Converging Parallels (27 page)

“Dynamite! Be careful!”

Gracchi released the clutch, the side prop had come up against the body of the cycle but the earth was churned up on the powdery ground and formed a neat arc of grit and billowing petrol fumes in the air behind the machine.

Too late.

By now Pisanelli, running slower, his jacket flapping, had reached Gracchi and with the palm of his hand, he slammed against the helmet. The Laverda kicked up more dust but the front wheel was askew, pointing towards the hut. The motorbike started to topple sideways and then it fell. Gracchi was caught against the side of the hut. Angrily the rear wheel started to spin faster and faster, unchecked by friction. Pisanelli was sprawled over the bike and he was screaming.

A deafening whine, more clouds coming from the exhaust. Gracchi was on the ground, his head at a strange angle, like a broken puppet, his body caught beneath the weight of the revving
motorcycle and Pisanelli. Magagna had not moved, his gun still held at arm’s length. Slowly he straightened his body.

The plastic bag lay on the white dust near the spinning rear wheel.

The engine roared like an angry, wounded animal.

G
RACCHI DID NOT
look up.

The policeman unlocked the door—a dark grey sheet of thick steel with welded rivets—and Trotti entered the cell.

The smell of old vomit, disinfectant and desolation. They had given him some coffee and a couple of doughnuts; he ate greedily. Trotti nodded to the uniformed man who took the tray and left.

The clang of the closing bolt.

Trotti sat down.

“My father is an important man,” Gracchi looked up at Trotti’s face, “with important connections in Rome. There’s nothing you can do to me.”

“I can do what I want.”

“And lose your job.” He folded his arms.

“You run to your father now you need him—despite your differences of opinion.”

“I don’t have to justify my political allegiances to you.”

“You’ll have to justify them in court. Why kidnap her?”

“Kidnap who?”

“The little girl.”

“What little girl?”

“You don’t even read the newspapers?” Trotti laughed drily.

“Fascist rags.”

Trotti moved behind him. The yellow shirt smelled of sweat and fear. “Why did you take her?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Anna Ermagni.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You don’t know. And the letter?
‘A target chosen at random. The first attack against the so-called Communist Mariani and his lackeys?’
 ” Trotti pushed the photocopied letter before his face.

“It means nothing to me.”

“Surprising.” Trotti now faced him. “You wrote it and you signed it. The Proletarian Army of Liberation.”

He sat with his hairy arms resting on his thighs; the blue jeans were scuffed and patched with white dust. Large adhesive bandages on his forehead and temples. “Fairy tales.”

“Fairy tales—but you write them. And, my friend, they will send you to jail. Ten years, perhaps, if you behave yourself. In Sicily or Sardinia; you’ll have plenty of time to write fairy tales.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you are trying to find a culprit, I’m afraid you’re not going to have any luck. I know nothing about the child. Nothing.” His voice trembled. “You can keep your fairy tales for your friends in the Questura.”

Trotti waited. “Just one problem, Gracchi.”

“No problem at all.”

“This …”—he ran his finger along the typewritten lines of the photocopy—“was written with your typewriter. With the little Olivetti you keep in your dirty apartment—and which we’ve confiscated.”

“There’s nothing you can prove.”

Trotti laughed again. “And the dynamite?”

“I’ll have the best lawyers. They will make fools of you; they will make fools of the Questura and they will make you, Commissario, the laughing stock of the city.”

“Why did you kidnap her?”

Gracchi raised his head and shoulders; he clicked his tongue.

“You and your friends, you took her. You needed money, perhaps to buy dynamite or to buy your P38s to put bullets into people’s legs. But something went wrong and you chickened out. You were scared. Something in the paper—or something the
child said. Perhaps you realized you had made a mistake, that she didn’t come from a rich family, but you went ahead. After all, you’re terrorists.”

“I don’t kidnap children.”

“You handed her back just at a time when the grandfather was collecting the money together. You could’ve waited for the payoff. Good money. Why go to the effort of snatching the girl, terrifying her, making the life of her father and her grandparents a misery just to put her back on a bus?”

