Persecution (9781609458744) (25 page)

There was no occasion when Herrera didn't reproach him. Why did he waste so much time on that lunatic nonsense? Why didn't he stick to his orders? This was the road to the madhouse, not the way to win the trial that they would soon have to face together.

“Rest, read, exercise, think about other things . . . Your wife doesn't want to see you? Find yourself a twenty-year-old to fuck. If you want I'll get one for you. But distract yourself, for God's sake. I want you fresh, tough, and ready, when the time comes to fight. I want you to be in shape. At the height of your psychic and physical powers. You understand what I'm telling you?”

“Of course I understand. But do you realize that this shit says I favored one milk company over another for reasons of friendship, for reasons of patronage? And this one calls me a degenerate? A child molester?”

“Leo, no serious person charges you with anything at all. Only that shit of a journalist. And thank heaven journalists aren't the ones who run trials.”

“But do you know how many people must have read that article? Do you know how many people who know me and who don't know me believe I'm the monster who did all these things?”

“It seems to me that you're somewhat idealizing the average newspaper reader. The majority have trouble reading the headlines, and the minority who embark on the undertaking of starting an article are already limping at the fourth line. The scant few heroes who get to the end, well, they forget the entire contents in the act of moving on to the next article. And that's what you should do. Forget. Forget the whole business. You don't realize it because it has to do with your life, because the thing burns you, which is natural, and also because you can't have my objectivity, but your affair is going out of fashion.
You
are going out of fashion. And this, I assure you, can only play into our hands. I shouldn't tell you this, but I nourish many hopes. The more I examine, the deeper I get into this business, the better I understand the impressive series of mistakes, conjectures, strained interpretations. In the end we'll make it. I promise you. All you should be thinking about is what will become of you when this business is over. You should be thinking of yourself, your health, your family, how to get back on track. You don't give a shit about fucking a twenty-year-old? At least find some way of talking to Rachel and the boys. Remake your relationship with them. Regain their trust. If you want I'll help you. I'll talk to Rachel. I'll put before her all the incontrovertible proof of your good faith and your foolishness. I'll show her in detail how the story of the girl has no criminal implication, I'll show her how that girl literally subjugated you, blackmailed you, leading you to the brink of despair . . . ”

“No, please, I beg you, Herrera, I'll do what you want. But don't say anything to Rachel, leave the boys alone.”

“But why? You don't think they'd like to know that their father and husband isn't the monster that some would have us believe?”

“No, no, please. No. Promise you won't do it.”

“All right, all right, I promise, but don't get excited. I won't say anything. But you can't go on avoiding them. Being ashamed in front of them. Leo, you don't have anything to be ashamed of. Absolutely. The person telling you this makes his living by defending habitually devious sharks who should have a million things to be ashamed of but, God knows why, don't even know what it means to blush.”

Herrera was preaching, as they say, in the wilderness. The problem was that Leo was that wilderness. The funny thing was that what had, in part, impelled Leo to go to Herrera was the conviction that he, better than any other, would be able to understand the shame that Leo couldn't in any way purify himself of. Evidently Leo had calculated badly. Not only for him had things changed over time. They had for Herrera, too. He was no longer the despised dwarf he had been. Now he was a successful man. Through his virile charisma, through his satanic cleverness and his acrobatic eloquence he had made the world forget his height and his appearance. And, despite all his empathic capacities, how could that renowned lawyer imagine the life Leo had been leading? The abyss he had fallen into? The most recent period of his human experience (the only granted to him) was rigorously devoted to shame.

Did Herrera know anything about what it means to be aware that your sons are looking at you unperturbed while you're on your knees in front of a man who is about to shoot you? What it means to imagine what your children are suffering because of you? But, so it is, Leo would never have been able to explain to a rational man that, when you are so involved with shame, the only thing you wish for is more of it. To bury yourself under it, like a man who has just been shot and every so often presses on the wound to feel where the pain is. That was why all that documentation was useful, all those scrupulously filed newspaper clippings: it kept him attached as tightly as possible to his shame, so that he wouldn't forget it or underestimate it for a single instant.

Or maybe yes, Herrera was right. Maybe he was going mad? But was there anyone, at least in their world, who under those circumstances had more right to go mad?

The picture that I ruthlessly reproduce on the facing page managed to put Leo's nervous system to a hard test.

It appeared suddenly in a couple of newspapers, accompanying articles discussing his
affaire
. Finally they have what they wanted, Leo thought, overexcited. They have their ace in the hole. Other evidence that had developed, other abominations were of no use. That photograph said all there was to say. That photograph could have served as a publicity poster for the campaign to raise public awareness whose final, by now obvious, objective was the elimination from the social organism of the bacterium Leo Pontecorvo.

Leo didn't even know how they had dug up that photograph. He already heard it, the voice of the classic, very sensible simple soul (the world is full of them), who would reassure him by saying that it was no big deal. It didn't show him naked, or dressed as a woman, or in dubious poses, or with a gun in his hand, not to mention drunk. It hadn't caught him in a compromising position with Camilla, or engaged in any of the infinite number of corrupt acts that were attributed to him. Nothing like that. Why are you getting so excited? the very sensible soul would have asked, basically all this photo shows is a man mounted on a horse like a thousand other men who practice the anachronistic art of equestrianism. But it's exactly that! Leo replied inwardly and at the height of agitation to the hypothetical sensible soul. That is the point. That is the secret. That is the low blow. It's an insinuating, specious photograph, full of double meanings and false bottoms.

