"No, what was it?"
"Mongoose."
"That"s the animal, a bit like a marten, that can kill a cobra, isn"t it?"
"Yes, we almost all had animal names. Do you know why the mongoose can kill a cobra and snakes in general?"
"I suppose because it"s very fast and can grab the snake by the throat before the snake has a chance to bite it."
"That"s true, but sometimes the cobra manages to inject its poison all the same, and still nothing happens to the mongoose."
"Do you mean they have a kind of immunity to snake poison?"
"Yes. They have a defense mechanism-it has something to do with chemical receptors-identical to that of snakes. Which is why snakes aren"t poisoned and killed by the toxins they themselves produce."
"Who gave you that code name?"
"One of our captains. But he didn"t know that bit about poison and immunity. Neither did I. It"s something I only discovered years later, reading an article. At the time I just registered the information. Then I remembered it, a little while later, and it seemed to me that it had a meaning. The mongoose, even if you hunt it down, is like a snake: it can live with poison in its body."
The doctor seemed to be about to say something. Then he had second thoughts.
"For many years I lived with criminals. They trusted me-in fact, they admired me-and I was working to bring them down, even when, as sometimes happened, we"d become friends. And you know why I was so good at that job?"
"Why?"
"Because I was like them. For example, I liked stealing. When you"re working undercover you have money and means at your disposal that a normal carabiniere couldn"t even dream about. You have lots of ways to pocket quite a bit of money or use it for different purposes that have nothing to do with your mission. That"s what I did. I didn"t feel any sense of guilt. In fact, I liked it. I liked it a lot."
Roberto emptied his gla.s.s and asked if he could have some more.
The doctor opened a drawer, took out a pack of chocolate cookies and pushed it into the middle of the desk, halfway between them.
"Maybe we should eat something too."
They ate the chocolate cookies and drank some more brandy, without speaking for a couple of minutes.
"My job was to be someone else. And it"s not at all bad to be someone else from time to time: it makes you feel free. The problem arises when you have to be someone else most of the time. The problem arises when you have to be someone else in order to feel yourself. And when you"re not someone else you know you"re out of place. I don"t know how to explain it."
"You couldn"t have explained it any better."
"And anyway, I liked the company of criminals. Obviously to do my job properly, I had to act in such a way that they trusted me, but I know I did more than that. I wanted their approval, I wanted them to like me."
"Can you give me an example?"
"When I heard that one of the bosses had said I was a good boy, or a reliable guy, or that I really knew what I was doing, I was happy. Much happier than when my colleagues or my superior officers said similar things. I wanted to nail them, yes, but before anything else I wanted to win them over."
"How long did this last?"
Roberto tried to smile, but what emerged was a grimace.
"Do you mind if I light a cigar?" the doctor asked.
"No, not at all. And can I smoke a cigarette?"
"But let"s not tell my other patients about this irregular session, all right?"
Roberto had the distinct sensation, or rather the certainty, that the doctor knew about him and Emma. It was a rea.s.suring sensation, like a signal that things were going in the right direction.
From a drawer of the desk-the same one where the cookies had been-the doctor took a box of Tuscan cigars. He took one out, cut it in the middle with a penknife, poured a little more brandy in the gla.s.ses, and lit the cigar. Roberto lit his cigarette.
"There"s a point I"d like to clarify before you continue with your story."
"Yes?"
"If you had the opportunity now, would you still like to steal? If you had the opportunity-in the same conditions, with a guarantee of impunity-would you like to go back to breaking the rules?"
Roberto stiffened on his chair, surprised. That wasn"t the question he been expecting and he had no answer ready. It took him a few minutes to formulate one.
"I don"t think so. I can"t be sure, but I don"t think so."
"When did you realize-when did you start to realize-that you didn"t like it anymore?"
Roberto lit another cigarette with the stub of the first. An action he hadn"t performed for quite some time.
"I couldn"t say for sure, but there are a few episodes, all from the last years, that always come into my mind together, one after the other."
"Then maybe you can say for sure."
"Maybe I can, now that you"ve made me think about it." And then, after a long pause spent putting his thoughts and memories in order: "Yes, that"s how it is. There were these three episodes when I should have realized that the machine wasn"t working anymore, the mechanism was breaking down, and it was probably time to stop."
"Then tell me about them. And if it"s all the same to you, tell me about them in chronological order, from the oldest to the most recent."
It was in Mexico, in a small town close to the border with Arizona, and he was working in partnership with an officer from the federal police, who was also undercover.
There had been a working dinner at the house of a local chief; they had eaten and drunk and finalized their business. Now they were smoking and drinking and telling each other stories, more or less true, more or less invented.
