After Hannibal (21 page)

“Machinery …” Fabio felt moved by this expression of sympathy. “He has brought everything there was between us down to machinery,” he said. “A car is more than an engine. It is bodywork, it is upholstery, it is beauty of design. He plotted it all beforehand, in cold blood. After I had done so much for him.”

Mancini nodded but made no immediate reply. It seemed to him that his new client was rather too absorbed in the role of wronged father. This companion had perhaps grown weary of being taken here and there. Perhaps this bid to dispossess his benefactor, steal his habitation, had been no more than that, an attempt to annihilate the grounds of a generosity long resented. What better way of asserting independence than taking over the presidential palace? “Yes,” he said, “I agree, quite despicable. Italian law as at present constituted encourages such tricks. It makes no provision at all for the rights of men who live together and then separate. In law
your partner is entitled to nothing, not a single lira. If you had been a married couple the one leaving would have been able to claim compensation for the years of work and service. He or she would have been entitled to share the value of the house.”

“I suppose so, yes.” Neither in face nor in voice was there any indication that Fabio felt this as an injustice.

Mancini waited a moment, then sighed and shrugged slightly. “Be that as it may,” he said, “he has wronged you, so much is certain.”

“What can I do? Take him to court for fraud? I know that would mean admitting my share in it, but perhaps we can get the deed of sale annulled.”

Mancini shook his head. “That would be a thorny path indeed. In my younger days I insisted always on the letter of the law. I applied the law with devoted consistency and I prospered, because the law applied with devoted consistency enriches lawyers to the same degree that it impoverishes their clients. Then I saw that justice rarely resulted from this and at the same time I began to feel bored. The due process of law is mainly a tedious rambling, Signor Bianchi. He would deny fraud, of course. We would have to try and show that his income had not been sufficient, that he could not have disposed of such a sum of money. For this we would need documentary evidence, in the nature of things rather difficult to obtain. No, my advice to you would be different.”

He stopped and leaned back in his chair. Fabio saw him close his eyes, or at least surmised he had done this—the shine of the eyes ceased as if eclipsed by the sunlight that still lay about his head. There was silence in the room for the space of two minutes or so.
Then the lawyer’s voice came again, rather deep in tone, unfaltering and unhurried. “Two acts of deception have already taken place. The first is the fraudulent transaction by which you two sought to evade the proper taxes by making a fictitious deed of sale. The second is the application of this fictitious deed by your companion as if it were not fictitious at all. A trick within a trick, we can call this. So we must now use a third trick to defeat him—or rather a series of tricks arising rather beautifully from within it, like the petals of a flower. However, as preliminary condition, it requires a third party, a man completely honest. Not so easy to find. Have you got a friend of such a kind, someone you can trust without reservation?”

Fabio was silent for a moment or two. Then he said, “Yes, I think I have. There is a man in Carrara, we grew up together, we were like brothers. We don’t see each other so often now but I know he would be ready to do me a service—and I would trust him.”

“Well, an element of risk there must always be. This finding of an honest man is the first hurdle and in a way the most important. He will present himself, on oath, not as your friend but as your relentless creditor, pressing for repayment of a largish sum.”

“But I don’t owe him any—”

“Bear with me a while longer. This debt we are speaking of was contracted
before
you made the agreement with your partner. Obviously the house, as your principal asset, acts as security. Now the debt has fallen due, you cannot pay, you fall into a panic. Do you begin to see? We will present the court with a
cambiale
, signed by you and made out to your friend in Carrara. This is a document containing a written promise to pay a stated sum to a particular person, or sometimes to the bearer, either at a date specified or on demand.”

“I know what a
cambiale
is,” Fabio said.

“In that case, you will know that it is a standard document and that they are issued in batches and the year and the number of the issue are printed on them. They come in different denominations. We will need enough of them to cover the sum your partner is claiming to have paid for the house. They will have to be dated well before you made the bill of sale, let us say three years ago.”

“Do you mean backdated?”

“The date when the debt was contracted will be written in ink in the space provided. But the document itself will bear the authentic year of issue, which also of course constitutes evidence of the year of signature. In other words you will have to find old ones. Three years old, to be precise. There is always a certain quantity of these forms in circulation, blank of course but with the original year of issue on them. As I am sure you know, they are made available to the public through stores with a license to sell tobacco. Some of these may have stocks of old ones lying around. But it is more probable you will get them through a bank. Perhaps you are on friendly terms with a tobacconist or someone who works in a bank? It is always better to do things through people you know. In any case, with a little patience you will find them.”

“I daresay that is true,” Fabio said, “but I don’t see—”

“You will,” Mancini said. “In a short while you will.” He regarded Fabio with smiling benevolence for some moments; then he raised his head and his smile merged with the light. “We will obtain the
cambiali
and we will ask your friend in Carrara to act as the creditor. That is to say, you will sign and date a document bearing in its watermark the year 1992, promising to repay your friend,
within three years, a certain sum, fairly substantial but not too improbably large, say two hundred and twenty million lire, just a little more than the price of the house. In other words, this promissory note has now fallen due. Are you beginning to see the pattern, Signor Bianchi? It has a certain beauty, as I think you will agree. We will be invalidating a fictitious sale by means of a fictitious debt. The note has fallen due, you cannot pay back the debt, you panic, you enter into a false sale of the house, you admit it is false, you throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Why did you do it? Not to avoid tax, not to evade your responsibilities as a good citizen, no and no again, you did it because you were afraid that this creditor would take the house, which you have offered as security for the debt, leaving you and your partner without a roof over your heads. The judge may not altogether believe it, of course.”

