The Past is a Foreign Country (12 page)

A FEW DAYS later, on the date indicated on Gino the lawyer’s cheque, we went to the bank to cash it and divide the money. As usual.

The cashier ran the usual checks and then said he was sorry but the account was overdrawn and they couldn’t accept the cheque. This had never happened before and I felt, absurdly, as if I’d been caught in the act. I was sure the cashier was going to ask me how I had got hold of that cheque, as well as a whole lot of other
questions
, and, seeing the guilty look on my face, would find me out. The silence only lasted a few seconds, but they seemed very long. I didn’t know what to say. I’d rather not have been there, however I’d got there.

Then I heard Francesco’s voice, just behind me. He asked the cashier to give us back the cheque, because obviously there’d been a misunderstanding with the client. Those were his exact words: ‘There must have been a misunderstanding with the client.’ These things happened. There was no need to make it official, no need to re-present the cheque, we’d handle it ourselves. Thank you and have a nice day.

A few moments later we were outside the bank, in the sultriness of the Bari summer.

‘The asshole. I should have expected this.’ For the first time since I’d got to know him, Francesco seemed angry. Really angry. ‘It’s my fault. We shouldn’t play in gaming clubs and we shouldn’t play with people like that. Damn it.’

‘What do you mean, people like that?’

‘Gambling addicts. Compulsive players. That’s what he was.’

There was rage and contempt in what Francesco was saying and the way he was saying it. For some reason I found this quite natural, even though I didn’t understand why.

‘Did you see how he played?’

He paused, but it wasn’t to hear my answer. In fact, I didn’t say anything.

‘People like him play the way other people take heroin. They’re junkies. And you can’t trust them, any more than you can trust
junkies
. They’d rob their own mothers, fathers, wives, their own children to be able to play one more time. They borrow money from their friends and never pay it back. They think they know how to play, and to hear them talk they always have some foolproof scientific
system
that means they can’t fail. But then when they sit down to play, they play like madmen. And when they lose they immediately want to play again. They always want more. They need it, because playing makes them feel alive. Cheapskates, all of them. There’s nobody I’d trust less than one of those people. And yet I sat down to play with one of them, knowing what he was. It’s my fault.’

Francesco continued speaking but after a while I stopped
listening
. His voice faded into the background, and I seemed to have a sudden intuition into the reason for his anger. For a few moments, or maybe longer, I can’t say, I thought I glimpsed the hidden
meaning
behind what he was saying.

Then that meaning dissolved, as suddenly as it had formed.

Many years later, I would read that compulsive gambling is an attempt to control the uncontrollable, and gives the gambler the
illusion
that he’s the master of his own destiny. And I would recall, quite clearly, the intuition I’d had that morning.

The reason Francesco resented Gino the lawyer so much was
because
the poor wretch was his double, his mirror image. He couldn’t
bear looking in that mirror and so he destroyed him, thinking he would destroy his own fear.

They both had the same fever in their souls. Francesco, too, when he manipulated cards – and people – was chasing after the illusion that he could dominate his own destiny.

Both, in different ways, were walking on the edge of the same precipice.

And I was close behind them. Very close.

We went and sat down on the terrace of a bar on the sea front where all the big Fascist-era buildings are, near the Art Gallery.

Francesco said we absolutely had to get that money back.
Immediately
after the game, he had paid the money he had lost. He had lost it deliberately, to that dangerous man whose face I couldn’t even remember, to avoid any suspicion that the game wasn’t straight. Added to that was the cost of the table, the percentage of the
winnings
I’d paid to the manager of the club, and so on.

First of all we had to make up those losses.
One way or another
, he said, in the neutral tone of a businessman discussing a balance sheet. But I didn’t like the expression on his face as he said it. I didn’t like it at all.

I had the feeling something was about to go wrong. The feeling that something – something that wasn’t good – was looming. The feeling that I was close to a point of no return.

So I feebly suggested we forget about the man. We didn’t really need the money, we already had more than enough. We should
divide
our losses and drop the subject.

He didn’t like that.

He was silent for a while, his jaws clenched as if he were
making
an effort to contain his anger. Then, without looking at me, he
started speaking in a low, tense voice. He had the icy, almost
metallic
tone of someone talking to a subordinate who wasn’t doing his job. I went red, but I don’t think he noticed.

It wasn’t about the money. Not only about the money. We couldn’t just let an unpaid gambling debt pass. It would arouse suspicion, there’d be rumours, one way or another, and for us it would be the beginning of the end. We
had
to get that money back. All of it.

I didn’t ask the obvious question. How could there possibly be rumours, since the only person who knew was the man himself, and he certainly wouldn’t be going around advertising the fact that he had paid a gambling debt of millions of lire with a cheque that bounced?