The host was a man named Miguel, known as El Pelo. He had had a hair transplant, and dyed not only the hair on his head but also his pubic hair. He boasted of only having s.e.x with girls less than twenty, which he said helped to keep him young.
After a while, El Pelo made a sign to one of his two bodyguards. The man went out and soon afterward came back accompanied by three young girls. In actual fact, they were not much more than children, one of them especially. They were heavily made-up and dressed like wh.o.r.es, but under the makeup and the clothes it was perfectly obvious they were no more than twelve, the youngest probably even younger. There was an excited buzz in the big dining room.
El Pelo was smiling smugly. He was proud of his hospitality: a perfect host who knows what a real party is and doesn"t simply offer wine and food and liqueurs. With a regal gesture, he announced that, in honor of his guests, he had bought three virgins, never touched by anyone before tonight. His favorite kind of merchandise. He concluded his brief speech by telling his guests to help themselves-que aprovechen.
The Mexican federal officer realized that something might be about to happen that couldn"t be undone: Roberto could well say or do something that would blow the whole thing sky high. He hissed in his ear not to do anything stupid. There was nothing they could do about any of this, he said, nothing at all. The only thing that would happen is that their cover would be blown and they"d be killed. Roberto seemed not to hear. His colleague had to squeeze his arm until the nails penetrated the skin.
"Roberto, don"t do anything stupid," he repeated. "Just think, soon we"ll have all these sons of b.i.t.c.hes arrested. And they"ll pay for this too."
The scene in front of them was frighteningly grotesque. Hairy bellies, sweaty, contorted faces, animal-like sneers. Some of the men pressed around the girls" bodies, while others watched and m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed.
Roberto and the Mexican officer waited until several men had drifted away and so there was no risk of being conspicuous, then went out onto the patio, lit cigarettes, and smoked in silence.
Roberto pa.s.sed a hand furiously over his face, almost as if trying to remove something sticky and tenacious. The doctor"s face was motionless, his complexion had turned livid, and his tight lips formed a scar.
"I watched the rape of three little girls and I couldn"t do anything. And you know what the worst part of it was?"
"What?"
"The girls were-how can I put this?-consenting. It wasn"t rape in the sense of physical violence. They ... went along with it, and the frightening thing was their smiles and their eyes. I tried not to watch but always ended up meeting the eyes of the youngest one. No. Meeting isn"t the right word. She wasn"t looking at anything, her eyes were open but they were like those of a dead girl."
He couldn"t go on. He remembered the murder victims he had seen in his life. Murder victims always have their eyes open. Open in terror or surprise or both at the same time. We close the eyes of the dead because we can"t bear to look at them, open onto nothing, lifeless. The memory of that evening in Mexico was silent. He couldn"t remember the voices, or the cries, or the laughter, or the grunts. Only an unbearable mechanism of bodies and a line of distorted faces, a silent inferno.
The doctor"s voice interrupted the nightmare.
"Tell me the second episode."
Roberto moved his head, like someone abruptly waking up and needing a few seconds to return to reality.
"I was in Madrid, handling a major deal involving Colombians, Spaniards, and Italians. The Italians weren"t the usual traffickers, Mafia, Camorra. They were-how can I put this?-normal guys who"d managed to get into the big time, which was quite unusual. You may have heard of the operation, I mean when we arrested them, because that unusual aspect of it caused a bit of a stir. Anyway, I was in Madrid with one of these guys, we had half a day free and he asked me if I wanted to go with him to visit a museum where there"s this big, very famous painting by Pica.s.so. The painting is called Guernica-I"m sure you know it-but I can"t remember the name of the museum."
"The Reina Sofia."
"That"s it, the Reina Sofia. Roberto-he had the same name as me-had already been to see Guernica several times and whenever he was in Madrid he always went back. He was a nice guy, with lots of interests. He was like, I don"t know, a university teacher, a good schoolmate. The kind who finishes the work before the others and then pa.s.ses the copy around. I liked talking to him and I think he liked talking to me. He said he thought I was different from the other people we had to deal with in our work. He meant our work as traffickers. He said he trusted me."
"Why was he a trafficker?"
"I don"t know. He came from a good family, he"d been to university, he only had a few more exams to take and he could have graduated. I often thought of asking him why he was involved in trafficking, but I never did."
"Were you afraid of making him suspicious?"
"Yes, it"s not the kind of question you ask in those circles. And anyway, if I"d asked him I think I know what he would have replied."
"What?"
"He would have said there was nothing bad about dealing in cocaine, nothing immoral. He would have said there"s no real difference between drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. Except that the first are forbidden and the others aren"t. If someone said something like that to me today I think I"d agree with him."
