1 2 3

THE
MEASURE
OF TIME

Gianrico Carofiglio

Translated by Howard Curtis

BITTER LEMON PRESS
LONDON

Contents

1. Title Page
2. 1
3. 2
4. 3
5. 4
6. 5
7. Lorenza
8. 6
9. 7
10. Lorenza
11. 8
12. 9
13. Lorenza
14. 10
15. 11
16. 12
17. 13
18. Lorenza
19. 14
20. 15
21. Lorenza
22. 16
23. 17
24. 18
25. 19
26. Lorenza
27. 20
28. 21
29. 22
30. 23
31. Lorenza
32. 24
33. 25
34. Lorenza
35. 26
36. 27
37. 28
38. 29
39. 30
40. About the Author
41. Also Available from Bitter Lemon Press by Gianrico Carofiglio:
42. Copyright

1

“What do we have today, Pasquale?” I asked as I walked into the office, thinking as I did so, for the umpteenth time, that this was a ritual I was tired of.

“Let’s see… The Colella woman should finally be coming to pay. Then there’s the expert witness in the Moretti trial, the public contracts case – he’s coming to pick up the papers, but says he wants to talk to you for five minutes. And at seven there’s a new client, a woman.”

“Who is she?”

With his usual slight aloofness, Pasquale leafed through the spiral notepad he always carries with him. Each one of us has something that identifies us and with which, assuming we’re aware of it, we identify. For Pasquale it’s his notepad. He buys them himself, without putting them on the practice’s stationery expenses, and he always gets the same ones, an old-fashioned kind to be found only in a dusty and rather heart-warming old stationer’s in the Libertà district. They have rough black covers with slightly red edges, like the ones my grandfather used.

“Her name’s Delle Foglie. She phoned yesterday afternoon and asked for an appointment as soon as possible. She said it’s about something serious concerning her son.”

“Just Delle Foglie?”

“How do you mean, Avvocato?”

“Did she only give her surname?”6

“Just the surname, yes.”

For a few months, so many years earlier that I preferred not to count them, I’d known a girl named Delle Foglie. It was a period very distant in time and extremely distant in my memory. A period I hadn’t thought about since it had happened and then melted away. While Pasquale spoke, vague, unreal memories came back into my mind, almost as if they concerned someone else, events I thought I knew about because somebody had told me about them, not because they’d really happened to me.

“She’ll be here at seven. But if you have other commitments,” Pasquale added, maybe noticing something strange in my expression, “I can call her back.”

“No, no. Seven’s fine.”

Pasquale went back to his post in the waiting room. I thought for a few minutes about this new client and decided she wasn’t the Delle Foglie I’d known before. There was no reason it should be her, I told myself, somewhat irrationally, and dismissed the matter from my mind.

At this point I should have devoted myself to studying the case files for the following day’s hearings. I didn’t feel like it. Nothing new about that: for some years now legal papers had been filling me with a sense of nausea, and the syndrome was getting slowly but inexorably worse.