Gianrico Carofiglio - A Walk in the Dark

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not for of such is the Kingdom of God.

Luke 18:16.

In a corner of the poster was a drawing. A child seen from the back, his hands over his head, as if to protect himself against blows from someone you couldn’t see. In the foreground, a teddy bear lay abandoned. It was a very sad drawing, and below it something was written. It looked like a kind of logo, but I couldn’t read it.

Sister Claudia gestured to me to take a seat in one of the small armchairs and she slid into the other, with a sinuous movement.

In the refuge that morning, apart from her, there were only three girls, two of them under house arrest. They were well hidden, I thought: the place seemed completely deserted.

Well? her eyes were asking.

Obviously. But at that moment I didn’t know where to start. It would have been easier in my office. And there was an extra problem: I wasn’t sure I really knew why I’d come all the way here.

“There’s… something more I need to know about Martina. Given that the trial is starting, as you know, in a few days.”

“In what sense: something more?”

In what sense, indeed? In the sense that Martina may be unbalanced, mad, a compulsive liar, and we’re about to get into even more of a mess than we thought at the start?

“I mean… as far as you know, has Martina ever had psychiatric problems?”

“What do you mean?” Her tone was much less cooperative now.

“Has she ever been in therapy, ever suffered from depression, ever had a nervous breakdown, that kind of thing?”

Is she crazy?

“Why are you asking me these things? What do they have to do with the trial?” The same kind of tone. Or even a bit worse.

All right, you don’t want to cooperate. Which means I’m going to make a fool of myself in court, and then when it’s all over I’ll become the kind of lawyer who deals only with road accidents. If I’m lucky.

I paused for a long time, breathing deeply through my nose. As if to say, I’m being very patient here, but damn it, you have to let me do my job. She said nothing, just waited. She was making me nervous.

“Listen to me, Sister Claudia. Trials are tricky things, they can be quite complicated. That’s what lawyers are there for, basically. The fact that a man or woman may be right is almost never enough. In a trial, witnesses are examined and cross-examined, and when a defence attorney cross-examines a prosecution witness, he uses every legitimate means at his disposal to try to discredit that witness. Sometimes illegitimate means too. If we’re bringing a civil action, I have to know what Scianatico’s lawyer is going to dig up. I have to know if they’re going to try and claim that Martina is unbalanced, unreliable, or whatever, so that I can be ready to disprove it.”

“I don’t follow you. If it can be proved that the man did certain things, isn’t that enough? What have Martina’s health problems got to do with it?”

“I’m trying to make this as clear as possible, but obviously I’m not succeeding. That’s precisely the point: we have to prove that he did certain things. And the only evidence we have is Signorina Fumai’s statements. There’s not much else to her case. Everything turns on her reliability. Or her unreliability. It’s in the interests of a defendant in a case like this, if he has a good lawyer – and in this case he has a very good lawyer, and a dangerous one – to spring a surprise and reveal that the presumed victim-”

“ Presumed victim?”

“Until it’s demonstrated in court that someone has committed an offence, that person is presumed innocent. And if he’s presumed innocent, then his victim is nothing more than a presumed victim. Whether you like it or not, that’s the way it works in this country.”

I hadn’t raised my voice, but my tone was decidedly tense.

“Martina has had psychiatric problems,” Sister Claudia finally said.

“What kind of problems?”

“I don’t know if I’m authorized to talk about them. I don’t know if Martina wants these things to be known.”

“They’re already known. I mean: Scianatico knows them and his lawyer knows them. He phoned me yesterday afternoon. He more or less threatened me, and told me my client is crazy. I can’t not know these things. I could talk to her directly, of course. In fact I’ll have to talk to her some time. Even if only to tell her what to expect in court. But when I talk to her, it’s better if I know what I’m talking about. Do you follow me?”

She leaned her elbow on the armrest of her chair and propped her head on her open hand. She remained in that position for about a minute, without looking at me. Without looking at anything in the room.

“Martina had problems as a child. I’m sure they don’t know anything about that. As an adult, she’s suffered in the past few years from a form of depression, combined with anorexia nervosa. That must be what they know about.”

“When did this happen?”

“Maybe five years ago, maybe more. As far as the anorexia is concerned, the doctors said it was a particularly severe form. She was admitted to hospital and for a few days they had to feed her artificially. With a stomach tube.”

“Had she already met Scianatico?”

“No. After she left hospital she was in therapy for a long time. By the time she met that… that man, she was cured. Insofar as you can be cured of that kind of problem.”

“You mean she had relapses?”

“No. At least not in the sense of being admitted to hospital again. When she’s going through a hard time, she has eating difficulties, but that’s something she can keep under control. She managed that even at the most difficult moments of her relationship with that man. But there’s a doctor following up on her case.”

“A psychiatrist?”

“A psychiatrist.”

I paused. For personal reasons. A sudden fissure opening on to my past: memories I dismissed, though I couldn’t free myself entirely from all the cacophony that went with them.

“And Scianatico knows all about this.” It wasn’t a question.

“I think he does now.”

There wasn’t much else to add. I’d feared worse. I mean: Martina wasn’t crazy, she wasn’t schizophrenic or manic depressive or whatever. She’d suffered from depression and eating disorders, but had recovered. More or less. That was something I could handle in court. Clearly, it wasn’t ideal, but I’d feared worse.

“Now all I need is for Martina to tell me about these things herself. Firstly, because I need more details, papers, medical records. The lot. And secondly, because it’s the right thing to do. She’ll tell me what her problems are – or were – and I’ll tell her what we’re likely to come up against in court. In the end she’s the one who has to decide.”

Sister Claudia said all right, she’d come to my office in a few days with Martina. Before that, she’d explain to her what I needed and why I needed it.

There followed a few moments of tense silence. Then we both stood up, almost simultaneously. Time to go.

“Can I ask you something?”

She looked me in the eyes for a few moments, then nodded.

“Why did you let me come here?”

After looking at me some more, she shrugged and didn’t reply.

We left the farmhouse and walked back the way we’d come. There was no trace of the girls who lived there. There was nobody. Around us, the wind shook the branches of the olive trees, dislodging the leaves, which were changing colour, brown on one side, a mysterious silvery grey on the other.

We walked slowly until we reached my car.

“Sometimes I’m aggressive. For no reason.”

I looked at her without replying, because clearly she hadn’t finished.