“I don’t suppose you’ve got a mobile, have you?” he asks.
She is sitting beside the bed on the rigid hospital chair, like a creature from his childhood. “Of course,” she says. “Would you like to use it?”
“But I don’t have the number in my head,” he says. “Perhaps you could see if someone’s got mine. It was in my pocket.” She smiles and passes him his mobile from the table.
“You found it yourself,” he says.
“How do you think I called your friend this morning?” she says. “You’d be surprised at how resourceful I can be.”
I must never stop being grateful, he thinks. For as long as this lasts.
It must be an hour later, or more, when he wakes from a half-sleep. Alina puts down her magazine and points to the TV. There is a photograph of Giacomo Mura.
“Wasn’t he standing next to your friend earlier?”
“Yes,” says Martin.
“Well,” she says, “he’s been arrested.”
8
Helen is standing where the taxi left her, outside the building in which Giulia and Fausto have lived since their retirement. She looks up at the tended balconies that are never used, the grilles and security devices. She’s always hated this area; neither she nor Federico understood their choice. She’s lost her courage, at the last moment, and if the taxi hadn’t gone, she’d have used it to be taken home. But she’s missed her chance, and besides, there is so much that needs to be said. She can’t put it off any longer. Her talk with Eduardo’s son this morning has given her strength. The more she thinks about him, the more she sees his father. How could she not have noticed the similarities that first time? she asks herself; he has his father’s eyes and a thoughtful, exploratory way of holding her gaze. But she had so much else on her mind, she thinks now, although all she can recall from that meeting is numbness and an underlying fear of being found out. If she could, she would talk to Federico about this, this closing of a circle she’d thought already closed, and how it might not be closed at all. She’d ask him what he remembered about her then, about the girl Eduardo must have seen. He’d been jealous, she remembers that, jealous and curious all at once. Had he wondered if she might have been attracted? She could talk to Giacomo about him, of course, but she won’t do that. She has never talked to Giacomo about Eduardo after that first conversation, when he’d called her sentimental; she won’t start now.
She feels as though she has Eduardo with her, taking her hand in an odd sort of way, grounding her as she lets herself into the building with the key she used before, and takes the lift to their floor. She doesn’t want to give them any warning.
Standing outside their flat as the lift doors close behind her, she hears faint scuffling sounds from the neighbouring flats and knows she’s being watched by their neighbours, old couples, like her in-laws, who behave as if under siege from the world. One of the other two doors on the landing opens a hair’s breadth, then closes before she has a chance to explain who she is, see what they know. Neighbours are always the first to know.
But nothing has prepared her for this hunched unshaven figure in a vest and pyjama trousers who opens the door at the third ring, after she has knocked and called out their names, and then her own. This old man, tremulous, foreign to her, smelling of sour milk, hurries her in.
“I don’t know what to do,” he says, his voice raucous, over-loud, as though he hasn’t spoken for days and has lost all sense of volume. “She won’t come out. She’ll starve to death.”
Helen hugs him. To see him reduced to this is more than she can bear.
“Won’t come out of where?”
Fausto points hopelessly down the corridor. “Her study.” He sighs, gestures with his clasped hands, shaking them up and down. “She hasn’t eaten since Thursday. She’ll die. She hasn’t taken her medicines.”
“Haven’t you got a key?”
“It won’t go in. She’s left the key in on her side.”
Impatient, more angry than anxious, Helen goes to Giulia’s door and raps at it sharply, hurting her knuckles.
“It’s Helen,” she says. “Let me in. I have to speak to you.” She doesn’t expect to be answered, but immediately she hears footsteps and the turning of a key. Fausto tries to push her out of the way but she won’t budge from where she is, not now, not until the old woman shows herself.
Giulia is dressed to go out. Her hair is drawn up tight into its perfect bun, her necklace and earrings are matching beads of jet. She is wearing a black suit, a different one from the day before, and holding a single short silk glove in her gloved right hand. Startled, uncertain, Helen waits to see if she’s going to be allowed in or expected to step to one side to allow her mother-in-law out. Fausto, behind her, is weeping with what might be rage or relief, she can’t be sure. Acknowledging neither of them, Giulia walks into the corridor.
