Gradually, as the days passed, I regained a modicum of self-control. It was a help to me to think – to convince myself – that when she came back she would come looking for me. Then, with all the necessary firmness, I would tell her that she had behaved in an unacceptable way and that I didn’t want to have anything more to do with her. On the basis of her apologies and her entreaties, I would evaluate whether or not to back down from that intention.

It wasn’t the best August of my life.

243

24

Easter came and went, and now we were back in court for the closing statements. They had all come for this last act: Consuelo, Tancredi, Annapaola. And of course Lorenza, sitting with her bag in her lap, looking unusually composed.

Judge Marinelli indicated the documents that could be used in the ruling and handed over to the assistant prosecutor for her statement.

Gastoni got to her feet, wrapping herself in her robe. Once again her overpowering perfume filled the air. I didn’t like her, so my thoughts weren’t objective, but it seemed to me that putting on so much perfume in order to go into court and ask for somebody to be sentenced to many years in prison wasn’t exactly in the best of taste.

“Your Honours, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I shan’t speak for too long because in legal proceedings where things are clear-cut the most important thing is to avoid the risk of complicating them. The job of the defence, on the other hand – and it’s a perfectly legitimate one – is to make them complicated in order to conceal a truth that in some cases, like this one, is obvious and irrefutable.

“I’m reminded of a famous passage in Manzoni’s The Betrothed, the one in which Azzecca-garbugli says to Renzo: ‘You need to tell your lawyer clear things: it is then up to us to confuse them.’ I don’t quote this to cause any offence, 244only to point to a common defensive procedure. A legitimate one, I repeat, because a defence counsel has to do his job: to try to get his client acquitted even when that client’s guilt is obvious. Even when, I’m sure, he himself is convinced of that guilt.”

Here I felt the impulse to stand up and object. Gastoni, while simulating respect, was suggesting to the jurors that the defence was only a pedantic obstacle on the road to the punishment of criminals; and that defence lawyers, starting with yours truly, were all more or less acting in bad faith.

I decided to let it go. Where necessary I would be able to criticize the argument in my closing statement, but objecting – and the squabbling that would ensue – risked only adding emphasis to that improper move of hers.