from her finger. While Helen filled a saucepan with water for tea, Stefania undid the ribbon and unwrapped the tray. She started to eat, icing sugar drifting onto her bosom as she licked the cream from the top. She was getting fat, Helen noticed, and wondered for a moment if Giacomo preferred his women fat or thin. Stefania complained that she was having problems at the faculty; she wasn’t being taken seriously in the way the men were. She’d imagined the academic world would be different from everywhere else, that was how stupid she’d been. She finished one cake and started another. They were small and beautifully made, like toys. How good they are at this sort of thing, thought Helen, the little pleasures: cherries drenched in liqueur and wrapped in chocolate, packaged in individual twists of layered paper and foil, like tiny bombs. Then Stefania began to talk about Giacomo, and Helen began to concentrate.
“I thought he had another woman to start with,” she said. She looked hard at Helen. “He doesn’t, does he?”
“Not as far as I know,” Helen said, finally taking a cake. It would take so little to tell her what she and Giacomo had done, but for what? To clear the way for more? Besides, she enjoyed her secret. “Why would he want anyone else? I’m sure you’re enough for him.” But Stefania wasn’t listening.
“He’s hardly ever at home. At work he’s distant, then, when he does show up, he’s always reading or listening to the radio or banging away on his typewriter, stuff he won’t even let me see, although he won’t come out and say so, he just hides it away. He’s been talking about buying a TV, he says I’m elitist for not wanting one, but it’s not that. I just think he’ll end up watching it all the time and ignoring me. What’s Federico like with you? Is he the same? Always thinking about something else?”
“No, not really,” said Helen, although this wasn’t true; the picture Stefania had painted was distressingly familiar. Only her reluctance to play the wounded co-conspirator stopped her admitting it. She loathed the way some women seemed to relish in the sisterhood of suffering, as though the truth of a relationship lay in its failures being picked over with friends. She’d barely seen Miriam since her affair with the manager at Fiat had come to an end.
“And I’d like to know why he needs that other place,” said Stefania, increasingly aggrieved.
“What other place?”
Stefania licked a blob of cream from her thumb. “The one he’s sharing with Federico, near the faculty.” She glanced across. “You do know about it, don’t you?”
Helen’s resolve faded. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” said Stefania, raising her hand to her mouth. “I thought he’d have spoken to you. It’s only for work, I’m sure. You know what it’s like at the faculty, everyone’s on top of everyone else. I shouldn’t have said anything. They haven’t had it for long, I don’t think. I’m sure they wouldn’t use it for anything else.” Stefania took another cake, licked off the cream; she couldn’t conceal her gratification at having told Helen something she didn’t know. Helen wondered how much she suspected, and how this other flat was being paid for.
“He has a study here,” she said. “What’s this other place like?”
Stefania shrugged. “I haven’t seen it. I know where it is, though. I can tell you, if you like.”
Helen rang the doorbell first, to make sure no one was there, then let herself into the flat with the key she’d found in Federico’s briefcase. The light switch wasn’t where she’d expected it to be, to the left. Hearing the noise of someone on the stairs, she hurriedly closed the door behind her and fumbled, like an idiot, like a thief, in the dark, thinking of Federico as he entered this flat, as much his as the one he shared with her on the other side of Turin, his hand reaching out for the light without even thinking. He has two homes, she thought, and she wondered if that was all and where he imagined he really lived: in this place or the place they shared or maybe in his own home, the home of his parents, who continued to pass him money, because how else could he possibly afford to pay this extra rent, as he clearly did? She wondered who he was, and why he’d never told her. Giacomo would never lie to her like this, she thought. Although, of course, he hadn’t mentioned it either.
She found the switch and turned it on, then walked down the hall. Kitchen and bathroom on the left. On the right a living room, bare of furniture apart from an armchair, books piled on the floor beside it. At the far end of the hall a bedroom, a single bed with a dark green blanket tucked in so that she could see the metal frame beneath the mattress. Federico told her he’d been a model soldier, and she could see that from the way his possessions were folded and piled like goods in a shop on shelves along one side of the room, his shoes placed side by side and lined up under the window, their toes facing in. She knew how neat he was, how ordered; but here the neatness seemed as much of a mask as the clothes he wore. Maybe that was too harsh; a sort of self-discipline, an imposition. There was a table against one wall, with a straight-backed chair beside it. She walked across and picked up the first thing that caught her eye, a pad of lined paper, the kind of pad reporters use in films, the spiral along the top. Flicking it open, she found sketches of faces, poorly drawn, diagrams that made no sense at all; there were street maps of places she didn’t recognise; towards the back of the pad a list of names and dates in pencil. Some of the names had crosses beside them, others question marks or symbols that must have meant something to Federico, but not to her. Turning the page, her eye skimmed down until it came to a name she recognised. Eduardo Cotugno. Her kneecapped student. The question mark beside his name had been rubbed out and replaced by a tick. She put the pad down and opened a drawer, her heart beating against her ribs. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, she wanted to distract herself from what she had seen. The drawer contained papers, department business, bills; she saw what looked like a permit to stay and pulled it out from under the other things. It was made out in the name of a man, a German, the space for the photograph was empty. She pushed it back into the drawer.