“Where are you going?” says Helen.
Giulia stops, turns slowly to look at her, a haughty, determined smile on her lips. “I’m going to pay my respects to my son.”
“We did that yesterday,” says Fausto, desperate, glancing at Helen, as if to say, You see? You see the state she’s in? “Giulia, my dear, we did that yesterday. Yesterday morning. Don’t you remember? We went with Helen. They sent the car for us.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she tells him. But she doesn’t seem to know where to go any longer. She stands in the hall, her eyes misting over with tears. Helen, unexpectedly touched by pity, takes her elbow.
“Come and sit down, Giulia.”
“I don’t want to sit down,” says Giulia.
“I’ve never seen her in such a state,” says Fausto, fretful and accusing, as though all this is Helen’s fault.
“I tell you I’m perfectly all right,” says Giulia, and now, confusingly for Helen, she sounds it.
“Come and sit down, in the living room,” Fausto says. “We can talk there.”
This time, Giulia nods and allows herself to be led by Fausto, along the corridor and into the living room, walking as though she were blind.
As soon as they are seated, Giulia and Fausto side by side on the sofa, Helen in an armchair in front of them, Helen opens her bag.
“You know what this is, don’t you?”
Giulia glances at the sheets of paper that Helen has thrown onto the coffee table between them, then raises an eyebrow.
“I knew it. You’re nothing but a common thief,” she says, with great hauteur. “And don’t imagine for a moment that I didn’t know who had them.” She raises her chin as high as it will go. There is something sad, and ludicrous, about her. Helen begins to laugh, then gathers the sheets of paper up.
“Those documents were given to me by Federico,” Giulia says. “He asked me to look after them.”
“I know what you’ve done,” says Helen, ignoring this.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” says Giulia. “You know nothing about me. Nothing.” Fausto is holding his head in his hands.
“I know what you’ve done and I think I know why,” says Helen.
Giulia looks exasperated, as if to say, Do I really need to discuss this? With you?
“What I still don’t understand – and, to be honest, I don’t think I want to – is how you arranged it all, the squalor of it. How much you must have dirtied your hands,” says Helen. “The people you must have dealt with.”
Now it is Giulia’s turn to laugh. “If it hadn’t been for me, for my work and Fausto’s, you’d all have died in jail for what you did. You. Federico. Giacomo Mura. Those friends of yours. You thought we didn’t know what you were up to, didn’t you? All your little secrets, your little subterfuges. Your silly revolutionary games.” Her mouth curls with disgust. “You have no idea what we went through to make this country a place fit to live in. You were all too busy spitting in the plate that fed you.”
“You have no right to criticise me,” says Helen. “I haven’t killed anyone I loved.”
“Which makes what you did all right?” says Giulia. “The fact that the people who died because of your foolishness didn’t have your love? What an odd way to see the world. You may as well live in caves.”
“You killed Federico,” says Helen. “Your own son.”
“What do you know about mothers and sons? You have no children. Oh no, nothing so compromising. You were both too busy, too self-centred, for children. You dare to talk to me about being a mother. You have no idea what it means to have a son.”
“A son you killed.”
“Federico was as good as dead,” says Giulia, dismissively. When Fausto utters a little cry of shock, although surely this can’t be news to him, thinks Helen, Giulia turns her head, throws him an angry glance. “You know as well as I do our son was mad. There’s no point in denying it.”
“He was ill,” says Fausto.
To Helen’s surprise, Giulia looks away from Fausto to give her a little conspiratorial smile, shaking her head. This is women’s business, she seems to be saying, we understand each other.
“And what about Massimo? Was he as good as dead?”
“Massimo?”
“Federico’s driver.”
“Oh,” says Giulia, after a moment. “The driver.”
“I suppose he doesn’t matter,” says Helen. What was it Giacomo had said, all those years ago, about Aldo Moro? An empty signifier. A box you can change the label on to suit your needs.
For a moment Giulia looks distressed. “His mother won’t suffer, I’ve seen to that. I’ve arranged for his brother to be taken on as a driver.”