He, who now knew the system from the inside (that majestic and insidious incinerator), could conceive the iconographic power of a photograph like that. A power such that this time not even Herrera could minimize it. With his subtle intuition he would certainly understand.

“We're back on this stuff? But didn't you promise me that . . . ?”

“Yes, I know, and I swear I've kept it . . . rather, I've tried to. But it's not so easy and maybe not even so intelligent to ignore this stuff. I have the right to check, to monitor. You can't keep an eye on everything, and your colleagues can't, either. I know, I know, all day they're working for me. But these things they can't understand. You'll agree with me that it takes our intelligence, our upbringing, our maturity to understand certain things . . . ”

“Calm down, Leo, calm down, nothing is happening. Now I'll give it a glance, as you say, just calm down a moment . . . ”

“Why are you telling me to calm down? I don't want to calm down. I can't calm down. How can I calm down when they continue to publish this kind of slander?”

“But what slander?”

So Leo put it down in front of him again. And Herrera, without losing control, resumed:

“Look, I've seen it. It's a photograph, that's all. Maybe it doesn't show you at the height of your attractiveness. Maybe you're not the most photogenic man in the world. But, good God, it's a photograph. The photograph of a man on horseback dressed like a shit. I've seen a million. All you have to do is buy the magazine
The
Horse
not to mention
Show Jumping
or
Dressage
, and you'll find another thousand.”

This time that cynicism didn't amuse him, that brisk irony didn't make him feel at home or intimate. It made him indignant. And made his heart sink. Leo had no desire to joke; he wanted to be taken seriously. He expected a serious response. He was spending his last cent, reducing his family to poverty, to get serious answers. So he ought to give him a serious answer.

“O.K., sorry, no joking. I swear to you, my friend, that I can't understand what you're saying. I can't understand why this picture should be more dangerous or more defamatory than all the ones that have been published so far.”

Was it possible that he didn't understand? A man of his subtlety, his cleverness, his sensitivity didn't understand. Probably to understand certain things you have to be in the middle, you have to be involved. Everything in life has a meaning. This entire tragedy has a meaning. Is it possible that you, Herrera, you, don't understand it?

Leo really needed to believe in it. In the meaning of what was happening. But he didn't know how to convince his lawyer that that photograph was connected to that notorious meaning. So he tried to calm down. Or, rather, to play the part of the man who is calming down.

“You're sure there's no way to make them withdraw this photograph? To get it pulped? I don't know, charge them all with defamation?”

“You see? I don't understand what you're raving about. What's happening to you? You're losing control. I repeat: it's a photograph. All you have to do is not look at it. Don't buy the newspapers and don't turn on the TV. That is the only prescription against paranoia.”

“So now you're calling me paranoid? What does paranoia have to do with it? I'm paranoid just because I realize, because I register meticulously what's happening? Everything that's happened to me seems to you like paranoia? You know what I'm going through? Do you have any idea how alone I feel? Overnight I became a worm. A reject. No one is willing to grant me anything. You remember the conference at Basle, the one they invited me to? Well, yesterday evening a girl, a shit with a very polite voice, left a message on my answering machine. You know what she said?”

“How should I know? That they changed the time of the coffee break?”

“That at the last minute they had had to cancel the conference. That they were dismayed, they didn't know how it could have happened, but that because of a regrettable series of circumstances . . . and all that other Swiss rubbish . . . ”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What's the moral?”

“The moral, Herrera, is that they're killing me. The moral is that for a while everyone has been killing me. Including the Swiss. But you know why they decided right now to finish me off?”

“Why?”

“But it's so clear, holy Christ! Because they saw the photograph. Think about it, Herrera. I've thought about it, since last night I've been thinking about it, and it hangs together perfectly. This fucking newspaper is available in Basle, right? Of course it is, I found out. Evidently it ended up in the hands of some idiot bureaucrat. That bureaucrat showed it to the committee. And only then the committee decided. This photograph convinced them. I see them all in a little knot looking at it, commenting on it, judging it . . . I see it all.”

“And you don't think they barred you because of everything that's happened to you in recent months? When you told me about it you said you were surprised that they hadn't revoked the invitation, with some excuse. And now, look: they've done it.”

“Yes, but why just now?”

“Because they've come back from vacation. Because the conference is approaching. Or because they only now remembered you. How should I know? And above all, who gives a shit? Do you really think that one of the organizers, after coming across this photograph by chance, had a revelation? And only then withdrew the invitation? This is what you're telling me? This is your brilliant deduction?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, my friend, as you see, the stopper is out of the bottle . . . I told you not to read that shit. It's that shit that is turning your brain to mush. You're not the first I've seen reduced to this state. You've stopped thinking straight. I repeat: you're not the first I've seen reduced like this. And I knew it might happen. Well, let someone help you who still has his feet planted on the ground: unbelievable as it may seem to you, this photograph says nothing more about you than any other I've ever seen. Yes, it's true, it shows you in a sporting activity. Maybe the sport you're engaged in isn't among the most common, in fact, let's admit, it's a bit snobbish. Maybe this will make some people angry. Some working-class guy, some populist. Maybe the concierge will say to the butcher's boy, ‘Just look at this shit of a pedophile, this thief, this loan shark, this shitty Jew with all his billions. I would've bet he'd go horseback riding dressed like someone going foxhunting.' Yes, I don't deny that that could happen. But between that and saying that this photograph is the product of a great plot intent on destroying you, well, there's a big difference.”