The telephone rang four or five times before Roberto managed to find it in the kitchen, between the coffee maker, the chipped cups, and a half-empty package of cookies.
"h.e.l.lo?"
"Roberto?"
"Emma."
"Hi, everything all right? I"m sorry, but your voice ..."
"I"m a bit out of breath, I was doing my exercises ..."
"I don"t know, I didn"t recognize you. Your voice seems ... different. But what am I talking about? I only heard you on the phone once, I couldn"t even remember your voice." And then, after a moment: "Of course, if I had to wait for you to improve my self-esteem, I"d still be waiting."
"How do you mean?"
"I"m obviously going downhill. In fact, meeting you is a confirmation of my decline. In the past, a man I"d spent an evening with like the one we had would have called me the next morning, at the latest. Even a.s.suming he hadn"t kept calling me and asking me to come up and see his apartment. Instead of which, a week has pa.s.sed, but not a sign of life from you. I"m a former beauty, now it"s official."
Roberto did not know what to reply. Of course he had thought of calling her several times, but hadn"t been able to bring himself to do so. He had tried asking himself why and couldn"t find a good answer. After that night in the doctor"s office, everything seemed to be hanging in the air.
"Luckily I"ve found a reason to phone you. Can you listen to me for a few minutes?" Her voice had become more serious.
"Yes, of course."
"My son Giacomo asked me a strange question."
All at once she seemed to hesitate, as if she had been overcome with doubt about what to say, and maybe about the very advisability of this call. Several seconds pa.s.sed. Eventually it was Roberto who broke the silence.
"Go on."
"He asked me if I knew any policemen."
"Why did he want to know that?"
"He told me he"d like to speak to a policeman because there"s something he has to tell him."
"What kind of thing?"
"He didn"t go into detail. All he told me is that a girl in his cla.s.s is in serious trouble and that it"s something the police ought to look into."
"Did he tell you what kind of trouble?"
Emma sighed.
"Giacomo isn"t an easy kid. As I said before, talking to him or getting him to talk can be quite complicated. The things he told me, though, seem worrying, if they are true."
A new pause. Silence, apart from her breathing at the other end of the line.
"Listen, you wouldn"t have half an hour to spare, would you? We could meet, I could tell you in person, and then maybe you could talk to Giacomo. Talking to him, you"d be able to tell if it"s a serious matter or not."
Do I have half an hour? I don"t just have half an hour, I have all the time in the world. For months now, I"ve had all the time in the world and I"ll have even more if they throw me out of the Carabinieri. That was what he thought, word for word, but he didn"t say it. And yet for the first time the thought of being discharged for good scared him. For a long time he had thought it didn"t matter; the idea of abandoning the uniform left him indifferent. Now just the possibility of it dismayed him.
"Yes, I have half an hour. Where shall we meet?"
This time she was punctual. In fact, she was early, because when Roberto arrived, at three on the dot, she was already there, sitting at the same table as the last time.
When she saw him, Emma stood up, came to him and kissed him on the cheeks. Maybe it was the embrace, maybe it was the two kisses-kisses with the lips on the cheeks, not in the more conventional way, with one cheek pressed against the other-maybe it was something else, but Roberto felt himself go red and a small electrical charge went through his body. He immediately felt embarra.s.sed, irritated with himself for his own awkwardness.
"Thanks for coming," she said.
Don"t mention it, it"s a pleasure, he was about to reply. But he restrained himself and it seemed to him that he had done the right thing. It was as if he were trying to learn again how to behave, he thought.
"Tell me about Giacomo."
"Yes. Well, the fact is, I don"t really know where to begin. Maybe it"s just a young boy"s imagination and I"m only telling you about it because I want to be rea.s.sured."
"Don"t worry. Just tell me and we"ll try to figure out what to do."
The waitress came and took their orders. Roberto felt good, alert, alive.
"Last night Giacomo asked me if I knew any policemen. I asked him why, and he said there"s a girl in his school who"s in danger. "Someone"s hurting her and I don"t know what to do to help her," he said."
"What kind of danger?"
"Apparently ... apparently some boys the same age, or maybe a bit older, are forcing her to have s.e.x."
"Who"s his source?"
He realized he had spoken as if he were in a briefing.
"I mean, how did he find out?"
"He says he heard rumors at school."
"But has he talked to this girl? Did she confide in him, did she tell him something?"
"That"s the problem."
"Why?"
"He says she asked him for help, but ..."
"But?"
"He says she asked him for help in a dream."
"I"m sorry?"
