Gianrico Carofiglio - Reasonable Doubts

“Obviously he never told you, or gave you any hint, who these people were?”

“Obviously not.”

“All right. Then you’ll have to tell me about the other conversations you had with him, especially the one where you quarrelled. I need you to remember as many details as you can. They’ll help to make what you say more credible. Keep a notebook in your cell and write down everything you remember. Even if it’s something insignificant. All right?”

The interview was over. We called the guards, who took him back to the bowels of the prison. As I walked back through gates and locks and reinforced doors towards the outside world, I was in a contradictory state of mind.

On the one hand, I still felt like a bastard. But we’re all good at finding excuses, ways of justifying our actions.

So I told myself, all right, I’d made a mistake, but in the overall balance sheet we were more or less equal. Maybe I was even in credit. I might save this man’s life. What other lawyer would have done what I was doing for him?

Getting on my bicycle, I wondered if Natsu would pick me up from my office again, or if she would call me.

Of if I would have the guts to call her.

There followed a succession of strange days. Even the texture of them was strange. Packed, and at the same time suspended, as if time had stood still.

Every now and again I would think about Margherita. Sometimes I wondered what she was doing. If she was seeing anyone, if she would ever come back. My thoughts stopped at that point. I never wondered what would happen if she came back. Whenever I thought she was going out with someone I would feel a twinge of jealousy, but it didn’t last long. Sometimes, in the evening, I would get the desire to call her, but I never did.

We had talked over the phone during the first months she was away. They had not been long calls and gradually, spontaneously, they had stopped after the Christmas holidays. She had stayed there, over those holidays, and I had thought that must mean something. Congratulations, Guerrieri, good thinking.

I hadn’t wanted to think about it any more than that.

Little by little, I had taken all my things out of her apartment. Every time I went there I felt as if I was being watched, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. So I took what I needed and got out of there as quickly as I could.

In the evening, after work, I’d go to the gym, or else do a bit of training at home. Then I’d have dinner and start reading or listening to music.

I didn’t watch television any more. Not that I’d ever watched it much, but now I just didn’t put it on at all. I could have sold the TV set and I’d never have noticed the difference.

I would read for a straight two hours, and make notes on what I was reading. I’d started to do it after the night I’d gone to Natsu’s apartment and after reading the book on the manumission of words, with the idea that maybe, further down the line, I could try to write. Maybe.

When I finished reading and taking notes I sometimes went to bed, and fell asleep immediately.

At other times – when I felt sure I wouldn’t get to sleep – I’d go out for a walk and a drink. I went to places where no one knew me and avoided those I’d been to with Margherita. Like the Magazzini d’Oltremare, where I might meet someone who asked me what I was doing, where I’d been all this time, why Margherita wasn’t with me, and so on.

Sometimes I’d meet people and spend a few hours listening to strangers telling their stories. I was in a strange place, an unknown area of my consciousness. A black-and-white film, with a dramatic, melancholy soundtrack, in which ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ by Green Day stood out. I often listened to that song, and it echoed almost obsessively in my head during my nocturnal walks.

Once, in a little bar in the old city, I met a girl named Lara. She was twenty-five, short, with a pretty, irregular face, and insolent, occasionally restless eyes. She was doing a research doctorate in German literature, she spoke four languages, her boyfriend had just left her, and she was getting drunk, determinedly, methodically, downing straight vodkas one after another. She told me about her boyfriend, herself, her childhood, her mother’s death. The atmosphere in the bar was slightly unreal. There weren’t many people, the few there were were talking almost in whispers, the stereo was playing Dvorak’s New World Symphony at low volume, and there was a slight smell of cinnamon in the air, though I had no idea where it was coming from.

After a while, Lara asked me to take her home. I said OK and paid the bill: one vodka for me, five for her. We walked through the city to her place, which was in Madonnella.

Madonnella is a strange neighbourhood. There are beautiful houses there and horrible municipal housing blocks, millionaires’ residences and shacks inhabited by pushers and other members of the underclass, all cheek by jowl. In some parts of Madonnella you have the impression you’re somewhere else entirely.

In Tangier, for example, or Marseilles, or Casablanca.

Outside her front door, Lara asked me if I wanted to come up. I said no, thanks. Another time, maybe, I added. In another life, I thought. She stood there looking at me for a few moments, surprised, and then burst into tears. She wasn’t crying over my polite refusal, obviously. I felt a kind of distant tenderness towards her. I hugged her, and she hugged me and cried louder, sobbing.

“Bye,” she said hurriedly, detaching herself from me and going inside. “Goodbye,” I said a few seconds later, to the old wooden door and the deserted street.

Ever since Margherita had gone away, the hardest day had been Sunday. I’d go out, read, or drive out of the city, and then eat alone in some restaurant where no one knew me. In the afternoon I’d go to the cinema and then wander around Feltrinelli’s bookshop. Then back home in the evening to read. At night I’d often wander the streets again, or take another trip to the cinema.

It was on a Sunday morning-a cold, beautiful day, lit by a blinding sun, three days before the start of the appeal hearing – that I finally couldn’t help myself and phoned Natsu.

“Guido!”

“Hi. I wanted to-”

“I’m pleased you called me. I’d like to see you.”

I’ve always envied the naturalness of some people – some women mostly – who can openly say what they think and what they want. I’ve never been able to do that. I’ve always felt inadequate. Like an intruder at a feast where everyone else knows how to behave.

“So would I. Very much.”

There followed a few moments’ silence. She was probably thinking, quite rightly, that if I wanted to see her, and had actually called her, I could at least make an effort and suggest something. In the end, she yielded. She must have concluded that I was an incurable case.

“Listen, seeing as it’s such a beautiful day, I’m taking Midori to the park. If you like, you could meet us there.”

“The Largo Due Giugno park?”

“Yes. See you in half an hour at the little lake, is that OK?”

Fine, in half an hour at the little lake. Bye, see you soon. Bye.

I dressed like someone about to go for a walk in the park on his own. That is, according to my idea of someone about to go for a walk in the park on his own. Jeans, trainers, sweatshirt, worn leather jacket.

I cycled over there and arrived early. I chained my bike to a bicycle rack and went through one of the gates into the park. It was eleven and there were a lot of people. Families, young boys on rollerblades, adults on rollerblades, people jogging and others doing fitness walking. All wearing jumpsuits, expensive shoes and very serious expressions, as if to say, let’s be clear about this, we’re doing sport, we’re not just out for a stroll.