“I tell you, I don’t kidnap children.”

“We’ve picked Guerra up.”

There was no reaction.

“We’ll see what she says.”

“She’ll say nothing because like me, she won’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’ll see.”

Gracchi crossed one leg over the other. “I never touched the child and your clumsy attempt to frame me will get you nowhere. My lawyers will see to that.”

“But you blow people up? You admit to that?”

The eyes looked up and again he showed his regular, white teeth. “If it’s necessary.”

“And it is necessary?”

“A bomb can be a clinical instrument. With fools, Commissario, there can be no dialogue.”

“Why did you kidnap her?”

He sighed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He turned away. The sweat on his body had an unpleasant, rancid smell. “Look, I want to speak with my father. And I want a lawyer.”

“There’ll be time for all that later.”

“I know my rights. I insist upon speaking with a lawyer—with my father’s lawyer.”

“Why did you take her into the hills?”

“You’re a fool.”

“Why did you take her into the hills?” Trotti repeated the question flatly; a droning intonation.

Gracchi was about to reply angrily but he then let his anger escape like the air he expelled from his lungs. “Be careful, Commissario, be careful.”

For about thirty seconds the two men stared at each other.

Trotti knew he was overreacting; he was allowing himself to get emotional, and it was not necessary. The child was safe. There was no need to get angry. It was like a clever card trick; insignificant but puzzling. He wanted the truth—that was all.

“You kidnapped her,” Trotti spoke very softly.

“I don’t kidnap little children. Unlike you, Commissario, I have my values. I am not a criminal.”

“When you use bombs, you kill. Indiscriminately. Men, women and children. Yes, children. Dynamite is no respecter of persons. So don’t give me your moral cant. You have the scruples of an animal. You don’t give a shit.”

“The scruples of a soldier fighting a just war.”

“A just war?” Trotti was genuinely amazed. “A just war—you must be mad.”

“You’re mad if you can’t see the truth. This is Argentina. We’re living in South America, a banana republic. Only we’re not going to allow a Pinochet here. When the forces of reaction—your friends, Commissario—with the help of the American imperialists, the CIA and the multinationals—decide to topple this tottering, corrupt regime, then we’ll be ready. Ready and waiting. There will be no Colonels here. They’ve been working at it for ten years, slowly building up an atmosphere of tension with their provocation. Provocation—that’s what they want; push aside the old hag of a syphilitic republic and get the power. Do away with the myth of democracy. They want power to set up their dictatorship. Your Fascist dictatorship.”

“That’s why you kidnap?”

“Frighten the middle class and soften them up—nothing the bourgeoisie will not do to protect its creature comforts, its country villas and its vested interests—for the totalitarian coup.”

“And the Communists?”

“Ha ha.” He wiped the mocking smile from his mouth. “Traitors. They’ve sold out—just to lick the arses of the powerful and
the corrupt. There was a time when they were Communists, when they stood for something, when they had genuine goals. And when they had morality.”

“You alone have morals?”

“The Communists are like all the others—constitutional and corrupt, fighting for their little piece of the cake of power. Corrupt and insidious and duping the working classes. But the working classes won’t be fooled, just as we won’t be fooled by the Fascists. We’ll be waiting for them. We’ll answer their repression with blood. With blood and with violence and with the knowledge that we are right. And out of the heroic struggle, from the blood of our companions killed in the war of resistance, we will set up a new Socialist State. For the workers, for the productive classes. A free society. Not a puppet of America. Not a lackey State—but a People’s Democratic and Socialist State. A society based upon freedom.”

His eyes had begun to sparkle. He raised his voice but he did not gesticulate and now he looked at Trotti. There was silence.

“You belong to the Red Brigades?”

Gracchi clicked his tongue.

“You use the same slogans,” Trotti said.

