Involuntary Witness

hand with her thumb.

“Maybe we could eat something too.” I was thinking of the pints of beer already swilling about inside her and of the other unspecified psychoactive substances circulating in her blood and among the neurones.

“You bet. I really feel like something sweet. A crepe with Nutella or with cream and a dark chocolate sauce.”

We returned to Bari and went to the Gauguin, where they made very good crepes, were polite and nice, and had beautiful photographs on the walls. It was a place I had often been to when I was with Sara, and had not visited since. That evening was the first time.

No sooner inside than I was sorry I’d come. Familiar faces at every table. Some I had to greet, all knew who I was.

Between the tables, the owner and the waiters staring at us. Staring at me. I could hear the wheels turning in their heads. I knew they’d gossip about me now. I felt like a squalid forty-year-old who takes out teenagers.

Melissa, meanwhile, was relaxed and talking non-stop.

I chose a crepe with ham, walnuts and mascarpone, plus a small bottle of beer. Melissa had two sweet crepes, the first with Nutella, hazelnuts and banana, the second with ricotta, raisins and melted chocolate. She drank three glasses of Calvados. She talked a lot. Two or three times she touched my hand. Once, while talking, she suddenly stopped and gave me an intense look, almost imperceptibly biting her lower lip.

They’re shooting with a hidden camera, I thought. This girl is an actress, there’s a TV camera somewhere, now I’ll say or do something ridiculous and someone will pop out and tell me to smile at the audience.

No one popped out. I paid the bill, we left, reached the car and I started up. Melissa said we could round off the evening by having a drink at her place.

“No thanks. You’re an alcoholic and maybe something worse. I shall now take you home, I won’t come up, and then I’ll go home to bed.” That’s what I should have said.

“I’d love to. Maybe just a drop and then we’ll get some sleep because tomorrow is a working day.” I said exactly that: “maybe just a drop”.

Melissa gave me a kiss on the corner of my mouth, lingering over it. She smelt of booze, smoke and a strong perfume that reminded me of something. Then she said that she didn’t have much at home and so we’d better go to a bar and buy a few beers.

I wasn’t entirely easy in my mind but I stopped in front of an all-night bar, got out and bought two beers. To prevent the situation from degenerating.

She lived in an old block of council flats near the television studios. The sort of building populated by five or six foreigners living in one room, old council tenants (a species on the verge of extinction) and students away from home. Melissa came from Minervino Murge.

The entrance had a very dim bulb that shed no light whatever. Melissa lived on the first floor and the stairs smelt of cat pee.

She opened the door and went in first, with me following her into the darkness. Stuffiness and stale cigarette smoke.

When the light went on I saw I was in a minute hallway that gave onto a study-cum-bedroom on the left. On the right was a closed door that I took to be the bathroom.

“Where is the kitchen?” was my fatuous thought of the moment. And at the same instant she took me by the hand and led me into the bedroom/study/living room. There was a bed against the wall opposite the door, a desk, books everywhere. Books on shelves, stacks of books on the floor, books on the desk, books scattered here and there. There was an old radio-tape recorder, an ashtray containing two squashed filters, a few empty beer bottles and a nearly empty bottle of J &B whisky.

The books ought to have reassured me.

When I enter a house for the first time I check on whether there are books, if they are few, if they are many, if they are too neatly arranged – which is a bad sign – or if they are all over the place – which is a good sign, and so on.

The books in Melissa’s tiny home should have given me a good impression. But they didn’t.

“Do sit down,” said Melissa, pointing to the bed.

I sat, she opened the beers, handed me one and drank more than half of hers without taking the neck of the bottle from her lips. I took a sip, just to show willing. My brain was searching frantically for an excuse to escape. After all, it was nearly two o’clock in the morning, I had to work the following day, we had had a pleasant evening, we would certainly be seeing each other again, don’t worry I’ll call you, and anyway I’ve got a slight headache. No, there’s nothing the matter except the fact that you’re an alcoholic, a drug addict, probably a nymphomaniac and I want to cry. I’ll call you, really I will.

While I was struggling to think up something less pathetic, Melissa – who in another single gulp had finished her beer – slipped off her panties (black) from under her skirt.

She didn’t want to waste too much time on preliminaries and other boring formalities. So much was obvious.

And in fact there were no formalities.

I stayed in that place, what with this and that, until nearly daylight.

While she smoked and finished the bottle of whisky she recited the difficulties of living away from home with next to nothing coming from her parents. Of paying the month’s rent, of eating – and of drinking, I thought – of buying cigarettes, clothes, paying for the mobile, having the odd evening out. And books, of course. The occasional job – hostess, public relations – hardly ever brought in enough.

That month, for example, she was already late with the rent, had an exam to prepare for, and the landlady waiting for nothing better than an excuse to chuck her out.

If she wouldn’t be offended, I could lend her a little. No, she wouldn’t be offended, but I had to promise that I’d make her pay it back. Of course, don’t worry. No, I haven’t got half a million in cash, but look, here’s 220,000 in my wallet, I’ll keep the twenty just in case. Don’t worry about it, you’ll let me have it back when you can, there’s no hurry. I really must go now, because tomorrow, that is today, I have to work.

She gave me her mobile number. Of course I’ll call you, I said, screwing up the slip of paper in my pocket, wrenching open the door and fleeing like a scalded cat.

Outside was a leaden dawn, a mouse-coloured sky. The puddles were so black they reflected nothing.

My eyes reflected nothing either.

There came to mind a film I had seen a couple of years before, The Ghost and the Darkness, a splendid yarn about big-game hunters and lions.

Val Kilmer asks Michael Douglas, “Have you ever failed?”

The reply: “Only in life.”

The next day I changed my sim-card and mobile phone number.

11

The days that followed that night were not memorable.

About a week passed, then we were notified that the inquiries were concluded.

At eight-thirty next morning I was in Cervellati’s secretariat to request copies of the file. I made the application, they told me that I could have copies within three days and I left the offices prey to pessimism.

On the Friday my secretary called at the public prosecutor’s office, paid the fees, collected the copies and brought them to the office.

I spent Saturday and Sunday reading and re-reading those papers.

I read, smoked, and drank big cups of weak decaffeinated coffee.

I read, smoked, and what I read I didn’t like a bit. Abdou Thiam was in a pretty pickle.

It was even worse than I’d thought when I read the detention order.