“But in that case—”

“I mean as a private person he may not altogether believe it. But the papers will be in order, your friend will be there as witness, he will have a lawyer to present the
cambiali
on his behalf, which will really be on your behalf, though it will not seem so. Naturally you will have to pay the fees of this lawyer of your friend; you could not press friendship so far as to expect him to pay them. Have no fear, Signor Bianchi, we will carry the day.”

“And afterward?”

“Your friend will not hold you to payment, naturally. When everything is settled he will tear all those pieces of paper into much smaller pieces and throw them to the wind.” Mancini paused, tilting his head slowly, first to one side, then the other. “That is, if he is the man you think him,” he said. “If he is not, then of course he will say
you have defaulted on the debt and perhaps he will try to take possession of the house. In that case we would probably have to declare these
cambiali
to have been fictitious documents and try to invalidate them by declaring the existence of some genuine document antecedent to them. In theory there could be a whole series of such documents stretching back into the past, each invalidated by the one before.” The lawyer chuckled, an abrupt and rather startling sound in that quiet room. “That would give them something to think about,” he said. “It won’t be necessary, of course.” He spoke almost with regret.

“I certainly hope not,” Fabio said, rather sharply. “It would cost me more in legal fees than the house is worth.”

“A regression of falsehoods and deceptions going back through all the generations to the original agreement, God’s pact with Adam. The money hasn’t been minted that could pay the fees for that. No, we will prevail in this matter, Signor Bianchi, never fear. Of course, you may find yourself facing a charge of fraud in the end, but that is better than losing your house, don’t you think? The law is on our side, you see.”

“On our side?” Fabio felt his head beginning to spin a little. There was something unsettling in the way Mancini unfolded his thoughts. He seemed to look at everything in the light of the universal.

“I mean in the sense of the law’s delays.” Mancini looked at the man seated before him, at the strong, still athletic frame, the pale scars, not unbecoming, on the cheek and forehead, the deep-browed face at once melancholy and saturnine. Before this business of the house was over, long before, there would be another young man,
another dependency, seeds perhaps of another betrayal. “Well,” he said, “I have looked at the deed of sale that you and your partner cooked up, so to speak. It is made out in proper form, there is nothing to get hold of there. But there is one thing strongly in your favor and that is the clause giving you usufruct of house and land. It was very wise of you to include that, otherwise you could have been turned out of the place at once, bag and baggage.”

“If they had tried to do that,” Fabio said, “I would have burned the house down. The usufruct clause was the notary’s idea, not mine—I trusted my partner completely.”

“Whoever’s idea it was, it is a very fortunate thing for you. You will have the right of continued residence and the enjoyment of all produce and income and any other advantages derived from the house and land until the case is settled. And the case will take long to settle, Signor Bianchi. Cases like this in Italy take many years. With the hearings concerning the
cambiali
and the hearings concerning the legitimacy of the sale and the disputes arising from these, it will be well into the next century before we get even a preliminary ruling. Then if it were unfavorable, which I think highly unlikely, there are various appeals procedures … No, I think we can safely say that the threat of dispossession is very far from imminent. Meanwhile, there is the situation of your former partner. He has not much money, as I understand it. He has no profession. Now, effectively, he has lost his house. He may find, may have already found, a new protector, if I may so express it. But he is aging, as we
all are. Protectors will get scarcer. It seems to me that he is considerably worse off than you are.”

“I would not have him back,” Fabio said, and this was not altogether true but would become so. “Not if he came begging. Why did he do it?”

“You have no idea?”

“None at all.”

Mancini regarded his client in silence for a moment. It was quite extraordinary, the evasions people were capable of, the way they would armor themselves against the lance of blame. Even a blunted lance, even minor blame. He smiled and placed his hands flat on the desk before him as if about to rise—it was his way of signaling that the interview was over. “Perhaps some lawyer talked him into it,” he said.

From his vantage point on the hillside Harold Chapman kept watch with his binoculars on the stretch of road that included the Checchetti house. From here he could see the junction of the road with the broader one that led down from the village. The lorry would come this way.

It was quite hot, even here in the shade, and the flies were bothersome. But it did not occur to him to abandon his post. When you have set your hand to the plow … Somewhere below him he heard a snatch of birdsong, abrupt and lyrical, with a melancholy dying fall. Some kind of warbler. He had originally bought the binoculars in order to do some bird-watching during his stays here
in his holiday house. He knew little about birds but they were on his list of leisure activities for Italy, like learning more about art. He had always, since his boyhood, made lists of things to be accomplished; but the lists changed with circumstances. Quite often, looking back, he could not understand the importance he had attached to some of the items. Getting Cecilia to marry him had headed the list once …