Gerald Seymour - Red Fox

The driver, sensing the discourse was exhausted, again nodded, decisively and with agreement. Perhaps if the Dottore had a wife and children then he would be changed, not bleed himself so copiously. But Vellosi was alone, and his home was his office and his furniture was his filing cabinet, and his family were the young men he sent on to the streets at darkness to fight his war. The cars swept into the back entrance of the Questura, recognized and saluted by the officer on the barrier.

Francesco Vellosi was not a man to be kept waiting. A greeting party of three inclined their heads as he emerged from his car. If the Dottore would follow them they would lead to the interrogation room. Tantardini was eating in the cell block. She had been questioned once; a shrug of the shoulders and a grimace to demonstrate how much had been learned. The session was about to be resumed. Vellosi followed his guides through pale lit corridors, down steps, past guards. Down into the bowels of the building. There were more handshakes at the entrance to the designated room and then Vellosi's escort abandoned him. He was left with his own people, the ones prepared to dirty their hands, while those who had brought him this far could retreat from the subterranean world of violence and counter-violence and breathe again the real air that was not conducted by ageing generators and fans. There were two men in the room, both known to Vellosi because they were his appointees; hard men, and efficient and devoid of soul. Skilful in interrogation, impatient of prevarication, these were their credentials. And what other criteria could be used in recruitment? What other men could be found to muddy their fingers in defence of a gross and obese society? The excitement was running for Vellosi because these were his colleagues, and in their company he was content and at ease.

He gestured his readiness and sat himself on a bare wooden chair in the shadow of the door where he would face the interrogators. The prisoner would not see him as the lights shone in her eyes, where she would be confronted by her questioners; her back would be to him. Vellosi heard the far distant, the approaching tramp of weighted shoes, and he found himself arched and taut as the woman, eclipsing the lights, was brought through the door. She blazoned her indifference, casually flopped down in a chair in front of the lone table. This was the enemy, the opponent of menace and hazard, and all he could see were the angular shoulder-blades of a good-looking woman with her hair circled by a cheap cotton scarf. Dirty jeans and unwashed blouse, no lipstick and a sneer to substantiate the threat. Where were her tanks, and her ADCs? Where was her army and her regiments and platoons? Where was her serial number and her rank? Dead still Vellosi stayed, because that way she had no reason to turn and face him. That way he was the voyeur, the intruder at a private party.

One interrogator lounged across the table from her. The second man was further back behind him with the file and the notepad on his knees. There was no paper laid out on the table because the man who would ask questions and seek to find flaws in her defiance must demonstrate his knowledge, must have no need for typed 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.