drinking on the sly. It’s impossible to keep tabs on an alcoholic. Alcoholics are crafty liars, like drug addicts, in fact worse, because it’s easier to get booze than it is ‘the stuff’. One day someone saw me at ten in the morning downing a draught beer in one gulp, and they told Pierluigi. I swore I’d give up and half an hour later I was back to secret drinking. He spoke to my parents, who didn’t believe it at first. Then they were forced to. We all went together to another specialist, in yet another town. Result: the same as before. Let me cut this short. This story dragged on for another year after I was found out. Then my husband left home. And who can blame him? I was going around with great bruises on my face, or grazes, because I would get up in the night to have a pee, having put myself to sleep with a fine mixture of tequila or vodka and anxiolytics, and walk right into doors. Or I just collapsed on the ground. Sex, on the rare occasions we had any, wasn’t a lot of fun for him, I bet. It certainly wasn’t for me. All I wanted was to cry and to drink. In short, in the end he left and he was quite right.
“After he went my memories become really confused. I don’t know how long it was before they grew clearer. I was in a clinic in Piedmont that specialized in addictions of every kind. There were people hooked on drugs, on pills, on gambling, and then there were us alcoholics. The majority.
“That was the toughest time of my life. In that place they were merciless, but they did help me to struggle out of the shit I’d fallen into. It’s nearly five years now that I haven’t had a drink. For the first two I kept count of the days. Then I stopped doing that and here I am. A lot of things have happened in these five years, but they’re a different story.”
I looked her in the face and didn’t know what to say or do. I thought that whatever I said would be wrong, so I said nothing. So she spoke again.
“Maybe you think I tell this story to everyone I meet, right off the bat. If you come to think of it, I’ve practically only met you today. Is that what you think?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. But I like to think that you don’t tell it to everyone.”
For once I hadn’t said the wrong thing. She gave a nod, as if to say: Good.
Then we sat there talking on, deep into the night.
22
The weeks I had to wait for the trial passed swiftly.
On 12 June, around ten in the morning, the air was still cool. On my way to the law courts I saw that the liquid crystal thermometer in a computer shop read 73 degrees. Lower than the seasonal average, I thought.
The temperature seemed the only good thing to be said about that day.
The night before I had gone to bed and hadn’t managed to get to sleep. At past two I had tried with pills, but they hadn’t helped at all. It wasn’t until about four-thirty that I nodded off, only to wake a couple of hours later. As in the worst period.
I stopped at a bar to have a coffee – a real coffee – and smoke a cigarette. I felt ghastly.
For some days I had been tortured by the thought that things were going to end in tears, for myself and, above all, for Abdou.
As the trial drew nearer I thought more and more persistently that I had made a stupid blunder in letting myself be carried away by emotion. I got to thinking that I’d behaved like a character in a second-rate novel. A kind of inferior
Take courage, my black friend, I, the white liberal-minded lawyer will fight in the Court of Assizes to get you acquitted. It will be hard, but in the end justice will triumph and your innocence will be proved.
Innocence? Doubts had assailed me and entrenched themselves in my mind during those last days before the hearing began. What did I really know about Abdou? Apart from a questionable personal intuition, what was there to tell me that my client really had nothing to do with the kidnapping and death of that boy?
I now think that I was perhaps looking for an alibi for a possible – in fact probable – defeat. At that time I was not sufficiently lucid to make a hypothesis of the kind, and so my mind was simply freewheeling.
It is not a good thing for a lawyer to have these qualms before such a trial. Above all, it is not a good thing for that lawyer’s client. The lawyer is in danger of cutting a sorry figure. The client is in danger of getting the chop.
In the previous few days I had talked twice with Abdou to prepare the defence. I was looking for evidence in his favour, for the hint of an alibi, something. But we found not a thing.
One morning I even made a tour of the places where the boy had disappeared and where his body was subsequently found. A rather pathetic idea, worthy of the movies; I was hoping for some intuition that would resolve everything. Needless to say, I didn’t get it.
So the day of the hearing had come, the trial was about to start, and I didn’t have a single witness, no scrap of evidence for the defence: nothing.
The public prosecutor would bring his witnesses, his material evidence, and would almost certainly overwhelm us. All I could hope for was to get one of those witnesses in trouble when my turn came to cross-examine.
Even if I succeeded, I would still not be sure of positive results, but I could at least play my hand.
If I did not succeed – as was more probable – in the prison registers, beside Abdou’s name and highlighted, would be stamped the words
Having smoked my cigarette right down to the filter, I crushed it underfoot and continued on my way towards the law courts.
Outside the door of the courtroom, journalists and television cameras were in waiting. A reporter from the
I had a sick feeling but managed to control it fairly well, I think. The public prosecutor – I said – did not have proofs but only conjectures. Plausible ones, but still conjectures. In the course of the trial we would demonstrate the fact, and for this purpose, at the moment, there was no need for witnesses for the defence.
While I was saying this, the other journalists gathered round. They made a few notes and the television cameras took a quick shot of my face. Then they let me enter the courtroom.
Inside there were only a few carabinieri, the clerk of the court and the bailiff. I sat down at my place on the defence bench, on the right for those facing the court. I didn’t know what to do and didn’t even feel inclined to make a show of being busy. I heard the humming of the air-conditioning, which that day wasn’t even necessary. A minute or two later a few members of the public began dribbling in.
Then, from the back of the courtroom, emerged the escort of warders in their blue uniforms. In their midst, Abdou. When I saw him, I felt a little better. Less alone, with less of a void around me.
They ushered him into the cage and removed his handcuffs. I went over to talk to him. More for my sake than for his, I think now.
“So, Abdou, how are things?”
“All right. I’m glad the trial has come, that the waiting is over.”
“We must decide whether to ask to put you on the stand. It’s something that depends largely on you.”
“Is there any reason why not?”
“It can be a risk. However, if we don’t ask for it, the prosecution almost certainly will, so what we have to decide is whether you want to answer questions. If you so wish you can say you don’t intend to answer, and in that case they will read out your interrogation before the public prosecutor.”
“I want to answer.”
“Very good. Now, the judge will tell you that you can make spontaneous declarations at any time during the trial. You must thank him and then make no such declarations. Even if you have the urge to shout, don’t say anything at any time without having spoken to me first. If there is something you want to say, call me, tell me what it is, and I will tell you whether it is a good thing to speak or not, and if so when. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
At that moment the bell rang to announce the entry of the court.
“Right, Abdou, we’re off.”
