Persecution (9781609458744) (28 page)

The truth is that the answers Leo seeks are in the right-hand pocket of his pants. That's where he put the copy of the arrest warrant that was given to him the morning they came to get him. Everything's written there. The explanation of why they brought him to this place.

But something is keeping him from putting his hand in his pocket and glancing at those few pages. Her prefers not to know. He feels that his nerves are so delicately balanced that a comma in the wrong place would make him collapse. So no paper and blessed ignorance.

One thing is certain: Leo has been here for hours and of Herrera not a sign. Maybe they didn't let him know. Or maybe yes, they told him but he, for some reason or other, is taking his time. Maybe they notified him, he came, but they won't let Leo see him. Or maybe they notified him, he came, and now he's working to get him out. Probably that old Levantine is bargaining with the judge.

Yes, the judge. Who knows who the judge is? Since it all began Leo has always had trouble imagining the human beings who were doing this to him. He has always found it incredible that whoever was doing such harm was a person like other people: wife, children, dog, insurance, and everything else.

One of the kids from the police, alluding to the judge, referred to him with the honorific “doctor,” referring to his law degree. With respect or sarcasm? Who knows!

“Has the doctor arrived?” he asked as he handed over to his fellow-jailer the package called “Leo Pontecorvo.” Just then Leo had read his own name written in block letters on the file that the two cops were exchanging. That was what he had become: a file. There was nothing that described his current condition better than those creased, dirty pages. Not bad for a man who for his whole life had avoided every bureaucratic trifle. In short, when one of the two men had asked the other if the “doctor” had arrived, the answer had been among the more evasive: “I don't know if he's coming today.”

He doesn't know if he's coming today? How can he say that he doesn't know if he's coming today? There's a chance that he won't come till Monday? Or even that he won't come until he finally considers it proper to show up? Which means that Leo will have to stay sitting on this mattress for who knows how long (he is terribly thirsty). He'll have to stay here staring at the filthy floor of the cell in which they temporarily park detainees waiting until the formalities of admitting them to prison are completed.

(Yes, “temporarily,” the most far-seeing of adverbs.)

What time is it? Leo doesn't know. At the entrance, along with a handful of other personal items, they confiscated his watch. To judge from the heat that has loosened its tentacles and from the late-afternoon light that filters through the high, sealed windows, eight hours must have passed. Leo has been shut up there for hours with a bunch of other people. And he still hasn't spoken a word to anyone. A real record. Leo is the type who when he is facing a long trip on a train or in an airplane in the end feels the need to bother his neighbor with some stock phrase: “There's a bit of turbulence” or “Do you know what time we're supposed to get to Milan?” But what are the conventional questions to ask a cellmate? “How many have you murdered?” “How many old ladies did you rob last weekend?” That sort of thing? . . . Better to be silent. Go on minding your own business. Wait. Something will happen, something has to happen.

 

Afterward, Leo was put in isolation, as per the “doctor's” orders. And now here he is talking to his father and mother. And he has been for some time. They've come to see him here: in his “single room,” flooded with milky moonlight. They must have flown here from the cemetery, which isn't far away. It's where, in a small, decaying neoclassical chapel in the old Jewish cemetery, Leo buried them, a decade apart. It's where, in a tomb on whose front is written “Pontecorvo-Limentani,” to signify that it is full of putrefied Pontecorvos and Limentanis, his parents, until a few hours ago, were resting in blessed peace. Maybe, seeing their son in trouble, they decided to wake up. (Leo imagines it was his mother who took the initiative and tugged her husband by the sleeve—or what remains of it.) And after a brief parley they flew to him.

