Involuntary Witness (28 page)

A pause. Seven, eight seconds.

“And please take note: even if against all the evidence you still choose to maintain that Renna’s account is reliable, this would not amount to proof of the defendant’s guilt.

“Because the other evidence against him isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

And I went on to examine the statements of the two Senegalese, the results of the searches and all the rest of the evidence.

I spoke of the mobile-phone records. Even if we agreed to speak in terms of the famous “verisimilitude”, I said, the prosecution’s reconstruction didn’t hold water. In fact it was almost grotesque. The prosecution held that the defendant had returned from Naples in the grip of a raptus, and had gone to Capitolo with the insane intention of kidnapping, violating and killing little Francesco. In that case he was mad. Because only madness could account for such preposterous behaviour. In which case, why had he not been subjected to any psychiatric examination? If to explain his behaviour it was necessary to fall back on mental illness, then this illness should have been ascertained. Otherwise that hypothesis remained simply an attempt to influence the court.

I raised all these points fairly briefly. The jurors were tired, and I was convinced that when the moment
came to decide they would primarily discuss Renna’s evidence.

So I began to wind up. To end at the point from which one started gives the idea of completeness and lends strength to an argument. So I believe.

“Verisimilitude or veracity, ladies and gentlemen. Probability or certainty. The choice ought not to be difficult. But instead it is. Because if on the one hand there is the perception – which I am sure we all share – that this trial has produced no answer, on the other hand there is the feeling of dismay at the idea that a horrible crime can remain unpunished, without a known culprit. It is an intolerable idea, and one that brings with it a very grave risk.”

At that moment Cervellati re-entered the courtroom. He sat down and propped his head on his right hand, using the hand as a kind of barrier. Between him and me. His gaze was ostentatiously directed at a point in the courtroom high up on the left. Where nothing was.

It was the position closest to turning his back on me that was physically possible with the tables and chairs arranged in parallel rows.

I thought he was a turd and carried on.

“The risk is that we may try to rid ourselves of this anguish by finding not
the
culprit but
a
culprit. Anyone at all. Someone who has suffered the mischance of getting ensnared in the proceedings.

“Without – having – done – a – thing. Let me repeat that: without – having – done – a – thing.

“Some may not share the categorical tone of my statement. Very well. Everyone is entitled to doubts. I am the defending counsel and for many reasons I am convinced of the innocence of my client. You have the right not to share this certainty. You have a right to your doubts. You have a right to think that
Abdou Thiam could be guilty, despite what his counsel says.

“He could be guilty. Despite the absurdity of the reconstruction put forward by the prosecution, you have the right to think that the defendant could be guilty.

“He
could
be. In the conditional.

“Verdicts of guilty, however, are not written – cannot be written – in the conditional mood. They are written in the indicative, they affirm certainties. Certainties!

“Can you make affirmations of certainty? Can you say it is
certain
that the witness Renna was not mistaken? Can you say that at the end of this trial you are left with no reasonable doubt?

“If you can say all this, then convict Abdou Thiam.”

I had raised my voice and I became aware that this time I was not play-acting.

“Sentence him to life imprisonment and nothing less. If you can say that there is not a single doubt, that you are absolutely certain, then it is your
duty
to sentence this man to prison for ever. You must have the courage to do it. The great courage.”

For an indefinable time everything hung in the air. Until I heard my voice once more. Low now, and with a crack in it.

“If, however, you do not have this certainty, then you require even more courage.

“In order not to suppress your doubts in the name of summary justice, and therefore to acquit, you will need enormous courage. I am confident that you will have it.

“Thank you for hearing me out.”

I sat down, scarcely able to believe that I had really finished. From behind me on the public benches came a murmur of voices. I sat with lips compressed and
head slightly bowed, staring dumbly to my left at the grain of the wood on my desk.

I heard the judge speaking and his voice seemed to come from far away. He asked the prosecution and the civil party if they had any responses. They said no.

Then he asked Abdou if he wished to make a concluding statement, before the court retired in camera. As was his right by law. The murmur died and there were a few seconds of silence. Then came Abdou’s voice speaking into a microphone inserted between the bars of the cage. It was quiet but firm.

“I want to say one thing. I want to thank my lawyer because he has believed I am innocent. I want to tell him he did right, because it is true.”

The president gave an imperceptible nod. “The court will retire,” he said.

He got to his feet, and almost at once the others did likewise.

I got up too, mechanically. I watched them disappear one by one through the door and only then did I turn to Margherita.

“How long did I speak for?”

“Two and a half hours, more or less.”

I looked at my watch. It was a quarter past six. It seemed to me I had spoken for no more than forty minutes.

We stood for a while in silence. Then she asked me why I didn’t take off my robe. I did so and laid it on the desk, while she regarded me with the expression of one who wants to say something and is searching for the way, for the words.

“I’m not very good at paying compliments. I’ve never really liked doing it, and I think I know why. In any case, that doesn’t matter now. What I wanted to say was that ... well, listening to you was ... extraordinary.
I’d like to give you a kiss, but I don’t think this is the time and place for it.”

I said nothing, because I was at a loss for words, and what’s more I had a lump in my throat.

A journalist came up and complimented me. Then another, and then the girl who had asked me what I thought of the prosecutor’s request for a verdict of guilty. I felt a pang of remorse at not having been kinder to her earlier.

While the journalists jabbered on at me without my listening, Margherita gave a gentle tug at my sleeve.

“I must dash. Good luck.” She raised her left fist to her brow and briefly bowed her head.