I didn’t ask that question because I wanted him to stop using that tone. I didn’t want him to be angry with me. I didn’t want him to take away his approval.

So I told myself that we had no choice. He was right. We couldn’t let something like that pass. It was a risk we couldn’t afford to take. We had to get that money back because otherwise, I told myself, it would all be over for us. I told myself many things, in a confused attempt to convince myself.

As he spoke, and I found reasons to agree with him, my unease and anxiety subsided, to be replaced by the stupid, false but
reassuring
belief that I had no alternative.

So in the end I nodded my agreement, like a businessman who has been persuaded by another businessman to do something that was unpleasant but necessary.

Because it was clear, very clear, that asking him for that money wasn’t going to be pleasant.   

THE APPOINTMENT WAS at eight in the evening, in the
gardens
of the Piazza Cesare Battisti, opposite the central post office and the faculty of law. My faculty.

I arrived a few minutes late and Francesco was already there.

He had someone else with him.

The man’s name was Piero. He was quite ordinary-looking, of medium height and medium build, about thirty-five years old, I guessed, maybe a little more. He would have looked quite
unremarkable
if it hadn’t been for his hair. It was long, unnaturally fair and gathered into a ponytail, tied with an absurd pink elastic band. He was carrying a thick black leather shoulder bag, which had
something
inexplicably indecent about it.

Piero would go with me to see Gino the lawyer – he knew where he lived – and would help me to convince him to pay what he owed. Quickly and without fuss. No point in making a fuss.

Before leaving, Francesco offered to buy us an aperitif at the Caffè della Posta. The same café where, up until the previous year, I’d often dropped in for a drink after lessons or seminars, or after doing an exam.

As I drank chilled prosecco, chewed pistachios, and saw images of my past life, I felt enveloped in a sense of unreality. As if these things, and this one in particular, weren’t happening to me. And, simultaneously, as
if even my earlier life hadn’t been mine. Caught between two feelings of emptiness that were at once nagging and dull.

We left the café and Francesco – who obviously couldn’t come with us – said goodbye. He shook hands with Piero and patted me smugly on the back.

We were near the courthouse. An area that was bleak by day and dangerous after dark. Piero pointed to the front entrance of a small, wretched-looking three-storey building. He told me, in dialect, that this was where the man lived. So we sat down on the bonnet of a parked car on the other side of the street and waited.

Piero worked as a male nurse at the general hospital but, he said, he only went in when they needed him. In other words, almost never. A colleague clocked in for him and the consultant never said anything. In return, whenever they needed a favour, like tracing a stolen car or something like that, they all turned to him.

He spoke in a flat voice, partly in dialect, partly in Italian, and chain-smoked Cartier cigarettes, putting them out halfway through by crushing the paper and the tobacco between the thumb and
middle
finger of his right hand.

Half an hour later, Gino the lawyer appeared. He was dressed in exactly the same way as the other night. The same white shirt, the same old-fashioned trousers. As he walked he smoked.

We crossed the road and intercepted him when he was almost at the front door of his building.

He saw me first and was about to smile when he noticed Piero. The smile froze on his lips.

‘Good evening,’ Piero said. ‘Shall we go and have a coffee?’

‘I really should get home. I’ve been out all day.’

Piero went right up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Let’s
go and have a coffee,’ he said again. In the same flat tone. Without hinting at anything, not even a threat. Gino the lawyer didn’t raise any other objections, didn’t resist. He seemed resigned.

We turned the corner, walked in silence to the end of the block, and then turned again. We were in a small dead-end street without shops or bars.

‘Now, what happened with that cheque?’

We had stopped in front of a closed, rusty shutter, next to an unlit street lamp. Again, Piero had spoken in the same tone, so that it almost didn’t sound like a question. Gino the lawyer was about to say something when he saw Piero’s hand – the one free of the shoulder bag – flash in the dim light. It made a quick semicircular trajectory and struck the man’s face very hard – this man who was my father’s age.

It was such a hard slap that I saw Gino’s head sway and his neck almost stretch with the impact. Like one of those slow motion
replays
of a boxing match, where you see glove meet chin and the boxer’s head wobbles uncontrollably from side to side before he
collapses
to the ground with his eyes upturned.

That was when I noticed that Gino the lawyer had a bald patch, over which he brushed his hair. I hadn’t paid any attention to it before, but the slap had dislodged a long lock of hair, and you could see the bald patch in the middle of his head and that lock of hair hanging, almost perpendicular, from his forehead to his nose.

I felt something like panic. But it wasn’t panic at all. It was a mixture of fear, shame, and a kind of mindless, shameful elation. The kind of thing you feel when you exercise almost absolute power over another human being.

I didn’t know what to do. Gino’s chin was trembling, like a child’s when it’s about to cry and is trying desperately to hold back the tears. The lock of hair hung pathetically, looking like a false appendage.

