After Hannibal (32 page)

“Excuse me,” Fabio said, “I am a man who likes to get things clear. What use will it be to me in the meantime, this sun-ray lamp?”

“In the meantime?”

“Before the dampness begins to affect me.”

“I had thought you understood. You will need the lamp in order to age the ink.”

Fabio looked blankly across the desk. There was something ineffable about Mancini, a sort of absolute imperturbability, something that disarmed all power of reaction. He radiated a wholeness of being so complete that it defied question.
I am he that is
, he seemed to be saying.
Than me there is no other
.

“You will have to be careful,” he said now. “If you make a mistake it will not be possible to put it right again. We can make things older but we can’t make them younger. That is because aging is in line with the natural tendency of the universe and the second law of thermodynamics.”

“How long must I do it for?”

“What is the date on the promissory note?”

“The tenth of April 1992.”

“Let me see now. That is three years, two months and four days ago.” Mancini extracted from a drawer a single blank sheet of writing paper and took from the inside pocket of his jacket a platinum fountain pen of impressive proportions. “Bear with me a moment,” he said. “A little elementary calculus.”

After a period in which the only sound was the faint scratch of the nib the lawyer looked up. “At one time I would not have been so exact but these days I am a perfectionist. If you expose the documents
to ultraviolet light for a period of thirty-four hours and twenty-six minutes, at a distance of one meter sixty-five, you will get it down almost to the moment.”

This at least was clear enough; but Fabio felt more fogged than ever as he rose to go. “But surely,” he said, “if you know this can be done, then Arturo’s lawyer, the one who is proposing to carry out the tests, he will know it too.”

“Of course. And he will know that we know it.”

“Also the judge who hears the case, he will know it?”

Mancini nodded his large head. “Certainly. All those professionally involved in the case will be fully conversant with the properties of the sun-ray lamp.”

“But in that case—”

“That is how the law works, Signor Bianchi, knowing and not knowing at the same time and always, under all circumstances, pursuing the tactical advantage.”

“To a man like me that is a nightmare,” Fabio said. “I am a man who likes everything to be crystal clear and in the open.”

“Are you sure? Think about it carefully sometime—when you find yourself at leisure. In my opinion you, and all mortal men, would soon be in a state of nervous collapse if everything were crystal clear and in the open.”

These words had little meaning for Fabio but he did not feel up to arguing the point. Mancini had not included himself in the ranks of mortality and this struck him as peculiar. He agreed to buy a sun-ray lamp and follow the instructions carefully. Then, with a certain feeling of relief, he took his leave.

It was time now for Mancini’s mid-morning refreshment. This took an invariable form: mint tea made for him by his secretary and accompanied by a brioche from the pastry shop on the corner.

It was cool and quiet in the office and he felt at peace. He thought for a while of the interview just past, the business of knowing and not knowing, the total dependence on tactics. Looked at one way, it was a kind of elaborate game, designed to show that the letter of the law had been strictly adhered to. A game for the benefit of the ignorant. Justice of course was another matter; it rested on moral distinctions, not legal. Above all it rested on common sense. These two men had joined together in a fraudulent enterprise. They were equally guilty in the eyes of the law. But one had done it to evade taxes, the other as part of a treacherous plan to cheat and dispossess his partner and lover. There was, to any but an idiot, a distinction to be made here.

Mancini sighed to himself, brushing small crumbs from his lapels. Judges were not always notable for taking the commonsense view of things. Justice in this case would best be served if Fabio kept the house and land and the income deriving from them and Arturo received a sum of money substantial enough to mark his contribution of work and service. By private agreement it would have to be, since Italian law did not recognize the rights of homosexuals in property settlements. The best outcome, if it could be done quickly. But Arturo would want more, his lawyer would encourage him to press the false bill of sale. If the device of the promissory notes was not accepted, the case would drag on for years and in the end Arturo would get nothing, his lawyer would get it all. This was not justice
either. He had behaved with outstanding wickedness, but moral turpitude does not cancel property rights—another distinction important to preserve …

He had finished his tea now. He rang for the secretary to come and take the tray. She informed him that his next clients were already waiting and he asked her to show them in.

A group of four—two married couples, all of them Italian. They sat in line abreast before his desk and told him a story of misfortune, interrupting one another frequently. Mancini listened, looking from face to face. It was his long-established habit to make mental summaries of what he was told, to extract the essence from the often stumbling and repetitive statements of those who came to him. These people, old friends, had combined together, put their savings together, to buy an abandoned
borgo
in the hills near Umbertide, four houses in need of restoration, a ruined church, various outbuildings, ten hectares of woodland. Their idea had been to have the place put to rights so that they could live in part of it and sell or let the rest—there would have been space for two more couples at least. The man from whom they had bought the property, also an Italian, had produced letters of guarantee and bills of sale, all apparently in order …

“Yes,” Mancini said, “you discovered when it was much too late that this man did not own the property, not in any real sense, though no doubt he had legal title to it.” He nodded with his usual blend of dispassion and sympathy. “It is a story I have heard before. It was all in mortgage to a bank, wasn’t it? And this man, where is he now?”

The answer when it came did not surprise him. The present whereabouts of the vendor were unknown. He had decamped with their joint deposit, leaving them with a massive debt to the bank.

“Yes, yes, I see.” It was the same disastrous dream, the same haste to buy before another buyer came along and stole the dream away. But the real thief of dreams was generally not the one you feared but the one you trusted … “You should have come to me before signing, not after,” he said. “I will think for a moment. These days I like to study things. It is like a plan of campaign. You choose the ground that suits you best, you position your forces.”

He folded his large, pale hands into loose fists and rested his chin on them. For a short while silence reigned in the room. Then he looked up and lowered his hands again to the desk, causing glimmering reflections in the lustrous surface. “This is what you must do.”