They don't seem to want to give him advice the way they used to. Nor do they want to reproach him. Rather, they do what, in life, they were never able to do: they listen to him. They sit there seraphic and smiling and listen to him. For hours. That is to say that in the cell he doesn't breathe the dark atmosphere of chaos that accompanies the dead king in the presence of the young Hamlet, nor does Leo feel terrified, like Don Giovanni before the ghost of the Commendatore. Not at all. As I was saying, the atmosphere is relaxed. So much so that Leo not only isn't afraid but he has never been so talkative. He hasn't felt such a strong desire to smoke a good cigar in a long time. He doesn't have one, but it's as if he did.

Although it's not cold, Leo is shivering. Pleasant shivers. It's the third night he's been there. Alone. And those shivers, before his parents arrived, are the most poignant thing that has happened to him since he was put in isolation. He has even managed to sleep for a few hours. Maybe because in the meantime he has learned the art of not thinking precisely about anything. The art of detachment. Of no hope. Precious skills, capable of putting in perspective, if not actually canceling, the weight of time. Whenever they bring him food or ask if he wants to go out for a walk, Leo starts. The door of the cell emits a sinister sound that makes him start.

But beyond these moments of panic the stay in the cell is unexpectedly innocuous. It's the first time since it all began that he has stopped thinking about what's happening to him. He doesn't give a damn what Herrera is doing. He doesn't even wonder anymore how it's possible that, four days after his arrest, he hasn't even showed up. He doesn't wonder anymore if Herrera has forgotten him or if someone (who knows why) is preventing him from seeing his client. Leo doesn't think about what people are saying about him. People don't exist. The world doesn't exist. A desolate empty land. That's what the universe has become. He doesn't think about the judge, the notorious “doctor”: the man who is taking his time, and who Leo, in all conscience, doubts will once more show up for work. The signature for Leo's arrest. That was the last act of the “doctor” before he retired. Before exiting the stage. Leo doesn't even think about Rachel, or Filippo, or Samuel. He begins to wonder if they ever existed. If they do exist, how is it possible that they aren't with him? How is it possible that they could allow this to happen? What perverted intransigence, what altered sense of justice could have led them to show such a glacial indifference toward him?

Yes, there, finally, he feels protected. No one can hurt him. He has seen that his infinite mildness, his meek behavior, induces in the guards who bring him the meal tray a strange, precious compassion. No one has been so kind to him in a long time. In short, Leo is comfortable there. All he does is nap. He has so much sleep to catch up on. He begins to believe that prison is underestimated.

Until Mamma and Papa show up. It must be very late. The moon and the stars have taken care to illuminate the inside of the cell. From outside comes the magnificent perfume of the Roman night: damp of the river, freshness of eucalyptus. And Leo can't stop talking.

The food here is really terrible, he is saying now. And not only the food. Everything is disgusting. This smell is disgusting. To help you understand, Mamma, it's a much, much more disgusting smell than the one that came out of my suitcase when I got back from the Jewish youth camp. Remember, Mamma? When you became obsessed with the UGEI, the Union of Young Italian Jews? It was time for your son to socialize. Spend time with his people. He was such a pretty child, your son, so intellectually precocious, so athletically high-spirited, and yet held back by his condition as an only son. And by a solitary temperament. And maybe by all that Jewish overprotectiveness that he was the object of. Those years in Switzerland saved his life, of course, but they also slowed it down a little. Here's the kind of conversation that at a certain point you started having at the table. Papa and I were eating and you were talking. You never stopped talking. And it was incredible some of the things you said. You, the inspiration of my precocious misanthropy. You who alone were responsible for my compulsive lack of sociability. You who had done everything possible to shelter me from the inordinate number of traps that this planet conceals. But, lo and behold, with one of your unexpected strokes of genius, you decide the time has come for emancipation. And that that emancipation has to pass through the bonds of blood. And what is better for emancipating a spoiled child than to send him to a fine Jewish summer camp? You remember how desperate I was? How I clung to you? You remember how I cried? That I didn't want to get out of the car?

“Come, little bear, look what a nice view you get from here. Look at the sea, and all those kids. You'll have fun here. Tomorrow your friend Herrera arrives. And then Mamma and Papa are only an hour away by car.”