"Did you go to the Reina Sofia?"
"Yes, we went, and he told me a whole lot of things about Guernica. I remember hardly anything, apart from the thing about the Minotaur being a symbol of evil and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity."
Roberto broke off. A shudder went through him, as if due to a sudden fever, and he pursed his lips.
"A few months later I had him arrested along with lots of others. He was given fourteen years. I think he"s still inside. All thanks to me, his friend. The man he trusted."
The third episode had taken place in Panama.
Roberto was a guest at the farm of a man connected to the Cali cartel in Colombia. The man was a very important person and the farm was a crazy place: there were tennis courts, an indoor Olympic-size swimming pool, another huge pool outside with artificial waves, and a regulation-size football field with gra.s.s that was watered every day and actual terraces. There was even a fake volcano that produced eruptions to order.
Real professional teams played on the football field, invited and paid for by the host. The matches were organized to entertain the guests. And all the rest was there to astonish visitors, who included police officers, mayors, politicians and professionals, as well as, of course, criminals and Mafiosi from all over.
While Roberto was there, a new shipment of arms arrived. Pump-action rifles, a.s.sault rifles, guns of every kind. They just needed to be tried, and someone said it would be more fun to practice on living targets. The edge of the village a few miles from the farm was home to groups of semi-domesticated dogs, and this same person said that the dogs would make ideal targets. So they set off in a couple of jeeps loaded with people and arms and went in search of the dogs. In the end they found them, got out of the vehicles, and the weapons were loaded and handed out. Roberto got his gun too, and almost instinctively c.o.c.ked the trigger.
A few people laughed, a few made jokes, a few said not to shout too loud because the dogs might escape. But the animals didn"t even think of escaping. They were used to people and just stood there thirty or forty feet away, calm and trusting. Some lying asleep, others searching in the rubbish, the puppies playing.
Then the host raised his rifle-naturally it was up to him to start-unhurriedly took aim, and fired. The first animal hit was a calm-looking ginger-colored dog, some kind of Labrador. The shot hit it in the back part of its body, its legs gave way, and it collapsed to the ground. Then all h.e.l.l broke loose, a h.e.l.l of fire and explosions and barking and whimpering and shouts and laughter and the smell of gunfire and smoke. Some dogs fell immediately, hit by the first volley. The others were pursued, and only a few managed to escape. Then the shooting stopped, and Roberto found himself standing there deafened in the middle of the smoke, with his pistol in his hand. Only then did he realize that he too had fired, like all the others.
Reloading the weapons, they advanced in scattered formation toward the place where most of the animals had fallen.
A guy nicknamed El Chico because of his baby face blew away the dying puppies with a round of M16 fire. Others took aim at the survivors as they tried to escape. Some attacked the animals that were already dead.
The dog that had been hit first, the one that looked like a Labrador, was still alive. It must have had its hip shattered, and was making high-pitched whines and flailing with its hind legs in a desperate attempt to get back on its feet.
Roberto approached it, c.o.c.ked the trigger, and shot it in the head. Blood and brain matter spattered on his trousers as the animal"s body was shaken by a final shudder and fell still.
"I feel as ashamed as if it had happened yesterday. I couldn"t prevent that ma.s.sacre any more than I could prevent the rape of the three girls. But n.o.body forced me. I could have fired into the ground, or in the air, or not fired at all. I chose to take part."
"You shot the Labrador because you didn"t want it to suffer."
"I"m a coward, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, a piece of s.h.i.t. The reason I was so good at working among criminals is because I"m like them. I belong with them, I-"
"That"s enough now!" The doctor"s voice was like a slap, rapid and well-aimed.
Roberto gave a start, just as if he had indeed been struck, and dropped his head. After a few seconds he raised it again and for no particular reason started inspecting the ceiling of the room. He looked at the highest shelves in the bookcases, then at a thin stucco frieze that ran parallel to the edge of the ceiling, some ten inches below it, then at a small crack in the plaster on which he focused for several seconds, as if the solution to everything were hidden just beneath it.
At last he turned his gaze toward the doctor. His eyes were moist and red. He sniffed, trying to do so in a polite way.
The doctor handed him a pack of tissues.
"But these weren"t the things you didn"t want to talk about this afternoon, were they?"
"No, they weren"t," Roberto said, drying his eyes.
Giacomo
I woke up very early this morning, feeling very thirsty, and got up to go and drink a gla.s.s of water. I had already drunk all of the gla.s.s I had on the bedside table during the night without even waking up, as always happens to me. I drink in my sleep and in the morning I always find the gla.s.s empty and never remember drinking. When I was very small I was convinced it was a ghost that came and drank my water.