reports, must dominate if he were to succeed.
'You have had your food, Tantardini?' He spoke conversationally, without rancour.
Vellosi heard her snort, the derision that communicated tension.
'You have no complaints about the food?'
No response.
'And you have not been hurt, you have not been tortured?'
Vellosi saw her shrug. Non-committal, as if the question were unimportant. But then the woman had no audience; she would be a changed person in the cockpit of the public courtroom.
'We have not treated you in any way that violates the constitution? We have behaved, Tantardini, is that right?' He mocked her gently, feeling his way forward, amused.
Again the shrug.
'And that is not as you would have expected? Am I correct?
That is not what the communiques will state, am I correct?'
No response.
'But then we play by different rules from yours.'
She drove back at him, seeking to destroy the smugness and complacency that he had fashioned on his face. 'If you do not hurt me it is because you are afraid. There is no compassion in lackeys like yourself. There is no kindness among you pigs. Fear governs you. Fear of the reach of our arm. The society that you are servile to cannot protect you. If you lay a hand on me, a finger, a nail, then we will strike you down. That is why you give me food. That is why you do not touch me.'
'We are afraid of no one, Tantardini. Least of all the little ones, like yourself. Perhaps we are cautious of the strength of the Brigate Rosse, cautious only, perhaps we treat them with care.
But the NAP does not match the Brigate Rosse, the NAP is trivia] and without muscle.'
'You hunt us hard. If we have no muscle you spend much time on us.'
The interrogator smiled, still sparring, still dancing far apart, as if unwilling yet to clash with the gloves. Then he leaned forward and the grin was erased.
'In twenty-five years' time, Tantardini, how old will you be?'
Vellosi could see the outline of the woman's neck, could see the smooth bright skin of youth.
'You have the files, you have the information,' she replied.
'You will be old, Tantardini. Old and withered and barren.
In twenty-five years there will be new generations. Young men and women will grow and take their places in society and they will never have heard of La Tantardini. You will be a dinosaur to them. An ancient creature, verging on extinction.'
Perhaps he has hurt her, perhaps that is the way to her. Vellosi sat very still, breathing quietly, satisfied she was unaware of his presence. There was no response from her.
' That is the future, that is what you have to consider, Tantardini. Twenty-five years to brood on your revolution.' The interrogator droned on. 'You'll be a senile hag, a dowager of anarchy, when you are released. A tedious symbol of a phase in our history, courted by a few sociologists, dug out for documentaries by the RAI. And all will marvel at your stupidity. That is the future, Tantardini.'
'Will you say that when the bullets strike your legs?' she hissed, the cobra at bay. 'When the comrades are at you, when there are no chains at their wrists? Will you make speeches to me then?'
'There will be no bullets. Because you and your kind will be buried behind the walls of Messina and Asinara and Favignana.
Removed from the reach of ordinary and decent people… '
'You will die in your own blood. It will not be in the legs, it will be to kill.' She shouted now, her voice dinning across the room. Vellosi saw the veins leaping at her neck, straining down into the collar of her blouse. Fierce and untamed, the magnificent savage. La leonessa, as the civil servant had christened her.
'La Vianale cursed her judge, but I think he is well and with his family tonight, and it is now two years that her threat has been empty and hollow.' The interrogator spoke quietly.
'Be careful, my friend. Do not look for paper victories, for victories that you can boast of. We have an arm of strength. We will follow you, we will find you.'
'And where will you find your army? Where will you recruit your children, from which kindergarten?'
'You will find the answer. You will find it one morning as you kiss your wife. As you walk back from school from setting the children down. You will see the power of the proletarian masses.'
'That's shit, Tantardini. Proletarian masses, it means nothing.
Revolutionary warfare, nothing. Struggle of the workers, nothing. It's gibberish, boring and rejected gibberish.'
'You will see.' Her voice was a whisper and there was a cold in the room that clutched at the man who wrote the notes behind the interrogator and which made him thankful that he was far from the front line, a non- combatant, obscure and unrecognized.
'It's shit, Tantardini, because you have no army. You go to war with sick children. What have you to throw against me?
Giancarlo Bat testini, is that the hero who will strike -'
The pain fled her face. She shrieked with laughter, pealed it round the faces of the watching men. 'Giancarlo? Is that what you think we are made of? Little Giancarlo?'
'We have his name, we have his fingerprints, his photograph.
Where will he go, Tantardini?'
'What do you want with him, little Giancarlo? His capture won't win you a war.'
Angered for the first time, resenting the dismissal of a situation he had worked towards with care and precision, the interrogator slammed his fist to the table. 'We want the bpy. Tantardini, Panicucci, Battestini, we want the package.'
She jeered back at him. 'He is nothing, not to us, not to you.
A little bed-wetter, looking for a mother. A thrower of Molotovs.
Good for demonstrations.'
'Good enough for your bed,' he chanced.
'Even you might be good enough for my bed. Even you, little pig, if there was darkness, if you washed your mouth.'
'He was with you at the shooting of Cesare Fulni, at the factory.'
'Sitting in the car, watching, messing his pants, masturbating most likely.' She laughed again, as if in enjoyment.
Vellosi smiled, deep and safe in his privacy. She was a worthy enemy. Unique, styled, irreplaceable as an opponent.
'Where will he go?' The interrogator was flustered and unsettled.
' If you want Giancarlo go and stand outside his mother's door, wait till it is cold, wait till he is hungry.'
The interrogator shook his shoulders, closed his eyes, seemed to mutter an obscenity. His fingers were clamped together, knuckles showing white. 'Twenty-five years, Franca. For a man or a woman it is a lifetime. You know you can help us, and we can help you.'
'You begin to bore me.'
Vellosi saw the hate summoned to the man's narrowed lips.
' I will come one day each year and stand over the exercise yard and I will watch you, and then you will tell me whether I bore you.'
' I will look for you. And on the day that you have broken the rendezvous then I will laugh. You will hear me, pig, however deep you are buried, however far is your grave. You will hear me.
You do not frighten me because already you are running.'
'You stupid little whore.'
She waved her hand carelessly at him. ' I am tired. You do not interest me and I would like to go now. I would like to go bac k to my room.'
She stood up, proud and erect, and seemed to Vellosi to mesmerize her questioner because he came round the table and opened the door for her. She was gone without a backward glance, leaving the room abandoned and