“And you think you’ll get away with it.” You almost killed Martin as well, she thinks, but doesn’t say. She wonders how much Giulia is aware of what she’s done.
Giulia smiles. “Oh yes, I think so.” She looks at Helen, hard, challenging –
unforgivingly
, thinks Helen. “Of course, that also depends on you.”
“Are you trying to threaten me?” says Helen. “You’re in no position to do that. Not now.” All at once, she is tired of this supercilious, unwavering old woman. She can’t even bring herself to hate her. There is nothing human left to hate, she thinks. Fausto is rocking slowly backwards and forwards in his chair, his head still held between his hands. You’ll have to live with this, she thinks, and is glad. You’ll have to live with her. And that will be your punishment.
“I’m not threatening you,” Giulia says. “I wouldn’t demean myself.”
“There won’t be any state funeral, you know,” says Helen. “I’ve arranged something else. For Monday afternoon. It’s what Federico would have wanted, I think.” She lifts her shoulders, as if a burden has been lifted. “More to the point, it’s what I want.”
“I expected you to behave like this,” Giulia says. “No thought for anyone other than yourself. Selfish to the last. You haven’t disappointed me, I’ll give you that. I assume I’ll be invited.” She glances at Fausto, who is crying, and corrects herself. “
We’ll
be invited.”
“Oh yes,” says Helen. “I’ll want you both to be there.”
9
Twenty minutes later, Helen is breathing deeply, holding the filthy sun-warmed air in her lungs, letting it out through her clenched teeth. She’d like to run – not to get away, for the sheer pleasure of it – but doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. She’s decided not to call for a taxi because the idea of being cooped up in a box is more than she can bear. Now she is a mile from her in-laws’ flat and she still hasn’t shaken them off, the vicious dried husk of the woman in her outfit of black cloth and beads, the devastated old man who has let it happen. They are still on her skin, like the scent of death. She’d throw herself in the river beneath her, to wash the scent off, if it wasn’t so deep and dark and dirty. How many dead this river has seen, she thinks, what a city I’ve let my life be spent in. Centuries, millennia of statecraft and slaughter, faith and the lies and bloodletting that keep it alive. The blood-dark Tiber, winding its way through the city, appearing where you least expect it, curling and almost doubling back on itself. Sluggish, then fast, swollen, retreating, all the detritus drying on its mud banks. What a city I’ve chosen to make my home. Giacomo was right to leave.
She is walking as fast as she can, she hasn’t felt this strong for ages. She could walk all night and find herself at the coast, although she knows this is impossible, that between her and the coast there are barricades of low-cost housing and car-jammed roads, an airport, military installations. All of it worth protecting, for Giulia, worth protecting so much she would let her own son die for it. There’s a precedent for that, thinks Helen, and bursts into humourless laughter as she walks. She’s taken the side of the river that runs by the stadium, its impotent marble youths gigantic against the red-streaked sky. Motorbikes, cars go by, but nobody else is walking, people in this part of Rome don’t walk when they can drive. Only their servants use their feet. She is alone, and revelling in it. She lets herself think about Federico, about the way he used to walk, long strides, his head held up. He would stroll for hours, along beaches and mountain paths, through woods and gorges. She let herself be led and now she is glad of it, now that he is dead and she is sauntering at her own pace, she is glad that for all these years she’s walked at his. She sees him almost, tempted to close her eyes, the way she saw him at the moment of his death, but the smile is less hesitant, less perplexed. She has a sense of rightness about him finally. How awful it would have been, she thinks, if he’d died not knowing who he was, in some hospital ward, in pain. How awful if he’d died some other way, the way he’d wanted, and thought, at the last moment, when nothing could be done, that he’d been wrong after all. That every choice he’d made had been wrong. She has Giulia, at least, to thank for that.
Her mobile rings. It is Giacomo. She’s forgotten all about him. She’s moved beyond Giacomo, it occurs to her, as though all that has died with Federico, and she’s only just realised. She will have to be gentle with him.
“I’m calling from the police station,” he says. He sounds annoyed. “In Piazza Venezia.”