Giorgio Faletti - I'm God

Vivien Light parked her Volvo XC60, switched off the engine, and waited a moment for the world to catch up with her. All through the journey back from Cresskill, she had had the feeling of being out of sync, of moving in a parallel dimension of her own, where she was faster than everything else. As if leaving in her wake a trail composed of fragments of the past, rapid splinters of coloured time, as visible as the tail of a comet by the cars, houses and people that flashed on the screens of her car windows.

The same thing happened every time she went up to see her sister.

She always felt hope when she set out. There was no reason for it, which made it all the stronger – and made her disappointment all the stronger when she found her sister the same as ever. Still a beautiful woman, as if the months and years were absurdly compensating her by having no effect on her face, but with eyes like blue spots staring into an emptiness that grew more all-encompassing as her illness developed.

That was why the journey back was a kind of leap into hyperspace, from which she emerged somewhere in the middle of reality.

She turned the rear-view mirror so that she could see herself. It wasn’t vanity. She just wanted to recognize herself, to make sure she was normal again. She saw the face of a young woman some people had called beautiful and others had brushed past as if she didn’t exist. The approval, as always happens, was invariably in inverse proportion to her own interest in that person.

She had short brown hair, rarely smiled, never folded her arms, and only allowed physical contact when she couldn’t avoid it. In her clear eyes there seemed to be a constant hint of sternness. And in the glove compartment of her car there was a Glock 23 pistol.

If she had been a normal woman, her approach to life might have been different. So might her appearance. But her hair was short to prevent anyone from grabbing it during a fight, her stern expression told other people to keep their distance, folding her arms could denote insecurity, and touching someone helped to create a sense of safety and trust, useful if you wanted that person to come clean. And the reason she had a pistol was because she was Detective Vivien Light of the New York Police Department, working out of the 13th Precinct on 21st Street. The entrance to her place of work was just behind her, and she would only have to get out of the car and take those few steps to be transformed from a troubled woman into a police officer.

She leaned forward to take the pistol from the glove compartment, slipped it into her jacket pocket and came back to earth.

In the side mirror she saw two uniformed officers come out of the precinct house through the glass-fronted main door, descend the steps, get into a car and drive off at speed, lights flashing and siren wailing. They were answering a call, one of the many they received every day: an emergency, someone in need, a crime. Every day in this city, men, women and children walked in the midst of danger, unable to predict when it would strike, unable to fight it.

That was what they were there for.

Courtesy.

Professionalism.

Respect.

That was written on the doors of the police cars. Unfortunately, courtesy, professionalism and respect weren’t always enough to protect all those people from the violence and madness of mankind. Sometimes, in order to fight it, police officers had to allow a little of that madness into themselves. The difficult part was that they had to be aware of it and keep it on a tight leash. That was the difference between them and the people whose violence they were sometimes obliged to meet with violence. And that was why she wore her hair short, rarely smiled, and had a shield in her pocket and a pistol on her belt.

For no particular reason, she thought of an old Indian fable she had once told Sundance, about an old Cherokee sitting watching the sunset with his grandson.

‘Grandfather, why do men fight?’

The old man, his eyes turned to the setting sun as the day lost its battle with night, spoke in a calm voice.

‘Every man, sooner or later, is called to do so. For every man there’s always a battle waiting to be fought, to win or lose. Because the fiercest clash is the one between the two wolves.’

‘What wolves, grandfather?’

‘The wolves every man carries inside himself.’

The boy didn’t understand. He waited for his grandfather to break the silence he had let fall between them, maybe to arouse his curiosity. Finally, the old man, who had the wisdom of time inside him, resumed in his calm tone, ‘There are two wolves in each of us. One is bad and lives a life of hate, jealousy, envy, rancour, false pride, lies, and selfishness.’

The old man paused again, this time to allow him to absorb what he had just said.

‘And the other?’

‘The other is the good wolf. He lives a life of peace, love, hope, generosity, compassion, humility and faith.’

The child thought for a moment about what his grandfather had just told him. Then he expressed what was especially on his mind.

‘And which wolf wins? ’

The old Cherokee turned to look at him and replied, clear-eyed, ‘The one we feed more.’

Vivien opened the door and got out of the car. As soon as she turned on her cellphone, it started ringing.

She lifted it to her ear and instinctively replied as if she was sitting at her desk. ‘Detective Light.’

‘Bellew here. Where are you?’

‘Just outside. I’m coming in.’

‘I’ll go down. Let’s meet in the lobby.’

Vivien climbed the steps, opened the glass-fronted door, and was inside the building.

A black man with his hands cuffed behind his back stood in front of the desk, with a uniformed officer beside him holding him by one arm. One of the officers behind the desk was taking down the details of his arrest.

As Vivien entered, she returned the officer’s wave. She turned right and found herself in a large room, painted a nondescript colour, with rows of chairs in the middle and a whiteboard on the wall facing them. Another whiteboard stood on an easel next to a raised desk. This was the room where the officers on duty gathered for roll call, to be given the rundown on the current operations and assigned their tasks for the day.

Captain Alan Bellew, her immediate superior, came in through another door facing the entrance. Seeing her, he came towards her with that rapid walk of his that gave an impression of physical vigour. He was a tall, highly capable man who loved his work and was good at it.

He knew all about Vivien’s difficult love life. In spite of that, and her youth, her unquestionable qualities in the job had led him to hold her in high regard. A relationship of mutual respect had sprung up between them, and whenever they had worked together they’d always achieved excellent results. One of Vivien’s colleagues had once called her ‘the captain’s pet’, but when Bellew had found out about it he had taken the officer aside and given him a little talk. Nobody knew what he had said, but from that moment on all comments had ceased.

Coming level with her, he did what he always did: he came straight to the point.

‘A call just came in. We have a homicide. The body’s apparently years old. They found it on a construction site during demolition. It was inside a wall between two basements.’ He paused, just long enough to give her time to focus on the situation. ‘I’d like you to handle it.’