Then she turned and made off, and I felt lonely.

The first defence I conducted on my own, shortly after qualifying, had to do with a series of frauds. The defendant was a large, jolly fellow with a black moustache and a nose laced with broken veins. I had a feeling he was not a teetotaller.

The prosecutor made a very short speech and asked for two years’ imprisonment. I made a long harangue. While I was speaking the judge kept nodding, and this gave me confidence. My arguments seemed to me cogent and unanswerably persuasive.

When I finished I was convinced that in a matter of minutes my client would be acquitted.

The judge was out for about twenty minutes, and when he returned he pronounced exactly the sentence the prosecution had asked for. Two years’ imprisonment without remission, because my client was a habitual criminal.

I didn’t sleep that night, and for days afterwards I asked myself where I had gone wrong. I felt humiliated, and persuaded myself that the judge for some unknown reason had it in for me. I lost faith in justice.

It never occurred to me for one moment that there was an obvious explanation for the matter: that my client was guilty and the judge had been right to convict him. This was a brilliant intuition that only came to me long afterwards.

However, that experience taught me to treat my
trials with due detachment. Without getting emotional and above all without nursing any expectations.

Getting emotional and nursing expectations are both dangerous things. They can do harm, even great harm. And not only in trials.

I thought about this now while the courtroom was emptying. I thought I had done my job well. I had done everything possible. Now I had to feel unconcerned about the result.

I ought to go out, go to the office or take a stroll, even go home. When the court was ready the clerk of the court would call me on my mobile – he had asked for my number before he left the courtroom himself – and I would return to hear the reading of the verdict.

This is the usual practice in trials of this kind, when the court is expected to remain in camera for many hours, or even for days. When they are ready, they call the clerk and tell him what time they will re-enter the courtroom to pronounce the verdict. The clerk in turn calls the public prosecutor and the counsels and at the established hour there they all are, ready for the final scene.

In short, according to practice I should have left.

But instead I stayed put, and after gazing around the empty courtroom for a while I approached the cage. Abdou rose from his bench and came towards me.

I took hold of the bars and he gave me a nod of greeting and the ghost of a smile. I nodded and smiled back before I spoke.

“Did you manage to follow my speech?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

He didn’t answer at once. As on other occasions, I had the feeling that he was concentrating on finding the right words.

“I have one question, Avvocato.”

“Tell me.”

“Why have you done all this?”

If he hadn’t done so, sooner or later I would have had to ask myself that question.

I was searching for an answer, but I realized I didn’t want to talk through the bars. There was no question of them letting Abdou out for a chat in the courtroom. Against all regulations.

So I asked the head of his escort if I could go into the cage.

He stared at me in disbelief, then turned to his men, shrugged as if abandoning all hope of understanding, and ordered the warder with the keys to let me in.

I sat on the bench near Abdou, and felt an absurd sense of relief as I heard the bolt slide home in the door of the cage.

I was about to offer him a cigarette when he pulled out a packet and insisted on my taking one of his. Diana Red. The prisoners’ Marlboro.

I took one, and after smoking half I told him I had no answer to his question.

I told him that I thought it was for a good motive, but I didn’t know exactly what that motive was.

Abdou gave a nod, as if satisfied with my answer.

Then he said, “I’m frightened.”

“So am I.”

And so it was we began to talk. We talked of many things and went on smoking his cigarettes. At a certain point we both felt thirsty and I called up the bar on my mobile to place an order. Ten minutes later in came the boy with the tray, and passed two glasses of iced tea through the bars. Abdou paid.

We drank beneath the bewildered gaze of the warders.

At about eight o’clock I told him I was going for a walk to stretch my legs.

I had no wish to go home or to the office. Or into the centre of town among the shops and the crowds. So I ventured into the district round the law courts, towards the cemetery. Among working-class tenements which emitted the smell of rather unsavoury food, rundown shops, streets I’d never been along in all my thirty-nine years of living in Bari.

I walked for a long time, without an aim or a thought in my head. It seemed to me I was somewhere else entirely, and the whole place was so ugly that it had a strange, seedy allure to it.

Darkness had fallen and my mind was completely distracted when I became aware of the vibration in my back trouser pocket.

I pulled out the mobile and on the other end heard the voice of the clerk of the court. He was pretty agitated.

Had he already called once and got no answer? So sorry, I hadn’t registered. They’d been ready for ten minutes? I’d be there at once. At once. Just a minute or two.

I glanced around and it took me a while to realize where I was. Not at all close. I would have to run, and I did.

I entered the courtroom about ten minutes later, forcing myself to breathe through my nose and not my mouth, feeling my shirt stuck to my back with sweat, and trying to look dignified.

They were all there, ready in their places. Counsel for the civil party, public prosecutor, clerk of the court, journalists and, despite the late hour, even some members of the public. I noticed that there were a number of Africans, never seen at the other hearings.

As soon as he saw me, the clerk of the court went through to inform the court that I had arrived at last.

I threw on my robe and glanced at my watch. Nine fifty-five.

The clerk returned to his seat and then, in rapid succession, the bell rang and the court entered.

The judge hurried to his place, with the air of a man who wants to get some disagreeable duty quickly over and done with. He looked first right, then left. He assured himself that the members of the court were all in position. He put on his glasses to read the verdict.

Eyes lowered, half closed, I listened to my thudding heart.

“In the name of the Italian people, the Court of Assizes at Bari, in accordance with Article 530, Paragraph One, of the code of criminal procedure ...”

I felt a charge throughout my body and my legs turned to jelly.

Acquitted.