“We can see the same, glaring truth. Since ’69, they’ve been preparing—you’ve been preparing the coup, making your plans. Because the Italian miracle scared you. The working class and the Italian peasants, who for centuries had accepted the exploitation and the blackmail meted out to them, started to rebel. And that scares you. The autumn of ’69 when the workers in Milan and Turin demanded better treatment—less medieval treatment. The unionization in the factories, the new political awareness. And all you could do was answer by transforming the police and the Carabinieri into forces of repression; and you started your strategy of tension. Piazza Fontana you remember? In Milan? For years public opinion believed it was Leftist extremists who placed the bomb that killed innocent men and women. But it was you. It was the reactionary police who wanted more power, who wanted to get greater, more repressive powers. And it worked. New laws, more power, new men, new guns, more repression.”
He shook his head. “We learned our lesson. You won’t catch us out a second time.”

“You say we.”

“No, Commissario—I am not a brigatista. I do not believe in the indiscriminate use of violence. Lotta Continua, yes, but not the Red Brigades.”

“And the dynamite?”

Gracchi ignored the question. “Violence is a trap—a trap set by you and the forces of repression, the anti-democratic forces. We fall into it and we are playing your game. The excuse to clamp down, a justification for more repression. A further excuse to exploit the working masses of this country. No, we will not be provoked; we will not make the mistake of the Red Brigades who by their action have unleashed the Fascist forces of the totalitarian State.”

“Then why the gun—the P38?”

“We must be ready.”

“That’s why you kidnap?”

“You are a fool, Commissario. A fool, a dangerous fool. You don’t understand, you can’t see what’s going on.” He smiled; a well-fed, unshaven, middle-class revolutionary. “I called you a Fascist. You must forgive me. I was crediting you with a political understanding that you don’t have. Fascism—you don’t even know what it means. You are a fool, an idiot—and because of that you are the worst kind of Fascist.” He snorted. “You can’t even see that you’re being exploited, that you are being used by the agents of international Capitalism to uphold a creaking system that exploits you, that alienates you from your class, that enslaves you and denies you your self-respect and your human dignity.”

“And the child?”

“Damn you,” he shouted, suddenly angry and standing up, “damn you, you flatfoot, Fascist pig. The child’s alive. She’s alive, isn’t she? What more do you want? She’s alive. Consider yourself lucky.”

C
ARS WERE PARKED
carelessly, their front wheels almost beneath the arcade. The air smelled of cheese and sawdust. The morning’s fish market was already over and apart from a few empty wooden cases, standing against the scarred brick wall of the cathedral, and apart from a few glistening fish scales, drying in the sun, there was no sign of the bustle that had animated the small square. They had gone, the eager fishmongers and the fat housewives prodding at the silvery goods.

It was nearly four o’clock and the shops were opening after the long lunch.

“She was in his apartment, waiting for him. Di Bono picked her up; she spat in his face, but apart from that she didn’t put up any struggle.” He stroked his mustache. “A pretty girl. Shame that she should be a terrorist.” Magagna nodded wisely.

“We can’t hold them without a charge.”

The sound of their feet echoed along the arcade.

“Even if the parents don’t complain, the NP will want to know what’s happened to them. They saw us pick up Gracchi.” Trotti popped a sweet into his mouth. “It’s as though Leonardelli doesn’t want to admit to these things. He’s like an ostrich; he hides his head and thinks the problems will go away. Only it’s not his neck that he sticks out—it is mine.”

Near the urinals, daubed with graffiti, a water tap ran ceaselessly, its overflow staining the cobbles. A couple of boys, their
neat shirts and short trousers now damp, splashed and kicked water at each other and screamed with unrestrained joy.

“He’s a politician,” Magagna said simply.

This was one of the oldest quarters of the city. The shops jostled together, forming a protective ring around the walls of the cathedral. They walked along the arcade and turned into the narrow street that ran down to the river.

Trotti knew the brothel; once, many years ago, when he was still a student at the technical institute, he had come here with some classmates. Together they had found some money—goodness knows where.

In those days, the place had not acquired its tired appearance, its atmosphere of pervasive seediness. If Buonarese—the nephew of a priest in Cremona, a tall boy with short hair and outrageously large ears—had not told him it was a whorehouse, Trotti would never have guessed it. From the outside—the faintly glimpsed wicker chairs and the opaline lights—it looked like rather distinguished tearooms.