Gianrico Carofiglio - Reasonable Doubts

We carried on chatting. A bit more about books, then about sport. He would never have guessed I was into boxing, he said, I didn’t really look the type, I didn’t even have a broken nose. He himself played tennis, quite well in fact. A pity there weren’t any courts in prison – that might have been why his backhand wasn’t what it should be. He was more relaxed now and the joke came out quite freely. At that point I remembered that the first time we met he’d told me he’d started smoking again in prison, and yet I’d never seen him light a cigarette.

How come? I asked him. He didn’t want to make me feel uncomfortable, he replied, seeing that I’d quit smoking. I said thanks, but smoke didn’t make me feel uncomfortable any more. Almost never, I thought without saying it. He nodded, but said he’d continue not to smoke when we met. He preferred it that way.

After smoking we got on to music.

“I think music is one of the things I miss the most.”

“Do you mean to listen to or to play?”

He smiled, and shrugged slightly. “No, no. To listen to. I’d have loved to learn an instrument, but I never tried. There are a lot of things I’ve never tried, but there you go. No, I love listening to music. Especially jazz.”

“What kind of jazz?”

“Do you like it too?”

“Fairly. I listen to it a lot, though I’m not sure I always understand it.”

“I like all kinds of jazz, but here in prison what I miss most is some of the classic tracks I used to listen to when I was young.”

You mean when you were a Fascist thug and painted swastikas on walls? Didn’t you know that jazz is black people’s music? How does that fit in with the master race and crap like that?

“My father was a great jazz fan. He had this incredible collection of old records, including some really rare LPs from the Fifties. They’re mine now, and I still have a real turntable to play them on.”

That record collection must have been in one of the rooms I didn’t go into, I thought, and suddenly the smell of the apartment filled my nostrils, and I felt sad.

“Do you have a favourite piece?”

He smiled again, looking into the distance, and nodded. “Yes, I have. ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’. If I get out of here, one of the first things I’m going to do is listen to a very old radio recording I have of that piece. It was made by Louis Armstrong in the RAI studios in Florence, in 1952, I think. He sings and plays on it. It’s a crackly old recording, but it still sends shivers down my spine.”

He startling softly whistling ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’, perfectly in tune, and for a few moments forgot about me and everything, filling that shabby, silent room with notes, while the questions ricocheted around my head like billiard balls.

Who the fuck are you? Were you really there when that young man was stabbed to death? And are you still a Fascist? How could you have been a Fascist and liked jazz? How can you like books? Who are you?

The music faded away without my even noticing, and with it my thoughts, and my answerless questions. Some of my certainties had already faded away some time previously.

Paolicelli told me I should go. He had taken unfair advantage of my kindness. He was very grateful to me for this chat. He’d really enjoyed it.

I told him I’d enjoyed it, too.

I wasn’t lying.

“So, we’ll see each other tomorrow in court.”

“Tomorrow. And thank you. For everything.”

Yes, for everything.

I went straight from the prison to my office, where I had an appointment with Natsu. I told her more or less the same things I’d told her husband, about what would happen in court, how she should conduct herself, and so on.

Before going to the prison, before talking to Paolicelli, I’d thought of asking Natsu if we could see each other that evening. But after that conversation, I didn’t feel like saying anything.

I felt a mixture of tenderness, shame and nostalgia. I thought how nice it would be if that hard lump of pain deep inside me over Margherita disappeared as if by magic, and how nice it would be if I could just fall in love with Natsu without having to worry about anything. I thought how nice it would be to make plans in my mind for the future, for all the days and nights we could spend together. For many things. It was probably nothing to do with her; it was about the idea of being in love, of playing the game, the idea of a life that wasn’t one of resignation.

But it wasn’t possible.

So, when we’d finished talking about the case, I simply told her that she was more beautiful than ever, walked around to the front of my desk, kissed her on the cheek, and told her I’d be working late.

She looked at me for a long time, as if she hadn’t quite understood. Who could blame her? Then she also kissed me on the cheek and left.

The usual routine followed, just a little more melancholy than usual. Coming back from the office, punchball, shower, roll, beer.

It wasn’t a good evening to stay indoors, so I decided to go to the cinema. At an old cinema called the Esedra they were showing Altman’s The Long Goodbye. It took me twenty minutes to get there, walking quickly through streets so deserted and windswept they were almost scary.

The man in the box office wasn’t pleased to see me and made no attempt to conceal the fact. He even hesitated for a few moments to take the banknote I had placed in front of him. I had the impression he was begging me to leave. I must have been the only person there. Without me they could close up early. In the end, he took the money, tore off the ticket and handed it to me, bad-temperedly, along with the change.

I entered the completely empty auditorium. I don’t know if the total absence of human sensory stimuli sharpened my sense of smell or if the cinema needed a good cleaning, but I could distinctly smell the upholstery on the seats and the dust that permeated them.

I sat down and looked around. The place was a perfect setting for an episode of The Twilight Zone. Indeed, for a few seconds I had to resist the impulse to go and make sure the man in the box office hadn’t turned into a giant man-eating crustacean and that the emergency exits hadn’t become portals into another dimension.

Then a woman came in. She sat down close to the exit, some ten rows behind me. If I wanted to look at her I had to make a deliberate effort to turn round, which could seem dodgy if I overdid it. So I managed to get only a vague idea of her before the lights went out and the film started. She was of medium height, was wrapped in a large shawl, or maybe a poncho, had very short hair, and seemed to be more or less my age.

During the first half, I didn’t pay much attention to the film – I’d already seen it twice anyway. I was thinking I’d like to start up a conversation with that girl, or woman, or whatever she was. I’d like to talk to her in the interval and then, when the film was over, invite her for a drink. As long as she hadn’t left during the first half, driven out by the weird atmosphere of that deserted cinema. And by the fear that the only other person there – who had turned round to look at her rather too many times – might be some kind of pervert.

But she was still there in the interval. She had taken off her poncho or shawl and seemed completely at ease, but of course I didn’t have the courage to start up a conversation.

During the second half, I thought of a good opening gambit: the presence of the young Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film. Look, there’s Schwarzenegger as a young man. Hard to believe he’s now the governor of California. All right, it’s pretty weak, but for a film buff – and damn it, a woman who goes on her own to see The Long Goodbye at that hour of the night must be a film buff – the gambit marked “first appearances of then unknown actors who later became famous” isn’t a bad one.