"That"s what he said: the girl asked him for help in a dream. But he sounded so genuine when he told me this that I thought I ought to do something. Then I told myself I did know a policeman, or rather a carabiniere, that having a chat doesn"t cost anything, and that I"d feel much calmer if I heard the opinion of a ... well, someone like you. I also thought of asking the doctor for advice-we"ve often talked about Giacomo-but then I thought it was better to call you."
Roberto let a few minutes pa.s.s, trying to focus his thoughts, without much success.
"You say they"re in the same cla.s.s?"
"Yes."
"And Giacomo hasn"t tried talking to her?"
Emma shrugged and shook her head.
"All right," he said finally, "let me talk to the boy and we"ll see what emerges."
"If you like, we can go home now."
"Let"s go."
26.
The first thing that struck Roberto was the smell. He"d never been good at naming smells-who is?-but there was something sharp and clean in the air you breathed in that apartment.
They entered a living room with a table, a big TV set, a bookcase, fresh flowers in a tall vase made of transparent colored plastic, a beautiful old leather sofa, prints and photographs in black and white on the walls. Roberto felt a strong desire to belong to what was around him, to be admitted to it, and at the same time he was a.s.sailed by a painful awareness of not being up to it, of being forever excluded.
"Giacomo"s in his room. I"ll go and get him."
Left alone, Roberto found himself doing something he didn"t usually do: inspecting the books on the shelves. A few weeks earlier, he wouldn"t even have noticed them. Now they aroused his curiosity. He pulled one out, looked at it cautiously, as if it were an object with which he still had to familiarize himself, and then put it back in its place. He did the same thing with another book, then another. He was holding one whose t.i.tle had attracted his attention-Heart of Darkness-when Emma came back into the room. Behind her was a thin young boy with dark eyes. In Roberto"s head the apparition of Estela took shape again, sitting on the bed, with the invisible child in the darkness. It lasted a few seconds, like a sudden sharp pain.
"This is Giacomo," Emma said. "Giacomo, this is Roberto."
Roberto held out his hand to the boy and felt it being gripped surprisingly firmly.
"Roberto"s a carabiniere."
Then the three of them stood there, saying nothing, until Roberto broke the silence.
"You told me Giacomo wanted to talk to me. Maybe it"d be easier if we were alone for a few minutes. If you don"t mind."
Emma looked around, dumbfounded, searching for something to say but not finding it. Then she shrugged, told them to call her when they were finished, and left the room.
Roberto looked at the boy, and the boy sustained his gaze.
"Shall we sit down?"
They both sat down on the sofa. Roberto felt the cracks in the leather beneath his hands and was surprised at the way all his senses-touch, at this particular moment-were coming back to life.
"I don"t think you"re the kind of person who beats around the bush," Roberto said.
"So you"re a carabiniere?"
He"d been right.
"Yes, I"m a marshal."
"What do you do exactly?"
"I"m a detective, I deal with organized crime." No point being too specific, like saying that he used to deal with organized crime but would never be doing so again.
The answer didn"t seem to impress the boy.
"How do you know my mother?"
"Her car broke down once, I saw her, stopped, and helped her to get it started. Then we happened to meet again. We"ve chatted a few times. Today she called me and told me you"d asked to speak to a policeman or a carabiniere. I think I"m the only person she knows in that line of work, that"s why she turned to me."
The boy scratched his head: he had exhausted the preliminaries and did not know how to carry on.
"From what your mother told me, you know something about a problem a school friend of yours has."
"Yes."
"Do you want to tell me about it?"
Giacomo told his story, and he did so in a brief, precise way, in the tone of an officer reporting on an investigation. There was a rumor going around school about a p.o.r.nography and prost.i.tution ring. Apparently, it was run by a group of older boys, maybe from high school. There were girls forced to have s.e.x and let themselves be filmed, and among them was a cla.s.smate of his-Giacomo told him her name-who was desperately in need of help.
"Who told you these things?"
"People from school, but I don"t know any of their names," he said, touching his face in the kind of gesture common in those not telling the whole truth. It doesn"t matter, Roberto thought. The boy was protecting his sources. Like any self-respecting detective.
"Have you tried to talk about it with the girl-Ginevra you told me her name was, right?"
"I tried."
"And what did she say?"
"Nothing."
"So how can you be so sure she"s involved with this ring and needs help?"
Giacomo hesitated before replying.
"I know you"re going to think this is crazy, but I had a dream. And in that dream Ginevra asked for help. She was desperate."