And in fact the view was beautiful. The colors were so vivid. The yellow of the earth, the blue of the sea. And, yes, Herrera was about to arrive, even though nowadays you'd never suspect it. It gives me shivers to remember it, Mamma. But it was terribly hot. Not to mention the mosquitoes, the dirt, the slovenliness! Life in that camp was like life in a kibbutz. And maybe that was the basic idea: a bit of real socialism translated into a little colony of Jewish kids camping in a pinewood in the Maremma. The bigger ones take care of the little ones. The little ones respect the big ones. Sooner or later everyone has a turn in the kitchen. Or in the latrines. Sooner or later everyone has to take a turn as night watchman. Night watchman? Exactly. Flashlights, sticks, whispers . . . As if the Jews didn't feel safe even in Tuscany. Something truly ridiculous but so exciting.

Yes, Mamma, I was starting to have fun. As usual, you were right.
After the first bewilderment, after winning the battle against my rich kid's squeamishness, I
started to feel better. After crying for several hours because I had been abandoned by you, I
almost forgot you and began to enjoy myself. And I did enjoy myself. All those boys, Mamma.
And all those girls, Papa. And Herrera, so comically squat . . . A magnificent vacation. And
now, remember the shock you had when you came to get me? That wasn't your son. That couldn't
be your son. Your son wasn't so thin, so dirty, and so scruffy. Your son wasn't a street
urchin. What had happened to him? Had those austere
gnevrim
4
not given him enough to eat? Made him work too hard? Neglected his cleanliness? Wretched ugei!

“I never smelled a stench like that.”

It was you, Mamma, who said that, when you opened my suitcase. After two weeks at the camp. As if that suitcase contained all the sweat and all the grime of a lifetime. You remember that stench, Mamma?

Well, it's not even comparable to the stench in here. I know you don't like it when I talk about these things. And in such an explicit way. But if I don't talk to you, then whom do I talk to? That's in essence why you came to see me, isn't it? That's why you ventured all the way here. That's why you're reincarnated. So that finally I can let everything out. So that I can tell you, rather, inform you, of what is happening to your son. You know, they nearly brutalized me. It was terrible. A horrendous fellow, Papa, with an accent and monstrous breath tried to brutalize me. He and his thugs tried to inflict on me a torture that I can't tell you about. And they got close. And I thought that was the worst thing. When the guards saved me, when they pulled me out of that nightmare, I said to myself: that was the worst of it. From now on things can only improve. Now I will have the consolation of mercy that is owed to those who have suffered so much. And so unjustly. That's what I thought the moment after I was saved from that nightmare. What innocence. What naïveté. The nightmare had just started. Now it was the guards' turn to have their fun.

Understand, they did neither more nor less than what the prison rules provide for. Mostly paperwork: the ID photos, the fingerprints. Then they made me strip completely. They confiscated the gold chain you gave me for my bar mitzvah, my wedding ring, and even your watch, Papa. Then, completely naked, with just a cloth around me, I was taken to a boiling-hot room. They left me there for a long time. They took their time. After a while they came back. They weren't alone. There was a doctor with them. A doctor, white jacket and rubber gloves. He put his hands everywhere. Yes, even up my ass. He put two fingers up my ass, Papa, as if he were checking my prostate. And they all stood there looking at me. The doctor and the two guards. They gave me such looks. As if my nakedness weren't enough for them. As if they wanted to strip me even further. If it had been up to them, if their wishes had been granted, they would have skinned me alive. No, no, the doctor was not at all rude. The doctor was kind. A bald, skinny type, younger than me. For someone whose job is to stick his hands up the ass of prisoners he was really friendly, and yet there was something repugnant in all that friendliness. You can't receive a human being in a hot room like that, you can't make him wait for all that time, and then come in and as if it were nothing stick your hand up his ass, and do it with such cheerful friendliness, besides. That affability has something demonic about it. Affability is the worst thing. The true mortal sin.