I felt something grow quickly inside me and go through me as
uncontrollably as a wave of water rushing through pipes that are too narrow.

And I hit him, too.

I slapped him, not as hard as Piero, but hard enough, and on the same side of the face.

I slapped him to stop him shaking. I slapped him out of spite. And out of anger. The kind of anger that takes hold of you when you’re confronted with someone else’s weakness and cowardice and you recognise – or are afraid to recognise – your own weakness and cowardice. When you’re faced with someone’s failure and you try to destroy the fear that sooner or later you’ll fail in the same way.

I slapped him, and for a moment he had a look of astonishment in his eyes, which immediately gave way to a resigned expression, as if he thought he deserved to be hit.

Then I spoke, in order not to think about what I had just done. What I was doing. I spoke to hold back the wicked smile I could feel creeping up on me. A smile of satisfaction at what I’d been capable of doing. But I also spoke to protect him. To prevent Piero from hitting him again. One way or another, I took control of the situation.

‘Why are you forcing us to do this?’

I assumed a disappointed yet understanding expression. As if he were an old friend of mine who’d betrayed my trust but I was still willing to forgive him, if only he’d let me.

With a pathetic gesture of vanity, Gino tried to put the hair back in place over his bald spot, as if to regain a modicum of dignity now that we were talking and he had to answer me.

‘But I don’t have the money. I’d like to give it to you, but I don’t have it right now. I’ve had a few problems. I can try to get it, but at the moment I don’t have it.’

Absurdly, I felt like saying, OK, that’s fine. Sorry we had to hit you, but you know how it is, business is business – and as soon as
you have the money we’ll meet again. I’d say that and then go.

Instead, Piero intervened. He had been quiet up until now,
surprised
, I imagine, by the turn the situation had taken and my
unexpected
behaviour.

He said we’d talked too much. Gino had to sign some bills of exchange, ten, twelve at the most. Naturally there’d be interest to pay, for the delay and the bother. We – he said
we
– would redeem those bills of exchange at the bank and he would do well to make sure they were covered. He didn’t change his tone of voice, not even when he said that if a single one of the bills wasn’t covered, he’d be back to break Gino’s arm.

Gino the lawyer turned to look at me. He seemed incredulous that someone like me was involved in something like this. I looked away, nodding gravely. I was playing my part. As if to say, Of course I don’t like it, but if you don’t behave, it’s going to happen. Don’t force us to do it.

Technically, I’m committing extortion.

These words formed in my mind independently of my will. I heard them and at the same time saw them written down, as if
printed
on a document. Or a police statement.

We stood there in silence for a few seconds.

‘Let’s go and get that coffee,’ Piero said at last. ‘That way we can sit down, do those bills of exchange and then we can all go home.’

Gino the lawyer made one final, weak objection. ‘But where will we find the right documents at this hour? Everywhere’s closed.’

‘I brought them with me, don’t worry,’ Piero said, touching his indecently large shoulder bag. You had to hand it to him, he was a professional.

We went to a bar and sat down at a table, at the far end, almost in the back room. I felt dizzy and vaguely nauseous. When the coffee arrived I couldn’t drink it. Piero took out his packet of Cartiers and offered it to us. Gino said, no thanks, if he didn’t mind he preferred
his own. Piero insisted, in his usual voice, that he take one of his. Gino did as he was told. I took one, too, but after lighting it I let it burn down without smoking it.

Gino the lawyer signed the bills of exchange, maybe ten, maybe twelve. He wrote with his head down. I looked at those pieces of paper and his hand moving to form that elegant, painfully affected writing. I couldn’t take my eyes off that pale hand, and that two-lire ballpoint pen, on the greenish surface of that cheap table.

When it was all done, I stood up, took the bills of exchange, rolled them up, and put them in my trouser pocket. Then I stood there motionless, not knowing what to do or what to say. The only things that came into my mind were absurd phrases like: thanks, see you again. Or: hope to see you again when things are better. Or else: I’m sorry, but business is business and unfortunately debts have to be paid. In all these imagined phrases, I spoke to him with a degree of respect. As I would if we’d met in other circumstances. After all, he was the same age as my father.

I was about to give him my hand, as if to express a craven
sympathy
, when my companion spoke. My accomplice.

‘Let’s go.’ He sounded impatient, as if he was thinking that
amateurs
shouldn’t do the work of professionals. Or perhaps I imagined that, and he simply wanted to go. I hesitated another few seconds, then turned and walked to the door without saying anything.

When I reached the door, I turned. Gino was sitting at the back of the bar, exactly where we had left him. He had his head propped on one hand, his elbow on the table, his other arm dangling by his side. He seemed to be looking at something with a certain vague interest.

But where he was looking there was nothing but the peeling wall.